Your favorite overpowered ability, gear, item, weapon, unit, etc.?

It's cool when games are fine tuned, well balanced, and the difficulty feels spot on. On the other hand, sometimes there is nothing better than an OP weapon that makes you feel like you completely owned the game. A classic example might be the pistol in Halo: CE.

For me, the one that comes to mind is the Scout unit in the first Valkyria Chronicles. You can run around all over the place cuz its stamina is crazy. The rifle's damage output really isn't that bad and it has a pretty awesome range. It's simply miles better than all the other units. Deploying a bunch of them makes you feel like a filthy cheat but also like an elite squad of badasses.

What OP thing in a game gives you the most satisfaction?

Can I just submit the entire junction system of FF8.

I honestly don't mind games where there is an initial difficulty spike, and then at some point you just become so OP you can wreck everything.

While it might not be one specific thing, I think Saints Row The Third and Fourth do a great job of this. In the Third you start out pretty GTA, and by the end the majority of your weapons wrecks everything, and you have flying VTOLS. 4 has all the superpower stuff so by the time you level even a bit of it up you pretty much just wreck though everything.

For something a bit more specific, both time slowing arrow ability in AC Origins/Odysessy and the predator takedown chain they added to the later Arkham games come to mind. If you know what your doing you can leverage either of those to make lots of encounters meaningless.

The best feeling is in Slay the Spire when you play as the Defect and you get lots of powers and relics that feed off each other. Every time you play a power, you draw two cards, get lightning orbs, and another card costs 0, so get these outrageous long turns where you run through nearly all your power cards at once. At one point I got like eight Storm, so every time I used any power I channeled eight lightning orbs. It's so ridiculously overpowered, but it's incredibly rare, and I've been struggling to get anywhere near this combination lately.

Half-Life 2's gravity gun is pretty damn satisfying. (although i'm not sure it's truly OP until the end sequence)

More recently, the push Launch ability in Control is great and works against almost anything, including bosses.

My favourite is still the Halo pistol though...

Calculator's in FF: Tactics. Wildly overpowered.

I was going to say that Halo:CE pistol...

Does launch Scorpion in MK11 count as a weapon? ;)

The last level of Half-Life 2 is great for this reason. Just pick dudes up and fling em around with the super gravity gun. It's very satisfying. I would also nominate the last level of Titanfall 2 for the same reason.

I really like finding the incredibly powerful legendaries in Borderlands that just lay waste to anything and everything in their paths. I dipped into a couple of BL3 games with randoms the other day and everyone just seemed to be using legendary Flakkers that killed almost everything before the enemies had a chance to react. It honestly wasn't fun as a participant in the action as it didn't leave me much to do, but if I can find one of those for myself I'd love it.

Helicoptering in to say the Komaki Tiger Drop.

Tammy's Head + Brimstone (Binding of Isaac: Rebirth), pretty much destroys every room.

In Skyrim, boosting Enchantment high enough so that Destruction magic costs nothing to cast.

Infinite fire, lightning and ice. All day, erryday.

Your AI crew in Wildlands. Sit back and watch the murder team go! (Jeff is totally right, very OP, but weirdly fun)

The Estoc is Dark Souls 3. Fast, light and hits faster than most weapons in the game. I've found I could take on two players with ease, watch one get stun locked while their friend is having a hard time hitting my light weight character that is slowly killing their ally with a million pin pricks(closer to a few dozen) and barely losing any stamina.

Nothing like sending invaders home with such an OP weapon.

The Mammoth MKII in Tiberium Sun

Pathfinders grapple in Apex is pretty OP. Just saying.

I don't know if they changed that to be harder in the more recent Yakuza games, but I could never do them reliably. Booting up Y3, though, the timing window is so generous that you're basically unstoppable. All of the parry moves in that game are baller.

Sniper in XCOM: EU

BFG, always.

Tecmo Bo is a great one...as is Mel Grey in Sega’s Sportstalk games on the Genesis.

I'm always fond of when games give you one final reward right towards the end of the game that is basically just the ability to ignore all of the challenges that got you to that point. A lot of metroidvanias do this very well in giving you movement abilities that just launch you through screen after screen. It's very satisfying.

Getting in a scorpion in a Halo game is maybe the best example of this I can think of. It's just such a power trip, maybe the best in video games. Supremely satisfying without imbalancing the game or anything.

The kick in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements

I bet I have a more fitting answer in the back of my head somewhere. But since I've been on a journey through several fire emblems recently, the first one that comes to mind is Titania.

Titania is a unit you get in FE: Path of Radiance's first mission. She is already promoted which makes her 10-20 levels stronger than every other unit you have available. She is a mounted paladin with insane stats and good skill with multiple weapon types. She's so absurdly overpowered that you can literally drop her alone against a swarm of 10+ enemies and she will kill all of them in one turn on counterattacks alone and will most likely not even take enough damage to drop under half health.

Her archetype is supposed to fall off towards the later parts of the game and mostly be a buff unit to help you through the early parts. But if you let her get experience and have her keep up in levels, she will STILL be an above average unit in the last few missions. She's basically just a god for 70% of the game and a demi-god for the last 30% when other units start overleveling her. Fucking love Titania man.

@tobbrobb: I played PoR earlier in the year and I absolutely adored her. It was my 1st FE and she helped tremendously as a beginner. I went in with a lot of anxiety about the series but she built my confidence and made it fun from the start.

@liquiddragon: That's great! I think that's the exact reason this archetype exists. I call her overpowered, but I think that is by design. I still think that game can be difficult in spots, and you have to be smart and strategic to beat missions even though Titania just mauled half the map on her own. The "Jagen" types exist in most FE games and are pretty much always fun to use. Titania is probably my favorite though.

I'm currently making my way through Binding Blade, and I really don't know if some of the boss enemies are even beatable without using Marcus (Titania equivalent). That game has some savage encounters in it lol.

You gonna play any of the other ones? Radiant Dawn, Sacred Stones or Awakening would be my suggestions if you want to tackle another. There's a bunch of other good ones, but I think Sacred Stones and Awakening are just solid overall, and Radiant Dawn is the followup to Path of Radiance.

@tobbrobb: Ah the beauty of Fire Emblem where she has always turned out trash in my game.

The jump in Super Mario

@tobbrobb: I found out about the Jagen types 6-7 chapters in. Before then I was abusing the shit out of her so I tried to avoid using her to get the other characters leveled up in the middle parts of the game. I started to use her more again towards the back quarter of the game just cuz I really liked her as a character.

I'm definitely looking to get into the series. I have 3H but I'm not in a mindset to commit to a super long game atm. That'll be my next FE tho. I want Radiant Dawn after that. Seems a bit divisive so I'm interested to see where I land on it. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the characters again regardless. But man, it's one of those series, now that I'm in, I'm looking at a decade+ long project. lol So many of them and most of them look worth playing through.

The mechanics to unlock it are pretty shitty, but the Human Plus stuff in Armored Core. Particularly the sword wave

Early on it is a nice flourish and a way to conserve ammo on the longer missions (of the earlier games). Once you get the better swords it is more powerful than most guns. And there is a reason that the competive scene (what little there was) tended to ban Moonlights

@liquiddragon: The jagens exist to be used. so i wouldn't worry too much about it. just as long as other units get their share too its ok to use them a lot. Titania is too cool not to level.

I think the most divisive aspect of radiant Dawn is that they sort of shoehorn you into not sticking to a core team of favorites. Characters leave and come back all the time so its hard to focus on just a few, you end up playing with your B and C team characters a lot. But on the other hand it has a huge roster so you generally always have a few cool people. i dont mind it personally.

@liquiddragon: Well if you go into the weeds a Jagen is a borderline worthless unit that you take the weapons from and let enemies waste attacks.

Titania is a different archetype called an Oifey which is basically the same classes of characters but under the hood they give them stats than ensure they actually turn out strong... usually.

Fire Emblem archetypes are an insane rabbit hole.

J.R. Smith was a super fun hits every three and dunks from anywhere guy in the 2K series for several years.

The Gold Peacekeeper in Apex Legends is insanely empowering, so of course it's almost never in the loot table.

I never got deep enough into FFTactics to master the mage/pure strategy types, but if you boosted a Monk just a decent amount early on in the game that guy could march around the map solving all your problems for you. The first time I played the game I found it super challenging once magic started playing a major role, but I liked the monk class so much when I played it years later I just focused really hard on that character and they basically packed the rest of my team away in a backpack and carried them for thirty hours.

@tobbrobb: Right, I know that now...There were a lot of lessons to be learned. It took me about as long to pick up on exp. distribution and last hit. I was a bit paranoid that I poured too much exp. on Titania so I decided to sideline her for awhile.

Regarding RD: oh, I thought I saw some differing opinions on the quality of the story or at least the storytelling. Didn't the localizers use an incomplete script or something? Anyway, the aspect you're talking about intrigues me.

@efesell: oh ok, gotcha.

Here's a Football Manager one: Rangers vs. The Scottish Third Division (2013).

The guns i made in Dead Space 3, extreme horror game? Not really, satisfying and fun? 100%.

There was a special machete in Dying Light you could get relatively early in the game that just completely wrecked the game’s difficulty. It was a riot. I also agree with the sniper in XCOM: EU.

Final Fantasy Tactics in multiple ways. Others have been mentioned throughout here, but the Ninja/Haste combo is one as well that is broken. But all goes to prove an interesting point that game balance is I think overrated at the favor of fun. Breaking the system with overpowered feeling results in FFT is cool and there's a reason it's still the best game of the type.

Also a good answer. With the jetpack, and the fucked up sight lines that allowed you to shoot through walls and things at times, it got mindless even but was nevertheless fun.

In War of the Chosen version of XCOM 2 several classes can feel broken as well in a very fun way that makes you feel powerful.

The Shield Rod + Alucard Shield combo from Symphony of the Night comes to mind. Just being able to walk forward with a shield out without having to ever stop to fight is so good when you gotta move through areas you’ve already been through a hundred times.

Edit: Being able to beat any end game boss with relative ease isn’t so bad either.

I am not going to name a particular weapon here, but there is nothing in gaming like the feeling of getting a great weapon in a hard-as-nails roguelike. Enter the Gungeon and Immortal Redneck come to mind. Both games feature guns that are intentionally limited in their abilities, but also have some really powerful weapons you can find. After a half dozen frustrating runs finally getting your hands on a gun that makes you feel empowered and able to take on all challengers and then blasting your way through a boss that has been giving you trouble is just a tremendous feeling. I remember when I finally got a good load out of guns and scrolls in Immortal Redneck and FINALLY beat that first pyramid after smacking my head against it for SO long. It was an incredible feeling. The second and third pyramids were basically cakewalks after that.

It is so satisfying to turn the tables on enemies who have tormented you for dozens of hours, and it adds excitement to each time you see a treasure chest or loot room because it could completely change the way the game plays in your favor. A++

@boozak: The melee ability is that good? Huh, and here's me who ignored it the entire time.

Stasis in Greedfall. When you're starting out you can put one enemy in stasis. It's very useful for locking down the elite of the group while you deal with the rest. Then you can upgrade it so that it also destroys armor. And then there's a second ability that lets you use stasis as an AoE.

I would dash into the center of a group and hit 'em with an AoE. Normal enemies would be frozen for upwards of 30 seconds (the entire fight basically), while the elite would stay in stasis for 10 or less. Focus fire the elite, re-apply the AoE, and then focus the rest down one by one. The party member AI is smart enough to not attack an enemy in stasis so they'd wait for me to attack someone first and then they'd jump in.

It's truly unfair.

@bane: I was talking about whatever telekinesis was called in that game Launch. The melee was kind of crap, unfortunately.

Another I just thought of was the flame Igni ability in the Witcher 3. (all signs throughout The Witcher series are fairly OP) Specifically once you upgrade it into a flamethrower you can take out entire groups (shields and all) without even thinking about it. (I played on Death March and that was my strategy for most fights)

EDIT: I corrected the names of abilities I forgot to avoid confusion.

I always got a kick out of the siege tanks in the original StarCraft. I slowly inched my way to many campaign victories with those things.

Spread. Other options were fun, like flamethrower and rapid fire. But Spread is Spread.

Tita in Trails in the Sky First Chapter Evolution. Her attacks are always AOE, she has AOE crowd control AND comes with healing that doesn't require time to cast. Just put her in the party and you're immortal. Only true for her in the Evolution version of the game, however, she's rather useless in any other release

I'll also have to go with the Komaki Tiger Drop, feels so good to stand there all nonchalant then punch out a bunch of mooks with 1 punch that sounds like a cannon in a split second. Also pretty fun for bullying bosses.

If you like overpowered weapons, I recommend Noita.

In a recent run I came to a particularly troublesome level. So I just blew up the entire level.