Guys, I’m here to tell you a story about this nasty little bugger called a Hill Gigas:
They’re in Final Fantasy 2 and they are not pleasant customers. See, I was doing a dungeon the other day and not just one, but two of them popped up as a random encounter. Expecting your typical random fight, I started wailing on him.
A couple of turns later, two of my party members were dead and the others could hardly put a scratch on the monsters, because they’re immune to Mythril Axes or something.
It was a good ten minutes before I managed to defeat these guys. It was a battle more difficult than any boss fight in the game thus far and I used up probably about 75% of my party’s total mana, but I did it. Feeling pleased with myself, I healed up and continued through the dungeon.
About ten steps later I ran into them again.
See, these guys are a recurring enemy in this dungeon.
I had figured out a method, though. It involves casting first Blink, and then Protect on my entire party, and hoping for the best. The battles are then long and slow, but manageable.
Slowly I inched my way through the dungeon, fighting these Hill Gigas monsters left and right. When I finally got to the dungeon’s boss, a chimera, I prepped up for the fight in the same way I’d prep up for a Hill Gigas fight and was then shocked when the boss went down in about a quarter of the time it took to fight the common Hill Gigas.
Then I teleported out of the dungeon and felt grateful to be alive. What a dungeon. What a monster!
What are some deliciously difficult monsters that you’ve encountered in your gaming journeys?
I had a DnD game for the GBA that had a dungeon full of displacer beasts. Basically, they created an illusion so they looked like they occupied a space they weren’t in. Swing at one, miss, surprise he’s over there! And I didn’t have anyone in my party that could dispel illusions. I opted for the tried and true method of nuking the whole room (my party included!) with AOE spells and hoping my poor cleric could keep everyone alive through it.
This reminds me PRECISELY of the Modai in Wizardy 8. These guys were basically big rock monsters, or at least monsters with hides that made them look like rock, and spike for hands. So, yeah, casters to the rear. But my experiences w/ them were exactly how you described: first quick death, then adaptation leading to sloooowww victory. But eventually, I started looking at their character sheets, for want of a better term, and figured them out.
Mobs like this challenge the typical gamer in two ways: they hit unexpectedly hard (well, maybe not in the case of the Modai, who do have spikes for hands, lol), and they’re highly resistant to PHYSICAL damage. Mobs like that, you can’t mail it in and let your warriors and rangers hack away at them. You have to take the time to cast the right spells to disable them, erode their defenses, etc. But as to the first part, even when you’re looking at something that you know is going to hit hard, it still always comes as a shock to the system because of conditioning: you’re playing through the game, you get a feel for how much damage your little pipples can take before they need to be healed vs. the typical trash mob, then all of a sudden, BOOM. You get a mob that hits like a boss, but, you learn. You have to make sure the clothies are well protected and that your defenses are fully raised, etc., before you can start unleashing hell in response.
Part of me looks forward to those encounters somewhat now, because I know I’ll be able to really flex my PCs’ muscles. But still…yeah, part of me gets a bit scurred. =)