In certain games (commonly RPGs) these are identifiable by the fact that they have a proper name, which has given them a common name of "named mobs".

These are occasionally equivalent to minibosses in other games, but minibosses themselves are not necessarily equivalent to elites.

Effectively anything that is noticeably more powerful than regular mook, but not so much to be a boss character. These have a habit of appearing first as a boss lookalike fight, but later on come in numbers. The first fight could've been a powered up version of the elite, being able to take more damage before going down and therefore qualifying for boss fight alone.

In cooperative games or games where players control more than one character, these require (or at least greatly benefit from) concentrated and usually somewhat coordinated efforts of everyone to take down on.

Related:
* Boss battles
* Elites - in case the player controls similar characters.

Contrast:
* Swarmers