You know the ones, a JRPG character shouts “Mega power moon strike!” and leaps into the sky with booms, crackles, lightning, and nukes, hitting the bad guy for 1365 damage points (in bouncing gold animated font).
So what are your faves?
Shining Force 2: Gerhalt is a werewolf, who after his promotion does a leap out of frame, pops out Wolverine talons, and mega-slices the hell out of his opponent.
Tales of Symphonia: Raine, your healer, shouts “Nurse!”, and all of a sudden a swarm of girls dressed in WW2 era nurse uniforms prance through the battlefield sprinkling healing points everywhere.
The chicken guy from the Starfox series rams you with a giant spaceship in the new smash bros game. You actually get to control the spaceship, too! Nothing cooler than that.
Dragonquest VIII: Yangus can access an ability called “Golden Oldies” if you level his Humanity attribute up far enough. The ability summons a bunch of old geezers from the game (interrupting King Trode’s meal in the process) to stampede across the battlefield, trampling enemies. It’s worth getting just to watch it once. (Or you could watch it way more times than you ever want to in this video.)
I think the most over the top animation I’ve seen in a JRPG comes at the end of FFVII. The bad guy calls a comet that destroys half the solar system and plunges into the sun causing it to explode. The exploding sun destroys the inner planets and just barely reaches Earth where it damages you.
And he does it two or three times throughout the fight.
