Breather Boss

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There are some bosses in gaming that are more difficult than the creators expect... and then there's this guy. He's not quite pathetic enough to go down in one hit from any old attack, and there's no story significance to him being easy, or indeed, any story significance to him at all. In fact, the developers expected people to actually find said character a challenging opponent in some way, but failed.

This is the Breather Boss, the boss enemy that lacks any semblance of challenge or plot importance. They may just have had a predictable and easy-to-exploit weakness, or they may just be easy due to attack pattern. Nevertheless, they are easy and weak. Simple as that.

Note: Only list bosses not intended to be beaten without fail; any bosses that have been created just to lose easily should go under Zero Effort Boss.

Compare to Zero Effort Boss, which is when the boss is so easy that it's a challenge to lose; That One Boss, which just plows right through your characters every time and poses a massive challenge, possibly unintentionally; Anticlimax Boss, when the easy boss is critical plot-wise; and Hard Levels Easy Bosses, where every boss is this way in relation to the stages.

Examples of Breather Boss include:

• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories had the second fight with Larxene, which might be vaguely challenging, but she is fought right after one of the hardest bosses in the entire game, making her easier by comparison.
  • Likewise, Saïx from Kingdom Hearts II is not an overly easy boss per say, but he does feel like quite a Breather Boss in comparison to the other Organization members. Barring Axel, he is quite possibly the only member who is not a That One Boss.
  • Also in Kingdom Hearts II, the Arena is a great place to get easy XP, and the best boss for this is the Rock Titan, the final boss of the Hades Cup (yeah, for some strange reason, Hades isn’t the final boss of the Hades Cup) and possibly the easiest boss of the franchise. While he can do a lot of damage if his attack connects, that isn’t likely to happen, as he’s very, very slow, at least when compared to other bosses, and very easy to dodge. And even if he does hit, you’ll have plenty of time to use a healing item before he manages to attack again. Of course, he does make up for this in Kingdom Hearts III, where he’s far more dangerous.
  • Captain Hook from the first game. Sure, he is not a pushover and takes some strategy to defeat, but he's much easier than Anti Sora, who you have to fight immediately beforehand.
• Super Mario examples:
  • Mario, despite already having easy bosses, has at least one of these per game most of the time. Super Mario 64 had the Big Bully and Chill Bully, New Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros 3 had fights with Bowser Jr. and Boom Boom easier than the last fights with said bosses, and Super Mario Galaxy had Topmaniac, who was already easy in area 2, then still just as easy in the second from last level.
  • Wario Land had the second boss in the original, and Yoshi's Island/Story had one per game.
  • The "Cloud 'N' Candy" boss of Yoshi's Story is especially notable for being the most unintentionally pathetic boss, ever.
  • Not to mention Gilbert the Gooey from Yoshi's Island DS. You can not only kill him in one hit with good aim, but it's actually harder to DIE against him that it is to win, due to the room design.
  • Given how much trouble Bob-ombs give you in Super Mario 64 you'd likely expect Big Bob-omb (named King Bob-omb in later games) to be a worthy opponent. He isn't. He can't hurt Mario at all, and just walks around, the objective being to throw him three times without throwing him off the mountain. Not much of a challenge, not much of a boss.
  • Mega Goomba, the World 4 Boss of New Super Mario Bros isn't really much harder to beat than any other Goomba, despite his size; you jump on him, three times. (The trick, supposedly, is finding out how to get high enough to do that, but the switch that reveals the platforms is in plain sight, and you don't even have to use them to do it.) You can even finish him with one blow using is Mega Mario or Shell Mario.
• Several examples from The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Aquamentus guarding the seventh dungeon, the Demon Labyrinth in the original The Legend of Zelda. The dungeon itself is one of the game's easier levels, but the boss is just pathetic as long as you have the Magic Shield and Magic Sword. His fireballs can't go through the shield, so you can just stand there and hit him TWICE with the sword to kill him.
  • The first encounter with Gohma is also laughably easy in the original The Legend of Zelda, as one arrow is all it takes to kill him.
  • The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess: Fyrus was a total pushover, though, despite being a terrifying Balrog-like monster with huge chains attached to his limbs.
  • The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: When fighting Morpha, many players realized that he can't reach the corners and basically hook-and-slash it to death without getting a single bit of damage. You know you have a breather boss when only getting to it is the real challenge. Some believe this was done on purpose, as the Mini Boss Dark Link was very difficult in comparison.
  • Hot Head from The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening is incredibly easy, especially for being the boss of the eighth dungeon. He can be easily lockstunned by the Fire Rod, and you can rapid fire it to deal repeated damage to him, while staying at the bottom of the room, fairly safe.
• Pokémon had a few, depending on team choices. In the original Pokémon Red and Blue, Koga and Bruno's teams came under this. In Pokémon Gold and Silver, when Koga was an Elite Four Member, his team still came under this.
  • Giovanni. Last Gym Leader in Kanto, third encounter with him...and you most likely have a Water Pokémon to sweep his team (at the very least, you can make that Tentacool you probably caught on the way to Cinnabar annoying for him by teaching it Surf). He dropped his Kangaskhan for a Dugtrio and another Rhyhorn. In RBY you still have to be careful of Fissure, though (and in Yellow, he keeps his Persian to keep in line with the anime, and the kitty was a critihax machine back in the day).
  • Applies even moreso for Blaine. You're required to have a Pokémon with Surf, a powerful and reliable Water move, to even get to the Island and he uses Fire-type.
  • The first, and often the second of the Elite Four is often this. This is fairly reasonable, as you still have three fights to go. However, due to a glitch making a preferred type overpowered, Bruno was even easier, and that's far less reasonable.
  • In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, the final Elite Four Drake can be this. While he had strong Pokémon, all of it are weak to ice. With the exception of Shelgon (which is the weakest of his Pokémon), they all took 4x damage against them too. So if you have a strong Ice Pokémon or even a strong Pokémon who knows Ice Beam, Drake will be easy sweep. Emerald fixed this by replacing one of his Flygons (he has two) with a Kingdra though.
    • Sapphire owners have it easy, as Kyogre is practically given to them, and it comes packed with Ice Beam. Even at its base level of 47, it could still one-shot every single one of Drake's Pokémon.
  • Brock, the first gym leader in the original games, definitely comes under this if you picked the water-type Squirtle or grass-type Bulbasaur as your starter. His two Pokémon (Geodude and Onix) were both Rock/Ground types, taking x4 damage from both water and grass, and their Special stat wasn't much cop either.
    • Even with Charmander, he can be beaten easily because of said Special stat; despite the type disadvantage, Charmander's Ember does far more damage than either of his Pokémon can take.
    • This is subverted in Yellow, as your starter Pokémon is Pikachu that either has electric moves, which have no effect on his Pokémon or normal type moves which are not very effective. Although catching the fighting-type Mankey (or a Nidoran and teaching it Double Kick) can solve that problem, though it still requires some Level Grinding.
    • This is even better in FR-LG, where Charmander can learn Metal Claw, which is super effective against rock types.
  • The ultimate example would have to be Janine, the Fuschia City Gym Leader in GSC. Her team's levels are lower than the eighth leader of Johto, meaning that by the time you reach her, you team is at least a good ten levels higher.
  • One of the easiest bosses would probably be Jasmine if you have a type advantage. Her team is two Magnemites and a Steelix. Magnemite is an unevolved Pokémon, so it can probably be one-shotted by a single fire-type attack. Steelix is evolved, but unlike what you may think, being part ground-type does not give it any resistance to fire attacks. It might take two hits, depending on your fire type's level, but it shouldn't be able to beat it.
    • Alternatively, the use of a water-type Pokémon with Surf (one that you had to have for plot reasons before fighting Jasmine) works well enough.
  • Pokémon Black and White gives us Skyla, who is pretty darn easy to beat if you've just got a decent electric type, especially considering her main Pokémon has a double weakness to electric types. This would not be such a problem if her gym didn't come right after a cave with 2 extremely useful electric-type Pokémon in it.
  • If you want to count legendary Pokémon as bosses, Mewtwo is surprisingly easy to catch in Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Initially, its only attacking move is Psycho Cut, and if you have a Dark-type that knows False Swipe, you can just whittle down its HP safely, give it sleep or paralysis, and start tossing Poké Balls.
  • Out of all the champioms in each game, Alder is one of the easiest, which is made worse since in Black and White he's also one of the easiest storyline opponents. This is justified in that he is severely out of practice - his fight against Plasma King N had him choke to said opponent's legendary, highly suggesting he was never going to be back in his prime again.
• Mingy Jongo in Banjo-Kazooie. Despite the fact that he's the boss of the second-to-last level, he doesn't have much health, he's easy to hit, easy to dodge, and poses relatively little threat.
  • Jongo's hard as nails compared to the game's true breather boss, Old King Coal. He just wanders around the room, occasionally turning up the heat (but not for long enough to actually harm you) and as long as you stand on a raised platform, he doesn't do you any damage at all (unless you take a ridiculously long time to wear down his HP).
• In most action games, this often happens as a result of said boss having the same skillset as previous bosses, but on a triple overdose of steroids. Therefore, a discerning player would have already mastered the moves necessary to make the battle a walkover.
• Destroyman in No More Heroes is probably the easiest boss (barring Letz Shake and Dark Star), especially if you purchased (and powered up) Tsubaki Mk. II before that level. Despite this, he's got Cutscene Power to the Max, having shocked the living Hell out of Travis several times before the battle actually starts.
  • Even easier than Destroyman is Dr. Peace, who does nothing but stand in the middle of the arena and rotate between three easy to dodge attacks, making it pathetically easy to defeat him without taking a single hit, even on Bitter mode.
  • No More Heroes 2 Desperate Struggle has Cloe Walsh who combines slow and predictable attacks with quite possibly the lowest HP of any boss in the series.
• Remiel (and, arguably, Mithos himself) in Tales of Symphonia.
  • Remiel is actually quite tough for that early in the game. Mainly because of his arrows of light distracting your casters, or his Photon spell. Plantix can be this if you know the strategy for beating it (using that strategy, it's easy to win using all four of your main frontal attackers). The convicts (not Regal) are also quite easy, and are considered a boss. Mithos is extremely easy for a final boss, though.
• Tales of Vesperia, in that vein, has Rhybgaro.
• Vlad from Nethack resides in the bottom half of the dungeon and is a required kill. However, he is so easy at that point that some people have used a "Vladsbane", which is basically a random, weak object made even weaker if possible, to defeat him.
• Sonic 3 and Knuckles—a few, but most notably Knuckles himself. His fight was built up through the whole game... he even has an increased hitcount... but he is still tragically easy to defeat due to an incredibly stupid pattern. (Hit him, he glides, you hit him. He glides, you hit him. He glides, you hit him. Oops, we've missed, he spindashes. Hit him again, he glides, you hit him. Rinse and repeat).
• Sonic Unleashed has the Egg Dragoon. It seems the developers were feeling merciful, and wanted to give players a break after braving the infuriatingly difficult Eggmanland.
• The "Egg Genesis" boss during Sonic's storyline in |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Not so much easy as just... reasonably well designed. Ends up feeling positively excellent after Radical Train.
• World of Warcraft has an interesting example: rather than fighting a boss normally, you play Chess with him (not the real chess, it has its own rules). Despite the fact that the boss cheats, it's not hard to win it, but it's certainly a different experience.
  • Noth the Plaguebringer counts. He's a fairly easy boss, but, apart from some easily-downed trash, he comes immediately before the dreaded Heigan. Get your dancing shoes on.
  • Ulduar: First, there's Flame Leviathan, a very innovative encounter using vehicles, but he's a complete pushover. Razorscale is not much harder. Then come XT-002 and Ignis who will eat you alive. Similarily there's Auriaya in central Ulduar, who is not particularily difficult except for the pull, that requires high amounts of coordination, but other than that, the boss is rather easy... and immediately followed by the watchers, who are much harder. And Mimiron WILL make you weep in despair.
    • And all bosses are Breather Bosses in comparison to the soul-crushingly, gut-wrenchingly, sickeningly difficult Algalon and Yogg-Saron (Hardest mode)
  • Burning Crusade had the Void Reaver, a slightly beefed up version of the Fel Reavers that run around Hellfire Peninsula and slaughter lower level characters. He was standing in Tempest Keep, where one of the hardest Bosses of all time was found, together with another two fairly difficult encounters... and the Trash before him is effectivly a lot harder than he himself. He could take a beating, but as long as most of the raid pays attention he is ridiculously easy. So easy that it was advised to try him as soon as you could beat a single boss of a lower Tier. The called him "Loot Reaver" for a reason.
    • Void Reaver was inadvertently made a lot harder after he got changed in a patch, though. Originally he was bugged, causing him to shoot his attacks (which you are supposed to run out of the path of) from his feet rather than his head. This was later fixed, which - since he's an insanely tall robot - had the side effect of making these shots impossible to see until they hit you. People had to use scripts to increase the viewing distance beyond the default maximum to work around this.
  • In Icecrown Citadel, Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper are quite difficult for players who haven't run through the dungeon very often. Then comes the gunship battle, which is easy enough to be nicknamed the "Lootship" battle, as it basically consists of fighting off adds while shooting the enemy ship with the cannons, and occasionally killing a mage who disables your cannons. The Deathbringer, who comes soon afterward, is a relatively simple DPS race if the raid knows how to deal with Mark of the Fallen Champion. Valithria Dreamwalker, whom many raids go to after the more difficult Plagueworks and Crimson Hall bosses, is quite easy compared to others, as it mainly consists of killing adds while healing the dragon.
    • The gunship battle was in fact so easy that groups which had no hope of completing Icecrown Citadel on normal difficulty still regularly beat the gunship battle on heroic difficulty, despite the fact that heroic difficulty is otherwise tuned so that the first bosses on heroic are harder than the last boss on normal.
  • In Cataclysm, Blackwing Descent begins with the relatively easy Magmaw and the fairly difficult Omnitron Defense System. Then the next boss is Maloriak, who has relatively simple mechanics, and the only difficult part is managing the release of the aberrations so they're all dead before the second phase.
    • Compared to the other bosses, Maloriak is in fact so easy that our main problem was that we killed him too fast, which caused the mechanics of the fight to get screwed up. Not only was he much easier than the designers had intended, he was so much easier that the designers failed to plan for the possibility of people killing him that quickly!
  • In the new version of Shadowfang Keep, Baron Silverlaine comes after Baron Ashbury (who is quite difficult for groups who can't interrupt properly), and his only abilities are a healing reduction debuff and summoning adds to be defeated.
    • Baron Silverlaine is about the same difficulty as most other comparable bosses, though. It's just that Baron Ashbury is an unusually complex fight. Once you've figured out the mechanics of it (like how some of his attacks deal damage as a percentage of your current health, meaning they can't actually kill you), the two fights are about the same difficulty.
  • Murozond in End Time. He has a very large amount of HP, but the ability to rewind time (which resets cooldowns and even revives dead players) five times makes killing him easy, especially since you can use Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp five times. He also has few abilities, only a breath attack and AO Es that leave behind "fire" on random players.
• Final Fantasy VI 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 is another joke boss in this game. He's less threatening than the standard mooks you find in his respective area.
• 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.
  • Final Fantasy VIII also 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.
    • There is that junctionable ability that heals you to full health when used, or when used on Undead enemies is a One Hit KO.
• 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.
• The Bonus Boss in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 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've pretty much amassed all of the best equipment and abilities in the game. Can you say Curb Stomp Battle?
  • Also, don't forget that 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.
    • This battle does come after a The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard engagement (where the enemy gets an extra unit, stopping you using one of yours) without a break to save in-between, so it's a welcome Breather 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.
• Bonus Boss version in Final Fantasy XII! Carrot, monster malboro and very high-level Giant Mook is pathetically easy to take down as his/her size actually works against him/her in this game: Putrid Breath, his/her worst weapon, is some seriously bad mojo that inflicts almost every debuff in the game on you—however, you've seen it before; the Cassies and the Vivians have it. It's an area-of-effect ability that radiates out from the center of the malboro and is notable for having probably the smallest area affected of any spell in the game. As a result, because Carrot is so huge, he/she cannot target all characters with it at once—so if the ability connects on the one character Carrot can target, one of the other characters just tosses a Remedy at them (Coming across Remedies at this point in the game is not an issue and besides, what player would knowingly take on a malboro, of all things, without a stock?) and the fight proceeds with barely a hiccup. Come on, Carrot, that was just disgraceful.
• Whip's Memory in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin goes down quick with the help of fully mastered Shurikens. Or how about Cream Pies, which uses only 3 MP per throw and is darkness-based, something that the Memory's vulnerable to? Yes, that's right, you can defeat Richter Belmont by throwing pies at him.
  • From the same game, Astarte is a bit of a subversion. She's often cited as beatable in less then a minute using the recently-acquired 1,000 Blades skill. However, this is not because she's easy, but because 1,000 Blades is a horrendous Game Breaker, and she's in the worst position of any boss to handle it. Without 1,000 Blades, she's much more respectable. In fact, in Richter mode she's almost That One Boss since her Temptation attack might as well be a One-Hit Kill.
  • Medusa can be this as well, as mastered Axes have just the right trajectory against her, like they do half of the game's bestiary.
  • Dracula Wraith's first form in Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.
    • Does it really count when almost all of the bosses in the game are cake, with only about five or so that pose any threat whatsoever?
  • Don't forget the Wallmaster in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, who dies the second Shanoa absorbs the glyph he uses to travel through the wall. Very much a pushover, considering that he's the first boss you fight once you reach Dracula's castle!
    • He can be pretty difficult if you don't figure that out though, since the Bomberman-styled bombs he throws do a lot of damage and there's very few spots where you can stand to absorb his glyph safely at any given time. Then again, if you're lazy, you can always just keep restarting the fight, hold up on the controller and repeat until his bomb pattern leaves a gap at your initial position.
  • Karasuman/Malphas in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. As Dawn of Sorrow showed, he would have been more challenging if he didn't "flinch" with each attack. Even in a game full of relatively easy boss fights, he stands out as way easier than he should have been.
• The Water Magician from Castlevania Bloodlines is incredibly easy. His only "attack" is to slowly (very slowly) raise the water level. Oh, he'll teleport to the other side of the screen when you hit him, or if you take too long to do so when you get close, but once you get the pattern going, he's pitifully easy, and otherwise incapable of harming you.
• The Stage 2 boss of Contra 4 takes craploads of damage from the laser, which penetrates enemies and hurts them so long as it's touching them; the boss's big head certainly helps to compound the damage. In fact, when you fight his second form, if you continuously fire lasers at him, he'll go down before any of his shots have a chance to hit you.
  • Of course, this being a Contra game, if you get hit once by any of the boss's attacks, you lose your laser and have to kill him with regular old bullets. Also, on everything but Easy mode the laser isn't quite so powerful until you collect it multiple times.
  • In Contra 3, the first boss of the last level is quite simple if you have the Spread Gun, as it's possible to shoot at its mouth and destroy the small aliens before they even come out.
• Knowing a boss's weakness in any Mega Man game gives you a tremendous advantage, but none more than the fight with Crash Man in Mega Man 2. Equip the Air Shooter, jump and fire at the right time and he goes down with one hit, before he can even get a shot off, in less than two seconds.
  • Even without his weakness, Heat Man from 2 is incredibly easy. It's possible to time your shots so he never throws more than a single volley of fire, and even if you don't, all but the very first volley are a cinch to dodge. Heat Man himself follows a simple pattern, and he takes double damage from the Mega Buster compared to most Mega Man bosses. However, many people save him for late in the game, simply because he comes at the end of That One Level.
  • Metal Man's pattern is even easier than Heat Man's, even for a first time player. When you meet him again in Wily's Castle armed with his weakness he becomes a complete joke.
  • Another weakling-Robot Master is Toad Man from Mega Man 4. All you have to do is shoot Toad Man, while dodging his jumps, and he'll NEVER use his Rain Flush attack. One could say that the dissection (no pun intended) of this boss is too easy.
    • For an even easier time, shoot him exactly once when he raises his arms. He won't attack, or even move.
• Natla in Tomb Raider 1. Tomb Raider 3 features bosses in every location of the game except Nevada, making the Breather Boss a lack thereof in this case.
• Rockstar's Bully ends with a climactic fistfight between our hero Jimmy and manipulative kid sociopath Gary atop a collapsing scaffold on the roof of the school. This is undercut by the fact that Gary is an average-to-lousy fighter, no better than the standard nameless non-boss mooks you beat up by the dozens throughout the game. Not only that, but he pretty much never attacks, goes down in a few hits, and blocks everything with his face. A video of the "climactic battle" can be seen here, skip to about 4:30 and that is around where the fight is. Although watching the whole thing to see all the build-up will make it seem far lamer then it already is, though in context it might be possible to justify the ease of the fight at least somewhat as Gary being overwhelmed because Jimmy goes into an Unstoppable Rage and just happens to not only be tough as nails, but a Combat Pragmatist, in the cutscene interludes of the fight Gary even gets the upper hand a couple times.
  • To add insult to injury, the official strategy guide describes him as being the toughest fighter in the entire game.
  • They also give him one of the most catchiest boss battle themes of all time, but you'll probably hear about 35 seconds of it because he is that easy to beat.
• Although using the term "breather" to describe anything in God Hand is something you should be wary of, Dr. Ion is noticeably easier than many of the other bosses in the game, mostly because he doesn't block and his attacks are slow.
  • Demon Shannon is another contender for the game's official Breather Boss, seeing as her whole stage is essentially a Breather Level after the monstrously hard 5th level.
  • On level DIE, however...
• If the boss of Racrock Forge in the sega cd version of Puggsy isn't the king of breather bosses, I don't know what is. I believe commentator Mashuren in the following video has pretty much covered how big of a joke he is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFTQ_5d7Mww&feature=related
• Would you believe there's one in La-Mulana? The first boss, Amphisbaena, goes down easily enough if you have shurikens... And then the other bosses in the game kill you a zillion times. Amphisbaena may have been an attempt to lure the player into a false sense of security.
  • Because you don't necessarily need to take the bosses in order as you find them, Sakit can range from vicious to pathetic. He's a massive boss, deals out a lot of damage, and is immune to all subweapons, but he's slow and has a simple pattern. If you have the Knife, he's not bad at all.
• An interesting example, the chapter "Fallen Heroes" in Trauma Center: Second Opinion has you operate on four different GUILT types, one after the other, in the one operation. Three of these are Triti, Deftera and Paraskevi - all types that, to different people, would be considered That One Boss (Paraskevi can kill a patient instantly if you let it, Deftera can hit vitals really badly if proper care isn't taken, and Triti is the Puzzle Boss in a puzzle game). But between Triti and Deftera, the player faces Kyriaki - the first, and most common, GUILT type. The player's faced it over a half dozen times at this point, only a few times with differences. It seems there for no other purpose than to let you catch your breath.
• Rawk Hawk, the reigning champion of Glitzville, in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
  • Doopliss is also fairly easy to beat compared to the other chapter bosses. He only has 40 HP, not much attack and few special abilities.
    • Although, this might be because you have to fight him twice. The second time is marginally more difficult, because your former party members are helping him, since they think he's you, and Vivian stays out for the first round.
  • O'Chunks in Super Paper Mario is fought repeatedly, "enhanced" each time. The pattern is very simple and barely changes between fights. This is in contrast to every other Recurring Boss, whose attack patterns change radically and require completely new strategies.
  • The Chapter 7 boss from Super Paper Mario, Bonechill, is ridiculously, to the point of nearly being a Zero Effort Boss, if you use Luigi's super jump. Otherwise, he can be a little challenging.
• Another Mario example would be Iggy Koopa from Super Mario Bros 3.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has two bonus bosses that are almost laughably easy with the right Nakama: White Rider and Red Rider. You see, they summon angels to assist them, and you can bring a demon with Stone Gaze to effectively knock both of the bosses adds out of commission without killing them, which would cause him to resummon them. There are other fights that end up feeling this easy with the right set up, but these two stand out due to the overwhelming power of every one of the fiends, especially Dante.
  • The thing that makes that such an absurdly effective tactic is that the petrified Angels will eat the boss's turns.
  • Black Rider isn't much better. He lacks the skills to remove buffs or debuffs, which are commonly found and put into use by the time he is fought.
• Pooh Black in Cave Story.
• The last boss of Return to Castle Wolfenstein has no ranged attack, is very slow and is fought in a huge area where you can just run circles and pump him full of minigun bullets. The twin minibosses you face two levels earlier as a warm-up are at least five times harder since they have miniguns, rocket launchers and tesla coils.
• Stage four in the tenth Touhou installment, Mountain of Faith, has hellish waterfall sections followed up by the super-fast Aya. Then comes stage five, which is mostly just filled with simple streaming sections. Sanae's spellcards have some tricky micrododging elements, but her final card is a cakewalk even on Lunatic.
  • In the eighth game, Imperishable Night, the fifth boss, Reisen, comes after both a brutal fight against either Reimu or Marisa in the previous stage, followed by a challenging stage portion with a fairly tough midboss. Reisen herself, however, is the epitome of a Puzzle Boss. Her spells may throw you off the first time you see them, but after you spend some time in Spell Practice and learn the best way to move while the bullets are out-of-phase, her battle becomes much easier (particularly her last card), and makes her one of, if not the easiest stage five boss in the series. Which is good, because after her is a tough battle against Eirin or Kaguya.
• Wapol in One Piece: Unlimited Cruise Episode 1 is kind of a breather, coming after Gecko Moria. He's slow and most of his attacks are short range, making him pretty much fodder for your crew's sharpshooter. His only threatening move is his super, but even that can be avoided without much trouble thanks to the large size of the arena.
  • Episode 2 has Oz on Island 3, who comes after a couple of nasty Dual Boss battles. He's incredibly slow and majorly telegraphs his moves. If he does hit, though, kiss your current character goodbye (especially in Hard mode). Although, by this stage of the game, you shouldn't have any trouble dodging his swings. He seems even easier when compared to the next two bosses.
• Super Macho Man in the Wii Punch-Out!! is largely considered a Breather Boss in both Contender and Title Defense. This isn't to say he's a pushover, but his position in the WVBA ranks is cushioned right between two of the hardest opponents in the game, with Bald Bull before him and Mr. Sandman after him.
• Nearly every boss in Thunder Force III goes down in under 30 seconds, especially if you have Sever. And thanks to the extensive amount of extra lives that the game gives you, you can BS the last two bosses with as many as 9 lives left, even if your weapons are reduced to the default Twin and Back shots.
  • Iron Maiden in V goes down even faster if you use the Free Range Over Weapon. If you positioned yourself at the right distance, he won't even be able to let off a single attack.
• Star Fox 64 has the lower-path boss of Corneria, Granga, who pilots a Humongous Mecha. Shoot one of his legs off to immobilize him, then blast away at his back.

I will not be defeated by this--NOOOOOO! NOOO-NO-NO-N-N-NOO-- [boom, HIT +10] MY EMPEROR, I'VE FAILED YOOOOOOOUUUUUU!!

• • What's even more pathetic is that Corneria's alternate boss (the Attack Carrier from the original Star Fox) is even easier, since you're still on rails for that fight and you don't even have to get behind it to Attack Its Weak Point.
  • Also, while still quite competent, Andross is a piece of cake compared to the improved version of the Star Wolf team you have to beat to get to him, and probably no harder than the Gorgon at the end of Area 6. Also, Fake!Andross is arguably tougher than Brain!Andross. Both battles are the same until you blow up the face. After that, the former is a giant robot head that, while it is vulnerable all over, has an attack that cannot be dodged. The latter must first have its eyes, tethered by lightning and capable of laser fire, blown off before you attack a noticeable weak point. The eyes are the toughest part, as the main brain has no distance attacks. In a shooting game. In All-Range mode. Its best attempt at a distance attack is the particles that are released when you hit its weak spot, but these, like the brain itself, are slow and easily avoided. (Note: This was originally written in Anticlimax Boss, but it is far too competent to be considered that.)
• The Joustasaurus from Backyard Skateboarding. You can lose your juice meter by bumping into him and it only comes out of the gate for a limited time, but those are easily fixed: you don't need the juice meter because you can just jump over him each time.
• Salazar was this in the original Game Cube release of Resident Evil 4. In that version, Salazar "head" would never attack the corners of the platform where the tentacles came out, so if you got a tentacle to retreat (easily done by simply shooting it a couple times from a distance) you could go into that corner and wail on him unperturbed (until the tentacle came back out, but then you just had to shoot it again). This was fixed in the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions.
• The final boss of Shadow Warrior is riding a Humongous Mecha that shoots deadly missiles... and that can be defeated within a minute with no loss of health, since it will not attack when you come up to melee range. You can then easily slash it to pieces with the katana.
• City of Heroes has an example of this when you go back in time to ensure the fall of the 5th Column on a weak pretence. The task involves turning several key Column higher-ups over to the Council side, but the pacing of them is terrible. The first one is Nosferatu, whom some have argued may well be the toughest enemy in the game. He is followed by Brukholder, who is not only one of the weakest bosses of his rank, but whom you also fight with the help of Nosferatu now on your side. You can basically walk away from the keyboard and Nosferatu will still destroy Brukholder on his own.
• The final bosses from Lufia and The Fortress of Doom, for the most part. Gades is reasonably challenging - though he can only hit one character at a time, he does fairly good damage. However, Amon, Daos, and Guard Daos all suffer from a significant flaw - all their attacks are magic. While it's not weak magic, there is a spell that Jerin learns called Mirror that causes spells cast on an affected hero to be reflected back at the caster. By casting it and maintaining it for all the heroes, those bosses can't harm you and do extra damage to themselves, allowing all your remaining characters to wail away at them until they die.
• Most of the bosses in Metroid Fusion are frikkin' hard such as the Nightmare and SA-X. Ironically, Ridley himself (as Ridley X) is really easy as you have the plasma beam by then. This means a charged shot will reverberate right through him and do insane damage. Of course, you'll get hit a lot, but it's not too bad. Lovely after Nightmare and Yakuza, and before SA-X.
• Persona 3 has the floor bosses in Tarturus, and most of them will wipe the floor with your face. Some however are easy enough to keep pinned to the ground with their elemental weakness.
  • One good example would be the three Golden Beetles on floor 47. Although they're weak to lightning attacks, they take very little damage from them...except that since they're weak, hitting them with one knocks them over. Hit all three with Zio, do an all-out attack, and you've knocked off something like 80 percent of their health.
  • Speaking of Persona 3, The Hermit can be beaten without any worry whatsoever, even if you have 2 party members with weaknesses to its elemental attacks. For a Full Moon boss, it's pretty tame. However considering the next one...
• In The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Game, there are challenges called Combat Arena challenges that require you to kill 120 enemies. There are 4 in the game and the every single one was extremly hard, getting increasingly harder until the 3rd one is damn controller breaking hard. Then there is a 4th one, called the ultimate combat arena challenge and you get to be Patrick instead of Spongebob for once. What it contains... is a single jellyfish, the easiest enemy in the game. Just 1. Then you win. However you can still lose as there are bottomless pits, and the jellyfish can kill you.
• The original Rygar has one on one of the middle stages. Arguably the hardest of the stages due to massive enemies and challenging jumps, the final boss is a giant spider, who is easy to beat, by merely grappling to teh ceiling so he can't drop on you.
• Persona 4 has Shadow Naoto. After the hell of a boss that was Shadow Mitsuo, Shadow Naoto comes off as relief for many players. She doesn't have any minions or battle-prolonging barriers, and, if you have means of healing the entire party (which you should have for every boss anyway), her worst attack, a Ma-dyne spell, isn't that big of a deal; even if she gets an extra turn, she'll simply follow up with a stat-raising spell, easily negatable with Dekaja.
  • There's also Lost Okina, which has a trick to make it completely immobile: Use Ice Break and hit it with ice attacks, and it will be "bewildered" and unable to move for that turn.
• Saltim from Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg which is a hard game with hard bosses, yet Saltim is much easier than the levels and bosses before him, which is odd because he is fought rather late in the game, and until now the bosses have only been getting harder.
• Ar Tonelico 2 has plot-related battles that force extremely weak but destructive Reyvateils to fight, or has only The Hero fight alone with a boss, both with no defensive abiliy you normally have. Instead of hard battles you may expect, these battle are far easier than most enemies group in the same area. Some can even be considered as Zero Effort Boss as they can hardly damage you at all.
• Dance Dance Revolution has a few of these. For starters, there's Xepher, regarded as one of the easiest bosses in the series. (This is taken up a notch in the console port of SuperNOVA. On the Stellar Joint "THE LAST", there are only 5 songs to play, and Xepher is the easiest one.) After that, there's On The Bounce in X, which is usually played right after Trigger. There's also Kimono Princess and Roppongi Evolved in the console port of X2. They're actually somewhat hard songs, but considering what 2 songs come before it...
• Wild ARMs 3 has one of these in the form of a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere boss called Gespenst. It is normally fought as a Puzzle Boss, but the player can take a shortcut and kill him in one hit just by casting Requiem.
• The Demon Knight at the end of Durlag's Tower in Baldurs Gate. It's a fairly straightforward melee oriented boss that appears at the end of a dungeon full of traps, Demonic Spiders, and puzzles. It does carry an item that unlocks the fight with the True Final Boss of the TOTSC expansion, Aec'letec, who is a legitimately challenging fight.
• The first Bangai-O has a fair amount of these, but the green orbs are the most harmless ones (especially the Core Division AI people, whom the manual even admits they're useless). Even if they don't have any enemies or guns defending them, the only thing they have is the ability to regenerate health. A good thing, considering how hectic the levels can get.
• Gunstar Heroes has a few of these too, the ease usually comes from predictable patterns and infrequency of attack. "Seven Force" and "Black Beat Stepper". And of course "Melon Bread" takes so long to attack that you'll have to stop firing to wait for its first one. Ironically the tough bosses tend to be the unarmoured humans.
• Kirby Super Star has an arena mode where you have to fight all the game's bosses in random order. And one Waddle Dee.
• Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean has, in a particularly severe case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, the first fight with Malpercio. Compared to the hell that Fadroh, the Angel of Darkness, and the two dog-golems likely put you through, Malpercio is no problem at all. He doesn't hit particularly hard for most of the fight, and when he Turns Red, all he does is use Soul Drain every three turns or so, which restores a maximum of 1100 HP. On a good turn, one character can easily do more damage than that. Justified, in that that form of Malpercio is just a collection of divine limbs haphazardly stuck together; he isn't fully complete, so he's not anywhere near his full potential.
• Lee Linjun in Super Robot Wars Original Generation 2 has poor accuracy and evasion and doesn't regenerate. You fight him after yet another battle with Axel and Alfimi and before the nightmarish Boss Rushes of the next few stages. In a game where half the recurring enemies are That One Boss, this is refreshing.
• War Wrecker in Heavy Weapon, if you know how to beat him. Even though his only attack is a One-Hit Kill, it is very easy to avoid once you find the right strategy. It comes between the somewhat annoying War Blimp and the "Wake-Up Call" Boss Kommie Kong.
• In Demon's Souls, a game so hard that beating it once is a godlike feature but twice or more makes you a god of gods, Mistress Astria can be this if setup right. You can make her very, very sad and she will give up her soul without a fight, at least from her. You have to kill her Loyal guard that has sworn his life to her first, who you can make nearsighted and then just spam a cloud of poison, counter intuitive seeing as the level they are on is a deadly swamp but it works on him, on him until he finally dies of it. That is the entire level if you go that route, because her stage is one big arena to fight in and the guard is on a side path free of any other soul, then talk to her and she will put a knife into herself. Easiest boss in the game.
• Dark Souls has the Moonlight Butterfly. Even its arena(a partly grown-over walkway) and theme are rather peaceful. It spends most of the time flying about, telegraphing it's relatively easy to dodge attacks, and for a melee character, resting its head on the walkway for a while before engaging in another highly telegraphed charged explosion. Summoning the Witch Beatrice for the battle makes it even more of a cakewalk.
• In the Super NES game, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose, Dizzy Devil is defeated via a rather unique way; you have to feed him. That's it, when you feed him enough, the fight is over, and the level is cleared. Before anyone says, "this game is for kids, it should be easy", try playing the game - this game is not easy. Besides, all the other bosses in the game are handled the same way as most bosses, so there's really no excuse.