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.

*** No longer possible in the games following ''[[Disgaea 2]]'' (The remake of 2 included), as you can't capture monsters of a higher level then the main character.

** Some consider Desco of ''[[Disgaea 4 a Promise Unforgotten (Video Game)|Disgaea 4 a Promise Unforgotten]]'' to be a game breaker due to her powerful evilities (Increases attack of adjacent allies by 20%, gains 20% attack per third of total HP missing, and deals 50% more damage at the expense of receiving 30% of normal mana), high stats, and multitude of long ranged area attacks that become even better after a monster fuses with her (Yog Sothoth hits a 3X5 area up to six spaces away, making it the biggest ranged area attack in ''the entire series''). On top of that, she can be boosted even further by a Beast Trainer.

* The original ''[[Civilization (Video Game)|Civilization]]'' had the Pyramids wonder. With just Masonry technology needed to build them, they allow you to change your government at whim, to any type of government (even if you haven't yet researched it), ''without an anarchy period''. That basically allows democracy (a game breaker government all in itself) about 3000 BC. And then, if you ever need to kick someone's butt but the Congress overrules it, just start a revolution, declare war, and continue enjoying benefits of democracy the very next turn! The only thing you need to watch out for is to never study Communism, which disables the Pyramids effect, and luckily, it sits pretty high up in the science tree and you don't really need it.

* 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.

* 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.

** [[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.

** To clarify, this was because they combined the speed of cavalry, excellent armor, powerful holy weapons, and the very rare ability "Magic Immunity". Magic Immunity, in the release version, [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|made you immune to hostile magic, even "mundane" magical ranged attacks and magical weapons]], [[A Wizard Did It|which was nearly everything in a game about wizards]]. On top of all of that, as they were considered a mundane unit, you could start making them as soon as you had the right buildings set up, [[Humans Are Special|but only if you played as high men.]] The later patches weakened Magic Immunity to simply be an enhanced chance to resist magic, but they were still quite effective.

*** A few more for [[Ko L]]: [[Infinity+1 Sword|The four Snapdragons]] are on a completely different plane of existence compared to all your other weapons. You'd be very happy with a weapon of attack 60. Snapdragons: attack 75 right off that bat, and then you can improve that AND give your character stat boosts and special abilities by 'snapping' specific classes and characters. The Ninja and Swordmaster classes are both stupidly overpowered: Ninjas move three times faster than any other character, [[Disk One Nuke|are available at the beginning of the game]] and have an insane evasion score. Swordmasters are the same as Ninjas, but trade a tiny bit of speed for the ability to equip any sword in the game, and are cast buffs or status spells. Including Time Stop ([[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|Stops time for the enemy team]]) or Teleport ([[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|teleport]]), which are already [[Game Breakers]] of themselves. Then you have sword techniques that cost a tiny bit of HP to use, but easily allow you to hit the damage cap if you have a Snapdragon... by the end you can beat the last boss with your main character and another (to use the Lance of Longinus to break the last boss's invulnerability field). In three turns (one turn to get there and break the field, two turns using of the time-stop special technique combo).