That One Attack / Shin Megami Tensei

None of your party members each can have more than 999 HP, by the way. And this is with a max-level and properly-prepared party.

Sure, Atlus has a long history of getting off on our tears, but these attacks are just asking for it.

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Specific Attacks

• As a general rule, any high-tier Almighty (can't be resisted by anything) attacks such as Megidolaon can quickly become a nightmare.
• Not as bad as Almighty spells, but Instant-Kill spells are pretty dangerous if any character isn't immune to them. In general, the franchise has Light and Dark elementals for the instant-kill spells. However, bosses are always immune to these, and so are some mooks. Toned down in a few games such as Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and Shin Megami Tensei V, in which Light and Dark spells now deal normal damage instead, their instant-kill effects only kicking in under certain conditions.
• If a boss has Diarahan, which fully heals HP, or Mediarahan, which applies the same to the entire party of the caster, you are in for a bad time if you don't know what makes them cast it. Depending on the boss it is possible to still succeed, but that depends on your party still having the resources to do so. If the trigger is "HP falls below a certain amount" and your best damage dealers can't do enough damage in one turn, you may as well turn the game off. Even worse, some bosses are scripted to use it exactly once at half health or so, effectively giving them 50% more HP than they have on paper; examples of this include the Demi-Fiend in Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner and Shin Megami Tensei V ^note The Demi-Fiend has a massive amount of HP in both Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner (18,000 HP) and Shin Megami Tensei V (60,000 HP), making his boss fights even longer than they already are and the various Velvet Room attendants from Persona 3 onward.
• In this franchise, status ailments are far more effective than most RPGs, making status-inflicting skills pretty annoying. Especially so since some status can be comboed with spells that inflict instant death on anyone with that status (example: combo of Sleep with Eternal Rest in Shin Megami Tensei III, Strange Journey and Digital Devil Saga; Fear with Ghastly Wail in Persona 3 and 4; or Paralyze with Death Call in both Devil Survivor games^note Mute also applies to Devil Survivor while Poison and Charm also apply to Devil Survivor 2).
  • Throughout the franchise, the status ailment "Charm" is particularly frustrating. Any charmed characters are essentially brainwashed by the enemies, they will attack your team members, and, if they have healing spells, heal the enemy. Especially bad if the charmed character has FULL heal.
  • The status ailment "Stone" just as much. Any character stoned will be counted as dead unless cured, so in most games, main character getting petrified means Game Over. In most games, hitting petrified characters with certain attacks (usually physical) may One-Hit Kill them.
  • Special mention goes to Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth's "Wind Corrosion," which changes characters' elemental weaknesses. Specifically, it gives the entire party Wind weakness. The kicker? The enemy that has this ability, Phantom Mage, also knows Magarula, a mid-level Wind attack that hits the entire party. If you find more than one of them in an encounter, prepare to take massive damage and have half your party downed as the first casts Wind Corrosion and the second follows with Magarula. And heaven help you if the enemy has advantage.

Main Series

The main series is interesting in that, with a few exceptions, you can recruit the bosses via fusion, and in most cases, they keep their signature attacks, making this one of the few game series where That One Attack and Game-Breaker are the same thing.

• Megami Tensei:
  • There is a special "smile and laugh" attack that can permanently reduce the experience levels of your human party members. Luckily only a couple of demons in the entire game have it and they're both in the same region of the dungeon.
  • The Final Boss Lucifer has a physical attack that deals over 100 HP of damage to your entire party in one move, in a game where the only upper-tier healing spell can heal just one person at a time, healing items in general are relatively rare and not sold in stores, and there are no resurrection items. Think that's still not too bad? It's by far his main move.
• Shin Megami Tensei II:
  • "Satan pointed his finger!" "YHVH let out his voice!" These attacks are used by the penultimate boss of the Neutral and Chaos routes and the Final Boss of all routes. These moves kill anyone targeted, without fail. Again, Satan in particular seems to love spamming his variant.
• Shin Megami Tensei NINE
  • Anything that inflicts Close, especially if it targets the entire party. In addition to sealing your magic, Close can stack with other status ailments, which can be especially annoying if your healers get Closed.
  • Combo attacks are incredibly powerful when used by the player, and that doesn't change when the enemy uses them. It's not uncommon for enemies that are only capable of dealing Scratch Damage with their normal attacks to obliterate entire parties when they start using combos, especially in the early game.
    • Combos that use physical attacks are even worse — besides their absurd damage output, they often have a variety of nasty side effects, such as debuffs, status effects, or even instant death.
  • Mad Tea Party, used by Alice. It inflicts Sleep, Panic, or Charm on the entire party, which can potentially leave your entire party either immobilized or beating each other up. You do have Mubiora or Miranda helping you, so the ailments usually don't last long, but it does prolong an already fairly drawn-out fight.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
  • Dragon Eye, turning one press turn into four halves. Used by a lot of enemies.
  • Also used by a lot of enemies, Beast Eye, turning one into two halves. However, these halves can be turned into two more halves each. Mot is especially infamous for exploiting this.
  • Hell Gaze, a Death-type One-Hit Kill with near-guaranteed success rate, like Mudoon on steroids. If Demi-Fiend doesn't have Death immunity, you'd better kill whatever enemies have this as quickly as possible before they just decide to hit him with it and instantly end your game.
  • Matador's Red Capote maximizes his Hit/Evasion rates, making it nigh-impossible to land an attack if you aren't prepared to counter it somehow. Missing an attack is Serious Business in this game because the attacker's party loses two turns instead of one for a missed attack. Also, Andalucia, which hits the entire party several times. It doesn't do that much damage on its own, but is usually used after Focus, which buffs physical attacks, or even worse Taunt, which puts a huge dent in your defense.
  • White Rider's God's Bow: 100% One-Hit Kill if you don't null light-based instant-kill. It doesn't help that the same boss also has Prominence, the strongest fire spell in the game, so if you want to avoid one you cannot avoid the other.
  • Red Rider's Terrorblade. It does huge physical damage to random members of your party and can cause the Panic status. If someone has this status, they may: lose a turn or throw away some money. But if it's your demon, they might run away. Granted, you can call them back, but that's only if the Demi-Fiend didn't get hit by it as well.
  • Black Rider's Soul Divide. It halves your HP and has a high chance of muting you if you're not immune to Curse-type ailments. The fact that he also has Megidolaon makes it worse.
  • Pale Rider's Pestilence if anyone is poisoned. This is an almighty-elemental attack that deals moderate damage to everyone... with the added caveat that it's also a One-Hit Kill to poisoned characters.
  • Sol Niger, used by Alciel, is an HP to One attack that hits the whole party. Bosses get two actions in one turn, and Alciel will invariably use that second action to attack one of your characters. If he hits the Demi-Fiend? You had better be used to that Game Over video. If Alciel starts using Mana Drain, pray you've got an Attack Mirror ready, because it's coming next turn.
  • Earthquake, used by Skadi, is a physical skill that hits the entire party for insane amounts of damage but thankfully cannot critical. If you don't realize that Skadi telegraphs this attack by boosting her physical damage with Tarukaja twice on her previous turn and remove her buffs (or reflect the Earthquake itself, since it lacks Almighty attributes), a Total Party Kill is almost guaranteed.
  • Holy Melody if you're not careful with Trumpeter's health. If he happens to have the lowest percentage of health when he plays that, the boss will fully heal himself. Same goes for Evil Melody. A character is just 1 point lower than the others? That person DIES! And if the boss has the lowest HP? He decides My Rules Are Not Your Rules and targets the main character, Game Over. Endure can stop it, but it works once per battle, and he also has Megidolaon, which makes controlling your party's health difficult.
  • Anything used by Dante. Stinger hits one character for almighty damage, and instantly kills anything on a critical. Provoke is an enhanced version of Taunt, which drastically increases your attack but lowers your defense; Provoke does this and, instead of spending a huge amount of MP, it actually heals Dante's MP. He also has an attack called Showtime, which deals a gigantic amount of almighty damage to your party, and Bullet-Time, which hits your party for pretty good damage, causes Panic, and is an Always Accurate Attack. There's also Rebellion, which has a crit chance so absurdly high that you might as well just assume it will always score a Critical Hit and is also guaranteed to hit every single time it's used. And E & I which, although not as strong as other attacks, hits 4 times, so if he scores a Critical Hit with this, you're probably dead.
  • Death Flies, used by Beelzebub. It's basically Megidolaon, with the added effect of instantly killing anything not immune to Death-type instakill, and he'll spam it once his health gets low, making his fight a really ugly case of Character Select Forcing. Luckily, the playable Beelzebub also learns it.
  • Fire of Sinai: Remember Megidolaon? This attack is what would happen if it hits multiple times on random enemies. Pray it doesn't hit the main character twice.
  • Surt's Ragnarok. Good luck surviving that if you don't resist/null fire. It's even worse later when he turns into a Degraded Boss, Surt appear in groups of at least 3, so there's a chance they'll use it more than once on the same target. You'd be surprised by the amount of times they do this to the Demi-Fiend...
  • Ahriman has two, one in each form. The first form has Hell's Call, which kills you instantly if you do any action he forbids. The second form has Apocalypse, which deals incredibly high almighty damage, similar to Megidolaon. Which he also possesses.
  • Bael's Bane, used by Baal Avatar. It turns you into a fly. Can be blocked, at the cost of being weak to One-Hit Kill spells the boss uses (bar Crazy Preparation of course).
  • The True Final Boss has a few attacks that are the bane of many players seeking the True Demon Ending.
    • This boss is a rather liberal user of Dekunda and Dekaja, which are Status-Buff Dispel spells. So far, so good, just reinstate your buffs and debuffs as soon as they disappear. Except when he spends two press turns in a row dispelling all your debuffs and all your buffs, and his very next two press turns frying you with High King before you can reinstate a sufficient amount of buffs and debuffs.
    • High King deals very high almighty damage (and can affect a party member or two with Bind, at that). Without a lot of buffs and debuffs in tandem (which is a difficult task due to the boss liberally using Status-Buff Dispel skills), it's impossible to survive two High Kings in a row (which he can and has indeed thrown at players), and even with maximum buffs and debuffs you could easily get a game over if the Demi-Fiend got lowered to 10% HP by Root of Evil.
    • Root of Evil is one of, if not the, most dangerous of the attacks in the boss's arsenal. It is a whole-party attack that will either take 50%, 75%, or 90% of your health when it hits a party member on top of dishing out random status effects. Keeping your HP maxed every round is necessary to survive it, and sometimes even that fails due to the boss being able to snipe the Demi-Fiend with a normal attack or High King right after it hits him. And in the Nocturne Maniax Chronicle re-release (the one with Raidou), Root of Evil removes all your buffs, too. The only saving grace is that party members can occasionally dodge Root of Evil, sparing them the damage.
    • Even the True Final Boss's unnamed normal attack counts as one, due to it possessing certain rare properties. It has almighty attributes, meaning that it cannot be resisted or blocked in any way, and it is one of the very few such unblockable normal attacks in the entire game. And unlike those other unblockable normal attacks in the game, it doesn't seem to be able to miss, even with maximum agility debuffs on the boss and maximum agility buffs on the player's party. Making things worse is its sky-high critical rate, giving the boss many extra turns. The boss also loves using this normal attack to snipe up to two party members to death immediately after a Root of Evil, after which they are very unlikely to have enough HP to survive a Critical Hit.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey:
  • First, the new status ailment Bomb. If a Bombed character gets hit with even the weakest attack, they die and deal their HP as damage to the party. God help you if the unlucky target happens to be the main character. And we can't inflict this to enemies, either.
  • And, depending of the amount of money you happen to have at hand, you will want to kill yourself if an irredeemably stupid enemy hits you with Macca Beam, or God forbid, Wastrel Beam. You lose, not a fixed amount, but a percentage of your total. Killing the enemy won't get it back - it's gone. You can lose hundreds of thousands of Macca to Kangiten's Wastrel Beam.
  • And finally healing ones: Tiamat, Captain Jack and Ryan all possess Pure Blue which heals them for over 1000 HP and cancels all debuffs on themselves. For the latter two, that equates to a full heal. Only Tiamat gives a way to avoid it (do not debuff her more than three times). This is a Nintendo Hard game, if not more so.
  • Asura Roga, used by (who else?) Asura (and Mem Aleph, if you're unlucky). This causes Rage, which cannot be cured with anything but Amrita or Salvation (and you don't have the latter at this point). Raging characters will attack anyone randomly, including Asura maybe, but more likely at your party. This is worked around generally by doing this fight ALONE, with no summoned demons. Affected characters can't attack themselves, so going into the fight with just the MC is one solution... so long as you don't get burned to death by Asura's Black Fire or Maragidyne.
  • Mitra has Light of Order, a guaranteed unblockable instant death attack directed towards a random demon. Although it cannot target the protagonist, this attack is annoying because you have to waste turns reviving and resummoning whoever gets hit by Light of Order, unless you decide to summon another demon in their stead. Mitra also has Mabufudyne, a third-tier, all-targeting ice attack. To compare, an average party will have Mabufu (first-tier, all-targeting ice attack) and Bufula (second-tier, single-target ice attack) at best at this point in the game. It's the huge difference in power that makes it super painful.
  • Ouroboros has Wave of Death, which deals insane amount of physical damage. And since you'll not get Physical-Null until the last sector, if she uses it twice in a row, you lose. Ouroboros also has another awful attack: Disaster Cycle, another physical attack that inflicts random status on everyone in the party. One unlucky turn where she hits the player character with Stone or Bomb and game over. And in her second form, she uses it every turn. It's made a lot worse in Redux, where it's now an Almighty attack but also softened by the fact that if you have a specific sub-app equipped the player character getting Stoned or killed won't mean an immediate Game Over.
  • Gore, the boss after alignment lock on the Law and Chaos paths, has Adaptation. This is an attack he will only use on the main character, and does so much damage that being on defense with Physical resistance and buffs in your favour only changes this attack from "instant death" to "takes out a majority of your max HP". If the protagonist was already at low health, that may not even save him. Since he does telegraph it with Charge, an Attack Mirror will help assuming you have any in reserve.
  • Mother's Kiss, used by the Final Boss on the Law and Neutral paths. It hits 6 to 8 times for physical damage and can deal four-digit damage even with your defense capped. At this point it can be negated, but doing so leaves you vulnerable to her One-Hit Kill spells unless you're clever with your equipment. And she uses those One-Hit Kill spells a lot.
    • MA, on the same boss. Like Mitra's Light of Order, it is a guaranteed instant kill of one character. This time, however, it CAN target the protagonist, and more often than not DOES. Unless you have plenty of Sacrifices ready, you might want to learn how to repair a DS. At level cap, it is possible to dodge it, but only if the Random Number God is feeling really merciful.
    • An attack with the same name as the boss, Mem Aleph. It puts all demons of a random alignment back in your stock. While it's not a One-Hit Kill, this can be very bad news depending on your party's alignment composition, as you will be spending the next several turns trying to reassemble your party, and the boss may use the above attacks while you're trying to do that.
  • Requiem, used by the final boss of the Chaos path. Think MA above was bad? Try an almighty-instant-kill that targets the entire party. The battle is nothing but a Luck-Based Mission in which you will try to kill her before she busts Requiem out. It isn't guaranteed to hit either, but if it does, instant game over. Just in case you thought the Chaos final boss, Pillar Zelenin, would be easier than Mem Aleph.
  • The Redux rerelease gives us Ishtar's Alluring Squall. It does one to three hits of medium wind damage and charms whoever it hits, potentially crippling more than half of your party in one fell swoop. And if that wasn't bad enough, her Soul Steal insta-kills anyone who is charmed and heals her for the damage it deals. The only saving grace is that she keeps Alluring Squall when you fuse her for yourself.
  • Redux also has Overdrain, a skill used by the wardens of the Womb of Grief. It's basically the bastard child of Megidola (heavy Almighty damage) and Energy Drain (absorbs your HP and MP). A clean hit can cripple your party and bring the boss back to full strength in one fell swoop. Not fun to deal with. At least these bastards are Optional Bosses.
  • The True Final Boss of Redux has quite a few: her main move Divine Pain is her version of Antichthon (massive Almighty damage + all stats debuff). In her second phase, she has a lot more: Heaven's Arrow which is the Gun-equivalent of Mother's Kiss above, Preening which heals her for over 1000 HP and buffs her equal to 4 Luster Candies on top, and finally a set of three Torahs, one for each alignment. The Torah sets up a barrier to reflect all attacks from anyone of the Torah's matching alignment and lasts 7 turns at minimum, so you'll have to switch your team out if you want to continue doing damage. Almighty attacks bypass the Torahs, but for this phase the boss also has massive resistance to everything except Co-Op attacks so you can't just spam Almighty attacks like you would with most endgame fights. In higher difficulties, the boss will use Preening more often and her Torahs will last even longer, so if the player's party doesn't have good combatants of different alignments then they might as well restart the battle.
• In Shin Megami Tensei IV...
  • Labrys Strike, which does massive physical damage, and hits a few times. Oh, and it's only usable by the first major boss, Minotaur. If he uses it multiple times in one turn, you're in trouble. For reference, this is a multiple-strike "heavy" damage move, at a point when your best moves will likely be single-strike "medium" moves.
  • Any skill that can inflict Panic. You have a chance to waste your turn by staring off into space or worse, using a random move. In this game, attacking enemy with attacks they are immune to can cause the enemy to Smirk (gain extra turns, a boost of both accuracy and damage, have their weakness removed, and can't be hit by Critical Hit), so it isn't hard to see why this is bad. You can also Smirk, but Smirk disappears if you are affected by status ailments, and considering the number of That One Attacks below that inflict status...
  • Macca Beam and Wastrel Beam return. Again, the first shaves off 20% of your total money. The second vaporizes half your money into oblivion. The Black Rider loves to spam Wastrel Beam on the first turn if you're actually lucky enough to encounter him and the Nekomata is the only other enemy that can use it while Macca Beam is a favorite of Dormarths in Blasted Tokyo. Not helping is that obtaining Macca is more difficult in this game.
  • Blight: a favorite of Macabres and Oses, as well as David, which targets your entire party for 100% accurate low physical damage. For reference, by that point your hard-hitting physical will be the inaccurate Critical Wave, or Heat Wave if you're a diligent grinder. Unlike Heat Wave however, Blight also has a built-in poison chance clocking in at roughly fifty percent. Add that to the fact it has the chance to critical, giving them another press turn and a probable Smirk, and a single Blight can be the harbinger of doom for an entire team. Blight is one of the most atrocious attacks even late into the game, as it will be a long time until you can get the ONE spell that will allow you to lift Poison from the entire party at once.
  • Ancient Curse, usable by Kenji and Yaso Magatsuhi, plus the Chaos/Neutral exclusive Optional Boss Izanami. Yay, let's have to deal with all five status ailments AT ONCE for the WHOLE PARTY! At least some demons, including the latter, can use a version of the same, Shivering Taboo, when fused.
  • Nought Wave, used by White Issachar and White Hugo. This is another almighty attack that can instant-kill, but this one only has a 10% chance of doing so and comes with moderate damage. This is a good thing too because Nought Wave targets THE ENTIRE PARTY.
  • Merkabah's Hexagram. A (fortunately dodgeable) guaranteed single-target almighty instant kill. At least loss of the protagonist doesn't end the game...
  • Lucifer has Kingly One, Evil Shine, and an attack that reveals his identity, Morning Star. Kingly One will force one of your demons back into the Gauntlet, no questions asked. Evil Shine deals serious almighty damage to everyone and has a high chance of inflicting Panic on anyone that survives. Morning Star will take away half of your team's remaining HP, without fail. Pray he doesn't spam or combo it.
  • Pandemic Bomb: An attack that has a high chance of inflicting Sickness on the entire party. Sickness is a status effect that lowers the attack and defense of the afflicted, specifically by reducing attack damage by twenty-five percent and evasion to zero (meaning that attacks on a Sick character will always hit). It can be cured through the same means as Poison... but there's a catch. "Sickness" isn't just a fancy name. No, it's contagious - every turn (not every round, every turn) there's a chance any unaffected party members will catch Sickness if there's a single affected character. Which means that unless you can cure the entire party at once, it's entirely possible that you cure a character, only for them to instantly get Sick again. This is a large part of why Beelzebub is so frustrating. It's even worse when he comboes it with Death's Door, which brings down the HP of any Sick character to ONE.
  • The new status ailment "Brand". First off, you can't remove it. Not with Amrita Showers and not even with Salvation. It naturally fades over time, but as long as you have it, all recovery, MP and HP, is reduced to one point, no matter what. And don't think about cheating by dying. Brand won't go away even then, making Enduring Soul revive you with no more than 1 HP. The good thing about it is that no enemies can inflict Brand outside of DLC fights.
  • Fallen Grace, used by Michael of the four Heralds, from the second "Clipped Wings" DLC fight. This move does a GUARANTEED 666 damage to one target. And since he can bestow Smirk upon himself, it's easy for him to use this twice in a row and instantly destroy someone^note 1,332 HP of damage total; a demon would have to have naturally high HP with Doping to stand any chance whatsoever of enduring it. Oh, and both him and Gabriel fought before him possess Lamentation which spams status ailments on your entire party and guarantees Brand for all of them.
  • The "Ancient One of The Sun" DLC has the fight against Ancient of Days, who boasts Damnation and Stigmatic Gleam. Huge almighty damage with very high chance of Poison for the first, worse damage and Brand for the second, and it's made even worse by his Spiritual Focus buff spell, which can't be canceled by Dekaja and triples the damage of his magic attacks, including Damnation and Stigmatic Gleam.
  • From "The Eternal Youth" DLC fight, Sanat has Gaea Rage. Not as bad as Demi-Fiend's from Digital Devil Saga, but it still deals massive almighty damage to everyone and can render demons lost for the duration of battle. Sanat will spam this if you exploit his weakness to guns and pretty much force you to fight him with your Main Character alone (by the way, Sanat is immune to everything except his weakness and almighty attacks, so this maximizes the chance of him spamming Gaea Rage unless you use the Pierce skills obtained from other DLC fights). Sanat also has Deadly Fury and Dark Energy, the former of which deals huge amounts of physical damage to the party and has a good chance to inflict Panic, while the latter is another buff spell that can't be canceled, that also triples the damage of his physical and gun attacks, including the previous skill.
  • Curse Thy Enemy from the final DLC fight. Nasty almighty damage to everyone and it always acts like it hits a weakness, and that means extra turns. He also has Guardian's Eye which gives him three extra turns for free. The worst part about this? This DLC fight is on a TIME LIMIT.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse:
  • Smile Charge grants the user Smirk. But while Smirk has been adjusted such that it no longer gives the user an incredible damage and evasion boost; it still protects the user's weaknesses, prevents them from taking any critical hits, while guaranteeing their next attack will always hit and always crit. Your first encounter with it is King Frost, at a stage of the game where you'd try to make the most of your Press Turns by striking weaknesses. There is Magaon, a spell specifically to get rid of Smirk, but it's also not readily available unless you're diligent with fusion or recruiting demons. You eventually do get Smile Charge for your own demons, but this costs about five times as much as Charge or Concentrate.
  • Krishna brings Venomous Raga and Dream Raga to the table. They have the ability to inflict multiple status ailments on your party while also doubling as two applications of Tarunda or Rakunda. It is possible to be affected by nearly every single ailment at once. Not only will you lose turns to the ailments unless lifted quickly, but you'd also find yourself spending more turns undoing the debuffs before your party gets slaughtered. Naturally, when you get to fuse Krishna for yourself, he retains these skills and can easily trivialize any random encounter.
  • The Final Boss YHVH and the Messiahs in the Diamond Realm DLC Super Boss Stephen up the ante with a few horrifyingly effective moves which can spell a Total Party Kill when combined especially in their second fights.
    • Divine Harmony^note YHVH and Reboot Code^note Stephen erase all effects from the party, including buffs, Smirk, Charge, Concentrate, and Doping. This means you have to quickly buff your party up again.
    • Authoritative Stance^note YHVH's first form only and Crack Code^note Stephen's second battle only remove 3 Press Turns at the start of your turn. If you don't have a full party (and thus don't have full Press Turns), that means the boss gets a free turn, and even if you do have your full party, that only leaves you with one Press Turn. This is worse for Stephen's fight, as he will use Singularity Wave, a tremendous Almighty attack that will all but certainly kill a party member, if his health is not decreased in your turn, meaning that little window can't be used for healing (and can indeed be lost if you miss an attack). This can potentially doom you if he decides to keep using Crack Code. In these fights (especially Stephen's), Dimensional Hourglasses shine as they can lessen or even nullify the effects of Crack Code so that if you have a full party, you get at least two Press Turns instead of five by using one hourglass and five Press Turns instead of eight by using four hourglasses.
    • Infinite Power^note YHVH's second form only and Pair Production^note Stephen's second battle only fully buff them to max stats and grant them Smirk status. While the player will have access to Dekaja and Dekunda stones to undo the stat modifications, Magaon and Sonic Shot are mandatory to nullify the Smirk effect. Ignoring the Smirk guarantees a critical hit for the bosses, potentially giving them free turns. This is dangerous especially for Stephen as his elemental moves generally pierce resistances.
    • Unending Curse^note YHVH's second form only and Particle Annihilation^note Stephen's second battle only fully debuff the player's party. To make things worse, the former has a chance of inflicting Mute which potentially denies the chance to exploit YHVH's weaknesses. You have to quickly buff your party up again like Divine Harmony and Reboot Code above in addition to casting Dekunda beforehand.
• Shin Megami Tensei V:
  • Attacks that pierce elemental resistances, and espscially Impaler's Animus which can give any attack this property while also boosting its damage. While in installments prior to Apocalypse, piercing attacks couldn't negate reflection, that's not the case in this game and unlike in Apocalypse or Strange Journey Redux, piercing attacks and Impaler's Animus are fairly common among enemies and bosses. Even if you use an Attack/Magic Mirror, you take the full brunt of the attack boosted by Impaler's Animus.
  • Yabusame Shot, a full-party physical attack that ignores resistance and is a guaranteed critical hit. In other words, it's a free Press Turn for the enemy without needing Impaler's Animus for setup. While it doesn't do much damage and is available to the player as well, enemies are able to use this skill with impunity and the extra action they get with it can turn the tide of a battle in their favor.
  • Khonsu Ra has Heliopolis Dawn, a full-party Fire attack that, like Yabusame Shot, pierces resistances and can easily hit for over 1000 damage per party member. He has to spend a Press Turn getting ready before he uses it... but if his allies manage to hit a weakness and score an extra Press Turn, there's nothing stopping him from incinerating your party with this attack that same turn before you get a chance to prepare for it.
  • Superboss Shiva's Tandava. It's an extremely powerful Almighty Attack that hits all of your Party. What makes it so deadly is that it drops your defense to minimum, not two stages but minimum so not even two stacks of Luster Candy can stop it. Since it's Almighty, you can't guard against it, so you HAVE to bring a demon with Dekunda and attack debuffs lest he pummels you with his other attacks. The only saving grace is that he won't use it often when his allies are still alive but there's still a chance that he'll use it, making you easy pickings for the next turn.
  • SMTV's DLC features the Demi-fiend. The Demi-fiend is a brutal opponent even on casual mode, and he dwarfs even the bonus boss of the vanilla game.
    • His most powerful move is Gaea Rage, which does thousands of damage, wiping out your active party. He only uses this move if provoked with a reflect attack, or if 3-5 turns pass without killing one of his demons, so it can be avoided.
    • He also uses Chaotic Will at set intervals. Chaotic Will has a chance to instantly kill anyone, and even if it misses, it cuts your upcoming press turns in half for a brutal hangover. Unlike nearly every other attack in the game, there is no way to be immune to Chaotic Will. The skill Abyssal Mask makes it less likely to hit, but there's still a chance. A dead demon can be resurrected multiple times, but the main character only gets a maximum of two revives. If the Demi-fiend gets lucky, it's game over.

Persona Series

• Persona:
  • Candy Voice. It is an area-hitting spell that causes the charm ailment. Doesn't sound so bad? Well, most of your party members are front-line combatants, which means that they are all in the same area, and in this game, ailments are stacked. There is no item that completely removes all ailments from everyone - either completely cure one person or remove one level of ailments from everyone but still leaving them affected. You can get stuck with an infinite number of charms on each character, and there is nothing you can do about it. The only way to counter this is to have Personae immune to charm, but that usually means they have a ton of other weaknesses that the game may or may not tell you about.
  • Butterfly Storm from the Pandora. It inflicts large non-elemental damage (meaning like Almighty, it cannot be resisted in any way) and inflicts random status ailments on the entire party. And since you already read the above, it isn't hard to see how bad it will be if the myriad of statuses stack.
• Persona 2 duology; Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment: Unlike other games in the franchise, Almighty is considered just another element which can be resisted and nullified. The proper attack affinity which functions similarly to Almighty in other titles is called Non-Elemental, which are generally (though not universally) enemy only skills.
  • From both:
    • Hula of Misfortune: Watch a hula-dance, lose half of your total money. You don't get it back.
    • Kudan's attack Prophecy kills the user, but it will revert all of your active Personae to Rank 1. Ranks are essentially a specific parameter which allows your Personas to use more skills (with the max being 8), so it isn't hard to see why this is bad. The move also removes any mutations they received, and once hit, it doesn't wear off.
    • Terror Fortune. It appears in two different boss fights - one per game - and it deals high Wind and Dark damage. That in itself isn't that bad, but this attack also deals random ailments to the entire party. It's the main reason why the Metal Trio in Eternal Punishment is treated as That One Boss.
    • Omega Cluster. Dark-type instant kill to one party member each turn for several turns. If not kept in check, it can wipe out the entire party very quickly.
    • Mephistopheles. Random ailments to the entire party before you even hit level 20. And it's the opening move of a Chest Monster.
  • From Innocent Sin:
    • Angel Joker has Holy Sword. It deals massive amount of non-elemental damage to your entire party, if the Light-type One-Hit Kill effect it has doesn't kill you first.
    • Master of 18, used by the Great Father. Non-elemental attacks that hit two or three times against one character is painful, but 18 times is...overkill at best.
  • From Eternal Punishment:
    • Old Maid. Spammed by all the "Joker" bosses, it possesses a random character in your party and forces them to attack everybody else once their turn comes, ignoring elemental resistances. On top of that, said attack is based on the possessed character's stats, so if the one possessed is Tatsuya, you're screwed. The only way to deal with it is to make everyone defend but this drags the fights on and on.
    • Takahisa Kandori has Wheel of Time, which starts with dealing huge Almighty damage to your entire party, which gets stronger with each subsequent use. He also has Unperishable Black, which halves your entire party's HP.
    • The same boss in Tatsuya's Scenario has Crawling Chaos which deals huge Almighty damage to all party members (not that you have any) and also inflicts Mute. That means that you can't use your skills against a boss that resists literally everything.
    • The above mentioned Terror Fortune from Metal Jun.
    • Bloody Divorce from Metal Eikichi, if you are not immune to Water and Dark. Huge damage and high chance of instant death.
    • Lover of Shadow from Metal Lisa also follows this pattern, but with Earth Damage. And she charms.
    • Nyarlathotep has a lot, from both of his forms. His first form has Unperishable Black and Guard Punish; the latter deals huge Almighty damage and hits for twice the damage if the target is defending. His second form has numerous: he has both Wheel of Time and Crawling Chaos (and this time you DO have party members), as well as Chaos Element, which deals anywhere from 100 to 800 fixed points of Dark damage to a target (the max HP is 999). And it's all made even worse by his Transient Ripple, which nullifies all buffs, shields, and recovery effects.
• Persona 3:
  • The Mythical Gigas' Deathbound hits everyone for a huge amount of Slash damage. It's about 300 damage if it doesn't critical (you'll probably have 480 HP, tops, by the time you reach him), and if it criticals, that number can easily exceed 1000, and no amount of Level Grinding will allow you to survive when that happens.
  • Night Queen from Nyx Avatar. Sizeable almighty damage, random status ailments. Very frustrating if it charms your healer, who proceeds to undo 30 minutes of work with a single spell cast. Even worse is that the protagonist getting charmed or enraged is practically a death sentence as it renders you helpless unless you get lucky and your healer is able to keep the entire party alive until your recover. Especially bad since...
    • The boss also has Moonless Gown: It stops your progress cold since it reflects absolutely everything (even almighty attacks) for three turns. What makes this bad? In a truly irritating display of Artificial Stupidity, your allies will blindly attack the Moonless Gown unless you stop them, even though both Fuuka and common sense say that they shouldn't. Combined with Night Queen and if the protagonist is knocked down and loses a turn (or worse, is rendered completely uncontrollable via a status ailment), all you can do is sit back and watch as your teammates blindly attack the shielded boss until they inevitably kill themselves before the boss kills you without a chance to recover. Persona 3 Portable reduces Moonless Gown's danger, since you can now control your teammates directly. However, the boss is fully capable of attacking during Moonless Gown, so it is still pretty threatening especially if the A.I. Roulette decides to spam it.
    • In Persona 3 Reload, Nyx Avatar loses Moonless Gown, but in its place gains Apocalypse, which reduces the entire party's HP by 99%, which it will follow up the next turn with Night Queen. It also has some of the signature moves of the Full Moon shadows, most notably Grim Transcendence which gives it three extra turns.
  • Elizabeth's infamous 9999 damage Megidolaon (the HP cap is 999, by the way..) She uses it once per move cycle, meaning you better have a way to counter it. And even if you do, if you break the rules of the fight, she'll immediately use it twice in a row to make sure you stay dead. The attack is so infamous that it returns in Persona 4: Arena as her One-Hit Kill attack.
  • Persona 3 FES has Dark Embrace, used by Erebus. When it uses this, it'll charge up, and unless you manage to deal enough damage in time, the actual attack, Primal Darkness will deal massive almighty damage. Survivable at first, but it gets stronger with each use, so when you see it charge up Dark Embrace, throw everything you have at it.
  • Persona 3 Reload has Takaya's Last Ditch Move, Paradise of Quietus, which inflicts heavy damage, drops everyone's SP to one, and instills fear, which the boss will capitalize on the next turn with Ghastly Wail (instant death to fearful enemies) if not cured.
• Persona 4:
  • Stagnant Air increases everyone's susceptibility to ailments by at least 50%, which then makes status ailment-instant kill combo capable of wiping entire parties easily. There are two good things to it, though; it can be used against enemies, and it wears off after a while.
  • Shadow Yukiko:
    • Burn To Ashes for beginners. At this point, you only have three party members; one of which has a fire weakness. You can pick up a Slime that has Red Wall, which can seal said party member's weakness for 3 turns... but Slime itself is weak to fire, and the only healing spell you're likely to have at this point is Dia or Media. And since this is an Atlus game, the AI will exploit any chance you give it to murder you.
    • On the same boss, the Charming Prince has an attack called Terror Voice, inflicting Fear upon you. It's not so bad on its own. The real kicker is when she follows up with Shivering Rondo, which does a HUGE amount of Almighty damage to anyone inflicted with said ailment. And this early in the game, items that cure Fear are hard to come by, so anyone hit by Terror Voice is likely doomed.
  • Rampage, used by the Contrarian King. Hits your whole party up to 3 times for huge damage and will one-shot your entire party if you fight him as soon as you can. When used by any other enemy (or your party), Rampage is a low-tier attack, so you might not expect much when the attack name comes up, until your party is obliterated in one go.
  • Shadow Kanji's Roar of Wrath, which gives female characters the Rage status. While this could work in your favor (when enraged, people will attack enemies with boosted strength), the only two females in the party at the time are Chie and Yukiko. And Yukiko is the designated healer for the party. He also likes to follow this up with Tetrakarn, making those powerful attacks go right back at the girls. Have fun watching them get instantly killed for attacking Kanji! This is also made potentially worse if you haven't killed off one of the flunkies that are HEALED by physical attacks.
  • Everything used by Mitsuo The Hero. His regular attack can deal out triple-digit damage, is unblockable, and is enough to kill anyone in two shots, which is a serious problem considering Mitsuo gets 2 turns. Then there's Bomb, which deals massive damage and can cause Exhaustion, which drains SP every turn. Lastly, he has Gigadyne, which is as strong as his regular attack and it hits the whole party, but Gigadyne can only be used if Mitsuo The Hero is completely recreated. Note that should this boss reform completely, both the regular attack and Bomb will increase in power. Shadow Mitsuo, the "core" of this boss, also has some deadly multi-target elemental attacks, which if they strike any member of your party's weakness, will cause him to unlease Megidola during the follow up turn. By far the worst is the Evil Smile and Ghastly Wail combo. The former can inflict Fear on all party members, while the latter kills anyone who has Fear.
  • Kunino-Sagiri's Control, which brainwashes one of your characters. They do the same things as they would if they were Charmed, but 1: it's unavoidable, and 2: it's incurable; you have to wait it out. After Kunino Turns Red, he'll take control of three of them. Just pray they don't use Diarahan or have a Persona that is weak to whatever element they use equipped on the MC. Nerfed in Golden, as now they only use physical attacks (or physical skills if they have any). This can still result in a sudden and unexpected Game Over if Rise buffed their attack or, worse, charged and focused them. On the other hand, equipping a Persona with Null Physical means you only have to worry about Kunino-Sagiri.
  • Izanami-no-Okami has World's End, which is game-ending if you can't figure out how to avoid it. Huge almighty damage to your entire party, chance of status ailments to everyone. She also follows it up by immediately using Summons to Yomi, which kills any character with status ailments. But it's only bad for players that don't recognize when the game is telling them to defend: she spends her two turns charging up and telegraphing the attack the round before she uses World's End, and it does nothing whatsoever to characters who are guarding. If you're lucky and leveled up Rise's Social Link enough, Rise can cure the party's status ailments between World's End and Summons to Yomi.
  • Like her younger sister, Margaret has a 9999-damage Megidolaon that she uses every 50th attack. Margaret also has a standard Megidolaon that inflicts a lot of damage when charged up, as well as Hassou Tobi, the ultimate physical ability, which hits all party members 8 times and is very difficult to survive on higher difficulties. Made worse in Golden, as Margaret now takes two actions per turn, giving you half the time you had in the vanilla game.
• Persona 5:
  • Anything that can cause the status ailments Brainwash and Despair, especially against the entire party. Brainwash is the game's equivalent of Charm except it's made even worse since party members who cannot heal can now use buff spells on the enemy, while Despair makes the affected unable to do anything for three turns, during which they will lose SP each turn, and then die after the last turn. If the whole party is hit with Despair, it's effectively a Total Party Kill.
  • Shadow Madarame's The Artist's Grace. What it does is it inflicts a special status effect that makes the afflicted character weak to every single attack. It usually couples this with Rakunda to lower the party member's defense and make everything hit even harder. The Final Boss also has a move that can do this, Distorted Vanity.
  • Shadow Sae's Berserker Dance. Severe Almighty damage to the entire party, and it's usually preceded by Desperation which buffs attack at the cost of defense, can't be dispelled like regular stat buffs, and stacks with other attack buffs...such as Heat Riser if you didn't bother to dispel it.
  • Berserk Akechi's Laevatein. Heavy Almighty Damage that always targets the Protagonist, which is a problem since We Cannot Go On Without You. Plus, like the above, it could potentially be buffed by Desperation and Heat Riser. Luckily, he telegraphs this attack the turn before he uses it, and only uses it as a Last Ditch Move, so you can try to kill the boss before the move fires.
  • Shadow Shido's Tyrant's Fist, which deals very high Almighty damage and can cause Fear.
    • The same boss has Tyrant's Wave, which deals heavy Almighty damage to the party. What makes it worse is that the boss uses Tyrant's Glare before it, which give the boss two extra turns to use buffs and debuffs to make the attack hit even harder.
  • Yaldabaoth's Rays of Control. The boss revives all four of its Cognizant Limbs and starts charging an attack for two turns before hitting your party with high damage dependent on how many arms are still alive. Usually the player's first instinct will be to guard against the attack; however, doing so leaves all the arms alive, which means that the attack will most likely be a Total Party Kill, even with guarding. And since it's the boss's Desperation Attack, if you die you have to go through the entire boss fight and the one immediately before this one all over again. And even if you do survive, you still have to deal with the revived arms. It is so bad that most players suggest that if he begins charging that attack, you should forgo guarding and healing and to throw all of your attacks at the main body and hope that you kill him in time. If you maxed out Futaba's Confidant, this is somewhat mitigated with Final Guard, which will block an otherwise fatal attack once in the battle. So if Futaba hasn't used the move yet, she'll block the attack and give you a second chance to finish the boss off since his next move is to attempt to charge it again.
  • Persona 5 Royal has a very subtle example during Okumura's boss fight, where right after he summons the Corporobo-GM's he will cast Rakukaja (raises defense) on one of them. Doesn't sound so bad, until you realize you have to beat them in two turns or else he'll essentially fully heal and revive them, and that single Rakukaja will allow the Corporobo to take a lot of punishment if you don't dispel it. Oh yeah, and the whole fight is on a 30 minute timer, and each of the Corporobo-GM's packs Megaton Raid, which is really strong for that point in the game, and all of them can potentially gang up on the Protagonist. If you don't abuse their Psychic and Curse weakness and the Baton Pass mechanic for all it's worth, you're in trouble. This one is also a deliberate case, since the developers confirmed in an interview that it was added in to keep players on their toes.
• Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth:
  • The gimmick of the Final Boss is its first skill, Gears of Time. This puts a countdown on everyone in the party, leading to an unavoidable death. It can be extended if you use revival skills or items on that person while they're still alive, though the boss can also hasten the countdown with Time Warp. If you're playing on Risky, you effectively have a turn limit to the fight as you get a game over if your chosen protagonist dies.
• Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth:
  • Golden Shadows like to use Holy Wrath if you don't kill them or knock them down quickly. It hits the whole party and can inflict different Binds which makes it harder to get more headway on the rest of the encounter.
  • The Mother Computer's Denial keeps you from using certain skills. If said skills are what you need to proceed with the hacking, or healing skills to keep your party fresh, you might be in for a tough time.
  • Climax Boss Doe has Infinite Despair, which inflicts an unavoidable triple-bind on the whole party, and they can't be cured by normal means. When this happens, you are given a lifeline with Hikari's Cheer to purge those binds, but you can only cure one party member at a time and the boss will repeat the attack every five turns. You'll have to carefully plan who to release or get caught in an uphill battle.

Devil Summoner Series

• Devil Summoner:
  • Strix and Strigoii have Mirror Prison and Killing Step, respectively. The former inflicts Mirror on all foes, and the latter deals massive Slash damage to Mirrored foes. Since Mirrored foes take increased damage from physical attacks, anyone that gets hit by this combo is as good as dead.
  • Charm and Stone are already annoying on their own, but Inaruna's second form takes it to a whole new level with Crying Scream, which inflicts both of them on the entire party.
  • Diablo de Corps, used by Gargantua 8 and David. It deals massive amounts of Rush damage to one foe, and may inflict Shock. It is a Fixed Damage Attack, but that only means it can't instantly kill.
• Soul Hackers:
  • King Frost has Self-Destruct, which he always ends the fight with. This means that if the main character can't survive it even with the best armor, you're screwed. And you need to defeat him to access New Game Plus, so starting a new run with a more defense-focused stat build for the hero is not an option. Better go and very slowly grind some more levels to improve your HP.
  • Manitou's magic version and Beelzebub share Armageddon, which halves your HP without fail but is capped at 500. Beelzebub also has Nice Short, which is a One-Hit Kill to shocked characters.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army
  • Anakashiko, used by Sukuna-Hikona. Fires out a laser that seals away your active demon for the rest of the fight if it hits and the damage dealt doesn't outright kill the demon that is hit.
  • Samurai Frost, used by Raiho. It's a powerful multi-hit Ice projectile that homes in on the player. The only real option you have to deal with it is to drop everything and block it, since the Pyro Jacks accompanying Raiho love to spam Pulinpa, which messes up your controls.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon:
  • Mute Beam, used by Mikaboshi. Like Anakashiko from the previous game, it's a laser that seals your demons away if it hits and doesn't kill.
  • Begin Starvation and Soul Balance, used by the Black Rider. Begin Starvation drains a LOT of your MAG if it hits, forcing you to refill it lest you run out and lose your demons. Soul Balance is a One-Hit Kill attack that hits the entire field; if you don't block it, you die, no questions asked.

Devil Survivor games

• Devil Survivor:
  • Beldr's Vampiric Mist. Deals moderate damage to every party on the map that isn't immune to Curse and heals him for some of the damage that it inflicts. This is bad considering that Beldr is immune to everything that you can throw at him the first time you fight him. During the second battle, only your main character's normal attack can hurt Beldr and fortunately it acts like it hits his weakness. This move is especially annoying when you re-fight him as part of a Boss Rush on certain routes. He's still immune to anything besides the main character, and he'll spam this attack every turn, essentially putting your health on a timer until you have the protagonist solo him, while you're dealing with another Bel.
  • Spawn, used by Belzaboul and his fly minions. It inflicts Almighty damage to one member of the team and has a high chance to inflict the Egg ailment. If any team has this specific ailment, the eggs will hatch on their next turn and deal heavy damage to that team, most likely killing them and creating additional flies.
  • Babel's Calamity of Babylon. Like Vampiric Mist, it deals a large amount of Curse damage to anyone and everyone that isn't immune and instead of healing him, it has a high chance of inflicting Mute status instead.
  • Megidoladyne, used by Lucifer, is one of the worst ones in the franchise. It deals enormous almighty damage to everyone in every friendly party, and gets stronger the more times he uses it. 50% more powerful, to be exact. He will use it upon changing into his second form, and every turn afterward. And inevitably again upon turning into his third form. Since Megidoladyne becomes more powerful every time he uses it, it becomes an instant-kill on the entire map after four/five uses, and that's if the party is at level cap. Which means that you have to beat his second and third form without letting him have more than two turns. Welcome to Hell, indeed.
• Devil Survivor 2:
  • Alice has her Signature Move, Die for Me!, an almighty attack that hits the entire party, damaging both HP and MP, with damage equal to the target's maximum HP and MP. That means it will one-shot your entire party, and even if you revive them, their MP will still be zero. The only way to survive this is to have Endure or Endure+, or resist almighty (unlike most games, Devil Survivor does provide Almighty-Resist).
  • Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker adds in the Triangulum invader Arcturus and his Fire-Elemental field attack Plough of Death. By itself it would only be annoying, but Arcturus pairs this attack with its start-of-battle skill Quasar, which renders every single one of your teams weak to elemental attacks and overrides passive skills that grant elemental resistance! And like Beldr from Devil Survivor, Arcturus is immune to everything when you first encounter it. During the second battle, only Yamato's attack can hurt the Starfish Alien. The cast acknowledges how much of a pain Arcturus is and goes out of their way to find a direct countermeasure.
  • Also in Record Breaker, that motherfucking Megidoladyne is back, this time in Tico's hands, and just as painful.

Digital Devil Saga

• From both Digital Devil Saga and Digital Devil Saga 2:
  • There's Vanity, random status ailments to the entire party.
  • Anything that can inflict Stone is already one of these, but special attention goes to Gate of Hell. This attack also deals heavy physical damage to the party. Gate of Hell is only used by Cerberus (when only the center head is alive) and Arahabakis in the first game, while Kali, Mada and Narasimha get this in the sequel. In DDS and DDS 2, in addition to chance of instant death when hit by physical attacks, if stoned people are hit by Force or Earth elemental attacks, it's no longer a chance. They die instantly.
  • Any attack specialized to be likely to inflict freeze on player characters. If a character is frozen, any bosses who notice will inevitably use this opportunity to spam physical attacks on the frozen character to not only get guaranteed chains of Critical Hits, but to get extra turns due to critical hits always giving extra turns as long as the attacker has an unblinking Press Turn icon remaining. To make matters worse, the frozen status turns off all immunities to physicals until you are defrosted. Also, freeze-specialized skills have a good chance of hitting a single character multiple times in a row, even if you didn't get frozen. Any frozen character subject to this strategy is almost guaranteed a swift death. Don't think you can outsmart these tactics by giving yourself ice immunities - any Optional Boss with such a skill will always have an unblockable almighty attack as backup.
  • Zotzilaha Bane, used by Camazotz when fought for the third time in DDS and when fought in DDS 2. It turns one party member into a bat, giving them abysmal stats and a large weakness to Force. Three guesses what all of his elemental attacks are. If the fight drags on enough (or all three party members have become bats), Camazotz also whips out Winds of Hell, a Force attack so potent it may as well be a Total Party Kill.
• From DDS:
  • Ravana and the Final Boss, Harihara, have Hunger Wave. Inflicts the Hungry status on your party. A Hungry character will do one of two things on their turn: 1) Do nothing and take some damage or 2) attack another member of the team. It can only be cured by the Song of Grace, which randomly cures one member of the party at the start of the turn, so good luck if more than one party member at a time is afflicted with it. Fortunately, Ravana loses this in his rematch in the second game.
  • Harihara also has Vaikunta. Thought Gate of Hell was bad? How about an Almighty Gate of Hell?
  • The Superboss, Hito-Shura/Demi-Fiend, has Gaea Rage. Deals four to five digits of almighty damage to your party. Your maximum HP is 999. He'll immediately use it at the start of battle to kill you before the command menu even shows up if you have any immunities, meaning you must expose yourself to the spells his demons have (especially the Dark spells). He also uses it every time two of his demons die. Problem is, he will replace those demons any time he can and if you ignore them, they will sacrifice themselves both to fully heal their master and make him throw Gaea Rage. The only defense against it is very vague and requires luck to work. You'll have nightmares about it. His non-Gaea Rage attacks also deal a lot of pain even for capped characters, and all of them have high critical chance, which means extra turns if they crit. Fortunately, Null Critical is not considered an immunity and will prevent him from getting those extra turns, although the game will certainly not tell you this.
• From DDS 2:
  • Jack Frost the Magnificent has Breath. It hits one person for one to three hits of very high ice damage, but it really only needs to hit twice to kill you (or just once if it's Heat). If you survive it, it has a ridiculously high chance of freezing you, and if that happens, he goes on to use Psycho Rage (grants him extra turns and can be stacked) and chain physical attacks until the party member dies, and then repeat the process on whoever's still alive. You can defend yourself from Breath with ice immunity skills, though this will just cause him to spam Megidolaon. Pick your poison.
  • Vishnu has Chaturbhuja, an Almighty attack that hits the whole party up to 4 times apiece. Each hit has a chance of being a critical, and it's strong enough to be a Total Party Kill from full health if you're unlucky. Of course, the version of Chaturbhuja the player gets only hits each enemy once.
  • Seth has the fittingly-named Pain, an Almighty attack with an absurd critical rate. Combined with Power Charge, it can hit a character for over 2000 damage.
  • Satan, this game's Superboss, has Temptation. It charms your entire party and cannot miss unless you cast Void Charm before he uses it. Most of Satan's attacks can be worked around or dodged, but this one forces you to dodge a possible Mamudoon without Void Death to block it. You cannot bring passives to get around this either, since Satan begins the battle by cancelling them and he immediately kills you if you try Magic Repel.

Other Games

• Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE:
  • Lorenz's Megaton Tackle is not only powerful, it always triggers Sessions, regardless of elemental affinities. In layman's terms, every time he hits you with this, all his flunkies get a free attack on the same character. Worse, Lorenz gets two attacks per turn. Naga help you if he targets the same character twice, not even Mamori will survive that.
  • The Final Boss, Medeus, has Dark Breath, which is a full-party Debilitate, and Dies Irae, which deals massive Almighty damage. But this is nothing compared to the version of Dies Irae used by his Superboss form, M-DEUS. Like Megidoladyne above, it gets stronger every time he uses it, but it also gets stronger every time a party member is KO'd. Give the boss an inch and the fight can quickly become unwinnable due to Dies Irae doing far too much damage for even a max level party to survive.