Purposefully Overpowered

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That Infinity+1 Sword is a true Game Breaker! Did the creators notice this?

Yes. It's Purposefully Overpowered.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out whether or not a certain Game Breaker is truly Purposefully Overpowered. For example, if it's justified, it's done on purpose.

May be a part of A Taste of Power or restricted to at/after the final boss. Can also be essential to beat the Bonus Boss on the Harder Than Hard bonus difficulty. Crutch Characters are often (temporarily) Purposefully Overpowered. Compare with Infinity+1 Sword and Eleventh-Hour Superpower. Bragging Rights Rewards often turn out this way.

Contrast with Joke Character and Joke Item, which are purposefully underpowered.

Examples of Purposefully Overpowered include:
  • Some legendary Pokémon, especially the non-event ones that are forbidden to use in the Battle Subway anyway, were designed with this in mind, particullary Mewtwo, who after a HUGE nerf remains one of the most dangerous creatures to face in the game. Kyurem, who gets the same treatment from the game as Mewtwo, is an odd case, as it was designed to be slighty less overpowered, but its redundant typing and lack of movepool made it a suboptimal choice compared to less overpowered (in paper) critters. The rule of thumb is that legendary and pseudo-legendary Pokemon will have above average stat totals, but may suffer from lack of movepool, lack of synergy between stats and type, or being overshadowed by "regular" Pokemon with better movepools and/or stat distribution.
    • The event-exclusive Arceus is worth a mention, as it is overpowered even when compared to other overpowered Pokémon - the only mon that can reasonably expect to duel it and win more often than not is Mewtwo. On top of the normal reason, the reason for Arceus' sheer power is because it is heavily implied to be the god of the Pokemon universe.
  • The RYNO (Rip Ya a New One) missile launchers of Ratchet and Clank fame. Overpowered? Hell yeah! But they're far from cheap - and in Future series, you have to find the blueprints first. Omega RYNO 4-Ever even comes with warning label stating that usage might make the game no longer fun.
  • The final boss characters in Advance Wars 2 and Days of Ruin, Sturm and Caulder/Stolos, are horribly broken. Sturm in the first game and Von Bolt from Dual Strike, meanwhile, are not.
  • The Bonesaw in Bonesaw, which can quickly kill most bosses and enemies, although you are required to defeat these "lesser" bosses without them.
  • A few Guest Star Party Member characters in various Final Fantasy games. The others, not so much.
  • You basically need the legendary weapons in Final Fantasy X to beat Penance. Oh, and nearly maxed out stats too.
  • Another bonus boss example is the bonus Weapons in Final Fantasy VII. Knights of the Round is a Game Breaker on anything else, but killing the bonus Weapons without it is maddeningly difficult.
  • Once you get the Mascot Dressphere in Final Fantasy X-2, you'll never need to use a different one again. Good luck getting it.
  • Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic 2 uses 42 point buy for her stats and unlike the other NPCs has basic optimization in their placement, by contrast Atton gets 28 (and has a pretty bad placement), the player gets 30. This fits into her character, the player characters mentor during the game, former Sith Lord and the Big Bad.
    • The Force Crush power in the second game, which is your reward for going Dark Side. It deals damage to an enemy while simultaneously making them unable to move or execute an action. Unlike all other movement-hindering powers, which leave the target unaffected if it manages a saving throw, here a saving throw will just reduce the damage...which doesn't mean much if you can follow it up in the next turn with another Force Crush, essentially locking your enemy out of action until he is killed. The only thing that can possibly harm you is multiple foes, but at that point in the game, you can literally take on lightsaber-wielding groups of elite Sith with your bare hands and win anyway, so that's not an issue.
  • Ghaleon in Lunar: The Silver Star, because he's one of the Four Heroes. And the Big Bad.
    • Laike in the same game. For largely the same reason as Ghaleon; he's actually Dyne, another of the Four Heroes.
    • Lucia at the start of Lunar 2, on account of being a Physical God.
  • The Silver Surfer in Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Has skills more or less cloned from other characters... Except he does maybe 2-3 times the damage the regular versions do because, well, he's the Silver Surfer. He's just as broken in the comics.
    • Jean Grey, Hulk, and Thor were intended to be this in the second game.
  • The Majin and Gideon classes in Nippon Ichi games.
    • To clarify: the Disgaea Majin outranks everyone at everything. Granted, unlocking this class pretty much requires previous knowledge of the requirements, but from the instant he's unlocked, he's already broken. In the two next games the game tells you how to unlock them, but they got heavily nerfed to the point that raising him to his full potential is a dreadfully boring task, given that he actually starts worse than any basic class and requires way more experience to level up.
    • The Gideon from Soul Nomad has the highest stats out of pretty much every class, and his attack pattern hits every member of the enemy squad for heavy damage. The drawback is that deploying additional squads with them will cost a lot of money. Doesn't block the player from adding 7 of them in the main squad and kill everyone that comes near.
    • Arguably half the material in Nippon Ichi games.
      • Practically anything beyond main plot, which usually takes about 100 levels. Out of almost 300000 stored plus 9999 active. With bonus bosses many times more powerful then the final boss, you need those Infinity Plus One Everything.
    • The main character in Makai Kingdom, overlapping with A Taste of Power.
    • Also Adell in the third game as he was a taste of the power of DLC characters.
    • Tyrant Valvatorez was said to have been extremely powerful before his vow to never drink human blood De Powered him. Since de-powered Valvatorez is acknowledged to be unusually strong for someone who's had his power depleted (or just for anyone in general), Val as a Tyrant would have to be a grade-A Game Breaker for him to be anything but Overrated and Underleveled—so they made him a grade-A Game Breaker.
  • The Roguelike Omega gave unlimited free wishes if you became an Adept. You couldn't wish for artifacts, but you could easily create any mundane items you wanted.
  • Several characters in the various Warriors games, usually noted as having really BEEN badass in reality. In Dynasty Warriors, Lu Bu is always vastly more powerful than any of the other fighters (In DW6, he gets his own campaign where he kicks the collective ass of Ancient China. Then all the noteable fighters who are already dead come back to life just to get another shot at him, and he STILL beats them all.) In Samurai Warriors, there's Miyamoto Musashi, legendary master of Dual-Wielding Katanas, who is significantly more fearsome than any of his contemporaries. And in Warriors Orochi, well, basically every member of the 'Orochi Party'. Da Ji, Himiko, Sun Wukong, Kiyomori Taira, and of course, Orochi himself, who has abilities generally above those of mere mortals. And then there's Orochi Z, who's even MORE overpowered.
    • Though it's quite notable that Lu Bu seldom actually is overpowered. Yes, his stats are great, and he's easy to use... but he's not as invincible as Ma Chao is on a horse in most Dynasty Warriors games(without taking acount its lack of damage in higher difficulty). In the Orochi games, he seldom ranks in the top ten- in fact, he was in the bottom fifteen in the first game, with Diao Chan being the by far best character. In the second game, EVERYONE is broken with Almighty.
    • The second orochi game is pretty notable for giving easy to use or downright broken character right of the bat. You already get the Three King(who have fast combination attack that can be spammed with Sun Jian's special), Musashi Miyamoto, Orochi which can spam C1-1 all day to end a stage, Kunoichi and her broken Invincibility Special. This without counting how early some other great character is unlocked(Zuo Ci being the most notable)
    • In the Fist of the North Star themed spinoff Ken's Rage, Raoh, being the final boss of many characters' Dream Modes, as well as the boss of Kenshiro and Toki's Legend mode, is made so powerful that even with his base starting stats, he makes even Orochi look like a joke. His starting Signature Move is far and away the most powerful 1-bar (the game uses a slightly modified stock system from other Warriors games) move in the game, strong enough to essentially (and instantly) kill all enemies in sight for a good 100 feet, has outrageously powerful normals with a great reach and tons of guard break, the potentially most powerful Hyper Signature in the game (although pretty much everyone's Mastery 3 Hyper Signature is strong enough to wipe the screen, even of bosses), and can summon Kokuoh-Go, a gigantic horse that, when ridden, instantly kills all Mooks on contact and lasts the entire rest of the stage after being used only once. Don't be surprised when you look at the online high score screens and see Raoh's face on almost every spot.
  • The two secret unlockable airships in Kirby Air Ride, Dragoon and Hydra, the former of which can fly to near-limitless heights at a very respectable speed, while the latter takes nearly a full minute to charge completely and thus be able to move faster than a paraplegic snail, but once charged moved at ridiculous speeds and could instantly knock out an opponent in a single high-speed hit.
    • A fully-charged Hydra needs the high health it has, since you often go Too Fast to Stop!
  • Oersted in Live a Live levels up like crazy in his chapter, has amazing stat growth, and some amazing attacks such as Hexaflange. He becomes Odio, the Big Bad.
  • Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the Chosen lets you play as Psaro when you beat the game once, then backtrack to get a certain item and perform a certain event, then reach the place where you defeated him the first time. He joins your party at a starting level of 35, not so impressive sounding considering you should be level 45-50 when you beat the game... and yet he still manages to outperform your party at every turn. He also learns many powerful skills when leveled up, many of which weren't initially seen until the latter games in the series.
    • In Dragon Quest 5, Pankraz, your father, demonstrates his strength when following him in the world map in the beginning of the game and in a later dungeon. You're also awarded with exp. He later becomes less physically dominating: he's level 20 and has good equipment (including his awesome sword), but you're doing damage almost on par with him at level 12, and your HP is getting close to his at that level as well.
  • In Populous: The Beginning, between the last two levels you become a god. The main effect this has is that you can cast spells anywhere in the world, without a range limit. Which makes the Blast spell (the cheapest offensive spell, previously hampered by having the shortest range) much more useful. Especially if you've learned to cast it next to your target, to throw them into water. Yes, the last level is meant to be easy; it appears to be designed for applying Video Game Cruelty Potential to the enemy tribes.
  • Nightmare Geese, in the King of Fighters and Fatal Fury series, is horrendously overpowered. He's able to fire rapid-fire projectiles mid-air, dash around at crazy speeds and create explosions in your face, having massive stats, the list goes on. He's the definitive Infinity+1 Sword of both series, usually included just to have fun crushing every other character. He's often the last character you unlock, and often the hardest to get. Even in KOF2K2 Unlimited Match, where he shares a roster with Igniz (who retains his infamous infinite from KOF01) and Krizalid (who gains massive amounts of meter if you block his signature projectile), he's still considered the most broken character in the game.
  • And in the BlazBlue corner we have Unlimited Ragna, who out-tanks the Mighty Glacier character, Iron Tager, with his 3 folded HP; can, quite easily, deal damage in the mid-thousands; is much, much faster than his original form; can air-dash 3 times, while most characters can dash 1 or 2 times at most; has automatic Heat gain; and has a massive life drain on top of that! (He also has one super move that can take off 2/3s of his opponent's HP and regenerate 1/2 of his own, so that's fair...) All of this is completely and utterly justified, because Unlimited Ragna has activated his titular Artifact of Doom.
  • The Peacemaker from Jak II and the Supernova from Jak 3. The Peacemaker would send out a ball of lightning that would always hit an opponent and instantly kill it, after which most other targets that were too close (i.e. 10 meters or so) would be hit by equally lethal beams of lightning erupting from the first target. It was nerfed a bit in in Jak 3 but there you had the Supernova, which is literally a mini-nuke. When fired, the whole screen lights up and when it's cleared, there's no enemy left. These two weapons were only stopped by their very low ammunition count. The Peacemaker could fire 10 shots in Jak II and 20 in Jak 3, while the Supernova could only be fired twice (and uses up the same ammo as the Peacemaker).
  • The Metal Gear series generally gives the player a host of game-breaking items to use on a New Game+ if certain conditions are met during a playthrough, some conditions more severe than others, including:
    • Starting from Metal Gear Solid, there's the Stealth Camouflage, which makes Snake almost invisible to enemies (except bosses), and the Infinity Bandana, which gives Snake infinite ammunition (assuming Snake has any ammunition in the first place). These are unlocked by beating the game with Otacon's and Meryl's endings, respectively (do both, and you get to wear a tuxedo on your third playthrough).
    • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty mixes it up by requiring the player to hold up a certain number of enemy sentries and collect their dog tags to unlock the previous items, as well as adding an assortment of wigs that give the player infinite grip and oxygen.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater swaps the bandana for face paint that does the same job, and also adds the EZ Gun to the mix. As you could guess from the name, the EZ Gun is a stupidly overpowered tranquilizer pistol with infinite ammo, a silencer that never runs out and a laser sight, and it replenishes your stamina and bumps your camo index to 80% when you hold it. Normally it's only available on a New Game+, but it's instantly added to your inventory if you start a game on Very Easy Mode. There's also the Patriot (The Boss's gun of choice), which is basically a chaingun with infinite ammo, and is also unlocked for the New Game+. Its only downside is wrecking your camo rating, but what machine gun doesn't do that?
  • Puyo Puyo Fever has the series mascot Carbuncle as an unlockable character, who is categorized as a "Well-Balanced Player?" by the game - the other all-around characters have no question mark.
  • Iji has the Massacre, which is a fairly powerful weapon, but only available during the final boss fight. Then there is the Null Driver, a literal Game Breaker, which is only available after finding nearly every single secret in the game and completing every achievement.
  • Star Control 2 has the Chmmr Avatar. Max Hp and energy. Ridiculous energy-to-damage efficiency (it can kill any ship with only half of its energy stockpile). Incredible energy regeneration. 3 orbiting satellites that intercept lots of incoming fire. For a capital ship, it is very fast. The only downside is that it's primary weapon is short ranged, but that's OK because it has a tractor beam as its secondary. Of course, you don't get access to it until right before the final battle...
    • ...in which, hilariously enough, it's almost useless. The Sa-Matra's defensive projectiles move too fast for the defense satellites to shoot down, and the ship can't move fast enough to avoid them. Experienced players take Fragile Speedster Pkunk Furies into the fight, which can outrun the Sa-Matra's projectiles.
    • The Utwig Juggernaut may also qualify. Its weapon doesn't take energy, so it can fire all it wants. Any attack can be absorbed by its shields, turning incoming fire into energy, which is used to power the shields, which turns incoming fire into energy, which well you get the point. Well known for being the principle prey to the above-mentioned Avatar (and pretty much the only ship that can kill an Avatar reliably while taking minimal damage). The only way to reliably kill this thing is to drain its shields by using a ship who's weapon doesn't provide more energy than the shields absorb to absorb it. So the Utwig player either drains their energy or takes damage. Getting access to this ship requires completing a long series of quests that take you quite literally to the four corners of known space. By the time you've done this, you're almost at the point where you get the Avatar.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces has Unison Reinforce (Reinforce with Hayate intentionally Unisoning into her), who you could only use at the final battle of Reinforce's story. She comes with all eighteen skills in the game where other characters could only use four, turning the normally powerful Big Bad into an Anticlimax Boss.
  • The original Mass Effect had Colossus armor and the unlockable Master Specter weapons. On lower difficulty levels, this turned you and your squad into unstoppable killing machines. On Insanity difficulty however, they were the only pieces of equipment that allowed you to survive enemy encounters.
    • The sequel has the M-920 Cain, a weapon that takes a couple seconds to charge up and fire, but can kill all but a handful of enemies (bosses included) in a single huge area effect blast. Its limiting factor is that it uses a massive amount of Heavy Weapon ammunition, meaning, assuming you're collecting all the heavy weapon ammo in your missions, you only get to fire it once every couple missions on average. That and that huge area effect includes you, if you're too near the target.
  • Devil May Cry 3 has as a reward for beating Dante Must Die mode the Super Legendary Dark Knight costumes. These not only give unlimited Devil Trigger energy, but also have the Healing Factor of the normal Devil Trigger modes, unlike the Super Dante/Vergil costumes. Furthermore, Dante's version of the Super LDK can use Quicksilver or Doppelganger infinitely, something Super Dante lacks.
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII has the Heike's Soul item, which combines the benefits of many other accessories. Naturally, it's a reward for completing all missions, which includes defeating the Bonus Boss.
  • Bleu, the hidden extra character in Breath of Fire 2. She gets a LOT of MP and HP, hits reasonably hard, gets the best magic (except boombada) and is not subject to highly diminishing returns when leveling up... but the game creators made her extra strong on purpose: she can't fuse with the shaman spirits.
    • She's pretty much this in the first game as well, although she does level out with the rest of the party by the end of the game.
    • Ryu's Dragon Forms in the other games definitely fit, ironically, Ryu's Dragon attacks in II were simply powerful attacks that blew all of Ryu's remaining MP.
  • The Valkyrie character class in Nethack might qualify. Barbarian was an original class, Valkyrie was added later, with similar starting stats and quality of equipment but more special traits, spellcasting power, and much better magical items. AIUI it was designed to be easier to win the game with. In the descendant game Slash'em, Monks seem to be this, especially when the Doppleganger species.
    • Given that Nethack is so difficult and unforgiving to begin with, the Valkyrie isn't anything like a guaranteed win — but it's a great candidate for a first ascension. Once you ascend a couple times with a Valkyrie, you can start playing with one of the more specialized classes for added challenge.
  • In Magical Battle Arena, if you hold down a button while selecting Lina Inverse she will become the Lord of Nightmares. Let me repeat that, the Lord of Nightmares. She has absurdly high attack power and is immune to damage, but automatically loses after a set period of time.
  • Archetype: Earth in Melty Blood, by merit of it being an alternate form of Arcueid Brunestud, possessed by an entity that sits quite comfortably above gods and the soul of the world itself. As a member of THE highest rank of beings in the Nasuverse, balancing it would've been ridiculous.
    • To a lesser extent, Ryougi Shiki as well. Justified by her Void personality being (or at least boasting to be) able to kill anything and everything under the sun, including God. She can't kill Crimson Moon.
  • In Fallout 3, you've got the Experimental MIRV, which fires 8 mini-nukes at once. On normal, just two mini-nukes are enough to kill just about anything. However, its durability wears off quickly and there are only so many mini-nukes in the game.
  • The Super Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2. Check it out in action.
  • Earth Defense Force 2017 has the aptly-named Genocide Gun that does a million Hit Points of damage—enough to one-shot any enemy in the game—and has an enormous blast radius. But you can only get it by completing all levels at the highest difficulty.
  • Jade golem and Red minister forms in Jade Empire. Both are overpowered (Red minister is immune to weapons and Jade Golem is immune to everything else) because you should use them on Jade Master.
  • Upgrading your weapons in the first Penny Arcade Adventures episode makes you kill everything in one hit. Well, except for the final boss (you may be able to beat the final boss without the fully upgraded weapons, but it would take forever).
  • Every Mega Ten Game Breaker on every Mega Ten hard mode.
  • Falchion in the first Fire Emblem. Narga in the 4th. Good luck beating the last bosses in the respective games without either.
    • All the S (or SS, if this is Radiant Dawn) weapons in this series are usually pretty overpowered, as are any special weapons that main characters get (Sieglinde, Ragnell, Armads, etc.).
    • The Sword of Seals from Fire Emblem 6 in particular has the power to turn even the most mediocre Roy into an unstoppable juggernaut easily capable of taking out the final boss in just a single turn.
  • The Dreadnought in the Dawn of War II campaign is a beast, with close-combat strength enough to crush anything less than a boss in a few seconds and an assault cannon capable of obliterating swarms of lesser enemies before they even get close. It is specifically added at the point in the game when the player begins to fight larger numbers of more powerful enemies (mostly Carnifexes).
    • Over on the manual side of the hobby, Games Workshop does this with almost a sick glee, ramping up the power level of whatever faction, race, company, chapter, tank, squad, monster, or single dude that they want to sell in large numbers. As of February 2011 (a date must be added because there's always some new absurd unit that renders its predecessor as just another afterthought) the cake seems to be taken by Mephiston of the Blood Angels Space Marines chapter. Predecessors to this title included the ultra-decked melee Carnifex (most notably the mutant Old One Eye), the C'tan Nightbringer (whom to this date is still the single most expensive model in the game), Marneus Calgar, Ghazskull Thraka, the Bloodthirster, Njarl Stormcaller of the Space Wolves, and if you're feeling generous Commissar Yarrick, to the point where nearly every race had at least one. The shock of shocks came when it was realized that Mephiston could curb-stomp Abaddon the Despoiler, the most tangible and iconic enemy of mankind in the entire setting. Granted, every last one of these characters mentioned could qualify for this trope at some point, but what sets Mephiston apart from all the others is that all the others are priced prohibitively high for what they do (in the ballpark of 275 pts). Mephiston has a statline that makes all the others cry and is cheaper than just about all of the aforementioned characters. Granted, using any of these aforementioned super characters in games of 750 pts or less is just asking to be punched in the face.
    • Of course, a more clear cut example of this trope (possibly Played for Laughs) is the limited edition 30th anniversary White Dwarf model. To put it briefly, he re-rolls failed rolls to hit, to wound, and forces wounded opponents to re-roll succcessful armour saves. He also has a 1+ armour save, a 4+ ward save, and HALVES the strength of any missile weapon aimed at him. (so if you thought you could just cannonball him in the face, TOO BAD.) Bear in mind, that's just Grombrindal. The model itself also consists of Gortek and Bugman, who both attack separately. Gortek deserves a particular mention, as he deals multiple, armour-piercing wounds AUTOMATICALLY (i.e. no dice roll required) Oh, and the amound of wounds he deals doubles against Bosses in Mook Clothing. The model's only real weakness is it has to roll on a random movement chart. (although the result that stops you moving also happens to restore ALL wounds the model has taken.)
    • The 'movie marines' list featuring in White Dwarf #300 (featuring fluff-aligned Space Marines) also completely breaks the game, with most of their weapons and stats outclassing their 'regular' equivalents many times over: Armies of Movie Marines usually cost in the upwards of 2000 points for about 10 marines, yet each of these marines are a One-Man Army and can usually kill twice their worth in forces each. The list is not tournament legal and Games Workshop made it clear it was designed that way on purpose; it's only intended for 'friendly' games (the marines even have Stunt Doubles, just to give you an idea of how 'serious' it is).
  • Even the Gran Turismo series has those. In the third one the Escudo could be tuned to have 1843 horsepower. That's it: nearly two thousand horsepower. And from Gran Turismo 5 we have the Red Bull X1, so fast that looks like the video is on fast forward.
  • The main characters in Persona 3 and Persona 4 vastly outclass the rest of their parties put together, with the ability to change their skill set, resistances, and weakness at any time. Balanced out a bit by We Cannot Go on Without You.
    • Note that "vastly outclasses" does not mean "God Mode". The protagonist is 100% as vulnerable as the rest of the party, and the ability to change personas at will is tempered by the fact that those personas will not level up nearly as fast as the rest of the party, each one has a level requirement and a lot of them take a lot of time, effort and money to get, compared to the other party members who can just grind their way to high-tiered skills.
  • The Staff of Oblivion in Nox will take a huge chunk out of an enemy's life when used on them long enough. By the time you acquire it, the only one who can actually stand against is is the Big Bad herself, and she won't give you enough time to get the best of it. The huge army of Elite Mooks she sends to take it from you are only there to demonstrate how effective this weapon truly is (before that encounter, a fight with individual Elite Mooks was so complicated, the entire final act could be considered a Boss Rush).
  • Orlandu in Final Fantasy Tactics. A legendary swordsman, Combining the entire skill sets of 3 good special classes, having enhanced stats and one of the best swords in the game (that also compliments him by giving him auto haste).
  • Most of the bonus characters in the Super Robot Wars games, who are you reward for doing various things, or just getting to the real final chapter.
  • Anything made of diamond in Minecraft. They're more durable and efficient than any other materials, and greatly outperform iron, the second-best material. The diamond sword, for example, can kill most enemies in three hits, and the diamond pickax can mine the widest range of blocks and lasts six times as long as the iron pickax before breaking. Diamond armor lasts more than twice as long as iron armor, and a new set can reduce damage by 80% as opposed to 60% for iron. However, all of this is justified because diamond is by far the hardest resource to find.
    • IIRC, a full set of diamond armor in 1.0.0 will allow the player to swim in lava for an unholy amount of time.
  • In Dead Space 2, the Handcannon (or Foam Finger) gun falls into this catagory as well. It can kill any Necromorph in one shot, and it kills the final boss in less than five. Oh yeah, and the thing has infinite ammo, fires as fast as you can full the trigger, and has Isaac scream out "BANG!" or "PEW!" depending on weither you use the primary fire or secondary fire. But to be fair, the gun can only be unlocked after beating the game on Hard Core mode, which can only be accessed after beating the game once already on any difficulty. Plus, on Hard Core mode, the game only lets you have three saves though out that run, and you cannot use a New Game+ to run through it either.
  • Ash's final class, the Vandalier, in Vandal Hearts, which can only be obtained after going through several difficult steps. Ash gains access to all spells in the game (including ones cast only by items and enemies), very high attack damage, and is virtually invulnerable from any direction but the back. It's a level of domination that can't be unintentional.
  • Dark Phoenix in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (released upon Phoenix getting knocked out while having five full Hyper Gauges in stock), presumably to compensate for the fragility and shortcomings of normal Phoenix.
  • Good luck beating the Bonus Bosses in Wild ARMs 2 withoutKnight Blazer.
    • The Sheriff Star in every game is like this: The highest single stat boost any other accessories can give? The star gives that boost to all of them. Add status immunity and elemental resistances and you've got yourself a Game Breaker. It's also the reward for the Bonus Boss.
  • Resident Evil 4 is full of numerous examples of overpowered unlockable New Game+ weapons, one or two of them accumulated as bonus content from various re-releases. Perhaps the most powerful of them is the Wii version of the PRL. When originally added to the PlayStation 2 port of the game, the gun was effectively a source of infinite flash grenades when fired without charging, and when charged, it was an insta-kill laser blast. When the game was ported to the Wii, however, it was beefed up so that it's charged attack would fire many beams in one blast, each of which would auto-target a particular enemy and kill it. The end result was that everything in front of you would die in one charged shot, with even the enemies halfway across the map getting sniped down.
  • In the comic books upon which The Red Star was based, Maya was an incredibly powerful spellcaster. In the game, you have to win once in order to unlock her, and for good reason.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has the Fierce Deity Mask, and to a lesser extent, the Giant's Mask.
  • Pathfinder beefed up pretty much every core class along with giving all players more feats and skill or hp. This was partly to encourage players to actually play a core class through to 20th level (as opposed to spending the first five levels preparing for your Prestige Class as was common in 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons). Its also supposed to help diminish the need of the DM to place the correct magic items for players which used to be more critical to game balance (to address this second problem, they also made it easier for players to make their own magic items to the point that even non magic users can craft some of their own magic items with the right feats.)
  • Equipping the String of Beads in Okami makes it outright impossible for you to lose, even if you try. Amaterasu becomes completely invincible, has endless amounts of ink to use, and every single attack deals ten times as much damage as it would normally.
    • Still not quite fair compensation for what we went through trying to get the bead away from Blockhead Grande. Seriously. Good luck getting the bead unless you have a VCR and a dry erase marker.
  • Nobunaga in Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes is the most powerful character by far. He's also the resident Bonus Boss and the most complicated to unlock.
  • Everything in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Uprising, which is why there's no multiplayer mode. The grand prize probably goes to the Rising Sun Gigafortress: a massive, self-aware battleship with several battleship guns and several rocket pods (each as powerful as a separate unit in their own right) that can transform into a flying artillery piece that takes out everything.
    • Also, the campaign-only Shogun Executioner from vanilla Red Alert 3, a giant mech with three instant-killing swords that can trample buildings to death. It fears only artillery, and is available only in two campaign missions. In one, it's the only unit the primary player fields.
  • At the end of Super Metroid, Samus is given the Hyper Beam during the last stage of the fight with Mother Brain. It's rather important as it's the only thing that can hurt her, however you get to keep it during the timed escape sequence and any enemies foolish enough to get in your way are obliterated by it in one shot.
  • The Fire Flower power up in Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros 3 is powerful enough to instantly kill most enemies in a single hit (very few enemies are immune to fireballs) and most bosses, including Bowser, can be beaten with enough fireballs to the face. Even enemies like the Hammer Bros. are made easier with the Fire Flower. Of course the downside is you lose your powers if you get hit yourself. Later games would nerf the Fire Flower so boss characters couldn't be hurt by it. Super Mario Bros 3 also has the Hammer Bros suit, very rare and Too Awesome to Use, but will one-shot everything.
  • The Sleg in Hunted: The Demon's Forge combines this with Suspicious Videogame Generosity as it is only available for some very difficult battles. It makes the drinker invulnerable with infinite mana and arrows and greatly increases damage turning horrendously difficult battles into near guaranteed victories. The catch? It's a trap, drinking it is part of an evil plan and prevents getting the good ending
  • Hyper Sonic in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. So long as you maintain your ring total, nothing can stop you.
  • Heirloom items in World of Warcraft, also known as Boa ("Bind on Account") items, level up while you do and can be bought by higher-level characters to give to lower leveled ones on the same account. Not only are their stats better than anything else until level cap, but they provide an EXP boost. They aren't really too much stronger than most items, you can't do level-appropriate stuff solo, but generally in a one-on-one PVP fight the guy wearing Heirlooms is going to win.
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