History ThatOneAttack / FinalFantasy

*** Every attack used by his second form. His basic laser attack can cause Fog or Pain, Apoptosis neutralizes any buffs and debuffs you've cast, Thanatosian Laughter devastates your party, and Cursega and Dazega for obvious reasons.

** Barthandelus' Destrudo. ''TotalPartyKill'' unless you can damage him enough while he's charging, which is never hinted at anywhere. Granted, it takes forever to charge, and you really don't need to hit him that hard to weaken it, but if you figured the long-ass charge time was ideal to swap to a defensive paradigm to heal and reapply your buffs. Also, and even more infuriating, it resets his stagger meter.

** Barthandelus' Destrudo. ''TotalPartyKill'' unless you can damage him enough while he's charging, which is never hinted at anywhere. Granted, it takes forever to charge, and you really don't need to hit him that hard to weaken it, but if you figured the long-ass charge time was ideal to swap to a defensive paradigm to heal and reapply your buffs...

** Dahaka's Diluvian Plague, which causes ''every status ailment'' and dispels any buffs you've cast. He also has Aeroga, just in case you were getting your hopes up about winning.

** Barthandelus' Destrudo. ''TotalPartyKill'' unless you can damage him enough while he's charging.
*** Every attack used by his second form. His basic laser attack can cause Fog or Pain, Apoptosis neutralizes any buffs and debuffs you've cast, Thanatosian Laughter devastates your party, and his Cursega and Dazega for obvious reasons.

** The [[BossInMookClothing Adamantoises]] generally don't have attacks that ''don't'' suck, but the worst by far is Roar. It deals horrifying damage to ALL party members, and, worst of all, tends to inflict Daze on at least one party member. Daze is like Sleep in other FF games--it keeps the character from taking ANY action until they're hit by another attack and/or it wears off. If it lands on the healer or the leader, or anyone at all if the damage from Roar [=KOed=] some characters...well, you're screwed. Everything else the toises have can be dealt with simply, but the best strategy for handling Roar is to kill the monster before it uses it. [[DamageSpongeBoss Good luck]] [[CognizantLimbs with]] [[MarathonBoss that]].

** Dahaka's Diluvian Plague, which causes ''every status ailment'' and dispels any buffs you've cast.

** In the Advance remake, the Holy Dragon's souped-up form in the [[BonusDungeon Dragon's Den]] will ''dualcast'' Heartless Angel with Southern Cross. That's a [[TotalPartyKill total party kill]] unless you used reraise, which is unlikely, since the dragon gives no prior warning to this combo. [[ItGotWorse Worse]], you have to trek through the ''entire'' [[ThatOneLevel Dragon's Den]] again!

*** And in case Omega wasn't satisfied with Encircle, it can also use White Hole, an attack that does quite a bit of damage and petrifies them.

** Encircle, from pretty much any enemy that uses it (thankfully, not many of them). It erases a character from the battle, which means they're effectively dead, and it's impossible to reverse the effects of it once it's been cast (except by ending the battle). It's also impossible to stop it being cast, except with the Aegis Shield (which only has a 1 in 3 chance of actually succeeding). Oh, and one of the enemies with access to this move is [[BonusBoss Omega]].

* Almagest from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'''s Neo Exdeath and Neo Shinryu. The only way to survive it is to have enough HP or the right combination of armor and accessories to absorb its elemental attacks.
** Omega can erase people from the battle, preventing them from being revived for the battle's duration, and can use White Hole, an attack that does quite a bit of damage and petrifies them.

** Sunder used by some Behemots after they stand up. Usually by the time you meet these Behemots, this particular attack is too strong for your party to survive without being taken to critically low HP, and even then the Behemot can just cleave the rest of the HP away.
*** Proto Behemots met in the Final Dungeon are actually harder than the Final Boss due to this attack being able to one shot your whole party, unless you are way beoynd the levels needed to take down some of the hardest optional bosses. The only way to have a fair fight is to kill it before it manages to stand up, which you probably can't do by the time you first arrive here.

*** Speaking of Ultima, ''any attack that causes Reverse'', though Virus can be just as annoying. Reverse makes you a case of ReviveKillsZombie, while Virus is a NoSell on healing.

** Evrae's Poison Breath will damage your entire party and leave you with a serious [[ExactlyWhatSaysOnTheTinpoison]] status that will probably kill in a couple of turns. Also, you don't have Yuna in this battle which means you can't use neither your healer or your Aeons to take the damage.

While one would expect a long-running RPG series such as FinalFantasy to have some powerful enemy attacks, these [[ThatOneAttack take it to another level]].

* Any ''FinalFantasy'' game with 10[[superscript:x]] Needles, where x>4. OneHitKO that can't be blocked.

* Particle Beam from ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII Final Fantasy III DS]]'''s Cloud of Darkness. Deals lots of damage.

* Grand Cross, used by Necron in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' and by various other ''FinalFantasy'' {{Final Boss}}es.

** The [[BossInMookClothing Adamantoises]] generally don't have attacks that ''don't'' suck, but the worst by far is Roar. It deals horrifying damage to ALL party members, and, worst of all, tends to inflict Daze on at least one party member. Daze is like Sleep in other FF games--it keeps the character from taking ANY action until they're hit by another attack and/or it wears off. If it lands on the healer or the leader, or anyone at all if the damage from Roar KOed some characters...well, you're screwed. Everything else the toises have can be dealt with simply, but the best strategy for handling Roar is to kill the monster before it uses it. [[DamageSpongeBoss Good luck]] [[CognizantLimbs with]] [[MarathonBoss that]].
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII-2'' has its own fair share of annoying attacks, especially the often spammed debuffing attacks.

* Adrammelech's Firestream in ''FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance''. In a battlefield which is much longer in one direction than the other, having a very powerful attack that hits a straight, unbounded line in one direction is a bit too much.
* Sheol from ''FinalFantasyTacticsA2'''s Illua. This slows down the player while speeding up Illua and giving her Regen. By the time you get your turn again, she's taken several turns and probably recovered most of her health.

* FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears loves making 1-2 people run around by themselves with [[DemonicSpiders ridiculously strong monsters]]. There are several ways to die near the beginning when Kain is by himself on Mt. Ordeals. An Ambush involving a snake-type monster and 2 ghouls results in Kain getting paralyzed and slowly beaten to death by the zombies. As soon as Paralyze wears off, the stupid snake does it again before Kain gets another turn. Also, just after that, The Hooded Man loses Ceodore on a cliff face, and gets ambushed by Medusas, or Rock Lizards and gets petrified before he can even do anything. Honestly, you'd think the game developers would have more sense than to put monsters with such deadly status attacks in a situation when you only have 1-2 party members....
* In ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'', Chaos has several attacks like this. First is Divine Punishment, in which he summons exploding flame pillars around your character, stabs you with a flying sword, and then deals HP damage with an enormous explosion. People new to this fight will die to this move a ''lot'' before finding out the trick.[[hottip:* :When he starts it, ''don't move''. If you stay in one place, you'll dodge the flame pillars. Then dodge to the side ''just'' as the flames end, then jump away from where the explosion is going to land]]. In phase 2 and on, he has Demonsdance: a long string of combo hits that hit you for HP damage several times ''within'' the combo (and if he's used his summon to freeze his Brave value so it doesn't go down...) and can kill you in seconds. [[hottip:* :However, each ''section'' of the combo can be dodged. There's a rhythm to it.]] Finally, his last phase gives him Scarlet Rain; a merciless shower of meteors for insane damage.[[hottip:* : You have to ''get off the ground as fast as you can'', and then ''block'' the otherwise undodgeable meteors. The last one has to be dodged, not blocked, if you want to avoid damage.]] They can all be dealt with, but they are easily Chaos's most [[SNKBoss unfair]] tricks.

** And the one for regular enemies is Curse-- this one move can make any enemy into a [[DemonicSpiders demonic spider]]. It works by hitting your party--all of them--with a mana-free (so you can't [[StandardStatusEffects silence]] the enemy or drain its magic), unblockable, unevadeable status bomb that inflicts poison, sap, confusion, and disease--that last one is exceptionally fun, as it means current HP is always equal to max HP, meaning a character cannot be healed while Diseased. Disease needs a special item or spell to remove it, and another spell to remove the other status effects. If a Diseased character dies, rezzing them leaves them with 1 HP and disease, yes, STILL in effect. Because Ribbons are stupidly, horrifyingly rare in this game, you will only be able to protect against ONE of these ailments--if any monsters (plural, ''they come in groups'') who use this attack can be available long before protective armor is. Basically? If three or more of these status effects stay on your party for more than, oh, three seconds? Death. If you are caught without fully upgraded Remedies? Death. No accessories to protect against confusion? Death. [[LuckBasedMission Command priority unkind to you?]] We're so sorry.

** As well as the above, the Magick Pot also counts. Analysis of the thing (which looks like ''a wizened old man with large eyes and a huge moustache'') lists it as absorbing all elements and having three attacks- Pester, Reward and Punish- with strange descriptions that make little sense. The game expects you to figure out ''not'' to attack it, defying the logic you've used the entire game, and giving it the item it demands with Pester, making it use Reward, killing it. Causing even just 1 damage to it will set its behaviour, however, to "kill", meaning it goes around the map using Punish, a ranged, 0 MP attack that ''always hits, dealing 999 damage to the unlucky victim''. And don't even mention the unfairness of the Tonberries...
*** To be fair, the Magick Pot is like this in most games it appears in, so a VETERAN will generally know what to do, but it's still brutal to newer players. The Tonberries can be avoided by keeping track of which unit is being targeted, as this is the only unit that can be one-shotted by the Tonberry doing the targeting, and only in melee range. Again, generic behavior, but still brutal if you don't have a bottleneck to stop them from catching their targets.

* In ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'', Chaos has several attacks like this. First is Divine Punishment, in which he summons exploding flame pillars around your character, stabs you with a flying sword, and then deals HP damage with an enormous explosion. People new to this fight will die to this move a ''lot'' before finding out the trick.[[hottip:* :When he starts it, ''don't move''. If you stay in one place, you'll dodge the flame pillars. Then dodge to the side ''just'' as the flames end, then jump away from where the explosion is going to land]]. In phase 2 and on, he has Demonsdance: a long string of combo hits that hit you for HP damage several times ''within'' the combo (and if he's used his summon to freeze his Brave value so it doesn't go down...) and can kill you in seconds. [[hottip:* :However, each ''section'' of the combo can be dodged. There's a rhythm to it.]] Finally, his last phase gives him Scarlet Rain; a merciless shower of meteors for insane damage.[[hottip:* : You have to ''get off the ground as fast as you can'', and then ''block'' the otherwise undodgeable meteors. The last one has to be dodged, not blocked, if you want to avoid damage.]] They can all be dealt with, but they are easily Chaos's most [[SNKBoss unfair]] tricks.

** Before Cloud of Darkness, there is Garuda and his "Lightning" attack. Crazy high lightning damage to the entire party, and since every boss gets at least two actions per turn, this means that, even if you gave every party member the job class he's weak to, put every party member in the back row, and used Jump on him, there is the very real chance that he will simply go before your team, use Lightning twice, and wipe out the entire team before you can even move once. Hooray! Cutscene time again!
*** Strictly speaking, the bosses only get 2 attacks if you're at the "right" level to fight them. If you're too low level, they get more attacks. If you grinded (ground?) enough to get your speed right up, they only get one attack per round.

* From ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': [[spoiler:Yunalesca]] has an attack that does lots of damage and causes mass zombie, but it's hard too see. And what's your [[ReviveKillsZombie first reaction upon seeing your entire party in a state of near death]]? For more fun, this attack is followed up later in the battle by an attack which [[spoiler:kills any non-zombie characters]]. Oh, and watch out for Mind Blast too.
** [[spoiler:Seymour Flux's]] aptly named "Total Annihilation" will one-shot your party if you don't Shell first. If you can't kill Anima in time, "Oblivion" will break you. Pretty much any attack that one-shots Aeons is one of these, but if you're facing an enemy that does this, you're probably just using them for their Overdrives.
** Sin's Overdrive, Giga-Graviton not only takes the party out, it takes out the airship you're on for an automatic GameOver, putting a fixed round limit (16 rounds) on a battle you basically have to fight magic-only.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' has Merciless Judgement, employed by the 2nd form of the final boss. It's basically like Supernova, except it can kill you and probably will unless you're nearly full health or have a sentinel on your team. The game shows the damage numbers, fades to white, and then fades back to let you know whether your leader had enough HP to survive it (game over if they didn't). Oh yeah, and it resets the boss' stagger meter.
** At first, you at least get a warning that the boss is going to use Merciless Judgment, since it only does it after it switches 'modes'. After you've whittled away half of its HP though, it does it completely randomly. And if you're poisoned? You're dead, no matter how high your HP was before the attack started.
** This form also has Progenitorial Wrath, a spell that can kill any character instantly even if you're at full health and a few slashes away from killing it. Did I mention that the death of the party leader is an instant game over? And that there's no way to be completely safe from it? The best way is to buy a charm that resists Death. Now level it up all the way. Then buy another and level that one up all the way too. Then take up two of your lead's accessory slots just to prepare against this one move. Now you "only" have a 16% chance of getting killed by it. Huzzah.

* Particle Beam from ''[[FinalFantasyIII Final Fantasy III DS]]'''s Cloud of Darkness. Deals lots of damage.

* Almagest from ''FinalFantasyV'''s Neo Exdeath and Neo Shinryu. The only way to survive it is to have enough HP or the right combination of armor and accessories to absorb its elemental attacks.

* ''FinalFantasyVI''-- Kefka's Forsaken isn't so bad on its own. It's a non-elemental AOE that's practically impossible to defend against, but doesn't do that much damage. The problem is that he loves using it right after his "Heartless Angel/Fallen One", which reduces everyone's HP to 1. Hope you remembered to cast Reraise-- or had a Curaga/Lakshmi summon queued right after the Heartless Angel lands. Oh, and the only reason it does so little damage is because it's affected by magical resistance. If it wasn't, it would do even more damage than '''''Ultima'''''.

* Sephiroth's Supernova from ''FinalFantasyVII'', which deals 9/10ths of the party's hit points in damage and can inflict confusion and mute. It also [[OverlyLongFightingAnimation takes a minute and a half to sit through]]. However, it can be noted that Supernova is a percentage based attack, so it cannot actually kill you... and it's kind of cool-looking, at least the first time he uses it.

* The [[BonusBoss bonus bosses]] of ''FinalFantasyVIII'' have some annoying attacks. First is Light Pillar, which instantly kills one party member with 9999 damage. This isn't too bad, you can fix that quickly enough with a Pheonix Down or the Revive command. They also have Gravija, which deals percentage-based damage. Can't kill you, but makes it easier to die unless you heal fast. There's also an attack called Megiddo Flame which does 9998 damage. The game assumes that by the time you're facing a BonusBoss, you're good enough to have 9999 HP and a repertoire of healing spells, which is pretty much the only way to survive that attack. But the worst of them all is Omega Weapon's Terra Break. It is a more powerful clone of the Meteor spell, which randomly divides ten attacks across your party. Now, Meteor isn't too bad, if you're lucky, it'll hit someone with lots of HP or spread the damage out evenly enough that your party survive, and the ten hits don't do much damage anyway. But Terra Break is not like that. Terra Break is like a physical-attack version of Meteor, except each hit does upwards of 3000 damage, damage which is not mitigated by your Vitality stat like most physical damage is. Even if your entire party has 9999 HP at the time, without proper preparation, it is nearly impossible to survive. Your only options are to make your party invincible with items, or had everyone summon their [=GFs=] beforehand to absorb the damage. You can also cast Protect on the entire party to halve the damage of each hit, but that won't ensure that your whole party remains standing. Alternatively, assuming you have [=GFs=] that still know the [[NotCompletelyUseless otherwise useless]] Defend command, you can order your party to Defend against the attack, which will nullify the damage completely. And even then, you have to know where Terra Break comes up in Omega Weapon's attack sequence.

* Sporefall from ''FinalFantasyXII'''s Elder Wyrm. Inflicts on the order of 8 status ailments with a large area of effect, probably hitting your entire party unless you really know what you're doing. If you're not prepared, by the time you've recovered from these ailments, it's probably close to casting it again.

** ''FinalFantasyX'' gives us Great Malboros that uses this as its opening gambit. Wouldn't be a problem if it didn't also get "Ambushed!" ''every single time''. With the characters now poisoned, confused, and blind, they will now constantly attempt to kill one-another only to miss and take poison damage. Frequently you will die without having been given a single chance to do anything.
*** ''FinalFantasyVIII'' comes close to this, coming in second as far as Malboro terror goes only because of the ability to run away.
*** ''FinalFantasyVII'' has it bad too. Sure, the Malboro doesn't get a free first turn in this version, but in this game it only attacks count as magic, so when it uses Bad Breath to put the entire party to Sleep (if neither of your party is equipped with a ribbon or a sleep protection), its other attacks damage you ''without'' waking you up, so you can just sit there and watch your slumbering party members die off one-by-one.

* FinalFantasyI. Astos. Rub. Instant death to a party member, in a game in which (in earlier versions at least) you cannot resurrect characters during battle, or even outside of a town (which is relevant because it's a long trek back to the elf village even if you win). Hope he didn't hit Fighter or White Mage.

* The imps from FinalFantasyII have a nasty habit of spamming Confuse XVI on your whole party. Unless at least half your party is immune to confusion, it's a crap shoot every time you meet them.

* Big Bang from ''FinalFantasyIV'''s Zeromus. Deals lots of damage, and any survivors suffer continual hit point loss. The BonusBoss version of Zeromus in the GBA version, Zeromus EG, can do this move two times in a row.

* Grand Cross, used by Necron in ''FinalFantasyIX'' and by various other ''FinalFantasy'' {{Final Boss}}es.

* From ''FinalFantasyX'': [[spoiler:Yunalesca]] has an attack that does lots of damage and causes mass zombie, but it's hard too see. And what's your [[ReviveKillsZombie first reaction upon seeing your entire party in a state of near death]]? For more fun, this attack is followed up later in the battle by an attack which [[spoiler:kills any non-zombie characters]]. Oh, and watch out for Mind Blast too.

* ''FinalFantasyXIII'' has Merciless Judgement, employed by the 2nd form of the final boss. It's basically like Supernova, except it can kill you and probably will unless you're nearly full health or have a sentinel on your team. The game shows the damage numbers, fades to white, and then fades back to let you know whether your leader had enough HP to survive it (game over if they didn't). Oh yeah, and it resets the boss' stagger meter.