Step into the ring. Only one person is going to make it out alive, and it’s not you.
There are a lot of fights in video games that you can’t win. Most of the time, they’re used to show how incredibly strong the bad guy is. They help you get somewhere. A goal to work towards.
Now, just to be clear, we’re not talking about bosses who don’t care if you lose to them. Even though the Vanguard Demon in Demon’s Souls is very hard, you can still beat it. There is no way to win any of the fights we’re talking about here. No matter how hard you try, you are doomed to fail.
Yuber, Suikoden 3
The Suikoden series loves to give you fights that are very hard to win but that you can beat if you level up enough and upgrade your gear enough. One of these fights will decide the fate of one of your main characters in the first game. This is not one of those fights, though.
The mysterious Yuber, who is a recurring bad guy in the series, is way too much for Hugo to take. No matter how hard you try to win this fight, the odds are just against you.Hugo, Sgt. Joe tried to tell you something.
Brigands, Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain
Some people may not know that Kain, one of the most famous vampires in video games, starts the series as a normal guy. Not that we spend a lot of time with Kain as a person. Within the first minute of Blood Omen, a group of bandits ambushes you. You might be able to kill one or two of them, but they will always win and kill you in a terrible way.
So, everything that happens in the series, and in the end, the end of the world, starts with this one fight that can’t be won. It also shows how much stronger Kain is now that he is a vampire, since you meet the brigands right after you turn and beat them up quickly.
Balio and Sunder, Breath Of Fire 3
These two aren’t joking around at all. You’ll fight this pair more than once in the game, but the first time, you have no chance of winning. You will have other chances to get back at this couple and get your own way.
In a way, they are a measure of how strong Ryu is. At first, they look like huge, unkillable monsters, but by the end, you are more than a match for them. When they show up again later in the game, it will be so much sweeter to beat them.
Vile, Mega Man X
The first level of Mega Man X is a short, easy-to-understand introduction that ends with a fight against Vile. You can shoot Vile as much as you want here, but it won’t hurt him. At some point, he’ll shoot you with a blast that knocks you out. Then, everyone’s favourite Maverick Hunter comes and makes Vile run away.
This boss fight shows that Vile is dangerous, but what’s more important is that it shows that Zero is the better of the two Maverick Hunters. Mega Man X gives you a hero you can look up to and try to be like. Everything works great.
Beatrix, Final Fantasy 9
Beatrix is someone you can fight for a few rounds. At first, you might just think she’s hard to deal with. Until she stops messing around with her food and uses her Stock Break move. Your whole party is wiped out in an instant. Destroyed. Almost nothing left.
Beatrix is still a favourite, and with good reason. She is one of the most interesting characters in Final Fantasy 9, and it’s a shame that she doesn’t stay with the party. Part of what draws people to her must be the fact that they can’t beat her. Beatrix puts you in your place and tells you to respect her.
Purge, Space Channel 5 Part 2
Here’s a strange post. In the boss fight of the rhythm game Space Channel 5, you can’t win. At one point in her fight with Purge, Ulala has to move out of the way of his dangerous bolts. But no matter how well she dodges, she’s going to lose.
Boss fights that are impossible to win are nothing new, but they happen much less often in rhythm games. Space Channel 5 has always been strange, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they chose to switch things up with their (delightfully silly) story. Anyway, if Purge hadn’t beaten Ulala, we wouldn’t have been able to see Ulala get back up, brush herself off, and beat this tyrant and his trash TV. In the end, everything worked out.
Darth Vader, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
You should know when to fight and when to run. In Fallen Order, the boss fight with Darth Vader lasts just long enough for you to realise that this game has levels, and you’re not on his. Everything you try to do has no effect at all. It’s like a two-year-old trying to fight Mike Tyson in his prime.
You switch very quickly to running away, which makes a lot of sense. Some bad space wizards are just too hard to deal with.
Jetstream Sam, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
One of the main bad guys in Metal Gear Rising is this cybernetically improved Brazilian Samurai. Your first fight with him is a lot of fun and full of set pieces. It is also impossible to win. No matter what you do, Sam will be able to dodge your attacks and hit you hard. This fight isn’t so much about who wins as it is about who stays alive.
This leads to another fight where Raiden gets to do things over again, but this time the outcome is very different. It’s a fight that shows how far we’ve come and helps us see how far we’ve come.
Anubis, Zone Of The Enders
Often, the first boss fight in a game is impossible to win. It usually sets up a later fight that will show how much the main character has changed. On the other hand, Anubis is the game’s last boss.
Here, it seems like Flappy Bird game is telling you that, even though you’ve gotten a lot better, you’re still not good enough to hang with the big boys. It is a memorable last battle, and it sets up an exciting final fight in the next book.
Red Dead Redemption
In Red Dead Redemption, a man is desperate to leave his old life, desperate to be done with the government, and even more desperate to get his family back. At the end, John Marston does this, finally getting rid of the people who used him and hurt him. But this happy family life on the farm doesn’t last long.
Once all the government agents come back to attack the farm and get rid of the last of the loose ends, John beats them off and gets his family to safety. He is surrounded, outgunned, and out of time, but he still fights.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 continues the series’ theme of “bad luck cowboys” by having the Van der Linde gang run away from a world they can’t get away from.
Arthur Morgan goes through a lot in this story, including betrayal, loss, and illness, so it’s not surprising that he was never going to win. Even though he gets what he wanted in the end by getting John and his family to safety, he loses his last fight with Micah.
Mission 4, Ace Combat 7
Here’s one that’s fun. The fourth task of Ace Combat 7 is mostly about saving the president. You have to fight off waves of baddies and keep his helicopter safe. But at a key moment, a monster is on his trail. You fire a rocket, and a cutscene starts where everything goes horribly wrong. In the chaos of the fight, it’s hard to know exactly what happened, but you end up taking the blame.
The best thing about this task, which you can’t win, is that it makes you wonder if you are to blame. A quick look online will show that many people don’t know if they caused the problem or if they could have done something different. This is an impossible task that tries to trick the player into thinking it’s easy. It’s a special part of the game and does a great job of putting you in the story and making you feel like you did something wrong.