...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!

Overrated and Underleveled

472 statements
85 feature instances
67 referencing feature instances

Overrated and Underleveled	type	FeatureClass
Overrated and Underleveled	label	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled	page	OverratedAndUnderleveled
Overrated and Underleveled	comment	Within the plot, a character is introduced who has a preexisting reputation of being a master fighter and quite renowned. This character is then implied to be a potential rival, obstacle, or ally of the party. The problem arises after this character joins your party, and a dedicated player notices aside from perhaps being a few levels higher at first, this character is inevitably weaker than the main character. This can sometimes be explained by a simple matter of not leveling the newcomer properly, but usually a heralded "strongest character" simply never is for long, or is certainly not as useful as their strength would suggest. Maybe programmers are underestimating gamers. Sometimes it can also be explained another way, such as they're weakened by something, like age (You're not as strong at 50 as you were at 20), injury or amnesia. It could also be its own variation of The Worf Effect. A dangerous foe or ally, whose reputation for being powerful is well-known, is overshadowed by the main character as a way of showing the player just how powerful they've become. Inevitably, this is almost always for game balance reasons, preventing a Disc-One Nuke. When it's averted, the character may be a Crutch Character whose power you don't get to enjoy for long. When applied to equipment, it's the Penultimate Weapon. Redemption Demotion can be seen as a variation of this. Also Bag of Spilling, in which a previous playable character doesn't retain their weapons/skills. One of many examples of Gameplay and Story Segregation. Overlaps with Character Shilling, and a frequent culprit behind Memetic Loser reputations. Contrast Underrated and Overleveled or Purposely Overpowered.
Overrated and Underleveled	fetched	2024-03-16T20:32:40Z
Overrated and Underleveled	parsed	2024-03-16T20:32:40Z
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to AllThereInTheManual: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to BigBad: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to ClimaxBoss: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to CoolShades: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to CutscenePowerToTheMax: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to DaywalkingVampire: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to DentedIron: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to DiscOneNuke: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to EleventhHourRanger: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to EvilVsEvil: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to FamedInStory: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to FantasticNuke: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to FireEmblemNewMysteryOfTheEmblem: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to FourthWall: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to GameplayAndStorySegregation: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to GentlemanAdventurer: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to GuideDangIt: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to Hell: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to Hunk: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to InfinityPlusOneSword: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to Izuna: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to LoudOfWar: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to MagicKnight: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to MagikarpPower: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to MiniGame: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to NaiveNewcomer: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to OverratedAndUnderleveled: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to RespawningEnemies: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to SoulCalibur: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to StoneWall: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to TabletopGames: Not an Item - CAT
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to UnderratedAndOverleveled: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to UpdatedRerelease: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to WarriorPrincess: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Overrated and Underleveled	processingComment	Dropped link to fridgelogic: Not an Item - FEATURE
Overrated and Underleveled	processingUnknown	WarriorPrincess
Overrated and Underleveled	processingUnknown	FireEmblemNewMysteryOfTheEmblem
Overrated and Underleveled	processingUnknown	Izuna
Overrated and Underleveled	processingUnknown	SoulCalibur
Overrated and Underleveled	isPartOf	DBTropes
Overrated and Underleveled / int_145d9b29	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_145d9b29	comment	In Star Ocean: The Second Story, we have Dias who is the classic version, a legendary swordsman who frequently calls party members weak. Once joining the party, he is quickly outclassed by Claude due to a lack of combo potential. In Dias' case, this trope was somewhat turned back; in the PSP remake he was vastly improved, and more on the level of badass the game makes him out to be.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_145d9b29	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_145d9b29	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ocean: The Second Story (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_145d9b29
Overrated and Underleveled / int_17415b19	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_17415b19	comment	Star Ocean: Ashlay in Star Ocean, who is a grizzled and aged veteran, swordsman known the world over, personal friend of most of the world's royalty... and joins at level 15, only to be very quickly overshadowed by Ratix. However, unlike most examples of this trope, there is an easy way to justify this though: Much of the story of his skills were in the past, by now he's obviously past his prime thanks to being almost sixty years old and he only has the use of one arm (in the remake, he is flat out missing the arm.) Ashlay actually plays this trope fairy realistically too â€• Sure he knows a lot of technique, but isn't very good long-run because he literally is an old man. His knowledge of techniques DOES have one perk though. He can't use them anymore, but if you recruit him he can teach the main character several powerful sword skills he cannot otherwise get. In Star Ocean: The Second Story, we have Dias who is the classic version, a legendary swordsman who frequently calls party members weak. Once joining the party, he is quickly outclassed by Claude due to a lack of combo potential. In Dias' case, this trope was somewhat turned back; in the PSP remake he was vastly improved, and more on the level of badass the game makes him out to be. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: Albel Nox, who is level 29 (according to the guide) when you fight him, and level 24 when you get him. Adray is praised as a great magician and swordsman, yet he starts at a level in the mid-twenties when you should be around fifty, Fayt absolutely destroys him in swordplay and Sophia outclasses him in magic to the point of seeming like a Goddess by comparison. Justified as she had genetic engineering for that purpose and Fayt had been training with video games his whole life and had the destructive gene.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_17415b19	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_17415b19	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ocean (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_17415b19
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1af341a1	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1af341a1	comment	Disgaea also contains a mechanic that allows a character's level to be reset to 1 in exchange for higher base stats. It's possible he Reincarnated just before the beginning of the storyline.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1af341a1	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1af341a1	featureConfidence	1.0
Disgaea (Franchise)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_1af341a1
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1c16db6b	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1c16db6b	comment	.hack R1 Games: There are numerous characters you meet throughout the series who are supposed to be legendary game players who have done amazing things. They all join your party as level one characters with weak equipment.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1c16db6b	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1c16db6b	featureConfidence	1.0
.hack R1 Games (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_1c16db6b
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1cc09117	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1cc09117	comment	In Bleach: the 3rd Phantom, character levels are determined by when in the storyline they first appear. Since the four senior captains are encountered first (but don't join you until later), these legendary warriors have starting levels lower than captains hundreds of years their junior (though their high statistics make them more powerful, even at low level, than many other characters). The game's dialog will also assume that the main character is weaker than pretty much everybody else, when in fact the opposite is true. The lieutenants in particular are bad about this; pretty much all of them talk down to the main character, when in fact they can't hold a candle compared to him/her, even when they first appear.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1cc09117	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1cc09117	featureConfidence	1.0
Bleach (Manga)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_1cc09117
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1d242e4d	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1d242e4d	comment	Many characters from Growlanser I return in Growlanser II. They seem to have lost all their levels between the two games, which is given no explanation whatsoever.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1d242e4d	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1d242e4d	featureConfidence	1.0
Growlanser (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_1d242e4d
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1ed97d3e	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1ed97d3e	comment	Kanon of Wild ARMs 2 harasses you all throughout Disc 1, often being called a Wake-Up Call Boss due to how strong she is. When she finally joins you, she's alot weaker. However, it's justified in that the heroes really beat the ever-loving crap out of her so that her bionic implants were destroyed and Marivel had to fix them. This could explain her loss of power. She also happens to notice that she's been weakened. She's still the second most damaging character in the game once you unlock her special moves, however.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1ed97d3e	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_1ed97d3e	featureConfidence	1.0
Wild ARMs 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_1ed97d3e
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2192aeb3	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2192aeb3	comment	The Fire Emblem series of tactical RPGs has more instances of this than can be conveniently listed. The reason is primarily a result of the games' mechanics — since death is permanent in this series, late recruits exist primarily to give the careless and the inexperienced a fighting chance in the later levels. As a result, the experienced knights, powerful generals and legendary warriors of the world (who come later in the game) are almost invariably weaker than the rank novices, random mercenaries, and inexperienced students (who join early) raised to the same level. Almost without exception, a character who starts out at level 5 and is raised to level 15 will be far stronger than a character who starts at level 15, even if the character who starts at level 15 is renowned for his peerless strength and skill. (The only exceptions are Game-Breaker units who join on the final chapter of most games.) This doesn't make these characters useless by any standard, though—in many cases, their stat deficiencies still leave them as very competent fighters, and they consistently boast high weapon ranks, letting them use powerful swords and staves. Complete aversion in the franchise are relatively rare, though there are a handful of outliers who provide some level of story justification. Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem: Hardin is the leader of a band of exiled soldiers who have been escorting their princess and fighting a guerilla war against the Macedonian Army for some time. You'd expect him to be a prepromote or at least very high-level, but he's only a level 6 cavalier, albeit an unusually strong one. His four subordinates are pretty unimpressive at base level, and in the original game, two of them are some of the weakest characters in the game. Minerva in the original NES game, Warrior Princess of Macedon and famed as The Crimson Dragoon, is a level 1 Dracoknight, and due to the way the game calculates stats, she has the same stats as a generic enemy in her class (she's still very strong, but it can be rather disconcerting to compare her to another Dracoknight). Every game afterward gave her some buffs to be more fitting of her reputation. Her elite subordinates, the Whitewings, also aren't particularly high-level in their original appearance, with two of them being more Magikarp Power than anything. Jeorge is notable for being renowned as the "greatest sniper on the continent" but is a prepromote who's average and not really noteworthy statwise aside from his very high bow rank. This is explained in-game, however: due to the high-class nature of his bloodline, people have been spreading ridiculously exaggerated rumors about him, leading to this false reputation. Zig-zagged with Gotoh. He was the original 11th-Hour Ranger in the series, and in the original NES game his stats definitely befitted his legendary status, having 20's in most areas, which was the maximum at the time. In the remake, Shadow Dragon, however, stat caps are higher than 20 but Gotoh's base stats were left unaltered, leaving him to fall victim to this trope. He's never playable in either version of Mystery of the Emblem, probably to avoid this trope. Despite taking place after the first book, the second book of Mystery doesn't take your stats from a playthrough of the first book into account, instead simply giving characters preset levels and stats. Consequently, while just about everyone has gone up a few levels and gained about the right stats for those levels, the amount of levels they've gained is considerably less than what you'd expect—most notably, Marth has gone from level 1 to level 3. While some of this could be explained with them having lost their skills in the three years in between, it doesn't work as well for characters who stayed frontline troops or have been actively involved in other events, particularly the Whitewings. Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem is notable for this, due to growth rates and enemy strength being hugely inflated across the board; consequently, just about every character to join after the Sable Knights will be struggling to survive past their join chapter. Astram is one of the most notorious cases, due to the fact that he's recruited from the enemy side. This means that you can compare this guy, who is supposed to be the World's Strongest Man, to the soldiers he commands... and holy crap does he not stack up well. On the highest difficulties, he can be one-rounded by every single one of them. Even the thieves. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 mostly averts this, with Famed In-Story characters like Galzus, Ced, Saias, Xavier, and Eyvel all being about as strong as you'd expect for characters of their status (though Saias does suffer some Redemption Demotion). Amalda, Conomor, and Diarmuid are on the weak side next to similarly-leveled units of their classes, but are still entirely competent fighters. Olwen is the most significant counterexample, being quite weak at base apart from her signature tome, but even she has a level of justification: she's been fairly sheltered and lacks experience. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade has Cecilia, who, despite being the Mage General of Etruria, has very mediocre stats (most significantly, her 10 Speed, which isn't enough for her to double anything that isn't an armor knight, is one of her higher stats). Compare that to Perceval, the Knight General, who has 18 Speed without Hard Mode Perks, and even Douglas, the Great General and a Mighty Glacier, has 8. The base parameters of her class (high movement, good rescuing capability, an Armor-Piercing Attack with the option to hit hard on fliers, and staff use to cure status and heal allies) make her an alright Support Party Member, though. The Blazing Blade: Karel is Famed In-Story as "the Sword Demon", and many characters talk about his incredible feats like wiping out whole armies and slaying giant monsters. In reality, he has fairly mediocre stats for his level and is in a rather bad class (footlocked Fragile Speedster swordsman in a game that heavily favors mounts, raw power and durability, and axes), meaning that him wiping out whole armies is a tough sell. He's actually outclassed in every stat but Speed by Harken, who replaces him if certain conditions are met and is mostly just treated as a fairly experienced knight. His appearance in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade depicts a much more experienced Karel who is a far stronger warrior—albeit one who suffers badly from Late Character Syndrome. The penultimate chapter, "Victory Or Death", introduces Renault, a mysterious, high-level Bishop with rare equipment and the ability to heal numerous units at once—initially, he may be seen as a godsend thanks to the continuous stream of high-level, dangerous enemies present in the level. However, his magical abilities are absolutely atrocious, implied through support conversations to be because Renault was a former mercenary who renounced his violent ways and embraced religion as penance. The process of discovering this, unfortunately, requires bringing a seriously underpowered character into the most dangerous part of the game. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn: Lucia and Bastian, Elincia's retainers. While both have excellent growth rates, they also have atrocious base stats for their high levels. The third, Geoffrey, is ironically the lowest leveled despite being the head knight, and his base stats are much better suited to his level. The trope is notably averted with Stefan, who, while a much higher level than the rest of your team at that point, has a stat spread that's more than adequate for his level (except for his paltry Luck score). This trend continues in the sequel, where he's among the last units you recruit in the game, but is no less effective than his fellow swordmasters (still has low Luck, though). It might have to do with his recruiting requirements and the implication that he's descended from a legendary member of the tribe that produced one of the Purposely Overpowered Laguz kings that joins in the final chapter. Then this gets completely defied by the Greil Mercenaries when they make their grand return in Radiant Dawn. Famed In-Story and the heroes of the previous game, they'd be a disappointment if they were anything less that absolute badasses more powerful than any other unit you have... so they're absolute badasses more powerful than any other unit you have. Despite the enemies scaling appropriately, the Greil Mercenaries have a much easier time with combat than any of the previous groups you control, and their chapters are made difficult mostly by virtue of escortees or time limits. Even once perspective shifts back to the other teams and they get enough experience to reach the same level, the Dawn Brigade and Royal Knights will struggle to outclass the Greil Mercenaries. Averted by the royal families in Fire Emblem Fates. Between amazing bases, growths, and being perfectly specced for their jobs, they all come across as the Badass Family of Royals Who Actually Do Something the story says they are. Although this does have elements of Tropes Are Not Bad, since this makes it very hard for other units to compete for a place on your team when a royal fills that niche - to the point where they're collectively considered a High-Tier Scrappy in some circles, and not using any of the royals is commonly considered a Self-Imposed Challenge. Played with in regards to the Knights of Seiros you can recruit in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Despite being experienced knights, the best of the best, they join you at a level considered appropriate for the story. That said, they arrive already in an Advanced class regardless of level, and their statline reflects this. They also tend to arrive well-suited for that job and often carrying powerful equipment (Catherine is a Disc-One Nuke for exactly this reason) so all up they're hardly a disappointment. Likewise, the protagonist's father, Jeralt, is a famous mercenary known as the Blade Breaker, and former captain of the Knights of Seiros, but in the prologue, he's only a Level 3 Paladin; he's definitely the strongest unit on the map on non-Maddening difficulties, but isn't as powerful as he should be. Also applies to Byleth, since you start at level 1 despite having over ten years of experience as a mercenary.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2192aeb3	featureApplicability	-1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2192aeb3	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem (Franchise)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_2192aeb3
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2a04866b	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2a04866b	comment	The prequel novel to Guild Wars 2 is about the Five-Man Band (well, it's five by the end of the book) who took down several Champions of the Elder Dragons, and nearly succeeded in taking out one Elder Dragon himself. In the game proper, the tutorial mission and lvl 1-20 story missions of each race feature the player fighting alongside one of the group's members, where they are marginally stronger or equally strong as the low level player. Interestingly, this may be due to the same (unexplained) game mechanic that effectively de-levels high level players while they're in low level areas. So while your level 80 player character will still have more skills and traits, he too will be Overrated and Underleveled if you want to help your friend with his new character. But at least you can still have fun in the low level areas this way.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2a04866b	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2a04866b	featureConfidence	1.0
Guild Wars (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_2a04866b
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2d644371	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2d644371	comment	Tales Series Leon in Tales of Destiny is supposed to be an elite military warrior, carefully trained since childhood to be a prodigy general. Yet when he joins the party, he's at the same level as the low-level thieves (+ country bumpkin) he easily wiped the floor with moments before. Kratos in Tales of Symphonia is supposed to be a powerful, experienced mercenary, adept at both blade and magic, but when he joins he's only a level or so higher than the rest of the party (which at that point consists of only random schoolchildren) and knows only a handful of weak techniques. (Of course, there is a spoilerrific reason for this.) Later in the game he is replaced by another character, Zelos. Despite being a pampered noble, Zelos is effectively Kratos in combat: they have the exact same skills, weapon proficiencies and combat role, with only a few minor differences in stats (Zelos' are lower) and attack style (Zelos is better at using certain attacks). Oddly enough, when you have to fight them, even if they just left your party in the previous cutscene, they're suddenly tough enough to match the entire party all over again... but, of course, they're using their Angelic powers during those fights. Jade from Tales of the Abyss is advertised as one of the most powerful and feared sorcerers in the world, but is hit by a bad guy's special item early in the game which causes him to lose access to all but his most basic spells. He spends the rest of the game gradually breaking the seals on his magic, which by a crazy coincidence happens at more or less the same rate as the other, less-experienced characters are learning new skills. Crazier still, after he remembers all his old abilities and regains his old stats, he keeps gaining new ones at the same rate. He joins your party for a short while before this, and he's a good 40 levels higher than your party by that point (assuming the player isn't grinding). He drops to around the same level as you when his artes are sealed.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2d644371	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_2d644371	featureConfidence	1.0
Tales Series (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_2d644371
Overrated and Underleveled / int_3565350a	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_3565350a	comment	Ezel from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is touted as a character who can make any law cards that can easily nullify whatever laws are set in battle and is someone that is quite elusive. However, Ezel is just a reskin of the Alchemist class. He only has two abilities (one which makes you immune to status ailments once and another that puts all enemies to sleep) and can't change classes at all. Despite Ezel having extremely high magic power, he posses no abilities that are based on it. Along with being extremely slow, physically weak, having low HP, and can't even walk into water due to a glitch, Ezel may look like a powerful character but is absolute crap in battle. Even if Ezel joins your clan, he won't give you law cards for free, thus you still have to barter with him to get the cards you want.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_3565350a	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_3565350a	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_3565350a
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43e086ac	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43e086ac	comment	In Phantasy Star I, your ally Odin has a reputation as a "man of great strength." He's weaker than all your other party members, including the Squishy Wizard, although he can use the Laser Gun.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43e086ac	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43e086ac	featureConfidence	1.0
Phantasy Star I (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_43e086ac
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43f52aa9	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43f52aa9	comment	Oblivion: The final boss of the Mages Guild questline, Mannimarco, "King Of Worms." While in the lore Mannimarco is by far the most powerful Necromancer in the series and a Physical God after the warp in the west at the end of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, here he's more or less a more powerful generic Altmer necromancer set to be 7 levels above the player until level 36 or higher (his level scaling stops at level 42).
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43f52aa9	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_43f52aa9	featureConfidence	1.0
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_43f52aa9
Overrated and Underleveled / int_442ce200	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_442ce200	comment	Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis: Erin is an interesting version of this. She is not a bad character by any means. She is a healer with a healing ability which can, with proper equipment, be made capable of activating every two rounds and heal the party completely, rendering many battles easy so long as you can avoid a TPK for two turns. For players that don't like using a lot of healing items she is arguably the strongest character. However, her strength comes entirely from her ability to quickly heal the party, she is otherwise underwhelming in health and especially damage. The Fridge Logic kicks in here, because in the early game, the time when everyone insists she is powerful, she always fights alone. A solo Erin, before drives made it possible to speed up her healing, would easily get overwhelmed and killed before she could build up resources for a heal or do much damage. Effectively she is only powerful when put in a team and the only times the plot calls her out as powerful is the times she isn't with a team. Plus no one ever mentions her ability to heal when mentioning her danger, despite this being the only thing that makes her a viable character at all. The bonus characters are all NPCs that were either bosses or allies who were powerful in cutscenes, but they all start at level 1. The only saving grace is that they have lower EXP requirements and good stat growths, meaning they can easily surpass the main party members.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_442ce200	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_442ce200	featureConfidence	1.0
Alter A.I.L.A. (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_442ce200
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4499d6a0	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4499d6a0	comment	Feena from Grandia fits this as well. She's supposed to be a legendary explorer and adventurer, and everyone is in awe of her, but once she joins you she's not particularly powerful compared to anyone else apart from the fact that she's the first playable character to have magic (which the others can start learning shortly afterwards).
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4499d6a0	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4499d6a0	featureConfidence	1.0
Grandia (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_4499d6a0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_44e0cf22	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_44e0cf22	comment	Legend of Legaia 2 Averts this with Kazan, an old, highly trained martial artist who joins the team literally 15 levels higher than the rest of your party (a young man with a few years of combat training and a young woman with none) and stays that way until they catch up with him. He quickly makes work of every enemy they encounter for the next few dungeons.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_44e0cf22	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_44e0cf22	featureConfidence	1.0
Legend of Legaia (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_44e0cf22
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a84be6	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a84be6	comment	As a boss in Final Fantasy III, Odin has his trademark move, Zantetsuken: fearsome, impressive and capable of wiping your entire party to shreds in a single turn. Only after you defeat Odin and get him as a summon do you realize that Zantetsuken is actually pretty useless: it misses every single endgame boss and a lot of random encounters, and the ones that it doesn't can easily be defeated via other means anyway.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a84be6	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a84be6	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy III (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a84be6
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a87cb3	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a87cb3	comment	In Final Fantasy VII, Cloud Strife is introduced as a former SOLDIER First Class — the strongest member of an elite group of super-soldiers. Of course, gamewise he's level 1, clearly much weaker than SOLDIER Third Class, and is only stronger than the regular military police. As it turns out, there's an in-universe justification for this — Cloud was never in SOLDIER, and is repressing his actual past due to trauma and being experimented on by Shinra. Sephiroth massively averts this when he is briefly on your team for a flashback sequence (where "SOLDIER First Class" Cloud is yet weaker still); he is literally invincible, has high-level magic attacks that can destroy entire teams of enemies with ease, and is strong enough to kill a dragon in two hits (although at higher levels, you can kill those dragons in one). He is so powerful that you don't actually control him at all- he attacks on his own, and he's there partly to showcase what a badass he is, and partly just to show you up. He will sometimes kill every on-screen enemy before you have a chance to do anything.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a87cb3	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a87cb3	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a87cb3
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a88435	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a88435	comment	There are quite a few examples in Final Fantasy XII. They include a sky pirate and his partner, who is described as a "master of weaponry" but is only two levels ahead of your character when you recruit him. What's worse, said two characters are actually the worst characters to use their starting weapon types which they're implied to be most adept at using, mostly because their attack animations with those weapon types are by far the slowest in the party. Fran is the oldest of the main cast, comes from a race of magical huntresses and can single-handedly take down several imperial soldiers during cutscenes. Which makes it all the more surprising that she is the statistically WORST party member by a small margin. The game also makes a big deal in one boss battle about how she (and presumably other Viera) goes into a feral rage when mist starts filling the area. This is represented by putting her in permanent Berserk status for that battle; later in the game, you go to areas that are permanently filled with mist with no similar effect. Well-justified with Basch, who was once a renowned knight but has just spent two years imprisoned in horrific conditions. One character explicitly remarks on how much weight (and presumably muscle) he's lost.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a88435	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a88435	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy XII (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_49a88435
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4ce5263e	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4ce5263e	comment	XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its sequel avert this. Your soldiers have a standard 70% chance to hit, and generally good chances to avoid panicking. The former is amazing by real life standards and the latter is good as well, considering that the game takes place in an alien invasion.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4ce5263e	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_4ce5263e	featureConfidence	1.0
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_4ce5263e
Overrated and Underleveled / int_526d4c5c	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_526d4c5c	comment	Knights of the Old Republic: Carth is "one of the Republic's best pilots," "a hero of the Mandalorian War and a legendary soldier." He's only a couple clicks higher than your starting character, possibly justified in that being a crack pilot doesn't mean much in on-the-ground fighting (the bulk of your game). Bastila? The paragon of Padawans and key to the war effort - at less of a starting level than you will be at that point, which is also handwaved by her being an adept of Battle Meditation, an exceedingly rare ability that, by augmenting her allies' fighting prowess, boosted her reputation. The "near-killed-and-left-with-amnesia" excuse shows up to explain why you, the ex-Dark Lord and galaxy-feared Badass are a rather pathetic fighter for a few levels and also further explains why your "exceptional" compatriots seem so mediocre in comparison. And in the second game, damage and age are used to explain the low starting levels for Canderous, who becomes the Mandalore and the droids when Exile finds them.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_526d4c5c	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_526d4c5c	featureConfidence	1.0
Knights of the Old Republic (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_526d4c5c
Overrated and Underleveled / int_541c1f0f	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_541c1f0f	comment	Sword and Fairy 7 has a Physical God as a party member, while the rest are just trained magic-using humans. In cutscenes he Flash Steps around before anyone can react and knocks people out with a single chop. In gameplay, he has some high-damage skills and Flash Step instead of dash, but otherwise he's no stronger than the other characters.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_541c1f0f	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_541c1f0f	featureConfidence	1.0
Sword and Fairy 7 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_541c1f0f
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5908ee91	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5908ee91	comment	Skyrim: Ulfric Stormcloak, should the player pursue the Imperial questline. The game practically treats Ulfric as a king-slaying, Thu'um throwing, Memetic Badass, if dialogue is to be believed. Yet when an Imperial-Alligned Dragonborn storms his castle, his own Dragon is harder to kill than him. The meta reason takes this trope literally. Up until patch 1.6, all NPCs were leveled based on when the player first encounters them. And Ulfric is the 3rd character you see in the opening sequence. So, you were essentially fighting what would be a challenging enemy, if you were at level 1. Even with the patch to buff his health, his outfit possesses a whopping 7 armor rating (the weakest item in the weakest armor set in the game gives an 8), so any decently-skilled character will wipe the floor with him. Humorously, if one uses the console to spawn Torygg (the king he murdered) and set them to attack each other, Torygg will win most of the time, even if Ulfric shouts him down. Lord Harkon, Big Bad of the Dawnguard DLC, claims that the Vampire Lord transformation will make you "a lion among lambs". Regular city guards can defeat you easily in this form, and you're often better off as your normal self, as the Vampire Lord cannot use equipment (other than certain rings) and doesn't have access to your regular set of spells. It can be useful in areas where you're deprived of your regular equipment, such as Cidhna Mine. If you manage to get it as early as you can, it can be extremely useful early on for caster characters, who in the early game struggle to hurl more than one or two firebolts before running out of Magicka - the Vampire Lord form gives you a decently powerful projectile with a low mana cost that also heals you. It's only later on in the game, when you properly level up your crafting skills, that its usefulness falls off, but then again, Destruction magic in Skyrim is underwhelming in general due to the lack of an enchantment to increase its damage. Werewolves suffer the same problem in the lategame, where their claws no longer compare to a good blade and their lack of armor cripples them severely, considering that they are melee-oriented. Several of the Daedric artifacts are talked up as world-shakingly powerful, which they don't live up to. For example, the Rueful Axe is described by its creator as "incredibly powerful" and guards will remark on how it could cut through gods. While it's got good base damage, it's far from the most dangerous of its type, and its enchantment adds stamina damage, which is hardly that exciting. Adding to the problem is the fact that most of these artifacts, for no discernable reason, do not benefit from smithing perks, meaning that you can upgrade them by only half of what you could do with a regular weapon. For that reason, the most useful Daedric artifacts are ironically the ones that are not combat-oriented at all.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5908ee91	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5908ee91	featureConfidence	1.0
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_5908ee91
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5c66fff9	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5c66fff9	comment	In Neverwinter Nights 2, we have Ammon Jerro, who is stated by several characters to be "a wizard of some power," others to be "a powerful sorcerer," and still others "an extremely powerful Warlock." In-game, he only has Warlock levels and is fairly powerful, but all the descriptions of him suggest that he is, in fact, every single frelling spellcaster class available short of Bard, and should technically have more levels than the game suggests is possible. When you actually fight him, his summoned help is ever-so-slightly harder to beat than he is. Although this is justified by his powers being based on various pacts and agreements with certain fiends: When you destroy his Haven you strip him of his power, which he mentions. And all those NPCs calling him sorcerer or wizard are in no way knowledgeable about differences in spellcaster classes - all they know is that he uses spells. By the time you get him, he is level 15+. By Dungeons & Dragons standards, this is actually an extremely high level, especially for anything that is remotely a caster.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5c66fff9	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5c66fff9	featureConfidence	1.0
Neverwinter Nights 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_5c66fff9
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5e733985	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5e733985	comment	Langrisser 2 employed this to hair-pulling extent, where Leon, a Level 6 Knight Master, joins you as a computer-controlled unit for one battle and then offers to join you. If you accept, he loses nearly 30 levels on the spot. (To add insult to injury, several party members leave you and appear at least 10 levels higher as enemies the very next stage.)
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5e733985	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5e733985	featureConfidence	1.0
Langrisser (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_5e733985
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5f6f0132	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5f6f0132	comment	Adell in Disgaea 2. Although he starts the game at Level 1, as appropriate for an RPG hero, he's already traveled all over the world of Veldime looking for Overlord Zenon, whom he's sworn to defeat — and Veldime has some pretty dangerous regions to search through. When he couldn't find the Overlord, he instead traveled all over Veldime again to collect the ingredients his mother needed to summon Zenon — which included killing a few mighty beasts. So, he's supposed to be much stronger in the story than his level in the game indicates. This is how he can block one of Etna's attacks in a story segment, even if gameplay wise she has over 100 times his Level. You could explain this through the game's Fourth Wall-lessness, where Adell should be level 1 as it's the start of the game. Disgaea also contains a mechanic that allows a character's level to be reset to 1 in exchange for higher base stats. It's possible he Reincarnated just before the beginning of the storyline. Adell's passive ability is to do more damage to enemies that are a higher level than him. While this wouldn't allow him to match enemies that are of a significantly higher level in actual gameplay battles, it could be used to justify his power in the storyline. The Updated Re-release of Disgaea 2 parodies this with one of the DLC unlockable characters, in which Hanako sacrifices a copy of Phantom Brave in which all the characters are leveled up to 9999 (Don't think too hard about the fact that Phantom Brave is disk based...) for a summoning ritual. All that comes out of it is a level 100 Marona. Near the beginning of Disgaea 2, your party runs into Demon Lor...erm...Beauty Queen Etna from the first game, who is Level 1,000 (compared to your party being maybe Level 10 or so.) Later on, Etna becomes the strongest Demon on the planet and is inadvertentely summoned by Adell's group when they try to summon Zenon again (only this time, by not summoning Zenon specifically, but by summoning "The Strongest Demon In The World" instead.) However, since Etna gave them bad summoning materials out of spite, she messed up the ritual and suffered severe level drain in the process. Only now does she join your party (or rather, stalk your party until she gets her levels back.) Near the end of the first game you are stopped by some "powerful" demon lords (they're roughly level 80) and your group starts to lose hope when they're inspired by the sudden appearance of... Kurtis! Who joins your group so you can fight the enemies properly. ...Except he's level 50 and has no notable equipment, and you can't take the time to change equipment or level him up until after you've defeated the demon lords. He's also reincarnated as a prinny to atone for his sins, and his old friends have trouble taking him serious at first. Note that at the same time he is Underrated and Overleveled as he joins as a Level 50 Prinny.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5f6f0132	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_5f6f0132	featureConfidence	1.0
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_5f6f0132
Overrated and Underleveled / int_629cd094	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_629cd094	comment	At Ostagar in Dragon Age: Origins, it takes an ogre and several waves of darkspawn forces to finish Duncan off in a cutscene. In the Fade sequence, it takes you a couple of minutes at most (to kill Duncan). Justified in that it's not really him, but a demon guarding the main boss of the level.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_629cd094	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_629cd094	featureConfidence	1.0
Dragon Age: Origins (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_629cd094
Overrated and Underleveled / int_640d9be1	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_640d9be1	comment	Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade has Cecilia, who, despite being the Mage General of Etruria, has very mediocre stats (most significantly, her 10 Speed, which isn't enough for her to double anything that isn't an armor knight, is one of her higher stats). Compare that to Perceval, the Knight General, who has 18 Speed without Hard Mode Perks, and even Douglas, the Great General and a Mighty Glacier, has 8. The base parameters of her class (high movement, good rescuing capability, an Armor-Piercing Attack with the option to hit hard on fliers, and staff use to cure status and heal allies) make her an alright Support Party Member, though.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_640d9be1	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_640d9be1	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_640d9be1
Overrated and Underleveled / int_67ce5a04	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_67ce5a04	comment	Averted by the royal families in Fire Emblem Fates. Between amazing bases, growths, and being perfectly specced for their jobs, they all come across as the Badass Family of Royals Who Actually Do Something the story says they are. Although this does have elements of Tropes Are Not Bad, since this makes it very hard for other units to compete for a place on your team when a royal fills that niche - to the point where they're collectively considered a High-Tier Scrappy in some circles, and not using any of the royals is commonly considered a Self-Imposed Challenge.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_67ce5a04	featureApplicability	-1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_67ce5a04	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem Fates (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_67ce5a04
Overrated and Underleveled / int_68cc5557	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_68cc5557	comment	Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem: Hardin is the leader of a band of exiled soldiers who have been escorting their princess and fighting a guerilla war against the Macedonian Army for some time. You'd expect him to be a prepromote or at least very high-level, but he's only a level 6 cavalier, albeit an unusually strong one. His four subordinates are pretty unimpressive at base level, and in the original game, two of them are some of the weakest characters in the game. Minerva in the original NES game, Warrior Princess of Macedon and famed as The Crimson Dragoon, is a level 1 Dracoknight, and due to the way the game calculates stats, she has the same stats as a generic enemy in her class (she's still very strong, but it can be rather disconcerting to compare her to another Dracoknight). Every game afterward gave her some buffs to be more fitting of her reputation. Her elite subordinates, the Whitewings, also aren't particularly high-level in their original appearance, with two of them being more Magikarp Power than anything. Jeorge is notable for being renowned as the "greatest sniper on the continent" but is a prepromote who's average and not really noteworthy statwise aside from his very high bow rank. This is explained in-game, however: due to the high-class nature of his bloodline, people have been spreading ridiculously exaggerated rumors about him, leading to this false reputation. Zig-zagged with Gotoh. He was the original 11th-Hour Ranger in the series, and in the original NES game his stats definitely befitted his legendary status, having 20's in most areas, which was the maximum at the time. In the remake, Shadow Dragon, however, stat caps are higher than 20 but Gotoh's base stats were left unaltered, leaving him to fall victim to this trope. He's never playable in either version of Mystery of the Emblem, probably to avoid this trope. Despite taking place after the first book, the second book of Mystery doesn't take your stats from a playthrough of the first book into account, instead simply giving characters preset levels and stats. Consequently, while just about everyone has gone up a few levels and gained about the right stats for those levels, the amount of levels they've gained is considerably less than what you'd expect—most notably, Marth has gone from level 1 to level 3. While some of this could be explained with them having lost their skills in the three years in between, it doesn't work as well for characters who stayed frontline troops or have been actively involved in other events, particularly the Whitewings. Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem is notable for this, due to growth rates and enemy strength being hugely inflated across the board; consequently, just about every character to join after the Sable Knights will be struggling to survive past their join chapter. Astram is one of the most notorious cases, due to the fact that he's recruited from the enemy side. This means that you can compare this guy, who is supposed to be the World's Strongest Man, to the soldiers he commands... and holy crap does he not stack up well. On the highest difficulties, he can be one-rounded by every single one of them. Even the thieves.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_68cc5557	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_68cc5557	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_68cc5557
Overrated and Underleveled / int_69a9d669	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_69a9d669	comment	Garr in Breath of Fire III. The story presents him as a extremely powerful warrior with skills way above the strongest warriors in the world. He always joins the annual Warrior Tournament as a solo entry, while the standard is to register a team of three. Balio and Sunder, the duo of two Hopeless Boss Fights, tremble by just being stared by him. He eventually joins your party in the third battle against the duo, and after killing them, casually remarks that he was eventually planning of disposing them. After all that insane shilling and hype, he turns out to be, in-game wise, a bog-standard Mighty Glacier that does nothing particularly impressive and is easily outranked by Ryu. He has a plethora of Fire spells but his magic is so low that even his strongest spells can't match the power of his standard attack.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_69a9d669	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_69a9d669	featureConfidence	1.0
Breath of Fire III (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_69a9d669
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6bef8832	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6bef8832	comment	In Baldur's Gate III, your party members have reputations and histories quite at odds with the fact they all start at level 1. Some are given an attempt at justification, even if they sometimes aren't enough: Gale was a human wizard powerful enough to draw the attention of the goddess of magic herself, who took him as a lover for a short time, but now he has a Fantastic Nuke stuck inside him, which he is deathly afraid to set off and took most of his magic to implant inside him and is actively eating the magic within and around him. Wyll was a vigilante whose exploits were told through all of Faerun, and who considered diving into Avernus to kill one of Zariel's top lieutenant a task he had good odds of coming back alive from, but he explicitly notes that the tadpole he's been infected with has made him weaker (and that excuse probably apply to the entire party as well, but none besides him raise it as a possibility). Karlach is a soldier who proved herself a great asset in the Blood War, but the infernal engine powering her is explicitly weaker in the Material Plane (where your adventure takes place) than in Avernus, which was where she fought, but you'd think she'd still retain some feats or stats increases from her experience. Astarion is a vampire spawn and has served his master for the past two centuries. But not only was he fairly weak before (being regularly forbidden from feeding on people), the tadpole is explicitly messing with his vampiric nature (which is how he can walk outside on a sunny day, among other things). The Dark Urge is eventually revealed to have been the Chosen of Bhaal in the same way Ketheric Thorm, the Climax Boss of Act 2, is of Mrykul and Gortash, one of the other two Big Bad, is of Bane. which should make them as powerful as them, but they still start at level 1. Their case is justified, however: Orin wounded them, wrecking their body and severely damaging their brain when she usurped their position.. Jaheira returns in III, at the same level as Tav. For someone who, at the end of Baldur's Gate II, may very well have been at level 26, and has spent a century adventuring with the Harpers, this is... very low. Some justification is made, as Jaheira is now approaching the end of her life and feeling her age. Minsc returns as well, and he joins the group at the average level of your party. Which by the time you can recruit him, will be a respectable 10 to 12, but still nowhere near the level 26 he should be if he stuck with CHARNAME through the entirety of Baldur's Gate II (which he canonically did). Though, if Minsc and Jaheira had been kept at their old canon power levels, they would have been capable of soloing any boss battle in the game with ease, and probably not defeat but still present a credible threat to both Vlaakith and Zariel... Halsin likewise joins the group at the average level of your party members (since you will recruit him at the beginnig of act 2, he will be somwhere around level 9). For an archdruid, this will be exceedingly low when you can recruit him (for reference, the druids in the grove outside Trademeet in BGII won't even let you try to become an archdruid before you hit level 14, and you may need another level or two to actually succeed). In particular, while he is a Hunk and many people comment on his physical strength, his actual strength score will be the perfectly average 10 when he joins you, due to the game adjusting his stats for a Druid, where Strength is something of a Dump Stat. When he fights alongside you as a NPC earlier, his character profile has the much more adequate 16 Strength.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6bef8832	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6bef8832	featureConfidence	1.0
Baldur's Gate III (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_6bef8832
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f1bcb62	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f1bcb62	comment	Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn: Lucia and Bastian, Elincia's retainers. While both have excellent growth rates, they also have atrocious base stats for their high levels. The third, Geoffrey, is ironically the lowest leveled despite being the head knight, and his base stats are much better suited to his level. The trope is notably averted with Stefan, who, while a much higher level than the rest of your team at that point, has a stat spread that's more than adequate for his level (except for his paltry Luck score). This trend continues in the sequel, where he's among the last units you recruit in the game, but is no less effective than his fellow swordmasters (still has low Luck, though). It might have to do with his recruiting requirements and the implication that he's descended from a legendary member of the tribe that produced one of the Purposely Overpowered Laguz kings that joins in the final chapter. Then this gets completely defied by the Greil Mercenaries when they make their grand return in Radiant Dawn. Famed In-Story and the heroes of the previous game, they'd be a disappointment if they were anything less that absolute badasses more powerful than any other unit you have... so they're absolute badasses more powerful than any other unit you have. Despite the enemies scaling appropriately, the Greil Mercenaries have a much easier time with combat than any of the previous groups you control, and their chapters are made difficult mostly by virtue of escortees or time limits. Even once perspective shifts back to the other teams and they get enough experience to reach the same level, the Dawn Brigade and Royal Knights will struggle to outclass the Greil Mercenaries.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f1bcb62	featureApplicability	-1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f1bcb62	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f1bcb62
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f9447b6	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f9447b6	comment	God Eater 2: Rage Burst introduces Livie, a remarkably experienced God Eater who is used as a one-woman kill squad whenever a God Eater goes missing in the field. She can sync up with ANY God Arc, something exclusive to her and her alone due to her unique biology. But when she is forced onto your party, she has next to no Personal Abilities and the ones she has are inefficient and not that good at keeping herself alive in combat.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f9447b6	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f9447b6	featureConfidence	1.0
God Eater 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_6f9447b6
Overrated and Underleveled / int_74aab514	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_74aab514	comment	KanColle: Despite Johnston's historical showing where her historical counterpart unambiguously pulled off a feat rivaling or even surpassing Yuudachi, her surface combat stat in-game is pitifully low, only barely higher than Sammy B. (which only puts her pretty much dead average in night battle power compared to other DD) even though a Fletcher-class has way more firepower than destroyer escorts. This is probably because the developers chose to give her other roles instead, including the ability to perform OASW without any gear in her base form note All other ships that can do that like Sammy B., Jervis, Isuzu, and Tatsuta all need remodels to pull this off and, with right gear, having AACI that's among the strongest in the game, at least rivaling the Akizuki-class.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_74aab514	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_74aab514	featureConfidence	1.0
KanColle (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_74aab514
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7668653a	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7668653a	comment	Mass Effect 2: Your second batch of dossiers includes the assassin Thane Krios. In a bizarre quirk of Gameplay and Story Segregation, Thane is very useful for taking on Collectors in missions, as his specific powers are formidable against them, but when it comes to the game-ending Suicide Mission, he's a complete Master of None story-wise. He's ill suited for leading any of the available specialty roles (tech expert, fire-team leader, or biotic barricade) and his defense score towards holding the line is nothing special. There's also Samara, a thousand-year-old Asari justicar and accomplished biotic. Apart from Cutscene Power to the Max, she is not particularly more powerful in gameplay than other biotics although she is one of two people who can sustain the biotic barrier in the final mission. Jack, supposedly the most powerful human biotic ever born, is actually inferior to virtually all the other biotics in your team due to her bad power set. Not helped by her Cutscene Power to the Max intro which shows her blowing up the heads of mid boss level enemies with ease, something you can't remotely come close to doing even against the exact same enemies.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7668653a	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7668653a	featureConfidence	1.0
Mass Effect 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_7668653a
Overrated and Underleveled / int_78e27fa7	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_78e27fa7	comment	The Blazing Blade: Karel is Famed In-Story as "the Sword Demon", and many characters talk about his incredible feats like wiping out whole armies and slaying giant monsters. In reality, he has fairly mediocre stats for his level and is in a rather bad class (footlocked Fragile Speedster swordsman in a game that heavily favors mounts, raw power and durability, and axes), meaning that him wiping out whole armies is a tough sell. He's actually outclassed in every stat but Speed by Harken, who replaces him if certain conditions are met and is mostly just treated as a fairly experienced knight. His appearance in Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade depicts a much more experienced Karel who is a far stronger warrior—albeit one who suffers badly from Late Character Syndrome. The penultimate chapter, "Victory Or Death", introduces Renault, a mysterious, high-level Bishop with rare equipment and the ability to heal numerous units at once—initially, he may be seen as a godsend thanks to the continuous stream of high-level, dangerous enemies present in the level. However, his magical abilities are absolutely atrocious, implied through support conversations to be because Renault was a former mercenary who renounced his violent ways and embraced religion as penance. The process of discovering this, unfortunately, requires bringing a seriously underpowered character into the most dangerous part of the game.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_78e27fa7	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_78e27fa7	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_78e27fa7
Overrated and Underleveled / int_792239e5	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_792239e5	comment	Kratos in Tales of Symphonia is supposed to be a powerful, experienced mercenary, adept at both blade and magic, but when he joins he's only a level or so higher than the rest of the party (which at that point consists of only random schoolchildren) and knows only a handful of weak techniques. (Of course, there is a spoilerrific reason for this.) Later in the game he is replaced by another character, Zelos. Despite being a pampered noble, Zelos is effectively Kratos in combat: they have the exact same skills, weapon proficiencies and combat role, with only a few minor differences in stats (Zelos' are lower) and attack style (Zelos is better at using certain attacks). Oddly enough, when you have to fight them, even if they just left your party in the previous cutscene, they're suddenly tough enough to match the entire party all over again... but, of course, they're using their Angelic powers during those fights.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_792239e5	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_792239e5	featureConfidence	1.0
Tales of Symphonia (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_792239e5
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7c31fdd7	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7c31fdd7	comment	Any late-game recruit in Valkyrie Profile gets hit with this, but it's particularly stark with Lyseria and Gandar. The former is half-giant whose magic power was so great that she sealed herself so that her power wouldn't destroy the world. The latter is the most powerful sorcerer on Earth, who Odin specifically orders Lenneth to recruit so that nobody else (particularly Hel, queen of the dead) can get his power. However, due to showing up extremely late (the penultimate chapter for Lyseria, the final chapter for Gandar), and having base stats only marginally better than Mystina (who shows up at roughly the halfway point of the game, just after a Peninsula of Power Leveling opens up), most players prefer using Mystina and taking advantage of Hard Mode Perks to perform more tweaks to Mystina instead.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7c31fdd7	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7c31fdd7	featureConfidence	1.0
Valkyrie Profile (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_7c31fdd7
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7f9f892f	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7f9f892f	comment	In War Thunder many vehicles that in real-life were effective if not dominating can struggle because of game modes not favoring their intended role or the matchmaking putting them against comparable adversaries that they did not face historically. Due to how vehicles are balanced, though, sometimes they might even become very weak. One example are high speed supersonic interceptors such as the English Electric Lightning or the Lockheed F—104 Starfighters, which in reality were tasked of quickly scrambling and climbing to intercept high altitude Soviet bombers, but in-game are put in compressed dogfights against more agile and technologically advanced fighters. The update that introduced rank VI and supersonic jets showed the American F-100 Super Sabre, the Soviet Mig-19... and the British Gloster Javelin, which was a subsonic night interceptor, quite underleveled compared to the other two. The "Apex Predators" update of December 2022 introduced rank VIII with the F-16 Falcon, the Mi G-29... and the Tornado IDS. Presented as a comparable counter to the other two right from the cinematic trailer, the Tornado was by no means an "apex predator" during his service. It was in reality a strike aircraft. In-game, countries that operated it, such as the UK, Germany and Italy, don't have a counter to the F-16 spam until other aircraft are introduced. Even if the developes instead added first its interceptor variant, the Tornado ADV, it would have been in the same situation of the aforementioned Lightning as its role was different from what happens in game (and the Tornado ADV was even underwhelming as a platform).
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7f9f892f	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_7f9f892f	featureConfidence	1.0
War Thunder (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_7f9f892f
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814cd2	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814cd2	comment	Continuing with Final Fantasy IX, we have the character Beatrix. Being the general of an entire army, she can take quite a few hits from the party before she falls, and in fact can't be defeated at all. However, in the short time you fight alongside her, she is just about as strong as just any other party member, and it shouldn't take more than a few hits to K.O. her. This is in part due to a glitch; her HP, stats and abilities are identical to when she's a foe (save for the plot-convenient version of Stock Break she uses to end the battle), and another glitch in her two strongest attacks mean they don't register as special attacks, greatly reducing her usefulness.. Steiner gets hit by this trope fairly hard as well: he's consistently billed as Beatrix's equal, even accidentally wounding her in a sparring match once, yet at the beginning of the game he's level one.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814cd2	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814cd2	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy IX (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814cd2
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814e56	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814e56	comment	Terra in Final Fantasy VI is famed as a One-Man Army who singlehandedly wiped out dozens of Imperial soldiers in a demonstration. As she's the starting character, it's obviously some time before this is actually feasible. In the game proper, she's a Jack of All Stats who starts out with only a few very weak spells, and doesn't truly become a party powerhouse until she obtains Morph/Trance. Aside from two levels and some extra Magitek abilities, she's not much better than the two grunts escorting her.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814e56	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814e56	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy VI (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_86814e56
Overrated and Underleveled / int_87f2d9f8	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_87f2d9f8	comment	Mass Effect: Urdnot Wrex is a 1000-year-old mercenary who's been fighting since around the time Europeans discovered North America for the first time. While he's undenieably a powerful party member who's practically unstoppable if you choose the right skills when leveling him, he's still on par with the marine who's only fired her weapon in anger for the first time when you met her or the archeologist who doesn't even have any actual combat training when he first joins you.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_87f2d9f8	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_87f2d9f8	featureConfidence	1.0
MassEffect	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_87f2d9f8
Overrated and Underleveled / int_88a765a2	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_88a765a2	comment	In Romancing Saga 3, Muse may start off weak, but has an amazing stat-growth that allows her to become a really good magic-focused character when used. But she can't be recruited, until the Dream Eater sidequest is done because it involves saving her. And if the player doesn't do it soon enough, Muse joning the party with no skills is more of a hinderance to keep alive before she actually has the chance to really show her amazing upside.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_88a765a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_88a765a2	featureConfidence	1.0
Romancing SaGa 3 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_88a765a2
Overrated and Underleveled / int_90eb5a2	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_90eb5a2	comment	Tezkhra, the last playable character in The Reconstruction, is a god. Yet he moves at approximately the same speed as dirt and most of his abilities are Useless Useful Spells, making him more trouble than he's worth most of the time.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_90eb5a2	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_90eb5a2	featureConfidence	1.0
The Reconstruction / Videogame	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_90eb5a2
Overrated and Underleveled / int_919c4f7d	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_919c4f7d	comment	Since the party characters in each timeline of Radiant Historia don't overlap 100%, the levels of those characters that don't appear in both timelines tend to lag behind those that do (As all experience gained remains even if you go back and forth in time or change timelines, probably because doing otherwise would have been very difficult to program). This is especially true of Rosch, who isn't playable in a significant fraction of the timeline he is a member of the party in, what causes him to lag even further behind.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_919c4f7d	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_919c4f7d	featureConfidence	1.0
Radiant Historia (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_919c4f7d
Overrated and Underleveled / int_951c41c1	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_951c41c1	comment	Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 mostly averts this, with Famed In-Story characters like Galzus, Ced, Saias, Xavier, and Eyvel all being about as strong as you'd expect for characters of their status (though Saias does suffer some Redemption Demotion). Amalda, Conomor, and Diarmuid are on the weak side next to similarly-leveled units of their classes, but are still entirely competent fighters. Olwen is the most significant counterexample, being quite weak at base apart from her signature tome, but even she has a level of justification: she's been fairly sheltered and lacks experience.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_951c41c1	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_951c41c1	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_951c41c1
Overrated and Underleveled / int_959e84f	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_959e84f	comment	Terry from Dragon Quest VI suffers from this; in his first appearance, he is stated to be an extremely skilled swordsman and defeated several soldiers in Arkbolt that your own party beat as a team, and then proceeds to defeat a Hackasaurus that previously defeated said soldiers before your own party can do anything about it. When he joins you for real, he's likely a few levels lower than your party, with his only abilities of note being that he is already in an advanced job (which you likely have access to anyway) and has good equipment; statistically, he is weaker than the Hero or Carver. Furthermore, prior to having him join, he is fought as a boss battle where he is tougher than when he's in the party purely because Dhuran the Dread Fiend is empowering him, rather than any power of his own.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_959e84f	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_959e84f	featureConfidence	1.0
Dragon Quest VI (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_959e84f
Overrated and Underleveled / int_95f45f6b	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_95f45f6b	comment	Shadowrun Returns is repeatedly guilty of this: The final mission of "The Dead Man's Switch" has a famous character from the Shadowrun setting, Harlequin, a 2000+ year old immortal elf Magic Knight who is single-handedly a match for an entire high-level team in the tabletop, join your party. He's a rather underwhelming physical adept with some buffing spells, and while he'll pull his weight against your foes he is rather fragile and has nothing on a good mage or street samurai damage-wise. Similarly, you meet Jake Armitage from the SNES game. You see, the problem is that by the end of the SNES game, Jake was a badass decker-shaman that fought a Great Dragon and won. Here, he's only a bit more powerful than your fresh-out-the-new-game-screen character, and he's just a mage. When you meet him again much later he's still not much better than you'll be then. The supposedly famous and super-skilled deckers Dodger and Johnny Clean don't have very good stats or gear either.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_95f45f6b	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_95f45f6b	featureConfidence	1.0
Shadowrun Returns / Videogame	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_95f45f6b
Overrated and Underleveled / int_985ddbb1	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_985ddbb1	comment	Quattro in general really. It's most prominent in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, where his stats are some of the worst in comparison to other Gundam main characters including normal pilots like Kou Uraki and even Loran Cehack. And like in Z, he only get the Hyaku Shiki, and Sazabi is an Easy Mode only unit that is decent at best.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_985ddbb1	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_985ddbb1	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Robot Wars Alpha (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_985ddbb1
Overrated and Underleveled / int_98c55b59	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_98c55b59	comment	In Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: At the end of the game, you can add Arronax to your party. While he's at the maximum possible level allowed by the game engine, he equips no weapons nor armour, and most of the time prefers fists to his (quite decent) magic. This may, however, just be a result of a glitch. The dude single-handedly destroyed advanced technological civilization and was bad enough to be generally regarded as his world's Crystal Dragon Satan. This also happens to the other Banished villains - for example, a half-man-half-dragon creature whom the collective of most powerful mages of the world defeated after days-long battle. In general, most of the recruitable NPCs avert this. They're all set at static levels, and the locations you find them are often within their realm of ability. Franklin Payne (Gentleman Adventurer!) is hyped continent-wide for his famous and daring expeditions. By the time you qualify to invite him, any gunslingers currently in the party could have been better developed and better equipped, and all other character types are more effective in their specialty and still broadly useful. Franklin is a nice chap for such a Glory Hound, and entertaining to listen to, but he's a little late for the True Companions.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_98c55b59	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_98c55b59	featureConfidence	1.0
Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_98c55b59
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9b0ee54f	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9b0ee54f	comment	In Third Age: Total War, several factions qualify, but perhaps most egregiously, Gondor. Minas Tirith doesn't even have a grain exchange, and there is no place in Gondor that begins the game with the ability to train it's primary troops, or even a standing army of any kind! The closest is a bunch of scattered militias, which are capable but not exactly what you'd expect from one of the greatest kingdoms of Middle Earth, a shadow of it's former glory or not.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9b0ee54f	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9b0ee54f	featureConfidence	1.0
Third Age: Total War (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_9b0ee54f
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d34190a	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d34190a	comment	The Elder Scrolls: While certainly not in the majority of cases, a handful of "artifact" class weapons and items throughout the series tend to fall into this. Despite being items of legend, often crafted by and associated with divine beings, they often aren't even as powerful as generic items of the same time which have been custom enchanted by the player. Oblivion: The final boss of the Mages Guild questline, Mannimarco, "King Of Worms." While in the lore Mannimarco is by far the most powerful Necromancer in the series and a Physical God after the warp in the west at the end of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, here he's more or less a more powerful generic Altmer necromancer set to be 7 levels above the player until level 36 or higher (his level scaling stops at level 42). Skyrim: Ulfric Stormcloak, should the player pursue the Imperial questline. The game practically treats Ulfric as a king-slaying, Thu'um throwing, Memetic Badass, if dialogue is to be believed. Yet when an Imperial-Alligned Dragonborn storms his castle, his own Dragon is harder to kill than him. The meta reason takes this trope literally. Up until patch 1.6, all NPCs were leveled based on when the player first encounters them. And Ulfric is the 3rd character you see in the opening sequence. So, you were essentially fighting what would be a challenging enemy, if you were at level 1. Even with the patch to buff his health, his outfit possesses a whopping 7 armor rating (the weakest item in the weakest armor set in the game gives an 8), so any decently-skilled character will wipe the floor with him. Humorously, if one uses the console to spawn Torygg (the king he murdered) and set them to attack each other, Torygg will win most of the time, even if Ulfric shouts him down. Lord Harkon, Big Bad of the Dawnguard DLC, claims that the Vampire Lord transformation will make you "a lion among lambs". Regular city guards can defeat you easily in this form, and you're often better off as your normal self, as the Vampire Lord cannot use equipment (other than certain rings) and doesn't have access to your regular set of spells. It can be useful in areas where you're deprived of your regular equipment, such as Cidhna Mine. If you manage to get it as early as you can, it can be extremely useful early on for caster characters, who in the early game struggle to hurl more than one or two firebolts before running out of Magicka - the Vampire Lord form gives you a decently powerful projectile with a low mana cost that also heals you. It's only later on in the game, when you properly level up your crafting skills, that its usefulness falls off, but then again, Destruction magic in Skyrim is underwhelming in general due to the lack of an enchantment to increase its damage. Werewolves suffer the same problem in the lategame, where their claws no longer compare to a good blade and their lack of armor cripples them severely, considering that they are melee-oriented. Several of the Daedric artifacts are talked up as world-shakingly powerful, which they don't live up to. For example, the Rueful Axe is described by its creator as "incredibly powerful" and guards will remark on how it could cut through gods. While it's got good base damage, it's far from the most dangerous of its type, and its enchantment adds stamina damage, which is hardly that exciting. Adding to the problem is the fact that most of these artifacts, for no discernable reason, do not benefit from smithing perks, meaning that you can upgrade them by only half of what you could do with a regular weapon. For that reason, the most useful Daedric artifacts are ironically the ones that are not combat-oriented at all.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d34190a	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d34190a	featureConfidence	1.0
The Elder Scrolls (Franchise)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d34190a
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d80bbcf	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d80bbcf	comment	Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a few examples: Jubilost Narthropple is supposedly a legendary explorer, journalist, cook and author who has travelled the length and width of Golarion, writing up stories on its lands, people, customs and food for years if not decades. When he joins your party in-game he's level 5 (which is fair enough if he's avoided combat for most of those adventures), an alchemist (a class with a skill-set that isn't very conductive for exploring and writing), and hasn't got a single rank in Knowledge: World, the actual skill used for knowing customs and for cooking. Mechanically, Linzi is likely to be better at the things Jubilost are supposedly famous for, despite being a NaÃ¯ve Newcomer and a bard college drop-out in-story. Amiri's call to fame is that she slew a Frost Giant and took his weapon as her own. She joins the party at level 1, a point at which it is extremely unlikely she'd be able to so much as scratch a Frost Giant, nevermind slay one. This disrecepancy actually gets adressed in-story: Turns out Amiri simply found an already dead Frost Giant and looted his sword, and then made up the story that she killed him.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d80bbcf	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d80bbcf	featureConfidence	1.0
Pathfinder: Kingmaker (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_9d80bbcf
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a2c37f38	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a2c37f38	comment	Played extremely straight in Planescape: Torment - The Nameless One doesn't so much learn new skills as he remembers what his previous incarnations knew... and some of those were absurdly powerful.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a2c37f38	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a2c37f38	featureConfidence	1.0
Planescape: Torment (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_a2c37f38
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a4ff8e01	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a4ff8e01	comment	Fate/Grand Order: Siegfried is introduced with a lot of fanfare in the Orleans singularity as being basically the greatest dragonslayer in history, to the point that about half the story is dedicated to successfully restoring him to health so that he can kick ass again. When you actually pick him up, he's a Stone Wall whose anti-dragon skills are pretty much required for him to do any meaningful damage to them, and he doesn't even get a Tactical Rockâ€“Paperâ€“Scissors boost against any of the dragons in Orleans. This ended up creating the "SAVIOR OF FRANCE" joke, as the majority of players instead used whatever Assassins they could scrounge up (since Assassins do get that boost against the mostly Rider-class dragons), typically Sasaki Kojirou, and left Siegfried collecting dust. This applies to a lot of guest servants in the main story, barring a small handful like Jeanne and Caster Cu (who show up very early) as well as Merlin and Super Orion (who are just that good). No matter how Famed In-Story they might be, they can be somewhat underleveled, lack Fou statboosts, and are overall probably inferior to your main party, much less the Servants you can borrow from friends.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a4ff8e01	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a4ff8e01	featureConfidence	1.0
Fate/Grand Order (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_a4ff8e01
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a599305d	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a599305d	comment	Zero, the "Legendary Hero" from Mega Man Zero, was violently awoken from his 100 year rest and has forgotten most of his fighting techniques. True to his series heritage, he recalls most of his techniques after beating a boss and mimicking its attacks. This is further justified in Mega Man Zero 3 where it's revealed he's not the original Zero.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a599305d	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a599305d	featureConfidence	1.0
Mega Man Zero (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_a599305d
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a81325d3	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a81325d3	comment	Final Fantasy Tactics games: Cloud in Final Fantasy Tactics is extremely useless unless you put a ton of effort into raising him properly. Despite being pretty strong in his own game, he joins your party at level 1 and he can only use his special abilities from the Soldier class if he has a certain sword equipped, which is pretty weak compared to other weapons. Most of the time, you are better off raising Cloud with whatever job classes you have available rather than stick to his default class. Thunder God Cid, however, is just given to you without any effort at all and very much does live up to his name and legend. He very easily becomes the most powerful PC in the game, to the extreme that the rest of the game can be solo'd by him and him alone. Ezel from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is touted as a character who can make any law cards that can easily nullify whatever laws are set in battle and is someone that is quite elusive. However, Ezel is just a reskin of the Alchemist class. He only has two abilities (one which makes you immune to status ailments once and another that puts all enemies to sleep) and can't change classes at all. Despite Ezel having extremely high magic power, he posses no abilities that are based on it. Along with being extremely slow, physically weak, having low HP, and can't even walk into water due to a glitch, Ezel may look like a powerful character but is absolute crap in battle. Even if Ezel joins your clan, he won't give you law cards for free, thus you still have to barter with him to get the cards you want. Al-Cid in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. He's a powerful opponent when you fight him, but he loses several levels once he joins your clan. He is the only human in the game that can use a gun in battle, which would have made him extremely awesome, but like with Ezel in the above example, Al-Cid can't change classes and most of his abilities revolve around the gimmick of females present in battle. If you don't have many female units in the clan, Al-Cid will become useless quickly.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a81325d3	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_a81325d3	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy (Franchise)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_a81325d3
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ad34ca69	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ad34ca69	comment	Al-Cid in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. He's a powerful opponent when you fight him, but he loses several levels once he joins your clan. He is the only human in the game that can use a gun in battle, which would have made him extremely awesome, but like with Ezel in the above example, Al-Cid can't change classes and most of his abilities revolve around the gimmick of females present in battle. If you don't have many female units in the clan, Al-Cid will become useless quickly.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ad34ca69	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ad34ca69	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_ad34ca69
Overrated and Underleveled / int_aeedf9b7	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_aeedf9b7	comment	In Vagrant Story, the main character's Backstory involves him being among the baddest of badasses, but he gains amnesia before the game starts and forgets most of his past — and most of his fighting skills. He doesn't actually learn new attacks; he "remembers" ones he already knew from before he lost his memory.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_aeedf9b7	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_aeedf9b7	featureConfidence	1.0
Vagrant Story (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_aeedf9b7
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0544c4d	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0544c4d	comment	Quattro Bajina in Super Robot Wars Z is a variation on this, he's one of the best pilots in the game(He usually is. In fact, here he's probably second in Z only to Kei ) but rather than getting his own top of the line mobile suit, he's got the OK Hyaku Shiki, which is not very good compared to the units you get late game. UNLESS you do what many do and put him in the ∀ Gundam..... Quattro in general really. It's most prominent in Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, where his stats are some of the worst in comparison to other Gundam main characters including normal pilots like Kou Uraki and even Loran Cehack. And like in Z, he only get the Hyaku Shiki, and Sazabi is an Easy Mode only unit that is decent at best.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0544c4d	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0544c4d	featureConfidence	1.0
Super Robot Wars Z (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0544c4d
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0666b59	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0666b59	comment	In Neverwinter Nights, the novice players are tasked by Lady Aribeth to defend the city. Aribeth is a legendary fighter and defender of the realm. In a major plot point she later turns heel and the players must fight her. Fortunately, by this time the players have been adventuring for a few months and any one of them could mop the floor with Aribeth without much difficulty. In Neverwinter Nights 2, we have Ammon Jerro, who is stated by several characters to be "a wizard of some power," others to be "a powerful sorcerer," and still others "an extremely powerful Warlock." In-game, he only has Warlock levels and is fairly powerful, but all the descriptions of him suggest that he is, in fact, every single frelling spellcaster class available short of Bard, and should technically have more levels than the game suggests is possible. When you actually fight him, his summoned help is ever-so-slightly harder to beat than he is. Although this is justified by his powers being based on various pacts and agreements with certain fiends: When you destroy his Haven you strip him of his power, which he mentions. And all those NPCs calling him sorcerer or wizard are in no way knowledgeable about differences in spellcaster classes - all they know is that he uses spells. By the time you get him, he is level 15+. By Dungeons & Dragons standards, this is actually an extremely high level, especially for anything that is remotely a caster.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0666b59	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0666b59	featureConfidence	1.0
Neverwinter Nights (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_b0666b59
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b358111c	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b358111c	comment	Star Ocean: Till the End of Time: Albel Nox, who is level 29 (according to the guide) when you fight him, and level 24 when you get him. Adray is praised as a great magician and swordsman, yet he starts at a level in the mid-twenties when you should be around fifty, Fayt absolutely destroys him in swordplay and Sophia outclasses him in magic to the point of seeming like a Goddess by comparison. Justified as she had genetic engineering for that purpose and Fayt had been training with video games his whole life and had the destructive gene.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b358111c	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_b358111c	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_b358111c
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0c57462	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0c57462	comment	Magus from Chrono Trigger is an infamous case, as he is an incredibly powerful dark wizard with powerful magical barriers when he fights against the party, but upon joining becomes a run-of-the-mill spellcaster who has to learn all of his Dark spells over again. This is justified by having the game's Big Bad drain him of most of his power shortly before he joins the heroes, but we all know it's really thanks to Health/Damage Asymmetry.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0c57462	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0c57462	featureConfidence	1.0
Chrono Trigger (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0c57462
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0eae17	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0eae17	comment	Total War: In Rome: Total War, Carthage. Historically, Carthage at their height dominated the western Mediterranean and was an equal of the Roman Republic militarily and economically. The three Punic Wars fought between the two nations were the largest wars that had ever taken place at the time and lasted over a century. Carthaginian forces under Hannibal threatened the heart of Rome in a way no other outside force would for hundreds of years after. In-game, however, Carthage is significantly inferior to the Roman forces in just about every way. Only Carthage's highest-tier units like the Sacred Band heavy infantry beat out their Roman equivalents, and it's rather rare for Carthage to last long enough in the campaign to recruit them in significant numbers. Carthage is also lacking archer units of any sort (though this appears to be due to a bug, as they exist in the game files which can be easily modded to add them into the game). Essentially, if you're hoping to rewrite history by leading Carthage to victory over Rome, be prepared for a much tougher task than you might expect. In Third Age: Total War, several factions qualify, but perhaps most egregiously, Gondor. Minas Tirith doesn't even have a grain exchange, and there is no place in Gondor that begins the game with the ability to train it's primary troops, or even a standing army of any kind! The closest is a bunch of scattered militias, which are capable but not exactly what you'd expect from one of the greatest kingdoms of Middle Earth, a shadow of it's former glory or not.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0eae17	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0eae17	featureConfidence	1.0
Total War (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_c0eae17
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c2463c55	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c2463c55	comment	Half of the main characters in Final Fantasy X. The former guardians Lulu, Wakka, and Auron supposedly had all completed most or all of the pilgrimage, and the Level Grinding that entails, prior to the beginning of the game, but all start at effectively level 1. The monsters at the Calm Lands, which all three Guardians supposedly made it to, could have killed all three guardians with a sneeze at the beginning of the game. This also occurs very blatantly in a plot-relevant Minigame: While the original members of your Blitzball team are certainly not the best players out there in the long run, the extremely-hyped, won-the-championship-many-years-in-a-row Luca Goers are a highly competent, tough to beat team... at level 1. They also have pretty much the worst stat growth in the game, rendering them ineffective by the time players' levels are in the teens. The first, story-mandated, match against them needn't be won, which is good because winning it usually involves taking advantage of the fairly simple Blitzball AI and Tidus's unique special moves. By the second or third league season they almost never even pose a challenge. The Al Bhed Psyches, on the other hand, start and remain a formidable team, and their starting goalie is a prized recruit for players who seriously pursue Blitzball; however, the story never actually makes much of their abilities, even having them try to win by cheating in a cutscene-only match. They're also the first team the pathetic Aurochs defeat in ten years in the storyline, making it even more confusing once you play them normally. It is also a good question why all Blitzball players in Spira, many of whom are implied to participate in previous games, start all at level 1. Especially since both Besaid Aurochs and Luca Goers all explicitly won matches just before the one you play.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c2463c55	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c2463c55	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy X (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_c2463c55
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c67a1218	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c67a1218	comment	In The Legend of Dragoon: Rose was one of the original Dragoons, and arguably the strongest considering she was the only one to survive the final battle. Since then she has had 11,000 years to train. So why is she no stronger then two (admittedly competent) soldiers when she joins the party after all that training? Kongol, a former enemy boss, is also something of a disappointment when he joins you.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c67a1218	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_c67a1218	featureConfidence	1.0
The Legend of Dragoon (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_c67a1218
Overrated and Underleveled / int_cf0163b3	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_cf0163b3	comment	In Assassin's Creed Origins, Aya is touted as Bayek's equal as a warrior. During the moments you play as her however, since none but the most basic of Bayek's abilities carry over and she's restricted to a set of leveled gear she ultimately comes off as mechanically weaker.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_cf0163b3	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_cf0163b3	featureConfidence	1.0
Assassin's Creed Origins (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_cf0163b3
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d0ea0838	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d0ea0838	comment	Ashlay in Star Ocean, who is a grizzled and aged veteran, swordsman known the world over, personal friend of most of the world's royalty... and joins at level 15, only to be very quickly overshadowed by Ratix. However, unlike most examples of this trope, there is an easy way to justify this though: Much of the story of his skills were in the past, by now he's obviously past his prime thanks to being almost sixty years old and he only has the use of one arm (in the remake, he is flat out missing the arm.) Ashlay actually plays this trope fairy realistically too â€• Sure he knows a lot of technique, but isn't very good long-run because he literally is an old man. His knowledge of techniques DOES have one perk though. He can't use them anymore, but if you recruit him he can teach the main character several powerful sword skills he cannot otherwise get.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d0ea0838	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d0ea0838	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Ocean (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d0ea0838
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d3b17858	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d3b17858	comment	Cloud in Final Fantasy Tactics is extremely useless unless you put a ton of effort into raising him properly. Despite being pretty strong in his own game, he joins your party at level 1 and he can only use his special abilities from the Soldier class if he has a certain sword equipped, which is pretty weak compared to other weapons. Most of the time, you are better off raising Cloud with whatever job classes you have available rather than stick to his default class. Thunder God Cid, however, is just given to you without any effort at all and very much does live up to his name and legend. He very easily becomes the most powerful PC in the game, to the extreme that the rest of the game can be solo'd by him and him alone. Ezel from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is touted as a character who can make any law cards that can easily nullify whatever laws are set in battle and is someone that is quite elusive. However, Ezel is just a reskin of the Alchemist class. He only has two abilities (one which makes you immune to status ailments once and another that puts all enemies to sleep) and can't change classes at all. Despite Ezel having extremely high magic power, he posses no abilities that are based on it. Along with being extremely slow, physically weak, having low HP, and can't even walk into water due to a glitch, Ezel may look like a powerful character but is absolute crap in battle. Even if Ezel joins your clan, he won't give you law cards for free, thus you still have to barter with him to get the cards you want.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d3b17858	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d3b17858	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy Tactics (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d3b17858
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d616724d	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d616724d	comment	The playable characters in League of Legends have four usable abilities, but when you start a game with them, they can only use one, and are actually rather weak with less than a thousand health. Especially when you look at some of their backstory. However; this is presumably invoked by having spells around the fields of justice so that the champions powers are kept equal or in check. Even though players will forever argue about champions being overpowered and underpowered. Explained away in-game as having to summon the champions every time a new battle starts, creating a fusion of the summoner and champion who has to learn how to use their powers and abilities again. Killing minions and champions presumably assists this process.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d616724d	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d616724d	featureConfidence	1.0
League of Legends (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d616724d
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d6206c4c	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d6206c4c	comment	In Rome: Total War, Carthage. Historically, Carthage at their height dominated the western Mediterranean and was an equal of the Roman Republic militarily and economically. The three Punic Wars fought between the two nations were the largest wars that had ever taken place at the time and lasted over a century. Carthaginian forces under Hannibal threatened the heart of Rome in a way no other outside force would for hundreds of years after. In-game, however, Carthage is significantly inferior to the Roman forces in just about every way. Only Carthage's highest-tier units like the Sacred Band heavy infantry beat out their Roman equivalents, and it's rather rare for Carthage to last long enough in the campaign to recruit them in significant numbers. Carthage is also lacking archer units of any sort (though this appears to be due to a bug, as they exist in the game files which can be easily modded to add them into the game). Essentially, if you're hoping to rewrite history by leading Carthage to victory over Rome, be prepared for a much tougher task than you might expect.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d6206c4c	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d6206c4c	featureConfidence	1.0
Rome: Total War (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d6206c4c
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d628f901	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d628f901	comment	Leon in Tales of Destiny is supposed to be an elite military warrior, carefully trained since childhood to be a prodigy general. Yet when he joins the party, he's at the same level as the low-level thieves (+ country bumpkin) he easily wiped the floor with moments before.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d628f901	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d628f901	featureConfidence	1.0
Tales of Destiny (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d628f901
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d880e828	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d880e828	comment	In Defense of the Ancients, many of the heroes, according to their backstory, ought to be powerful beyond belief already, but for balance everyone starts at level 1.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d880e828	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_d880e828	featureConfidence	1.0
Defense of the Ancients (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_d880e828
Overrated and Underleveled / int_de8f1f24	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_de8f1f24	comment	And then Kingdom Hearts III plays this straight for Sora and averts it for Riku and Aqua, which is also justified due to events at the end of Dream Drop Distance.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_de8f1f24	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_de8f1f24	featureConfidence	1.0
Kingdom Hearts III (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_de8f1f24
Overrated and Underleveled / int_df8856e6	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_df8856e6	comment	Merik in Dungeon Siege is talked up as a magical badass, but when you finally meet and recruit him he turns out to be a plain nature mage... who is lower level then you. Especially bad if your main character is a nature mage himself.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_df8856e6	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_df8856e6	featureConfidence	1.0
Dungeon Siege (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_df8856e6
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e04f934e	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e04f934e	comment	Played with in regards to the Knights of Seiros you can recruit in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Despite being experienced knights, the best of the best, they join you at a level considered appropriate for the story. That said, they arrive already in an Advanced class regardless of level, and their statline reflects this. They also tend to arrive well-suited for that job and often carrying powerful equipment (Catherine is a Disc-One Nuke for exactly this reason) so all up they're hardly a disappointment. Likewise, the protagonist's father, Jeralt, is a famous mercenary known as the Blade Breaker, and former captain of the Knights of Seiros, but in the prologue, he's only a Level 3 Paladin; he's definitely the strongest unit on the map on non-Maddening difficulties, but isn't as powerful as he should be. Also applies to Byleth, since you start at level 1 despite having over ten years of experience as a mercenary.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e04f934e	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e04f934e	featureConfidence	1.0
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_e04f934e
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e1886e7a	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e1886e7a	comment	Rather disappointingly enforced by paladin Artix of DragonFable In his own movie (Artix VS The Undead), Artix was shown to slay hundreds of Undead with a swipe of his sword. In game however he is a level 3 Paladin who seems weaker than your main character, bar his four-hit Light combo. Justified when you find out while talking to Artix that after fighting a deadly creature summoned by a Master Necromancer, he sealed the monster inside his battleaxe and as a result of the battle lost 30 levels. Implying that before the battle, he was still very much a badass at level 33. Even at level 3, his four-hit combo is extremely powerful, and turns most fights at lower levels into cakewalks. Add the fact that the increase in damage from level 3 to 33 is generally at least 1000% and you realize that he was originally probably capable of taking out the player's full-grown dragon.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e1886e7a	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e1886e7a	featureConfidence	1.0
DragonFable (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_e1886e7a
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e5de407c	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e5de407c	comment	XCOM is infamous for this. Your troops, supposedly drawn from the best of Earth's special forces, are pathetic chumps who stormtroopers could give a run for their money. Of course, one could argue that the aliens are just that good at their job... if your soldiers didn't constantly panic and drop their weapons. XCOM: Enemy Unknown and its sequel avert this. Your soldiers have a standard 70% chance to hit, and generally good chances to avoid panicking. The former is amazing by real life standards and the latter is good as well, considering that the game takes place in an alien invasion.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e5de407c	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_e5de407c	featureConfidence	1.0
X-COM (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_e5de407c
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ecd2d797	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ecd2d797	comment	The trope occurs in the first Baldur's Gate game. Several NPCs who offer to join you early on (Xzar and Montaron, with Khalid and Jaheira following shortly after) are supposedly experienced adventurers, yet upon joining the party they are all revealed to be no more powerful or better equipped than the player character, a novice going out into the world for the first time. By the same token there's also Gorion, who's only Level 9 despite being stated to have regularly run with Elminster's crew back in the day.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ecd2d797	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_ecd2d797	featureConfidence	1.0
Baldur's Gate (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_ecd2d797
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f10619d8	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f10619d8	comment	Jade from Tales of the Abyss is advertised as one of the most powerful and feared sorcerers in the world, but is hit by a bad guy's special item early in the game which causes him to lose access to all but his most basic spells. He spends the rest of the game gradually breaking the seals on his magic, which by a crazy coincidence happens at more or less the same rate as the other, less-experienced characters are learning new skills. Crazier still, after he remembers all his old abilities and regains his old stats, he keeps gaining new ones at the same rate. He joins your party for a short while before this, and he's a good 40 levels higher than your party by that point (assuming the player isn't grinding). He drops to around the same level as you when his artes are sealed.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f10619d8	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f10619d8	featureConfidence	1.0
Tales of the Abyss (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_f10619d8
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f5a661a6	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f5a661a6	comment	Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: Most of the party are implied to be veterans of some kind, or at least skilled in their craft, but they start with low levels and horrible equipment. The only ones to avert this are Arueshelae and Greybor who come later and thus have higher levels and equipment; as well as the few companions like Ember and Woljif whose backstories don't involve much actual combat experience. Seelah perhaps suffers from this the most, as she's an Iconic character who's already been through at least one adventure and yet she starts off at level 1 with gear to match.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f5a661a6	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f5a661a6	featureConfidence	1.0
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_f5a661a6
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f6a54e75	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f6a54e75	comment	Kingdom Hearts actually zig-zags this trope quite a bit, often starting you at level one with no abilities by putting you in control of a different character, while playing the trope straight and explaining why it's played so. In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Sora enters Castle Oblivion just days after beating the final boss of the first game. If you remember, by then Sora had become quite the capable fighter, but Marluxia informs him that right as he entered Castle Oblivion, he forgot all of his abilities and had to re-learn them. However, at the end of Chain of Memories, Sora is put to sleep for a year, having his memories also siphoned off during the events of 358/2 days and by the events of Kingdom Hearts II, is level one again and has to re-learn all his magic while also picking up new tricks. It's easy to assume he still knew these; just didn't immediately remember them right off the bat. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] justifies Sora and Riku being rewound to level one because they must "restart their training". And then Kingdom Hearts III plays this straight for Sora and averts it for Riku and Aqua, which is also justified due to events at the end of Dream Drop Distance.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f6a54e75	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f6a54e75	featureConfidence	1.0
Kingdom Hearts (Franchise)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_f6a54e75
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f9368d52	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f9368d52	comment	In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Sora enters Castle Oblivion just days after beating the final boss of the first game. If you remember, by then Sora had become quite the capable fighter, but Marluxia informs him that right as he entered Castle Oblivion, he forgot all of his abilities and had to re-learn them. However, at the end of Chain of Memories, Sora is put to sleep for a year, having his memories also siphoned off during the events of 358/2 days and by the events of Kingdom Hearts II, is level one again and has to re-learn all his magic while also picking up new tricks. It's easy to assume he still knew these; just didn't immediately remember them right off the bat. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] justifies Sora and Riku being rewound to level one because they must "restart their training".
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f9368d52	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_f9368d52	featureConfidence	1.0
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_f9368d52
Overrated and Underleveled / int_fa5e90fd	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Overrated and Underleveled / int_fa5e90fd	comment	City of Heroes uses different stats and AI for allies compared to enemies. This can be clearly seen in Gaussian's story arc, where the previously incompetent Longbow allies that you've fought with for a few missions now are suddenly much, much tougher when you have to fight them instead. Vanguard also demonstrate this. The player will usually fare better against the Rikti than Vanguard does, but when the player has to fight Vanguard during a civil war they are suddenly so much more deadlier that you wonder why they couldn't do anything without your help before.
Overrated and Underleveled / int_fa5e90fd	featureApplicability	1.0
Overrated and Underleveled / int_fa5e90fd	featureConfidence	1.0
City of Heroes (Video Game)	hasFeature	Overrated and Underleveled / int_fa5e90fd

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Bikini Warriors / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Phantasy Star Online 2: The Animation / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Being Able to Edit Skills in Another World, I Gained OP Waifus / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Fake Saint of the Year / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Console RPG Clichés 121 to 144 / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
OverRatedAndUnderLeveled	sameAs	Overrated and Underleveled
OverratedAndUnderLeveled	sameAs	Overrated and Underleveled
OverratedandUnderleveled	sameAs	Overrated and Underleveled
Restart at Level One	seeAlso	Overrated and Underleveled
VideoGameCharacters	seeAlso	Overrated and Underleveled
Age of Wonders 3 (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Baldur's Gate III (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
BattleTech (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
BattleTech (2018) (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Betrayal at Krondor (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Beyond the Beyond (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Bleach: The 3rd Phantom (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Bravely Second (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Breath of Fire III (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Captain Tsubasa (Video Game) / int_fec6ba37	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Chaos Wars (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
ClaDun (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Crash: Mind Over Mutant (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Dawn of the Dragons (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Dead Ahead Zombie Warfare (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Defense of the Ancients (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Video Game) / int_a8bee57	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Dragon Quest VI (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Drakensang (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Exit Fate (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
FTL: Faster Than Light (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Final Fantasy Tactics (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Final Fantasy V (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Glory of Heracles (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Grandia Xtreme (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Guild Wars 2 (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Imperator: Rome (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Marvel: Avengers Alliance (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Mount & Blade (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
PokÃ©mon Super Mystery Dungeon (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Rome: Total War (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Shadowrun (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Shin Megami Tensei V (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Star Wars: Battlefront II (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
StarCraft II: Co-op Mode (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Steam World Quest (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Super Robot Wars BX (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Super Robot Wars W (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Tales of the Abyss (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
The Legend of Dragoon (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Total War: Shogun 2 (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Total War: Warhammer (Video Game) / int_d6fb6a77	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Total War: Warhammer II (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Unchained Blades (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Valkyrie Profile (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
War for the West (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Wasteland 2 (Video Game) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney â€“ Trials and Tribulations (Visual Novel) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
Adventurers! (Webcomic) / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled
The Reconstruction / Videogame / int_9b8e2257	type	Overrated and Underleveled

Copyright of DBTropes.org wrapper 2009-2013 DFKI Knowledge Management. Imprint. - Thanks to Bakken&Baeck for hosting. Contact.
Copyright of data TVTropes.org contributors under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.