History Main / CognizantLimbs

* Galbalan in ''[[VideoGame/{{Ys}} Wanderers from Ys]]'' and ''Videogame/YsTheOathInFelghana'', the latter of which also has FloatingLimbs. Also used for many other bosses throughout the series.

* ''VideoGame/{{Grandia}}'': Several appear in the series, particularly the final boss battles of ''[[VideoGame/Grandia1 the first game]]'' and the various parts of Valmar in ''VideoGame/GrandiaII''. A notable case is the fight against Melfice, where you could target his Sword, a piece of armor, or himself. While killing Melfice would mean you didn't have to destroy the items, you wouldn't get as much treasure and it makes the fight harder.
* ''VideoGame/GrandiaIII'': Emelious ups the ante a bit with himself, Demon Sword, and the Orb of Darkness, all capable of powerful attacks. There is also a 4th target, the Godslayer, which cannot be killed but must be regularly canceled or it causes [[OneHitKill instant game-over]].

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIII'': Dark Force has two hands as additional targets. One does healing, the other - a powerful attack.
* ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'', though an ActionAdventure style {{RPG}}, has a Living Wall boss with two eyes, each with the ability to use magic, and a central eye. The central eye is the real target, but it stays closed until you defeat one of the outer eyes.
* ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore'' has Thraxx (and its later palette-swap Coleoptera), a massive spider-like monster with a couple of arms that can swipe at you, and an oddly visible heart blocked by its ribcage. You can attack the arms, but Thraxx's heart is its weak point, and it can only be reached by attacking the ribcage until it opens, or targeting the heart with alchemy spells. The arms are even worth some extra experience if you destroy them before finishing off Thraxx's heart.
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireII'': In the boss fight against [[spoiler:your Father]], he's strapped into a machine and protected by three drones. In order to complete the extended sidequest to get the good ending, you have to leave him alive, which means slowly chipping away at the drones one by one because anything that would hurt all of them will also hurt him.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': Lavos, the alien parasite, is a major user of this. His first form is a BossRush, growing various extra bits to mimic past bosses (many of which have Cognizant Limbs of their own) before fighting you for real. Then you fight Inner Lavos and its two arms. The Lavos Core is somewhat of a subversion, though; it is a normal-sized humanoid flanked by two small floating Lavos Bits; however, it soon becomes clear that [[spoiler:the humanoid is not the actual Lavos Core, but instead the Center Bit. The enemy on the right is the Lavos Core, which looks identical to the Lavos Bit on the left]].

* ''VideoGame/WildARMs2'' has bosses set up so that you can simply go after the main part of the boss, or first target and defeat the individual parts. Doing so nets you more experience and make the boss fight harder, as the boss begins using their most powerful moves constantly.
* ''VideoGame/{{Grandia}}'': Several appear in the series, particularly the final boss battles of ''[[VideoGame/Grandia1 the first game]]'' and the various parts of Valmar in ''VideoGame/GrandiaII''. A notable case is the fight against Melfice, where you could target his Sword, a piece of armor, or himself. While killing Melfice would mean you didn't have to destroy the items, you wouldn't get as much treasure and it makes the fight harder.
* ''VideoGame/GrandiaIII'': Emelious ups the ante a bit with himself, Demon Sword, and the Orb of Darkness, all capable of powerful attacks. There is also a 4th target, the Godslayer, which cannot be killed but must be regularly canceled or it causes [[OneHitKill instant game-over]].

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' had many of these, including a human boss whose swords counted as separate enemies.
** Especially present in a fight with a Virage on Disc 2. Disarming it in the more literal sense can lead to a FlawlessVictory, as the Virage AI can get confused and not attack at all. Unfortunately for you, the arms 'regenerate' at full health after a few turns. One of them gives it a OneHitKill attack.

* Almost every boss in ''VideoGame/DigimonWorldDS'' and ''VideoGame/DigimonWorldDawnDusk'' takes up multiple zones. This actually hinders them in that they take more than one hit from ranged attacks, and their massive size doesn't offer any benefits to the bosses themselves.
* The second phase of the Overlord GAIA battle in ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld2'' splits his hands from his main body. Both hands have a pesky habit of significantly reducing your party's stats, making them more vulnerable to the hard hitting main body.
* The first form of the BigBad in ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles: The Dark Brotherhood'' has a couple of defensive units that hang out on either side of him. Taking these out isn't strictly necessary, but he does take more damage (and, more importantly, does less damage to you) in the few turns before he respawns them.
* ''VideoGame/BlueDragon'' has this for the ''third'' boss, the Hydrattler. It gets one attack for every living member of its four heads.
* The final boss of ''VideoGame/LunarEternalBlue'' is like this, having a head and four arms to target. It's sort of split up, though; at the start of the battle, you can only target the two outer arms. The rest of the targets are invincible, but they don't attack either. After a set amount of turns, your team is fully healed and all parts of the boss start attacking, and can be attacked in return (hopefully you killed the two outer arms by this point, otherwise things start to get really hectic).
* Nearly ''every'' enemy in ''VideoGame/ResonanceOfFate'' has at least one other body part in addition to their main body. These body parts act as shields from some angles. Destroying them nets you a Hero Gauge bezel, potentially some items, and usually exposes the main body to attack from that angle (unless there's another body part layered under it!), but you get no experience for attacking it.
* The final (or penultimate depending on a certain extra) fight against [[spoiler:Quaestor Verus]] in ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' Origins has you fighting not only against the man, but also a group of four mechanical tentacles, which attack you along with the actual boss, block all attacks aimed at [[spoiler:Verus]], and can be revived after you take them down. The tentacles take no damage when protecting [[spoiler:Verus]] -- very annoying when you've prepared a powerful combo after the tentacles have been defeated, only to have them be brought back and seeing your combo do a total of zero damage.
* Wolfram ALPHA from ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'' is a towering mecha split into seven targets across [[SequentialBoss three phases]]. First you have to fight its legs, then its arms, and finally its head and ''pauldrons'', which fire devastating energy pulses.

-->-- '''Sword Master''', "[[http://oglaf.com/swordmaster/ The Sword Master]]", ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' [[note]]This particular strip is safe for work, but the rest of the comics may not be.[[/note]]

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' [[spoiler:Baigan]] has two snake-like arms when you fight him, that will actually continue to hover in midair and have to be killed separately even if you kill the entire rest of the body. The CPU of the giant robot has an Attacker and Defender support system. Although in the DS remake, [[spoiler:Baigan]]'s arms self-destruct the first chance they get once the body is killed.

* ''VideoGame/{{Recca}}'' has [[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/recca/recca-16.png this guy]]. Not only does he have four of them, but each of them are segmented -- you will need to destroy all the segments to beat one, so you might as well go for his head and kill him off with your SmartBomb.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymothoa_exigua Cymothoa exigua]], a parasitic variety of crustacean, eventually kills the tongue it feeds upon... at which point it [[BodyHorror replaces it]]. That may not ''sound'' scary, until you realize it still has ''eyes and limbs''. It's not all bad- the fish can eat harder foods by crushing them between the parasite's back and their hard palate.

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*** Both [[BonusBoss Emerald and Ruby Weapon]] qualify as well. Ruby Weapon won't deploy its tentacles in combat until your party is down to one (living) member; until then, it just banishes your characters from the battle one by one. In Emerald Weapon's case it's not really ''limbs'', but rather a pair of extra ''eyes'' on each shoulder. Killing all of them provokes its ultimate attack.

** Several of the Sinspawn in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' employ this, and Sin itself {{exaggerate|dTrope}}s it by having its various parts be separate boss battles. There's also the ultimate BonusBoss, Penance, which is a literal example as it is accompanied by its two floating arms.

* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'', there is a BonusBoss, Spiral Draco, that follows this. He consists of three heads, a body, and tail, all of which can be targeted separately. They all have ludicrous HP and Attack power, so getting close is nigh impossible, but also have such high Magic Defense that your best ranged damage dealer (Rita) is useless. And the main head can revive other body parts if it doesn't get killed first.

* The larger Thresher enemies in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' such as Badasses and Old Slappy have tentacles that can be targeted separately from the Thresher. They share the same health bar but severing a tentacle will earn you a Second Wind. However, BonusBoss Terramorphous the Invincible has various types of tentacles that each have their own individual health bars.

* Star Overlord Valvoga in ''VideoGame/MakaiKingdom'' is a parody of this, with a separate personality in each of his components - Dryzen the loud and brutish dragon skull, Ophelia the arrogant dark angel, and Micky, the apparent main body who is actually timid and AmbiguouslyGay. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Despite this]], though, his BonusBoss form is only a single enemy.

** Several of the Sinspawn in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' employ this, and Sin itself takes it UpToEleven by having its various parts be separate boss battles. There's also the ultimate BonusBoss, Penance, which is a literal example as it is accompanied by its two floating arms.

* ''VideoGame/{{Grandia}}'': Several appear in the series, particularly the final boss battles of ''[[VideoGame/Grandia1 the first game]]'' and the various parts of Valmar in ''VideoGame/GrandiaII''. A notable case is the fight against Melfice, where you could target his Sword, a piece of armour, or himself. While killing Melfice would mean you didn't have to destroy the items, you wouldn't get as much treasure and it makes the fight harder.

* The final (or penultimate depending on a certain extra) fight against [[spoiler:Quaestor Verus]] in ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos'' Origins has you fighting not only against the man, but also a group of four mechanical tentacles, which attack you along with the actual boss, block all attacks aimed at [[spoiler:Verus]], and can be revived after you take them down. The tentacles take no damage when protecting [[spoiler:Verus]] -- very annoying when you've prepared a poiwerful combo after the tentacles have been defeated, only to have them be brought back and seeing your combo do a total of zero damamge.

** [[BigCreepyCrawlies De Rol Le and Da Ra Lie]] lose their bone-like armour plates as their segments take damage, increasing the amount of damage dealt to that segment. Makes it important to focus your attacks.

* Cthulhu in ''VideoGame/DragonMarkedForDeath'' has four tentacles (the two outermost tentacles fire streams of water than can cover the length of the ship stage while the innermost tentacles fire globs of toxic gas that induce [[StandardStatusEffects Confusion]]) with their own separate health bars, and all of them must be depleted to trigger the finishing cutscene where the ship you're on kills the monster's main body with cannon-fire. On higher difficulties, each limb needs to be defeated ''twice'' in order to count as fully downed, and on the [[HarderThanHard highest difficulties]] the "defeat each limb twice" rule still applies but now each limb instead of going away for good ''keeps attacking and is now invulnerable to damage'' until all the other limbs have been defeated twice.

* Every boss in ''VideoGame/RevolutionX'' (except for the mutated giant ant, which can be defeated with a rather simple gimmick) has multiple weak spots which must be destroyed individually before they are taken care of for good. The trope mainly applies to the final boss, an alien monster in a floating chair, whose battle gets [[{{Gorn}} ridiculously gory]] as you damage him by exploding his limbs and rearranging his face until it explodes.

* Galbalan in ''[[VideoGame/{{Ys}} Wanderers from Ys]]'' and ''The Oath in Felghana'', the latter of which also has FloatingLimbs. Also used for many other bosses throughout the series.

** Ramrock from ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleOfAges''. His hands switch around with each phase, going from regular, to spiked, then replaced with shields, and finally ball and chains.