7 Boss Fights You Can Win Before they Even Start 

Fun fact, if you unequip everything as well right before Malenia, you can finish the battle early by losing your will to live 70% faster

In Silent Hill you can easily win the final boss fight by emptying all of your bullets from the inventory before you go down the stairs to enter the boss battle. To win you just need to stay alive for a few seconds by running around the area until the fight automatically ends. Apparently the devs were trying to trick you into thinking that the boss battle will require every last bit of ammo you have when in reality the final cutscene automatically triggers after you run out of bullets. So the more ammo you have when entering the boss fight the longer the time you'd need to fight it.

In Metal Gear Solid 3, The End has a number of interesting interactions. The most commonly known is the 2 week wait during the boss fight and he dies. But the very first time you see him, he is actually just sitting in a wheel chair. You can shoot him before he is wheeled inside to skip the boss fight entirely and before The Fear. The boss fight will actually be replaced with an Ocelot unit patrol.

To add one more to this list, Muffet from Undertale (for the Neutral and pacifist runs). If you buy an item from the spider bakery way in the beginning of the game and eat it during her boss fight, she accuses you of stealing it, receives of telegram from the spiders at the bakery that you did not, and she cancel's the boss fights. Her fight is also a nightmare.

For the mimic tear fight, you can actually do better than going in naked: If you've finished Rya's questline, you'll have the Daedicar's Woe talisman. Equip it before you enter the fight. It causes you (and your mimic) to take double damage. Just remember to remove it after you're in the boss room.

In botw, speedrunners will shoot an arrow and enter a cutscene to fight ganon. The arrow will freeze in place when the cutscene starts, but continue to deal damage. This allows them to beat windblight immediately.

I remember the final boss of Ratchet and Clank 2, the mutant protopet. You could stay on the last platform with the upgraded sniper rifle and just keep blasting and buying more ammo until it had 0 health, then just swing into the battle and one-shot it with the wrench

A messed up one that’s always worth mentioning is the grand champion in the Oblivion Arena. You tell him his backstory, and he becomes so depressed that he want you to kill him.

In Bravely Second, there's a boss that has the ability to control one of your party members, but while he's doing so, his own hp is temporarily set to 0 (tho he can't be hit at this time). With the the help of a previously obtained class with "undo" skills, as soon as he returns to his normal state, you can make his hp go to what it was up to 3 turns ago, which if done immediately, would instantly kill him.

In the original DeusEx both the other cyborgs agents from the first chapter have kill words you can discover during the game. If you find the hidden documents the killword becomes a dialogue option, literally ending the fight before it starts

8:30 the original SNES line referred to yoshi as an egg-throwing maniac. The GBA version (released in 2002) refers to Yoshi as a "cutie" without a "navel" which I'd say is a reference to oranges! Cuties as a product were released around 2001 and over 20 years later they are still a thing regularly packed in school lunches or in a big bowl at a picnic. Navel oranges are the classic orange. In the Japanese version the pre-fight message says something like "What if I just give up "Navel-less Flower"? Ah! No, nothing..." So the navel weakspot clue is there in the Japanese version but not in the American. Then the clue came back in the GBA remake.

Getting the Shift slab in Deathloop became a hell of a lot easier once I realised you don’t have to chase/fight Charlie, you just need to set up a few strategically-placed turrets on the upper landing and then cause just enough noise to lure him into your kill box. Actually, turrets are the solution to a lot of problems in Deathloop. Julianna’s coming? Just crouch in the fast food truck with turrets covering every angle. Need some cover for your escape? Turrets! Turrets for every occasion!

In Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, in a Dark Brotherhood contract to kill the mage Celedaen. If you read the dude's diary that he left around, you learn that he is transitioning to become a lich and is currently very vulnerable. His soul is currently tethered to an hourglass in his inventory and needs to keep it on him to live. So you, a sneaky assassin, can pickpocket the hourglass off him and he immediately drops dead in Oblivion's hilarious ragdoll physics. Boss fight averted.

Mike's "undergrad student" comment and delivery is one of his best

The Luigi's Island one is really interesting as the developers actually accounted for the players doing it really fast before the dialog! Apparently there must have been some speedrunning testers in the QA department...

Mike’s giggle while insulting his own fashion is the cutest thing to happen all week. 😂

Couple from me; The End in MGS3, who can be killed shortly after a cutscene ends (and one of the wheels off his chair will get a small measure of vengeance on you), and both Anna and Gunther in Deus Ex if you find their kill phrases before you encounter their boss fights. The phrases become dialogue options and if you choose it they just explode, which is hilarious.

I’m super impressed that they didn’t include “the end” from metal gear solid 3. You can outright kill the guy before the fight even happens, and even better: you get a funny codec call from it.

I knew Saren would be here! Technically Dragon Age Origins has a similar "use morals and logic to avoid a fight" with the werewolf/Dalish elf conflict. You can fight either side to the death by choosing which one you want to support, or you can talk down Zathrien who created the werewolf curse in the first place and everyone can live in peace. Less of a singular boss in this case, but it would be the final fight of the conflict that you're avoiding. Do love when Bioware includes roleplaying strategies to avoid more violence.

Entry #1 blew my mind away. That was the most frustrating boss fight in Halo Infinite in my opinion. Your trick is so clever.

I've got this habit I developed in Fallout 4 after multiple playthroughs. When the Minute Men ask you to recapture the Citadel you bring every single mine that you've discovered since the start of the game. Maybe even buy some more mines before you go. Instead of heading straight into the dinner, walk up to the walls of the Citadel and skirt around the outside to the huge gap in the wall. You know, the one the Mirelurk Queen is going to come crashing through once you killed off her hatchlings. With enough mines this goes from a difficult fight that kills all but one of your helpers (the essential radio operator), to starting a settlement with 3 extra guards.

There's also Dracula in Castlevania 2: Simon's quest. Two ways to do that. While he's forming, either whip him until he explodes, or use the golden knife on him repeatedly. Both will stun lock him and make your fight MUCH easier.

That Elden Ring one reminded me of fighting a high starred Ditto raid in Scarlet and Violet. If the person who starts the raid brings a low leveled pokemon (like a level 1 Magikarp), it turns into that low leveled pokemon and is really easy to beat.

I believe it was the final boss of Red Faction Guerilla, but they were driving a heavy tank, and by using the rail driver weapon which penetrates walls, you can instantly kill the driver without any fuss

The final (and only) boss of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided can be completely avoided if you find his kill switch beforehand, so you can just instantly kill him in a cutscene. You can also kill the final boss of Human Revolution in 5 seconds if you happened to bring the laser rifle with you, because it lets you shoot through the wall she's hiding behind instead of having to run around hitting a bunch of buttons to lower it like intended.

In Fallout, you can also destroy the final boss (the Master) the same way. There's a nuke in the bottom floor of the Cathedral base that you can set off with a high enough Science skill - meaning a sneaky smarty can take out both main bosses without ever meeting them.

You’ve mentioned talking The Master into suicide in Fallout before, but if you’re an asocial comp sci nerd (or playing one in Fallout) you can also nip into the complex’s basement, set the reactor to overload, and do a legger without ever even setting foot in the boss room

There is one in Dragon Age Origins. As a mage, you can go into Connor's mind to get rid of the demon possessing him during the Castle Redcliffe quest line. When you find the Desire demon, you actually have the option to intimidate her into leaving instead of fighting her for Connor's mind. But you can only do that if your Coercion skill is high enough at that stage.

Dark Souls 1: You can lob dung pies over the Capra Demon's fog wall, poisoning and killing it. Also you can shoot at Manus from platform outside the fog wall.

Some may call it cheating, Batman would call it being prepared.

In Planescape: Torment you can convince the final boss of the game to give up being an all-powerful manifestation of your mortal soul and just return to your body. Which even gives you the power to resurrect your entire fallen party , so you can say goodbye before the ending of the game for good.

In some patches (at least) for Hollow Knight, you can defeat Crystal Guardian's first fight without waking it from its sleep. If I remember correctly, it's done using Dream Nail to gather soul to just spam cast spells.

There was this one in Skyrim, very minor so the fight itself is trivial, but he is protected by two enslaved ghosts ('nightmare fuel' is how you describe their origin). Those ghosts are under his spell but if you knock a soul gem off a pedestal, he will completely lose control of the ghosts, and they will turn right against him.

In Persona 3 FES version, there's a glitch where if before the final confrontation with Nyx you initiate Tanaka's social link, the game seems to think you've beaten the final boss and moves to the true ending. Leaving people to conclude that this shady businessman either beats up an apocalyptic goddess by himself, or just pays her to leave.

The fish boss in Majoras Mask can be beaten in seconds if you equip the Zoras mask, jump into the water and just attack with the spin attack while inside the boss hitbox.

The fact that Kamek has dialogue for when you do this really surprised me, the devs somehow knew this was possible.

There's a Turks fight in the original Final Fantasy 7 you can skip if you helped them out before. Saving one of their members, Elena, in Wutai let's you talk your way past them when you return to Midgar. I remember my brother getting frustrated during that fight, but I had no idea what he was talking about as I had been able to walk right through.

The true boss is the strain on our wrist in the end

I'm so glad they included the Naval Piranha boss from Yoshi's Island. That was the very first boss that came to mind when I saw the title of this video. 😁

I’ve seen a few people in the comments mention a way to cheese the final boss of Ratchet & Clank 2, but there’s also a way to skip a slightly earlier boss on the Planet Snivelak level. Normally, it’s several minutes of turret section, occasionally punctuated by running to a new turret. However, the route to the boss takes you around the back of the entrance - by going right up to the thin wall behind the boss and using the precision aiming mode, you can have the Decoy Glove force Ratchet through the walls, at which point, you can sneak up behind the boss and use the sheepinator on him. He won’t actually be ‘sheepinated’, but once the progress bar for the sheepinator fills up, you can run across to the extended entrance to the boss room, and after the cutscene, he’ll instantly be defeated. Not only will you skip all those turret sections and a time-consuming boss, but you’ll also skip tons of high level enemies that were on the way round to the normal boss entrance.

Bioshock Infinite, the Siren. You just lay a bunch of vigor traps before she spawns on her spawn point. You basically HAVE to do this on 1999 mode because she is an absolute tank and the enemies she spawns are killers.

Jane's mass effect "Hots for Shepard" hand fan and "Saren's dead ass" line was hilarious.😂

There's a great one in FF9! The monsters and the boss in the Iffa Tree are all undead, so bringing a bunch of Phoenix Downs can one shot all the mobs in till the boss fights. Said Boss Fights is also undead, but if you throw a Elixir at him turn one, it one shots him. I have never legit beaten that fight.

I have played through and beaten Hunter the Reckoning like 800 times in my life. And I always just assumed destroying the window was how you were supposed to beat him.

Fallout New Vegas has one where you just convince Legate Lanius to go away by raising your Speech skill to 100. Which you can do by level 10, maybe earlier if you really want to. Also, shout out to the mod that replaces all of the speech checks with "Nuh uh!"

In Neverwinter Nights 2 you can do a thing similar to the one with the Mimic - In the last boss fight some of your companions will betray you (there are characters that will always stay in opposite sides, so if you keep one, the other betrays you) and fight alongside the last boss but, as a good cheeser, you can save right before the fight, see who'll betray you, go back to the previous save and strip them naked, making the fight a lot easier. Bonus points because the last boss will have a comment in case you do that, pointing out that it is as if you knew that they were going to betray you.

In the KotOR games, you can collect mines and use them to bait enemies, or bosses, to their doom. This is easiest to do in KotOR II's final boss, Darth Traya, where she just stands there in the middle of an empty room with only one path leading directly to her, like she's waiting for you to approach her. And you would, and you would then start a very difficult boss fight against the game's most powerful sith in a game with the subtitle "the sith lords"... Unless you just happen to have hoarded all the mines you've come across throughout the game, and layed them in the path to Darth Traya, right in front of her. Then you go talk to her, tease her and insult her probably, then run away past the mines that will only trigger when she herself steps over them. You can stack over two dozen mines and end the first stage of the boss fight before it even began.

i actually miss being able to setup the area before a big fight. it was 1 of the best features games had i love doing the paragon options RIGHT up to the final one where you say "there's still 1 way if you've got the balls for it" THAT is how SHepard convinces the main bad guy to shoot himself in the head. take that Kenobi.

If we're going along this route, then I have to offer Kellogg of Fallout 4. When you get to his lair, Kellogg comes out of hiding to talk to you, but the dialogue doesn't actually start until you approach him. Until then you are still free and in safe range to pull out the FatMan and...

An even easier way to beat Death in Castlevania is just to keep walking past it into the next room

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic! If you go through the game and collect every single mine you come across, you can then plant them one by one going down the ramp leading to final battle with Dark Malek. Once the battle Starts, Freeze him in place with a few sticky grenades, destroy the Captured Jedi pods, then lead him up the ramp and let the mines do the work for you.

In ultrakill, in the first v2 fight, not only can the whole level be skipped, so can the fight by literally punching him with money before his animation finishes. Probably one of the best boss skips there are.

Turbo man from mega man 7 fits perfectly here, you can use his weakness weapon just as you enter the room and he’ll die right after his intro animation

I love it when there's footage from old let's plays. That farming simulator cut through a tree without it falling challenge is like 5 years old. It always feels like a treat when I recognise something I've seen 6 years ago 😊😊😊 Never change, people.

Yu-Yevon. FF X You can use a high speed character to first strike Yevon / Yu Yevon with "zombiestrike" that you learned earlier on in the game and then after a few hits it casts Curaga, which is a full heal in that game... TLDR: You can make the main boss at the end of Final Fantasy 10 one shot itself faster than it takes to do the Tidus laugh.

That Elden Ring one reminds me of a similar doppelganger fight from Guild Wars: Nightfall. Your mirror self comes equipped with all the skills you have, so a way to make the fight easier was to just equip skills that it couldn't do anything with. Like pet skills if you were a Ranger, because it didn't come with a pet to use those skills with.

Hearing Mike talk about Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines and having seen Ellen run a game for the first time, I now desperately want to see Mike run a game of Vampire: The Masquerade on the Oxventure channel.

Hunter: The Reckoning does not get talked about enough, great game

In Last Story, you encounter a giant ogre in the first dungeon. That is, you would unless you stand outside the room and shoot him with crossbow bolts for a minute or two. Eventually he’ll disappear with no death animation, and the minute you walk in the room, everyone acts like they just had a tough battle. Good stuff.

In Dragons Dogma, you can bypass the entire boss fight with Grigori by shooting him with ‘The Maker’s Finger’ a one of a kind item you can only purchase from Fournival that instantly kills all but the hardest enemies in the game including Grigori. The best part is, he will simply stand there and take it as long as you make sure not to walk too far forward after he gives you the choice to fight or leave

I used to do this ALL THE TIME with my little brother: we beat General Grievous in the original Lego Star Wars The Video Game by triggering all the traps prematurely in his boss fight on Utapau. It usually took us a few attempts to get up there in free play, but we always did it because it made us feel so big brained. I don’t know if anyone else knew of that trick, but that’s one boss fight my brother and I cheesed constantly.

The Mimic Tear strategy also worked the exact same way when you fought your clone in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

There's also Legend of Zelda Wind Waker where the plant boss you fight in the Forbidden Woods can be killed by just pouring spring water on it after you've knocked it down just once.

Dimitri from Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. He has the ability to copy the last magic attack you hit him with; the rather powerful Malachi being the default. If you start the battle with an easy to doge magic attack, like Axe Knight, Dimitri is unable to hurt you and you can easily finish him off with your normal attack.

Honorable mention is Manus from Dark Souls, Artorias of the Abyss DLC. Shoot down at him with an unaimed bow or crossbow before even entering the fog door 😅

I haven't played Elden Ring so far, but as soon as you explained how you can obtain the mimic tear, I knew it would be something like unequipting everything you have.

I think not a lot of people know about this one, but the Siren in Bioshock Infinite. You can beat all of her encounters before even firing a single bullet at her by stacking a whole bunch of Devil's Kiss traps in specific areas; it even works in 1999 Mode

You don't actually get the Mimic Tear Ashes from beating any of the Mimic Tear bosses, you find it located in the ruins of Nokron, the Eternal City, not far from where you face the first one.

How on earth can The End from MGS3 not even get a mention? You can kill him a good while before you are even supposed to fight him, by sniping him after a cutscene. It was so mind blowing crazy that you could even do it, that it has legendary status.

In Metroid Dread, if you get the power bombs early, you can defeat Kraid instantly. It does involve a bit of sequence breaking, but the fact that the devs knew the route was there, didn't patch it out, and gave you an incentive to do it is something.

In Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, you'll find training remotes here and there through the game. They are largely useless through the game, but if you save as many as possible to the end of the game (5), you can release all five against the final boss (Desaan), who will spend all his time deflecting their blaster shots, so you can walk up behind him and casually slice him to ribbons.

Not sure about the post-6FF games, but it was always great having an undead boss because an Elixer would either do max damage to them or at least a huge chunk of damage. I think there’s a Boss in 6 that possesses your party, forcing them to kill them to expose itself. However, it’s vulnerable to the instant kill spell ‘X-zone’, which just ends the fight.

In Neverwinter nights the delayed blast fireball spell. You could basically one-shot any enemy who wanted to become a boss after some typical I am a bad guy dialogue. The moment they switch to being hostile, all the fireballs explode under them and the fight is won.

I'm surprised "The End" from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater didn't get a mention. You can dispatch him with a sniper rifle immediately after the cutscene outside the warehouse in the mangrove swamp, negating his boss fight entirely.

The mimic tear fight reminds me of the Doppelganger fight from Guild Wars, where there were about a thousand different ways to cheese it if you picked the right build.

Mike admitting to his never changing high school SAT outfit since the beginning of the channel was the most important part of this video

I was surprised to see that Crystal Guardian from Hollow Knight wasn't on here. If you equip the Defender's Crest, you can slowly murder the jumpy laser bug with your stench as it sleeps on the bench. Great video, as always!

New entry, Baldur's Gate 3 allows some very creative solutions to problems. My favorite is collecting a bunch of smoke powder barrels and firewine barrels and holding them in my camp. One place that is good is the goblin camp. You can surround any of the goblin leaders with explody barrels, climb onto the rafters and throw a firebolt at a barrel. Suddenly, goblin bosses and nearby goblins are vaporized and you *really* need to hold down ALT to find all of the dead bodies to loot.

One example I just remembered is False King Allant in Demon's Souls. All you need is the Thief's Ring and the poison cloud spell. Now enter the Allant's boss arena but DO NOT MOVE, he will walk towards you but at about the center of the arena he will stop, turn around and just stand there. Now all you need to do is sneak up on him, with the Thief's Ring equipped, cast poison cloud and then just watch him slowly die of poison damage.

"translucent murder butler" cracked me up for some reason 😂😂

I remember Manus father of the Abyss from Dark souls. He can bei killed with long range arrows at a spot right before the fog gate.

Love this video and proud to admit that I found the Yoshi's island one on my own during my second playthrough. Killing everything in advance.😂

While the Mimic Tear boss has to be completed on the way to getting the Mimic Tear ashes, the two are not directly connected at all. The fight just gives you the Silver Tear Mask and opens the path to get to where the ashes are. The ashes to summon the Mimic Tear are inside a chest being guarded/worshipped by a regular random enemy. I always thought it was a little anticlimactic since it’s such a powerful summon, but it’s still better than getting it as a reward for cheesing a boss fight.

In Tenchu (the first three entries) I always litter the ground with mines before boss battles. Some of them will go straight at you, ignoring the mines at their path, getting blasted for their trouble, getting up, then charging at you again. It’s a bit tricky since I also have to avoid the mines but hey, it’s so amusing to watch. 😅

I think it is in Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, but it's been a while. There is a mid-late boss battle against a Ythrak which is a flying dinosaur thing that screams sonic damage at you and is really hard an annoying, but it doesn't move until it comes on screen the first time, which is significantly several steps after it loads in so if you're playing the archer you can just shoot it while it is still off screen and kill it before it even moves.

There's a minor one in Mega Man 7: If you get Shade Man's Noise Crush before heading into Turbo Man's stage and your timing is near-perfect, you can fire a Noise Crush just as you enter the boss room and destroy him right as his life bar begins to fill. Never done it myself, but I've seen several speedrunners pull it off. Definitely doable in a TAS. ^_^;

One cool thing about the in engine cutscene is that the marines can still interact in them. If you have a marine next to you when triggering the bassus cutscene, he can kill Bassus instantly which will result in the rest of the cutscene just being a floating gravity hammer and dialogue from a already dead enemy.

The best part about the Malenia fight is letting other people summon you so you can spare them the suffering of dealing with Malenia. Bury her in dirt and point down

I believe it's Wind Waker, where you can take the spirit water in a bottle and just chuck it on the big plant boss for an instant KO.

In Dragon's Dogma, you can kill a Griffin during the first encounter on its quest. It's scripted to run after a bit of damage, but you could likely kill it with the right consumables even at low level. Killing it then skips a looong treck to the end of the North East part of the map, and saves time fighting through a bandit filled valley/ruins. Miss a ton of loot tho.

In Jedi Knight 2, you can cheese the final boss. Just force push as you drop down to the arena and you can ground him before he activates. After that, it's one chop with the ol' lightsabre.

Again in Elden Ring, you can kill Commander N'aill by shooting him with arrows through a hole in the wall of his battle arena. There is (or maybe was cause it was likely patched) another way to kill him, you can "Torrent fly" into the arena and N'aill will just stand there while you wail on him, this also works for Mohg, Lord of Blood.

sure, obliterating Bassus like that in Infinite could be seen as cheating, but you have to admit that it's really funny. hell, the whole thing they did with the fusion coils in Infinite is funny, the game lets you throw explosive bricks at people, which lead to me devolving back into the monkey i once was in the previous Halo games.

Dragons dogma has a moment like this with that sorceror in the cave tunnel, if you blast him before the cutscene starts just skips the whole encounter pretty much

Did you know that Simon Bellmont's favourite breed of dog is the Whippet?

Dark Souls 2: You can make the Dragonrider boss fall off the platform right after you enter the arena if you have not extended the arena.

In the remake of the original resident evil if you are playing as Jill you can kill the plant 42 boss by using an item called V-Jolt. Chris isn't capable of doing this in his campaign but he can have Rebecca do it on his behalf. The result is still the same though plant 42 dies before the battle even begins.

Regarding the mimic boss, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin had a boss like that in the Nest of Evil and it could be exploited in the same way. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night also has a Mimic enemy, but it comes with fixed equipment. Iga learned his lesson lol.

Buzzar the buzzard from the first Paper Mario has been sent to defeat Mario at the start of chapter 2. But he's not sure about this red-hatted plumber he's spotted, so he makes sure to ask your name first, and if you identify yourself as Luigi, he just leaves. And presumably spends the rest of the game fruitlessly searching the world for his prey. Our heroic liar, Mario.

Sir Gideon Ofner in Elden Ring. There are a number of ways to beat him before he finishes monologuing. From one-shot damage builds to comet azure to inescapable frenzy and I imagine many more.