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Multi-Stage Battle

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A location change during a Boss Battle, ranging from two to three areas in total, adding for nice variation in a brawl. This can occur for several different reasons:

  1. The fighters themselves end up dragging their brawl further into the area they're already in, with the main location being the same, but in a different scenario.
  2. The fighters might cause enough damage to the area that they end up literally breaking down onto another place, floor or level.
  3. Something happens that suddenly separates the opponents and prompt the two to find each other in a different area.
  4. One fighter runs away and is encountered in another area later on.
  5. One fighter chases down the other and resumes the brawl in a separate location from where the chase started.
  6. Finally, the fight itself is interrupted by something (usually an explosion or Collapsing Lair effect of sorts), and the combatants are forced to hold off their brawl and escape to another area, only to continue clawing out each others' throats almost immediately thereafter.

Not to be confused with a Sequential Boss, whose fight will often have several different phases before they go down for good.


Examples:

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    Fan Fiction 
  • Revenant: A number of location-changes occur during Ichigo's battles with Ginjo.

    Film 
  • Star Wars frequently displays this trope:
    • Episode I has a textbook type one between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul.
    • Episode III goes for type four in the first half, then switches to style one, when Obi-Wan fights General Grievous off in a saber duel back at the Separatist lair, then chases him down throughout Utapau's cities, and finally shoots him to death in a landing pad. Type one is used again for the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan.
    • The fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan is also a type six because their fight gets interrupted when the volcano erupts and they have to run and find cover so they don't get pelted with red-hot gravel. Then the structure they're on gets weakened by lava and collapses, leaving them stranded on it in the middle of a river of lava.
    • Episode V has Luke Skywalker fight Darth Vader in various parts of Cloud City, primarily because of types three and five.
  • Type one happens in Spider-Man 2 during both the bank confrontation and the fight on the train, and also in Spider-Man 3 during both Goblin fights and the final fight with Venom and Sandman.
  • The final battle against Voldemort in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has types 1, 4 and 5: it starts out in the Hogwarts' entrance when Harry reveals himself and tries to attack him. Then Harry escapes and is found near the Grand Staircase and then all the way to the astronomy tower. Finally, both fall off the tower and apparate around Hogwarts, ending in Viaduct Courtyard.

    Literature 
  • The first nine books of The Wheel of Time all end with a battle, and most of them are this trope:
    • "The Eye of the World": Rand more-or-less accidentally Travels from one fight to another.
    • "The Great Hunt": The manysided battle of Falme rages back and forth all over the town.
    • "The Dragon Reborn": Rand chases Ishamael through the Stone of Tear.
    • "The Shadow Rising": Rand chases Asmodean through Rhuidean.
    • "The Fires of Heaven": Rand chases Rahvin through the Royal Palace in Caemlyn.
    • "Lord of Chaos": Aversion. The Battle of Dumai's Wells start out at the wells and stays there.
    • "A Crown of Swords": Rand chases Sammael through Illian and Shadar Logoth.
    • "The Path of Daggers": Rand and the renegade Asha'man chase each other through the Sun Palace in Cairhien.
    • "Winter's Heart": Rand's allies and enemies sneak around trying to ambush each other in the forests around Shadar Logoth.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Luke Cage (2016): Luke's first fight with Diamondback begins inside a women's clinic where Claire is trying to extract a Judas bullet from him. After Diamondback knocks out Misty Knight, Luke chases Diamondback to a nearby theatre, where the second part of the fight is carried out.
  • Jessica Jones (2015): The final showdown between Jessica and Kilgrave starts in the ferry terminal, with Kilgrave ordering a bunch of cops to shoot at Jessica, and ends on the nearby pier.

    Roleplay 
  • Destroy the Godmodder:
    • The entire game is fighting the godmodder, with many scenery changes, character switch-ups, and more. Its all one, massive, hyper-extended brawl.
    • Besides the Godmodder, two boss battles are also famous for being multistaged: The return of the Vord in Trial 3, which had the players travel first to the Far Lands and then to the End to destroy the infested Red Dragon shard, and the Psi-Scratch boss battle, which had players enter a new stage for each Ancestral Artifact that needed to be disabled.

    Video Games 
  • God of War II followed the third style, with Kratos' fight against the Colossus of Rhodes, while God of War III had Kratos versus Zeus in a merge of the third and fifth styles.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves went with style one when Sly first fights General Tsao on top of a forest of vines, then on the ground level of said forest. Same game, but with the Mask of Dark Earth in style four, first in a bar as a coyote, then as Carmelita in a mountain-like dune.
  • Aquaria gets this with the final boss, which goes from a shrine to a dark pit to a circular room (with a creepy infant doll in the center), to a freaking huge, open area containing a colossus.
  • The Egg Dragoon fight in Sonic Unleashed is a variation of type two, with Eggman destroying the platform you're standing on twice during the fight.
  • The first two thirds of the final battle against Bowser at the end of Super Mario Galaxy both take place on two individual planets, but the third and final stage takes place inside a hollow Sun.
  • The first phase of Super Mario Galaxy 2's final battle plays out just like the other Bowser battles, even relinquishing the Grand Star at the end. .. but it's a trap, and Bowser eats the Grand Star, grows gigantic once again, and initiates the final phase inside a black hole.
  • Each time Thugly in Donkey Kong Country Returns Turns Red, he smashes the floor of the arena, sending the battle down to a lower level, though the change in terrain has no tactical effect on the battle in progress.
  • Something similar happens with Gergoth in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, you fight him on the top floor of the Condemned Tower, and during the fight you and he end up falling all the way down to the bottom floor once he Turns Red
  • Kirby
    • Goriath does this in Kirby's Return to Dream Land by smashing the snowy floor after taking enough damage. It turns from snow to icy to both.
    • Flowered Sectonia and Soul of Sectonia in Kirby: Triple Deluxe both do this, moving Kirby onto a new set of platforms and changing attack patterns every time they lose a fourth of their health.
    • Both King Dedede and Parallel Dedede do this in their boss battles in Kirby Star Allies after they Turn Red. The former breaks the floor after losing certain chunks of health, while the latter does so once to start off the second phase.
  • The Legend of Zelda series has this with Ocarina of Time (the final battle against Ganondorf) and Twilight Princess (battle against Zant).
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising, with the battles versus Dark Pit, Medusa, and Hades.
    • Dark Pit requires being chased across all of his level, from repeated air clashes, to tracking his hiding places on the ground, and a boss fight where he can fly and Pit can't.
    • Medusa starts out teleporting across the Underworld until Palutena chains her down, making her a stationary boss fight. Then she detaches her head and resumes an air battle.
    • Hades is an entire level on his own, going from the Underworld, the Underworld's sky, and finally the ocean in the overworld, before finally going down.
  • La-Mulana: While two- and even three-stage boss battles are par for the course in modern games, the Mother battle should be acknowledged as it consists of five separate stages, some of which involve substages.
  • La-Mulana 2: Most of the Guardians have two or three stages to their fight. This time, the final boss has only four forms, but the last one has eleven substages.
  • Star Fox: To fully get rid of the Venom Guardian, you must fight it once as the boss of the Venom Orbit and once right before Andross using new tactics on the ground.
  • The Munchables: King Pumpkin.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us allows the player to literally kick an opponent out of a battle stage, moving the fight to another location.
  • Mega Man 8: Grenade Man blows up the floor once his health gets low, causing both of you to drop into a lower room with uneven floor.
  • Mortal Kombat: It's possible to uppercut or otherwise launch your opponent either upwards through the ceiling onto another platform, or downwards and end up in the area below in several of the games.
  • The eponymous Final Boss of the first Metroid Prime game attempts to escape from Samus each time it takes a certain amount of damage. The two opponents dive further into the interior of the Impact Crater until reaching the bottom, where the final phase of the battle takes place.
  • The final Smith fights are an example of # 1 and 2, in no particular order - smashing each other out windows and breaking floors, along with a few other things.
  • Several stages throughout the Dead or Alive series are this way. You can send your opponents rolling down stairs, launch them through windows, doors, or even free falling several stories.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: Mixed with Sequential Boss, the boss fight with Pete in Timeless River starts out with Sora having to stop his steamboat with the Cornerstone from escaping down the river. After that Sora fights Pete on foot, and after taking some damage, he yells, "How about a change", a curtain with Pete's face comes down, and the scene shifts to one of the four windows on Cornerstone Hill (where Sora had earlier had to clear each of them in order to gain information on how Pete had traveled to this time period). Sora, Donald and Goofy fight through each of the four windows until Pete is defeated.
  • Touhou Tenkuushou ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons: The final boss battle against Okina Matara takes place in the Land of the Backdoors. After each spellcard, she uses one of the doors to teleport both of you to one of the locations you've visited in the first four stages, which corresponds to the type of attack she's using next.

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Themyscira, Temple

Never fight near stairs.

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