Breather Boss / Final Fantasy

The breath-takingly popular Final Fantasy franchise has several easy bosses sandwiched between harder parts.

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• Bikke's pirates in the original Final Fantasy are a complete joke, being easier to kill than goblins. They may come in a group of nine, but even if you don't have access to Sleep, they don't do much damage and go down surprisingly quickly.
• Final Fantasy VI:
  • The game has the Phantom Train. He can be a decent fight, but he has the glaring weakness to Phoenix Down that most undead enemies have. He's also notably weak to Sabin's Suplex move, often done for the humour value.
  • Dadaluma's entire strategy is based on throwing out powerful counterattacks that can one-shot a party member if they hit. Unfortunately for him, said counterattacks only trigger if you either repeatedly hit him with magic, which at this point, only Celes can use against him, or repeatedly hit him with standard attacks, in a game where many characters have a move stronger than their standard attacks to rely upon, like Edgar's Tools or Sabin's Blitz. Without those counterattacks, his attack power is quite low, meaning that if you go into him with the right party, he becomes a total pushover.
• Final Fantasy VII has Gi Nattak, who is easily beaten by one or two Phoenix Downs, and Palmer, who is simply a pushover.
• Final Fantasy VIII has Gerogero, who is also easily defeated by Phoenix Downs... and, if you master the Junction system, most guardians of Ultimecia's Castle will also be pushovers.
  • The same game has Abbadon, an undead boss. Just hit him with a Phoenix Down every couple of minutes and keep drawing magic from him if you need to stock up.
• Final Fantasy IX has Soulcage, who has some pretty tough attacks (notably Mustard Bomb), and some fairly valuable items to steal. Once you have all three items, just hit him with a Phoenix Down, and then the next hit(even Eiko, your weakest physical attacker at that point) will take him out.
• In Final Fantasy V:
  • The Manticore, one of three final bosses in World 1, is an example. It comes after the Soul Cannon, which can fire a powerful all-hitting electrical attack if not killed quickly enough, and Archeoaevis, which has lots of HP, powerful attacks, and can change its elemental weakness. Conversely, Manticore lacks immunities to most status effects, has only 3300 HP (Archeoaevis had roughly 10,000), and lacks any really powerful moves.
  • The Titan, another of the final World 1 Bosses, is a borderline example. His Earthshaker attack can be quite powerful; however, you can control the Gaelicat enemy on North Mountain and make it cast Float on you, effectively negating it. He has only 2500 HP, but the relative difficulty in finding Float before World 2 might place him slightly above breather boss level.
  • In the last dungeon, the first boss the player encounters after Omega's territory is Apanda, who is incredibly weak against fire and trembles in fear if you summon Ifrit.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:
  • The Optional Boss is a no-rules fight against three corrupt judges (special units whose stats are derived from the Paladin job). All they've got are a bunch of endgame gear and pitiful melee attacks. You, on the other hand, have Marche, Cid, and 4 other units on your side; plus the fact that you've just beaten a better final boss who has the ability to wipe your entire party in an instant. Also, at this point, you should have amassed all of the best equipment and abilities in the game. Can you say Curb-Stomp Battle?
  • There is one boss battle in the main storyline that can be incredibly easy, even though Marche is alone. All you have to do is KO Babus before you get to the crystal smashing. Failing that, there is an easily available robe that nullifies Babus' spells, which most of Marche's jobs can equip. If you ignore Babus, this could turn him into That One Boss.
  • There is another battle that can also be extremely easy, or another That One Boss. The boss can charm your allies to make them fight each other, but if you fight it on a day charming is against the law it won't use this attack, making it trivially easy.
• Final Fantasy X has Evrae Altana, who... wait for it... goes down to two Phoenix Downs. A few other bosses may also qualify, perhaps most notably the late-game Seymour Omnis. Not because he's exceptionally easy, but because the previous encounter with him is That One Boss. Of course, blowing off the final dungeon for a while can lead to you having level grinded enough to One-Hit Kill him, so...
• Optional Boss version in Final Fantasy XII! Fafnir is a gigantic dragon which is powerful in a straight fight... but can't fit behind the big rock in its battlefield. Position your party here and you no longer need to worry about many of Fafnir's attacks. To make the battle even easier, you can give everyone Reflect to bounce back all of Fafnir's spells, making you literally invincible.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Prior to its removal in patch 6.1, Cape Westwind pitted you against, essentially, an ordinary Garlean — with Magitek, yes, but magitek is common in Garlemald and Rhitahtyn sas Arvina's isn't anything special. It's a bit of an in-joke to act like the fight is super-difficult when you queue into it via Duty Roulette. Because of that, Cape Westwind was reworked into its own solo instance and Rhitahtyn now puts up an actual fight.
  • Then there's King Thordan and his Knights at the climax of Heavensward. Compared to some other boss fights, it's just... not really very dangerous or complicated.
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light's Belphegor is the easiest of the demon bosses. Most of them have more than one elemental spell to guard against and numerous dirty tricks, but Belphegor's entire skillset is fire-based. With four Flame Shields and an elementalist with Mysterio, you can reduce his maximum damage output to 1. Given that he guards the super-buffing Lux spell (which makes the other demon fights much more manageable), this might be a case of Throw the Dog a Bone towards the players.