A Taste of Power: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* ''[[Onimusha]] 3'' starts Samonosuke off with the fully-powered versions of his three primary magic swords from the first game (Raizen, Enryuu, and Shippuu) only to rob him of all three by the second level, leaving him with naught but his regular, non-magical katana once again until he can find three new magical weapons. If you manage to find the special orbs in the [[Bonus Dungeon|Dark Realm]] you can start a [[New Game+]] using the above-mentioned magical swords.

* ''[[Castlevania]]: [[Symphony of the Night]]'' is a textbook example of this trope. After the (skippable) introductory scene with Richter Belmont, Alucard comes to Castle Drac with a full complement of his signature equipment... which is promptly swiped from him by Daddy's [[The Dragon|Dragon]], [[The Grim Reaper|Death]]. It's not until you've explored the entire castle twice that you can get back everything you lost.

* ''[[Shadow Complex]]'' starts with you controlling a different character who has the (mostly) assembled suit of [[Powered Armor]] you find the pieces of once you start the game proper. For this one shootout with a boss fight afterwards, you have plenty of armor, an assault rifle, grenades and missiles, and a double-jump.

* ''[[Darksiders]]'' starts War off with eight [[Heart Container|Lifestones]], a maximum power [[BFS|Chaoseater]] and the ability to use [[Super Mode|Chaos Form]] indefinitely. A couple of battles later, War suddenly loses Chaos Form and four of the Lifestones. After the first [[Boss Fight]], War is brought in front of his masters, the Charred Council, who accuse him of starting [[The End of the World as We Know It|the End War]] early and siding with the demons. They then strip him of all of his powers and leash him with an [[Exposition Fairy]] before letting him go on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]].

 

* ''Alter Echo'' grants the player all three forms in quick succession during the opening chapter, allowing the player to get used to the shapeshifting mechanics and using all three forms in tandem effectively. At the end of the first chapter, the resident super-villain steals all but your basic form until your ally restores your other forms after beating the second and third chapters.

* ''[[Danny Phantom|Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy]]'' [[Video Game]] lets you play as [[Future Me Scares Me|Evil Future Danny]] for the first level and boss fight and in the [[Boss Rush]] mode. After that, you play the rest of the game as regular Danny.

 

* ''[[Forza Motorsport]]'' 3 starts out with the player racing in a nice red Audi R8. After the race, you have to choose between a few cheap hatchbacks (like the Ford Fiesta) for the next races until you buy another car.

** The forth game has a similar beginning, only now you are in a Ferrari 458 Italia.

** Strangely, ''[[Need for Speed]]: Undercover'' completely averts the trope when it'd be ''entirely logical'' to have it in full force. You're not some out of luck wanna be racer, you're ''undercover for the FBI''. You think they'd give you more than a barely decent car...

 

* Two of the ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' games begin with a fully suited-up Samus playing through a short level, after which she loses her extra abilities and the real game begins. This is now a [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]] joke for the franchise; "Samus ''always'' loses her powers near the start of the game."

** ''Metroid Prime 3'' just uses the [[Bag of Spilling]], but starts Samus off with the Space Jump Boots, Morph Ball and its bombs, and the Charge Beam. [[Word of God]] says that it was fun to make Samus lose her gear, but by the 3rd Prime game, they stopped doing it as a plot point because it wasn't fresh anymore. Also, after obtaining Phazon weapon, until you pass corruption threshold on Bryyo, you could shoot anything to death harmlessly, but walk an inch past that cutscene with the Phazon pool and even if you fly back to Norion and go to the generator, you can just overload and lose.

* ''Mysteries of the Sith'', the expansion pack for ''[[Star Wars: Dark Forces|Jedi Knight]]'', had you play as Kyle Katarn, the full-powered Jedi Knight from the main game, for the first few levels. Then your point of view switched to Mara Jade, who was still in training.

 

* ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]] II'' begins with Kratos as a (slightly depowered) god, allowing the player to slaughter his way through the armies of Rhodes, before he becomes ''all the way'' depowered.

** {{spoiler|He actually ''starts'' the story with fully godlike powers, but Zeus removes some of them with his first backstab, somewhere around a minute before the player is first given control.}}

* In ''[[Guardian Heroes]]'', Han starts off with the powerful Sword of Legend. He loses it to the Golden Hero after the first stage, but may gain another, equally powerful sword if he follows the right path.

 

* In some MMORPGs, when creating your character, it is depicted wearing very impressive looking, high level equipment. Once your character is actually created though, you only have basic, dull gear.

* ''[[Aion]]'' has a version of this around level 5-6, with a couple of {{spoiler|flashback}} quests that take place in The Abyss, a much-higher-level PVP area. You're in impressive-looking armor, can fly, and characters around you are calling you their hero. In the second quest you'll also be facing off against some really tough-looking enemies who nonetheless go down easily before your "might", {{spoiler|plus a "legendary" hero from the other faction, who ultimately kicks your butt in a cutscene}}.

* Two missions added in the August 9th patch of [[Lego Universe]] temporarily give new players special armour that has roughly the power of level 2 faction equipment and 4 extra hearts in order to fight the [[Spider Queen]].

* In ''[[Battlestar Galactica Online]]'', one plotline mission gives you a chance to take an Escort-type starship for a spin. If you accept that mission as soon as it's available, it'll probably be the first time you're going to get to use an Escort if you haven't been [[Bribing Your Way to Victory]].

 

* The Sega classic ''[[Wonder Boy III the Dragons Trap]]'' starts you off in the labyrinth lair of [[Big Bad|Meka, the Dragon]], equipped with [[Infinity+1 Sword|Legendary Sword]], Shield and Armor, bunches of Heart Containers, and mooks that drop heart refills nearly all the time, making it practically impossible to die at this point unless you do it on purpose. Then you reach and defeat Meka, and he leaves behind a Wisp that curses you, turning you into a lizard-man with a wimpy fire breath.

* In ''[[Captain Comic|Captain Comic 2]]'', you get unlimited fuel for your jetpack in the second to last level. The last level prevents you from using your jetpack at all.

* The new ''[[Bionic Commando]]'' game has a tutorial shortly after the beginning with several powers available to you. Although you get to practice them all, don't expect to use ''any'' of them until the game tells you it's okay (except zip line kicks, those you can do right away).

 

* ''[[Command & Conquer]] 3'' allows you to use the GDI's superweapon in the tutorial mission. However, you won't be able to use it again until much later into the game.

** Also an example of [[Cutscene Power to the Max]]. While being highly devastating, Ion Cannon does not, normally, evaporate entire enemy bases in one shot. The NOD buildings are just rigged to all die no matter what via map scripting - try firing the ion cannon at the outskirt of the base rather than the center.

* During the Orc campaign of ''[[Warcraft]] III: Reign of Chaos'', in one level the player has to kill a demigod named Cenarious, which is nearly impossible under normal circumstances since, in addition to him having a decent sized base , he has the highest HP of anything you fight in any of the campaigns and divine type armor which means most attacks only do 1 point of damage to him. The way to beat him is completing the main quest in the level which leads you to a fountain of life that's been corrupted by a demon named Mannorath, and the [[Genre Blindness|genre blind]] orc leader Grom Hellscream and his warriors drink the blood. [[Evil Is Not a Toy|This comes back to bite them after the level is over]], but until then, the player gets Chaos orcs, which deal chaos-type damage, meaning max damage to all armor types, including Cenarious', new [[Black Mage]]-type spellcasters called Warlocks, and Hellscream's stats skyrocket.

 

* ''[[Lufia]] and the Fortress of Doom'' starts the player off with a party of very high-level characters, taking on one of the most powerful beings in the game's universe. This turns out to be a flashback that sets up the story for the rest of the game.

** The prequel ''Rise Of The Sinistrals'' has the very same battle and ends with its immediate aftermath.

* Halfway through ''[[Monster Girl Quest Paradox]]'', you come across the [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Armored Berserker]]. Losing to him causes Nero to intervene, and you gain control of him to continue the battle. Nero is on his own... but he doesn't need any help. It's entirely possible to defeat the boss using nothing but normal attacks, and if you decide to try out some of Nero's skills, it'll be over ridiculously quickly.

 

* Super Nashwan Power (http://www.nashwan.org/), from ''[[Xenon]] 2''. Oh Oh, Oh Yeah!

* ''[[Wingnuts]] 2'' starts you out with the best plane in the game (fast, strong, a ton of missiles, etc.) as you shoot down training blimps. Then, when the action starts and the Baron busts loose of the Temporal Prison, you have to fight a boss... which steals your plane right as you defeat it. Your next selection of planes is... not as good.

 

* ''[[Ace Combat]] 5'' Arcade Mode, Operation Katina, gives the player an F-22 Raptor to toy with, which is far more capable than the F-5 Tiger that the player is made to start off with in campaign mode. The Raptor doesn't become available again for quite some time (even if the player unlocks it for purchase from the start by beating Operation Katina, being a high-tier plane it's hideously expensive).

 

* In ''[[Assassin's Creed (video game)|Assassin's Creed I]]'' you start off with all equipment and a great deal of health. Sadly none of this is enough to stop you from failing the first mission (albeit by the fault of the protagonist), and being stripped of everything - including, rather confusingly, abilities that shouldn't be possible to take away, like dodging and being able to grab ledges while falling.

** ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' starts off right after the final battle of ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'', with Ezio having all the endgame equipment of that game, only to lose most of them soon afterward when his villa is sacked, Ezio having woken up and rushed to the ramparts with only a longsword and a hidden blade vambrace—fortunately, it was the one with both a built-in pistol (a late-game weapon in ''AC2'') and a poison injector (an ''AC2'' mid-game assassination tool).

* Justified in the ''[[Splinter Cell]]: Double Agent''. In the first mission, you're flouncing through the fjords weighed down with a plethora of high tech gadgets. In the second, you're locked up in prison and have to crawl through an air duct to snag a lockpicking kit. Ouch.

 

* Almost every [[Fire Emblem]] game starts the party with at least one tier 2 character. This can be good for beginning players, and useful for taking out early bosses, especially the heavily armored ones. [[Crutch Character|However over using them takes valuable experience points away from all your tier 1 characters so your team can stay unbalanced for far too long]]. Experienced players tend to use them as [[Meat Shield]]s or just forget about them entirely.

* ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'' opens with the player taking control of the level 2000 "[[Badass]] freakin' overlord" (yes, that's his actual title) Zetta (who also has the best stats in the game) during the tutorial battle, who in the first subsequent cutscene [[Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds|ruins his entire life by accident]] and is rendered unusable as a playable character, despite still being the main character. {{spoiler|When appearing -- in book form -- as a [[Bonus Boss]] in ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]'', he is ''still'' the most powerful overlord in the multiverse}}.

** Hilariously, his aide doesn't tell him about the price until ''after'' he moves the city.

 

* ''[[Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories]]'' sorta does this. Vic is in the army and guess what he gets? Military hardware. That means while the Cholos and average thug is limited to baseball bats and pistols, you are cutting them down with your handy rifle received from unsuspecting patrols in your base (they will retaliate after the first patrol dies though.)

* The start of ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]'' has the player take Tony through the film-ending mansion shootout and play around with an [[Bottomless Magazines|unlimited-ammo]] M16+ M203. After the mission ends, Tony loses everything and is somehow made to lose the rifle too, forcing him to rebuild his reputation. The M16 does not become available again until much later in the game and it is no longer unlimited-ammo out of [[Super Mode|Blind Rage]].

** The thematically similiar ''Spider-Man: Web of Shadows'' also pulls the same [[In Medias Res]] variant of this trope.

 

* ''[[Digimon Xros Wars]]'': In the first episode, Taiki somehow manages to create a strange spectral incomplete variation of [[Combining Mecha|Shoutmon X3]] from just Shoutmon and Ballistamon, which is powerful enough to cause severe damage to MadLeomon's forces. They wouldn't be able to properly form Shoutmon X3 until numerous episodes later, when Dorulumon finally joined Xros Heart.

 

* [http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080731 Parodied] in the ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' storyline "Years of Yarncraft." When Torg first creates his character for an [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]], he's got a cool looking sword and some impressive armor. These are almost immediately revealed to be a cardboard cutout concealing the ''real'' character, who's only got some cheap clothes and a small dagger. The game then takes away Torg's dagger and gives him a stick.

{{quote|'''Torg:''' "Well that didn't take long!"}}