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But even if the power divide isn't too bad and the character is really quite awesome at what he does, there's another factor. You've already played most of the way through the game with the characters you're currently using, so you're already emotionally attached to that party and comfortable with the current group dynamic. In addition, a character that comes to the party this late is less likely to have as much of an impact on the plot, or any cool sidequests to go on.
And, as a final straw, these guys might end up coming in at the same time for any [[New Game+]] runs you might be allowed to do. ''[[
This is particularly a problem in games with [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], where "late" can actually be quite early, leading to a lot of [[Overrated and Underleveled]] situations.
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{{examples}}
* {{spoiler|Sarevok}} in ''[[
** Possibly Imoen in ''Shadows Of Amn'' if you've gotten used to using a character with a similar party function by the time you get her back. {{spoiler|This is also one reason why the game pushes Yoshimo into your party so heavily, because he'll automatically leave you at the point she joins you.}}
* Several characters in the ''[[Suikoden]]'' series.
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** Shoon and Hazuki, also from ''[[Suikoden V]]'' are great fighters, but arrive so late in the game that you'll probably already have others in their roles that fight as well as they do.
** Sonya Shulen in the [[Suikoden|original]]. You recruit her, and then go to war over [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]. {{spoiler|Could also apply to Gremio, as he only comes back if you recruit everyone (even Sonya) before starting the battle for [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]}}
* Magus in ''[[
* Most fourth party members in ''[[Final Fantasy II (Video Game)|Final Fantasy II]]'' {{spoiler|even Leon}} get this, due to your main three getting most of the benefits of grinding.
* Amarant in ''[[
** He's the only healer who can restore MP. Then again, most fights don't last long enough for MP to be an issue.
* A problem with Strago in ''[[
* Similarly, the new Jobs introduced in the GBA remake of ''[[Video Gam/Final Fantasy V|Final Fantasy V]]'' are only available at the end of the story. One of them, the Necromancer, gets new abilities by having the Necromancer ''personally'' kill certain enemies, meaning the ''only'' way to build them up is to backtrack and grind, and even then they'll only see real use in the final dungeon.
** Necromancer is probably the ultimate example, because you have to complete the first of the 2 post-game bonus dungeons just to unlock it - a dungeon much harder than the final dungeon of the regular game, obviously - basically all that's left after unlocking it is a boss rush (the OTHER bonus "dungeon")
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* {{spoiler|Legion}} in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]''. Whereas all of the other characters are recruited in the first half of the game, {{spoiler|Legion}} is a surprise recruitment made ''almost immediately before the final mission'' for most players. The only power he has which Tali doesn't is {{spoiler|Geth Shield Boost}} (temporarily boosts his shields), and she has a more useful equivalent (Energy Drain, which drains enemies' shields and boosts her own). He's a talented sniper... but so are Garrus and Thane. He's a good choice for the tech specialist...but so are Tali and Kasumi. He's good at taking down synthetic enemies... but there aren't any synthetic enemies in the final mission. You can recruit him earlier in the game if you choose... but that locks you out of the [[Golden Ending]]. (None of this stopped him from becoming one of the more popular party members.)
** It helps that you are still able to allocate all of his skill points and that most players still have DLC set after the end of the game.
* [[X
* In ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'', Nordom, Ignus and Fall-From-Grace are only available from about halfway through the game, with significant sub-questing required to add Nordom or, to a lesser extent, Ignus to your party. They mostly make up for it by being highly memorable and entertaining characters. However, Vhailor is only discovered even later in the game, when you've probably got your party line-up well finalised, and can actually be missed entirely. As a result, he often doesn't make the cut.
* In ''[[.hack GU Games|.hack//G.U.]]'', you get Shino at the end of Vol. 3. You get Tabby after getting halfway through the Forest of Pain, a 100-floor dungeon. Finally, you can get Natsume at any time during the game, but you have to find and defeat her and all the other Chaotic [[Player Killing|PK]]s in order to get her Member Adress, and she's around level 130, which is the average level to end the main storyline at. By the time you've gotten them, you've already cleared the main storyline and most side quests, and Shino and Tabby's roles are already filled by Atoli and Pi. Natsume's role would be filled by Alkaid, but {{spoiler|you temporarily lose Alkaid in the middle of the second game (shortly after getting her)}} and when you get her back, she's half the level of everyone else you have access to, making her pretty much useless. You might could also count Haseo as filling Natsume's role, since he also has access to Twin Blades.
* One of the factors that mitigated the potential awesomeness of {{spoiler|[[Final Fantasy VII
* ''[[Golden Sun
** ''[[
* Terry joins the party pretty late in ''[[
** In the original, Terry didn't have anything mastered and he was 5 levels lower to boot. Thankfully, the remake gave him a few buffs as described above.
* ''[[Warriors Orochi]]'' suffers from this problem constantly. When you unlock a character, even if said character is said to be a major [[Badass]] like in the case of Lu Bu, said character starts at level 1 with their basic weapon and none of their abilities. This is a case of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]], of course, but it does seem a bit strange, not to mention frustrating when you can't take the cool new character you just unlocked in Stage 7 of the campaign on to the final battle without some major grinding.
* ''[[Wasteland (
* A lot of these appear in the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series:
** One example is what the fandom calls the "[[Magikarp Power|Est]]" archetype. The most notable examples are the archetype-namer from the first game, Corpul from the fourth, Nino from the seventh, and {{spoiler|Pelleas}} (and to a lesser extent, Tormod and his friends) from the tenth.
** For the "pretty good already, but lacks time to level up", Ena in the ninth game and Stefan, {{spoiler|Oliver}} (although he's more of a [[Lethal Joke Character]]), Bastian, {{spoiler|Renning}}, and all of the dragon laguz in the tenth game apply, as do {{spoiler|Karla}} in the seventh game and {{spoiler|her brother, Karel,}} in the sixth. The latter is an especially interesting case--he serves the effective role of the [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower|Gotoh]], but unlike most examples of that archetype (except for the laguz royals in the Tellius games), he's a weapon-user, not a magic-user, and he's also not at the maximum level. He shows up one level ''after'' the final level of a [[True Final Boss|non-perfect run]] and can only be recruited by {{spoiler|Fir or Bartre, who are his niece and his brother-in-law, respectively}}, his stats are very good (in some stats, likely better than the characters of his class that were raised from a low level, especially in normal mode), and he averts the usual "pre-promoted units have horrible growth rates" by having the best growths of any character in any of the games. Oh, but he's already Level ''19'' in a promoted class, so those insane growth rates will only trigger once.
** In the ''[[
** In general, characters that join on the last five or so chapters of a ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' game will suffer from this unless they're a [[Game Breaker]] or something.
* The better you score in ''[[The Reconstruction]]'', the worse your problems with this trope will be, since getting your score high enough will provide significant stat bonuses to all characters you've so far recruited. Play on maximum difficulty (with the highest score multiplier), and there's a decent chance you'll get all possible bonuses before you've even recruited the last three characters.
* Regal in ''[[
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