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

* The ''[[Disgaea]]'' games, (and in fact most [[Turn Based Strategy]] games by [[Nippon Ichi]]) actively encourage you to try to break the games by creating ridiculous multi-character chain [[Combos]] and creating your own [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Swords]], as well as gaining [[Over Nine Thousand]] levels.

** 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.

* In ''[[Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri]]'' the supply crawler unit, which the computer never uses, gives the player a major advantage by itself. What makes it a game breaker is when you upgrade cheap crawlers and contribute them to builder wonders, because the cost of upgrading units is about 8 times cheaper than trying to pay for buildings. This makes it possible to build wonders, even the late game ones, in a single turn. Even at the highest difficulty, you civ score should skyrocket right after getting the tech for crawlers.

** 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...]]

* The late game in ''[[Master of Orion (Video Game)|Master of Orion]] 2'' had a pretty obscene example of this with the Phase Cloak/Time-Warp Facilitator Combo. Alone, the Phase Cloak rendered your ships invincible and invisible until you opened fire, at which point you would have to spend an entire turn doing nothing to get the cloak back up again, while the Time-Warp Facilitator effectively gave you two turns to every one of your opponents. (ie: Your Turn 1 -> Your Turn 2 -> Opponent's Turn 1) You can see the unfortunate side-effect of this a mile off, right? By using your first turn to open fire, then your second turn to recloak, you could annihilate an enemy fleet with utter impunity, without them being able to lay a single finger on you. Thankfully, this was changed in a patch.

** 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.

*** 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.

** [[Spiritual Successor|Spiritual Successors]] ''[[UFO After Blank|UFO: Aftermath]]'' and ''Aftershock'' had warp weapons. Subverting the previously established player knowledge of armor=longevity, warp weapons inflict ''greater'' damage if the target is wearing armor. Devastating when first encountered, when the weapons are reverse-engineered by the player, they become the single most devastating weapon in the game, capable of one-shot killing ''anything'', as enemies are ''always'' wearing heavy armor at that point. Greatly toned down in ''UFO: Afterlight'', as the player only gets two warp weapons, with six shots each that can't be recharged during a mission and low base accuracy.

*** ''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...

** 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.