The "Don't attack at this point!" thing.

The first boss battles in Final Fantasy IV to Final Fantasy VII, at the very least, had moments where you had to stop attacking, or the boss would counter with a powerful attack - this is signified by the boss changing in someway (e.g. becoming mist, closing its wings, etc.) and at least at times, you are even told by the characters to stop attacking at this point (not very coherently in FFVII, in the opinions of some.) I am not sure if this type of battle is ever seen again in any of these games (FFIV and FFV both have a later battle where you have to not attack, but it's the whole battle, from the begining), but if they don't it's kind of strange, thinking about it.

I mean, this is the first boss battle for each game mentioned - you've at least encountered regular monsters before this, and if you've thought them, you've gotten an idea of how the battles work, but then something different happens; you find yourself facing a monster that is not only more powerful, but there's actually a moment where you have to think and be patient with your attacks, with the game holding your hand enough by informing you of this. This could be a way of letting you know that not every battle is straight forward, that there could be a moment where you have to stop attacking, but this time the game doesn't have the characters point it out, and trusts you to remember the first battle and to use your eyes to check what the enemy (be it boss or regular monster) is doing.

But to my knowledge this never got used beyond the first boss each time - you still have to think of what attacks to use at times, such as casting the wrong element, but this doesn't usually put you in any danger, other than what is already present - it just heals the enemy or does insufficient damage. The only other thing coming to me is Abadon in FFVIII, but that also doesn't count, because the only problem with attacking when it's standing is that it's harder to damage, it doesn't counter with anything, and FFVIII doesn't start with a boss that follows this rule anyway (Abadon is not the first boss by any stretch of imagination.)

Feel free to say if I've missed any enemies that do have a moment where you have to time your attacks carefully, especially if it's in a game where the first boss followed this rule. Like I say, it would have been a good way to prepare you for the fact that some enemies were like this, if it had appeared beyond the first boss...

I think it's more a good way to convey the workings of the ATB system period, the fact that you can just *let time pass* isn't really intuitive in a turn based battle if you're not used to it.

Hmmm... good point.

Thank you.

Good gameplay tutorials are those that don't feel like tutorials at all.

Final Fantasy IV has several bosses that require correct timing to effectively fight. Barbariccia, Rubicante and Asura all come to mind. :p

The only thing wrong with the instructions in FF7 is the punctuation, but I got what they were saying anyway. Although I had already had the benefit of facing bosses like that in FFIV and FFVI, so that may have helped my understanding.

In FFVI there's a later version of the first snail boss, which I think may also do the counterattack.

As qwertysaur mentioned, Barbiriccia and Rubicante are variations of the don't attack boss in FFIV.

In FFV the Sandworm uses a similar tactic since it hides in the holes and you're meant to wait to attack it unless you want a gravity to the face. Siren can also be seen as a variation since she switches from Undead and alive and messes with her strengths and weaknesses.

For FFVI, ignoring the reskin version of Ymir fought in the Dragon's Den, the only boss that pulls a variation of this strategy is Chadarnook (the painting boss) as only the demon form can truly be killed and attacking its goddess form has it throw some nasty counters your way.

Also Heckran uses this strategy in Chrono Trigger though unlike the later FF variants, no one warns you he has a mean counter attack. Likewise Kahran Ramsus has his Mirror Stance in Xenogears that works on the same principle. So SE used it in other non-FF related games as well.

So yeah there are a few bosses who have similar if altered variations of the starter boss strategy but like has been mentioned by Karifean, the whole point is really to teach people how ATB really works compared to typical turn based.

ATTACK WHEN IT'S [sic] TAIL IS UP

Thank you for responding, everyone. I forgot/missed the ones mentioned, so thank you for the replies. :)

I didn't realise that they used the wrong "Its" for that line in FFVII as well (in fairness, I've made that mistake at times.)

I do like when boss battles have something new to them. FFVII after the first battle felt like you just spam your best attacks to win. In FFVIIR, you did have to think about each boss and how to address it.

I mean to give VII credit it did have a few elements going on in some of the battles like the Air Buster taught you about Pincer Attacks and the Gunner boss teaches you about Ranged attacks Aps also had that funky sewer attack that sometimes screwed him over.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

I mean to give VII credit it did have a few elements going on in some of the battles like the Air Buster taught you about Pincer Attacks and the Gunner boss teaches you about Ranged attacks Aps also had that funky sewer attack that sometimes screwed him over.

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You talking about Remake or Orig?

Original. The remake is a different animal at this point, though in reflection, I kind of feel like the bosses in the remake lack as much variety. The originals were super easy to steam roll in comparison, but the basic strategy of boss battles were often the same for most of the ones in the remake.

Hmm, I felt the opposite. Maybe because the FFVIIR bosses were a lot harder, I tried different things to see if I could make them easier. It is possible there was a single strategy that worked for all of them but I never figured it out! For FFVII, I get that there are a few themed bosses like on the elevator and the pincer attack but those were near the beginning. After that it felt like spamming attack, limit break, summon took care of most of them.

The issue with the remake bosses is that most of them were just HP sponges, so even if they had a gimmick it always felt like everything took forever to kill regardless. I think the only bosses I remember really liking was the human opponents like the Turks and Rufus since they go down quickly but hit hard so you had to be on your toes more. The rest, I found the most variety I got was really from just switching around the party to switch out aggro and use various buff/debuffs.