Game Breaker/Video Games/Turn-Based Strategy: Difference between revisions

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** In the third game, Adell is an extremely broken DLC character. Evility that does 30% more damage in one on one combat plus a S ranked innate attack plus loads of enemies (including story mode boss fights) that are weak against fire equals pain.

** There is also the issue of the Majin class. The Majin is hideously overpowered, having 110% proficiency in all classes for the first three ranks (meaning that all stat bonuses are 10% more efficient when equipped on them), which is an accolade normally reserved for specialist classes in their specialist stat, and 120% efficiency for the later three ranks (which is just flat-out crazy). This effectively means that they out-perform EVERYONE, at EVERYTHING. They're better swordsmen than Cosmic Heroes, better with their fists than a top-rank [[Bare-Fisted Monk|Eternal Fist]], and better spellcasters than a [[Squishy Wizard|Galaxy Mage]](and have MUCH better health and defenses too). In fact, the only thing they aren't completely superior at is guns. At guns, they TIE with [[Space Marine|Space Marines]], which are the highest rank of a class designed to use guns almost exclusively. The final rank, the Divine Majin, is simply flat-out broken and obseletes all other classes once unlocked. However, this is somewhat counterbalanced by the esoteric requirements needed to unlock the class. You need to have [[Guide Dang It|five different characters, of five different classes, some of which need to be unlocked themselves first, each at level 200.]]Since the final boss is only level 90 by default, it's highly unlikely that you'd ever manage to unlock it by accident, or on your first run through the game.

*** One must consider the fact that the Majins are really only available after you've beaten the main storyline anyway, and the [[Bonus Boss]] characters in the after-game sections are so disturbingly powerful that the Majins are practically balanced in comparison. If you get a Majin during the main game, you've broken it already anyway, as you already have 5 characters that outlevel the final boss.

** The Yoshitsuna sword makes all the other weapon types useless in the first game. It has more range than a gun, higher Attack power and capability than any other item PLUS stats boosts in all areas and, coupled with the sheer variety of skills that swords provide, it can cover almost all the area effects you need. It was considerably nerfed down in the sequel.

** Capturing monsters. By throwing a monster-type enemy (not a human-type, unfortunately), it will join your party under certain circumstances. Seeing as throwing an enemy on one another fuses them together, adding their levels together, it takes only 8 hours to go from a level 500 character to five level 9999 characters.

** It's possible to apply both the poison and sleep status ailments to any non-boss enemy to kill them off with ease, regardless of the level difference between you and them. As a result of this, one can clear some optional maps with extremely good rewards (Dark Sun level 1-4 of Axel Mode in Dark Hero Days in particular) far earlier then intended, and break the game with the absurdly powerful equipment and tremendous EXP rewards from them.

* In ''[[Shining Force]]'', arguably, [[Secret Character|Domingo]]. Let's see... he flies, he levels up quickly, he gets some very powerful magic, he gets more MP than most spellcasters, and, [[Squishy Wizard|most unusually for a spellcaster]], he gets very high HP and physical defense, to the point that even enemies in the last few battles will probably only do 1 damage if they use a non-magical attack. On top of all that, as a spellcaster, he's a prime target for the AI, so you can use him to keep enemies' attention while your other characters wail away. His only major downside is that he doesn't get to equip any weapons, but since he's not likely to physically attack anyway, that hardly matters.

** In the GBA remake, Domingo is even more broken; because of the change to [[Useless Useful Spell|Desoul]], the token [[One-Hit Kill|instant-kill spell]] being a flat low chance for every non-boss enemy to a spell that has a 100% success chance for all but bosses and certain monsters, Desoul is now a ''very'' powerful and efficient spell for killing monsters - even factoring its steep 8MP cost. And with Domingo's massive MP growth, he can happily spam Desoul without ever worrying about depleting his MP pool.

** In ''[[Shining Force|Shining Force 2]]'', one of your characters, named Karna, learns a buff spell called 'Boost 2'. The spell itself is not the broken part of it, all it does is increase the affected member's defense and agility, which is nice, but not game breaking. What is game breaking, however, is the large area it can cover, allowing Karna to affect the entire party, which no other buff spell does. Because it affects the entire party, Karna earns the maximum possible experience every time it's used, no matter what level you are. This allows you to [[Level Grinding|power level]] Karna to ridiculous degrees relatively fast.

*** Now promote Karna to the 'Master Monk' class using one of two "Vigor Orbs" found in the game and buy her a pair of knuckles, she is now a very effective front-line fighter as well as a healer, in addition to leveling disgustingly fast. Now consider that you can recruit her and do all of this about halfway thru the game.

** The ''Civilization II'' Pyramids were also a game breaker as they counted as a free Granary in EVERY city you have from when you build it (right at the start of the game) right up to the end. What's that mean in real terms? ''Double population growth'' in all cities and it ''never'' expires!

** ''Civilization IV'' still has the Pyramid wonder, with pretty much the same effect - it enables all government civics (''Civ IV'''s equivalent of government types). Combined with stone in one's starting area to halve their cost, this changes them from "hellishly expensive" to "doable", and constructing them gives access to the representation civic, which both allows you to increase the population of your largest cities by around 30-50% for the time period you are in and doubles the research produced by scientists.

** Also in ''Civilization II'': The UN was a crucial Wonder. Not because it was particularly useful (you could force other civilizations to make peace with you, but that was rather pointless since they'd then just break the treaty a few turns later), but because if another civilization gets it, having them constantly force you to make peace is a hassle.

** In Civilization Revolution, the simplified mechanics provides a number of opportunities to completely dominate the AI even on the most difficult setting. And the Leonardo's Workshop wonder is so overpowered, since it upgrades all your existing units. Given the right circumstances, you can destroy any AI. First, always produce as many cheap, weak units as possible. As you're doing this, follow the path on your technology tree to discover the internal combustion engine. Time the building of Leonardo's Workshop so that it occurs right after you discover the engine and gain the ability to build a tank. All those cheap warriors you've been building since the beginning? They're now tanks. The game is over in 2 or 3 rounds max.

** In ''Civilization III'' the Persians are considered by many to be the most powerful civilization in the game because they possess the Industrious and Scientific traits, which grants them bonuses to both production and research. Additionally, their unique unit, the Immortals, are the single most powerful ancient age offensive unit (it isn't until knights come along that a unit possesses more offensive power). The sheer power of the Immortals makes it easy for the Persians to conquer other civilizations during the ancient age and even well into the middle ages.

** Similarly, you can just abuse the fact that the AI never uses Supply Crawlers, by using them as they were intended, ad nauseum. Supply Crawlers act as if you were harvesting resources from the square it's sitting on(though only one resource at a time, as opposed to the usual three). However, by planting forests, which have a chance based on your Planet rating and eco-damage to automatically spread, you can plop crawlers down in squares your cities can't reach and [[Combinatorial Explosion|use them to gather minerals to make supply crawlers to gather minerals...]]

** Also, the counter was quite obvious: Use a Phase Cloak on your own, but don't use a TWF. This way the enemy ships have to keep the cloak up for twice the amount of turns, which means their cloak will run out of energy first.

** In addition there was a starship component called a Structural Analyzer, which doubled all damage that struck the target's bare hull. Not a [[Game Breaker]] on it's own, but there was also a component called the Achilles Targeting Unit, which caused all attacks to ignore the target's armor. Combine these with weapons capable of bypassing shields and season with some more general damage/accuracy boosting components and you had a warship who could wipe-out 10-20 ships by itself in a single round (a more 'conventionally' equipped ship takes 2-3 rounds just to destroy a single ship of similar size).

** The Guardian of Orion can be defeated very early on with large numbers of MIRVed Merculite missiles. The battleship you get as a reward for this will, at this early stage, be so powerful that the other races can't touch it, allowing you to wipe the floor with them. Gyro destabilizers can also be used for a game-breakingly early Guardian kill because they do completely plain structural damage and ignore defenses.

** Ditto Stasis Field Generator. It can be used rapidly incapacitate most of the enemy fleet and then tear them to pieces one by one.

** The Custom Race option can be used to achieve a [[Game Breaker]] effect: simply slap both the "subterranean" and "aquatic" bonuses on your custom race. (Never mind that it makes no biological sense whatsoever.) The result: a race that can out-breed any other, given a planet with water. And since most of the easily colonizable planets are "terran" or "aquatic" by default... And more people means more production and science. Plus the subterranean bonus gives a big boost to ground combat when defending against invaders.

** The Creative racial trait borders on game-breaker, requiring only 6 of your 10 available points to buy but allowing you to research all of the technologies available, not just one out of every two to four options given. Like, say, the various technologies referenced in this section.

** In version 1.2, the Plasma Cannon (specifically, the Heavy Plasma Cannon) was this. Whoever decided to make it that small apparently failed to realize that Enveloping doesn't just mean four times the shield penalty - it means ''four times the damage''. And the Heavy mod largely negates the weapon's worse-than-usual range dissipation. It was entirely possible to lose a late-game battle solely by researching Disruptors and [[Artificial Stupidity|having all your bases "upgrade" automatically]]. (In version 1.31, they [[Obvious Rule Patch|made the thing 2.5 times as big]], and it was ''still'' approximately tied with a fully tricked-out Phasor as the best beam weapon in the game.)

** Also, in ''Dread Lords'' and ''Dark Avatar'', the Mind Control Center wonder is bugged and instead of giving its advertised effect (near-instant defection of influence-pressured planets), it gives an even better flat 100% boost to your civilization-wide Economy. Of course, you again have to be Evil to get it - basically making Evil the game-breaker alignment. Of course, in the ''Twilight'' expansion, both are fixed.

* Psicorps in ''[[X-COM]]: UFO Defense''. Hard as hell to acquire, as you need to capture a psi-using alien that is blasting you with said psi-abilities ([[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|often straight at the easily affected guy that it can't even see]]), interrogate the alien, research the tech, build the required buildings, then wait until the month ends for results from said building. If you're ''extremely'' lucky, you'll have this by the 4th month, else you might have to wait until the lategame aliens show up. But it was well worth it. First off, you get to see the Psi-Defense stat of your units, eventually allowing you to get a team entirely immune to psi-attacks. The abilities themselves are powerful as well. The more accurate skill causes the target to panic, making them an easy kill. The other skill is Mind Control, a skill so powerful that you can use it to win the final mission ''on the first turn singlehandedly''. Apocalypse nerfed it from [[Game Breaker]] to merely stupidly powerful (the second was merely so hard [[Nintendo Hard|you actually needed it to win on the higher levels]]). You can use it to mind-control a zombie, kill it, then you have a pet Chrysalid.

** And then there's the [[BFG|Blaster Launcher]], a weapon that could send a missile out the door of your transport, over the heads of your units, down through the door of the UFO and up the elevator shaft to [[Dungeon Bypass|blow a hole]] in the otherwise impregnable UFO hull material. Or alternately just take out a [[Humongous Mecha|Sectopod]] in one shot. It's successor, the DPT Launcher, was nerfed in a way you can only fire it underwater... unless you consider that you troops can still reaction-fire it! Not to mention that one of the resources necessary to make ammo for it is more abundant in the sequel.

*** You can actually stick any craft weapon on any ship capable of dogfighting. Cue the Plasma Cannon: not overly powerful or fast, but it's range exceeds that of any UFO except the largest Battleships, it's ammo is free, and it has plenty of the stuff. And you can order your craft to fire from their maximum combat range, hence making even your lowly Interceptors effectively invulnerable. Battleships are immune to this tactic and do deal massive amounts of damage, but this can be mitigated by attacking them with multiple ships at the same time - the damage gets spread out (dividing repair times amonst the ships present) and the UFO goes down faster (meaning it deals less damage in the first place).

** [http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Smoke_Grenade Smoke grenades] are remarkably effective at decreasing the aliens' initial advantage; just drop it at the foot of the transport's ramp, before leaving, and the chances of the aliens' reaction fire hitting the redshirts drops drastically. [http://ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Proximity_Grenade Proximity grenades] are sworn by for many players to mine UFO exits and buildings aliens might be hiding in. Both together are a potent combination, especially if you've mined a Zombie that turns into a Chrysalid.

*** ''UFO: Aftershock'' has psionics with level 3 sniper, using the .50 calibre rifle with accuracy add-on and accuracy boosting psi-gear has a 1.1 - 110% chance of a torso hit. A headshot is merely 100% chance of instantly killing the standard mutant or [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Wargot]]. Also you can field a whole team of these girls, and depending on the status of your install the accuracy aura buffs may stack. Gets more insane if you give them Katanas against [[Butt Monkey|Wargots]] in room-to-room combat...

*** Even against enemies that could take multiple headshots and survive, a called shot to the head is considered a critical hit and topples the target over (there are enemies with "knock back resistance" ability but they are not common). Guess how much time it takes to stand up? Approximately same amount as making another called shot. If there is another enemy between sniper and target, then there is chance of hitting the enemy blocking vision, and if this happens, that enemy will be critically hit as if it was intended target of called shot, even if it is impossible to make called shot on that enemy. Very effective against mutants and Starghost combat drones.

** In a custom start, a water mage lord can start with the [[Infinity+1 Sword|Staff of Drowning]] legendary artifact that can decimate enemy armies.

* ''Lords of the Realm 2'' allows you to raze a foe's crop fields to annihilate their agricultural economy. There's also a minor exploit that allows you to produce armies consisting of only one soldier (normally a minimum of 50). Taken separately, one is a relatively balanced tactic and one is pointless. Combined, you can quickly swarm over your enemy's fields and cause a serious amount of damage with only a few soldiers.

** The character creation "personality test" (which determines your starting merc's special abilities and, well, personality) [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] this: One of the items you can pick from an army surplus store is "a pair of night vision goggles and the illustrated manual 'Daytime - an unnecessary hazard'".

* In unpatched ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] V'', the Necromancers were obscenely powerful because of an unfortunate synergy between the fact that their Necromancy skill allowed them to raise a sizable percentage of all living enemy creatures as skeletons, in a game that allowed you to upgrade your skeletons to skeleton ''archers'' on turn 2. Some neutral-monster-bashing later, and you have a stack of archers numbering in the thousands, growing to the tens of thousands, in a game where a single stack of the weakest units numbering 1000 is (supposed to be) a rare event. Cue one-shotting ''anything''. Cue inevitable nerf, by restricting number of creatures raised per week and causing enemy casualties to be raised by creature level. Yes, necromancers were nerfed by allowing them to raise more powerful creatures.

** Which is NOTHING compared to those fucking ghosts from [[Heroes of Might and Magic]] II. For every unit they kill, a ghost is created. Combined with the large number of wild low level creatures with low defense, building up a 1000+ army of ghosts is very easy. This makes maps where your enemies get ghosts all the more painful since if you lose a single fight against them, their armies can potentially get STRONGER even if you kill all of their other units. I'm looking at you Ghost Planet...

** Demonology and the "Summon Elemental" spells in [[Heroes of Might and Magic]] IV border on this. Especially if the character with the spell or ability also gets their hands on a [[Artifact of Doom|Demonary]] or [[Amplifier Artifact|Ring of the Elementals]].

*** To clarify further, the bug was that a unit with magic immunity was immune to all attacks from magical creatures, even non-magical attacks. It was supposed to make you immune to attacks like fire breath and stoning gaze as well as magical spells, but not claws and teeth. So an immensely powerful monster like a Great Drake simply could not harm a unit with magic immunity. The last official patch fixed this bug.

** Some strong enchantments, like Time Stop or Zombie Mastery. Hard to cast, but upkeep costs are modest.

** Death has two spells giving [[Immune to Bullets|Weapon Immunity]], Wraithform and Lycanthropy... but worse are Evil Presence (crippling unrest) and Warp Node (it sucks mana back in, and the victim needs a lot of mana to have a good chance to disenchant it - a vicious circle).

** High Elven longbowmen do full damage at any range. Two longbowman units can often clear the field of enemies entirely without magic, and then you give them alchemical assistance.

* [[The Undead|Undead Hordes]] in ''[[Disciples]] 1''&''2''. One can get ghosts with physical immunity pretty early in the game. And then [[Curb Stomp Battle|easily kill]] all those [[Giant Mook|giants, trolls and krakens]] for large amounts of gold and exp, which in turn would allow to kill more dangerous enemies, such as dragons and enemy heroes. All handicaps enforced by such strategy are counterable. The most practical way to deal with such party is to [[Nuke'Em|bombard them with most powerful spells available]], which works only slightly better due to the fact that your whole army consists of [[Squishy Wizard|Squishy Wizards]] (while the survivors of normal army would be easy pickings for exp). And computer doesn't do that.

** The PSP Remake removes the Retissue tactic, but some characters still manage to be overpowered, such as Canopus, who is a winged human who has high movement, is unrestricted by height and can be turned into one of the strongest archers in the game provided you have a class mark for it...which is 300 Goth...when an average battle rewards you with several thousand. Canopus can also be kept as a Vartan, allowing him to use a bow and axe, but they both need to be one handed and they don't do as much damage...but give him an absolutely amazing movement range. Did I mention you receive Canopus on the 4th mission of the game? The first 3 missions are all automatically performed, you can't lose.

** ''Knight Of Lodis'' had that any class could equip any weapon. Simple, right? Yeah, but then you've got a ghost that teleports to the target, floats, and uses a hammer. Or you can just use two insanely powerful spears (The second-most powerful weapon (after [[Infinity+1 Sword|the four Snapdragons]]) in the game, the Spear of Longinus, is [[Captain Obvious|a spear]].) and have your spear-using characters fight each other, hitting the target in the middle twice. (Does not work on Shaher, who stays in the corner.) And then there's [[Summon Magic]]...

* ''[[Odium]]'' has the Attracting Device. When you deploy it on the ground during battle, monsters become hypnotized and won't attack you, instead trying to reach the device as fast as possible, thus earning you several turns of blasting them to bits without fear of retaliation. Some monsters are immune, but most aren't (including, ridiculously enough, {{spoiler|human enemies}}, making several potentially tough fights a doozy.) A fun thing to try is surrounding the device with your men to keep enemies from ever reaching it...

* Milanor from [[Yggdra Union]] gets very strong by the half of the game. Enough that his attack can top any kind of enemy even though he has a disadvantage in [[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors|a weapon triangle rule.]] And he's one of the main characters you need to use in every battle.

** The first one is Ellis who just needs to get to level 25 to get her second [[Limit Break]] Regeneration. What it does is that it fully heals all your party members in the screen. Nothing much to it right? What makes her into [[Game Breaker]] status is her attack range ''going up to 10'' in a grid where it's at 12 at most! Link her with another character and watch as you slaughter enemies left and right at ''anywhere'' thanks to her range.

** Next is Plum and her second skill Maiden's Prayer which you get as soon as she joins you (she's level 40). What it does is that her skill gives the other party members SP, sacrificing her own. Pump up her SP in the first turn using the other party members, bunch them together, and let loose her [[Limit Break]]. Seeing as you've pumped up the other members by them getting 5 SP per them getting Plum's SP up to 200, they'll reach the 250 SP mark in no time. In which you can [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|destroy enemies left and right.]] You'll only get an A rank at most, but considering the fact that it's a miracle to have a [[Rank Inflation|S Rank]] on bosses, this is pretty much a godsend.

*** Speaking of which, Unleash All can also be a potent [[Game Breaker]] by itself seeing as party members who are down to 25% of their HP will have an ''obscene'' raise of all their stats.

* Due to the game's rather primitive and sometimes crippling AI it is possible to win ''every single'' game in [[Hogs of War]] by poisoning the enemy using a gas grenade and then using the Scout/Commando/Hero technique ''Hide'' to simply wait out the clock. Using this technique you can even defeat the otherwise ridiculously strong Legend class without sustaining hardly any damage whatsoever. Coming in at a close second on the ''crappy game mechanics you can exploit'' bandwagon comes the Spy class ''Pickpocket'' ability. Steal the bazooka or sniper rifle off an enemy Hog and they become near enough completely harmless.