That One Attack / Strategy Game

• Bleach: The 3rd Phantom:
  • Sennen Hyourou. It deals a medium amount of damage, stops you from moving or attacking, AND lowers your accuracy and evasion. And it can hit the 4 squares around its target, too? That means MORE characters that get affected by it! It doesn't help that Hitsugaya has to be in Bankai when he uses it, so you'll take even more damage that isn't connected to that attack (In Bankai, anyone within a two-space radius of Hitsugaya takes damage and can be potentially frozen, lowering accuracy and evasion.)
  • It's not an attack, but Absolute Defense is too horrible of a move to not mention it. A character with this will randomly (much more often than not) take single-digit damage from ANY attack. Yes, even Co-Op attacks. A lot of bosses in Kisuke's Tower have it, and it is extremely frustrating.
• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Berserk Staves in any game they appear in. These inflict Berserk status on the target, which causes them to become uncontrollable and always attack the nearest unit, friend or foe. Having that uber-powerful character with ultimate weapons isn't so nice when he's killing your team. Worse is that Berserk's success rate is based on the target's Resistance stat, which most physical fighters tend to lack.
  • The Hel spell in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Basically, it's an HP to One attack. In a game with Permadeath. And unlike Eclipse in the GBA games, this one can actually hit you. And if your HP already is 1, it kills you. And the enemies with this spell come in groups.
  • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776:
    • Blizzard. It's a 3-10 range magic tome that puts the target to sleep upon a successful hit. And in this game, sleeping characters are forced to dismount and can be captured instantly, so be prepared to lose their entire inventory if there are enemies nearby!
    • The basic Dark magic spell, which causes Poison. This wouldn't be so bad in other games, but in this one status effects last the entire chapter unless you're willing to use a hard-to-come-by recovery staff. And the most unfair thing about this spell is that, while you do get a playable Dark Mage eventually, that spell only causes Poison when used by enemies.
  • Bolting in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is a Thunder book that allows Anima magic users to attack their foes in a far longer range than say, normal tomes (which as much give you a 2 square range). Depending on the user's Magic, this can potentially cover more than half the screen. Far worse, more than one Bolting is in the paws of a stage boss (like Ursula and Sonia), or if not, in the hands of Mages/Sages with decent Magic stat. This is one of the only magic attacks which Lucius can't reliably resist, to say nothing of every unit that's Weak to Magic. Say your prayers whenever a Bolting user is in your map, you'll need the luck.
  • The Final Boss of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Ashera, has the Judge attacks, which are very powerful and accurate, and can hit anyone regardless of how far away they are — and they're treated as regular weapon attacks, so they can hit twice.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening:
    • Counter. Any damage taken at close range is returned to the person who inflicted it in full, and this skill always activates on a close range attack.
    • One thing that makes Awakening's Lunatic+ so hard is that enemies will almost always have a skill like Vantage+, Luna+, Hawkeye or the aforementioned Counter, or any combination of the four from as early as the Prologue. Vantage+ makes it so that the enemy always attacks first, Hawkeye means their attacks will connect (except on a lucky Dual Guard), and Luna+ always makes their attacks as strong as if your Defense/Resistance was halved.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Counter returns and it has a magical counterpart now, Countermagic. The game knows full well that the best use for these skills is to put Counter on archers, Countermagic on units weak to magic and to put both on any unit at all.
    • The Hexing Rod. It breaks after 2 uses, but it cuts its target's maximum HP in half for the entire chapter. Your Generals suddenly aren't so sturdy when they have the same amount of HP as a Squishy Wizard.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses: As you face the Final Boss of Azure Moon route, one of the enemies in the field is Myson. He uses a generic Warlock model, and isn't particularly noteworthy... except for the fact that he packs Bohr X, a 3-10 range HP to One attack. Nothing quite like having your units suddenly drop to 1 health in a game where permadeath is considered standard, and there's also the issue of the final boss flinging fireballs at you, quite likely killing the weakened units off.
• The Titan Dweevil's Monster Pump in Pikmin 2. It shoots balls of water everywhere and has incredible reach. If you're not paying attention to both of your pilots you could potentially end up with your entire army drowning.
• Stun grenades from Jagged Alliance 2. Everyone within the area of effect, which is quite large, has their stamina bar take a huge hit that will almost certainly render them unable to perform any action during their next turn. And if you're lucky, some of them will have recovered by the turn after that. You can mitigate the worst effects of this one whilst outdoors by not letting your team get bunched up, but heaven help you if you run across a Mook with one of these whilst trying to fight your way through a narrow corridor.
• The online Bleach game Soul Arena has balance patches released for it every so often, so abilities that fit this description are usually nerfed after a little while. However, there's one particular attack that stands out as particularly nasty, in the form of Bankai Gin's "Kill, Shinsou". It deals damage each turn, starting at 5 (out of 100 HP) and doubling every turn. And there's no way to get rid of the effects unless you are able to negate it before it starts, so your character will inevitably die if they are targeted by this skill.
• Baal's Ultimate Force/T.O. Force evility from Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten and Disgaea Dimension 2, which allows Baal to perform his normal attack from any distance as soon as one of the player's units enters the battlefield. When coupled with his ridiculous stats, Baal can easily take out the player's entire party before the player can even make a move (as shown here).
• Iron Marines:
  • The Overseer's Macross Missile Massacre. Not only can it be used from a long distance when it takes to the air and retreats from your units, it deals a massive amount of damage to troops and heroes. Unlike the Fell Bishop's Super Spit attack which is an avoidable splash damage projectile, this is pretty much unavoidable thanks to being homing missiles. The Overseer's other attack is a claw slam which is only used when it's grounded and is far less painful. Thankfully, the missile storm isn't an Armor-Piercing Attack and thus can be easily tanked by an armored Brawler, but if another unit happens to be somewhat near the Brawler it will also get targeted too for big damage.
  • One of Nexus' hand attacks, specifically the one where he turns blue, can be a lot more dangerous than the others. He'll fire a load of meteors into the air that will hit certain spots around your Tortugon, and each is a One-Hit Kill — if you fail to move the slow-moving Tortugon out of there, you lose. Even if you did manage to dodge it, they'll leave behind obstacles that block the Tortugon's way and must be targeted if you wish to to destroy them. Since you will most likely be targeting Nexus, the purple devices he drops, or his hands, this makes the meteors quite frustrating to remove, and worse still, the meteor attack can sometimes land in a way such that your Tortugon cannot avoid it causing an instant defeat. Thankfully, you can disrupt this attack by targeting his hand and hitting it enough.
  • Nexus' other nasty attack occurs in his final phase where he drops 3-6 (depending on difficulty) purple devices with a timer countdown around your Tortugon. Firstly, you need to target them in order to destroy them before they activate, and you can only target one at a time. Secondly, this attack cannot be disrupted unlike Nexus' single-hand attacks. Third, if you fail to destroy any of them before time's up, it turns into a large, slow-moving, lingering purple Sphere of Destruction that deals high continuous damage on contact with your units then explodes for even bigger damage after a long while, and each ball will be aimed directly at your Tortugon. This, along with the Tortugon's incredibly slow speed as well as the fact that you lose if the Tortugon is destroyed, makes it a very frustrating attack.
• Nintendo Wars has a few savage CO Powers that you'll have to contend with through the games:
  • Sami's Victory March gives her foot soldiers +2 move and lets them capture properties instantly, regardless of their HP. All she needs is a clear path to your HQ and a single Infantry unit, no matter how weak, and the power is an Instant-Win Condition for her. Even ignoring this, she's still likely to take a lot of your cities and cripple your income. It gets even worse in Dual Strike where she can team up with Eagle (see below) and use this right after his Lightning Strike gives her transports two moves.
  • Prepare to cry when Eagle uses Lightning Strike, which allows all his non-infantry units to move a second time that turn. As he's already a difficult opponent to face due to the already devastatingly powerful air units being even stronger under his command, him using this power can easily take you from dominating him to being so crippled that you can't possibly win the battle any longer and the only real defense against it is hoping you're lucky enough to survive the onslaught, especially since it actually weakens the defense of his air units in Advance Wars 1.
  • Adder's Sideslip simply lets his units move 1 exta space, but it's also the cheapest power in the game, so expect to see him use it almost every turn. It's also an easy plan-ruiner: that Bomber you thought was out of range of Adder's Anti-Air? It's not safe anymore!!
  • Hawke's Black Wave and Black Storm in the Campaign. They're Awesome, but Impractical in multiplayer due to their high cost, but the Green Earth Campaign missions against Hawke tend to give him a large force of expensive pre-deployed units, or a large income advantage to build them, which means he'll be hitting you for 2 HP of global damage and healing his army by 2 HP a lot more than you'd expect. It also forced you into a Morton's Fork: do you leave his dangerous Figters and Bombers alive, or destroy them early but risk him getting his powers faster?
  • Fitting for the Purposely Overpowered Big Bad of the first two games, Sturm's Meteor Strike is absolutely insane, and will make you dread the "enemy power ready" sound effect. It drops a meteor that deals 8 HP damage to a diamond-shaped clump of units, and given the design of the maps you fight him and the meteor's AI, it has an annoying tendancy to land on units crucial to your plans. But on top of that, it also raises his already Game-Breaker attack and defense to even higher levels.
  • Kindle's Urban Blight in Advance Wars: Dual Strike not only gives her 180% attack on urban properties but also damages any of your own units on urban properties by 3 HP. Note that an urban property is a city, factory, port, airport, or even your own HQ, so this means further damaging units you were trying to repair, forcing you to spend funds repairing a ton of units, impeding any units attempting to capture properties, and of course rendering you weak for a devastating high-power attack from her. Worse is that Urban Blight is only her regular CO Power, not her super, and that she only needs three stars to use it: she will use it very often.
  • Colin's Gold Rush is the reason he's considered so thoroughly broken. Multiplying his funds by 1.5 might not sound like much on paper, but it only costs two stars and also raises his global defense by 10% (and offense by 10% in Dual Strike), and Colin's troops are already 20% cheaper. The result is Colin flooding you with units that have 10% extra defense every other turn. And for the finishing blow, he can use his Super, Power of Money, which raises his firepower based on how much money he has, which can lead to Infantry oneshotting copters.
  • Kanbei's Samurai Spirit raises his troops' defense so high they become effectively invincible, and if you still somehow want to attack them, they also counterattack with 50% higher firepower. Using this essentially means you can't attack Kanbei at all for a turn, letting him do whatever he wants unimpeded. This video shows that not even Colin activating Power of Money at maxed-out funds is enough to break through Samurai Spirit.
  • Rachel's Covering Fire, also from Dual Strike is absurdly powerful as it launches three silo missiles: the first one will target the largest group of foot soldiers and prioritize hitting foot soldiers that are capturing properties while the subsequent two missiles try to cause as much monetary damage as possible. Be thankful that you only fight her in Money Survival and Vs. Mode.
  • Javier's powers on any map with 2 or more Comm Towers. Comm Towers give the army that holds them 10% extra firepower, but Javier also gets 10% extra defense. His powers double and triple the effects of Comm Towers, respectively. Even two of them plus his Normal Power puts him at the level of Meteor Strike Sturm, and anything higher makes his army an unstoppable force and immovable object at the same time.
  • Drake's Typhoon becomes this in Dual Strike. It deals 2 HP of global damage to all enemy units, halves their fuel (devastating for air and navel units) and makes it rain for a turn. The issue is that in Dual Strike, rain also triggers Fog of War, even on non-fog maps. Playing against Drake on these maps forces you to build otherwise-useless scouting units so you don't spend a turn blind.
  • The alterations made to how CO powers charge in Dual Strike make it very difficult to rout Sensei due to how fast they charge. His regular CO power, Copter Command, will deploy infantry in every city that he owns if they don't have a unit waiting there while his Super CO power, Airborne Assault, deploys Mechs in all of his cities if said cities are not occupied by other units. Both powers also deploy those troops with 9 HP and they can move immediately.
  • Sasha's Market Crash from Duel Strike does one thing and one thing only, it drains the CO stars of any enemy CO facing her. Making the above abilities functionally worthless due to the fact that she'll typically be teamed up with the abovementioned Colin, who can fuel her Market Crash with Gold Rush. On top of that it's a 2 star CO power meaning she'll typically be able to use it before your COs can use theirs.
• Starcraft, especially in the first game, features some spells that can be extremely annoying to face, moreso in the hands of The All-Seeing A.I.:
  • In both games, Protoss units are particularly vulnerable to EMP abilities - the Science Vessel's EMP Shockwave and the Ghost's EMP Shot. More dangerous in the first game than in the second (because the former would drain ALL shields and energy, while the latter always removes 100 of each), but in either case, for a Protoss unit, it's a very heavy instant damage ability - Archons in particular see their durability dramatically reduced in the process. Terran and Zerg factions are only bothered by it if it affects their spellcasters.
  • Starcraft I's Zerg Queen has the Spawn Broodling ability, which is a One-Hit Kill on all but exactly four ground units^note Probes, Reavers and both types of Archons. Particularly in the campaigns, once you give an AI Zerg player vision of one of your ground units, they will inevitably send a Queen to Spawn Broodling on it.
  • Also from the first game, the Science Vessel (alongside the aforementioned EMP Shockwave) has the Irradiate ability, which deals nearly 250 points of damage over time to every single biological unit nearby. Since Zerg are all biological, including their supply generators, casting Irradiate on a cluster of Overlords can be devastating - and in fact, given the Zerg's slow Healing Factor, nothing outside of Devourers and Ultralisks can survive an Irradiate. To make matters worse for them, Irradiate can be cast on a mechanical unit, including themselves, where the target does not take damage but still damage everyone nearby, and the effect stacks, so multiple Science Vessels can Irradiate each other to quickly wear down even the toughest of Zerg units.
  • Similarly, the Ghost has the Lockdown ability in the first game. It's stuns a mechanical unit for 44 seconds while they can still take damage, effectively turning them into a target dummy. It's completely useless against the Zerg, however.
  • The Defiler's Plague ability does not kill like Irradiate, as it has an HP to One effect if it would kill the affected unit, but it's a stronger effect as it deals almost 300 damage to everything in the area, even mechanical units and buildings. It's inconvenient for all factions (with Terrans being the least affected by it if using Marines and Medics), but the ones that suffer the most from it, by far, are the Protoss, as Plague ignores shields and Protoss cannot recover any of their lost health, meaning their durability is permanently severed.

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