History Main / PowerupLetDown

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect'' has the high explosive weapon upgrade, which basically makes guns into rocket launchers. The problem is that they also instantly overheat your weapons, making them useless for a few seconds. That, combined with the fact that the game has plenty of grenades, makes high explosives fairly useless. It still works well with the shotgun; explosive rounds and a few other upgrades give it an absolutely monstrous knock-back effect, without increasing the cooldown time beyond the maximum. [[CycleOfHurting Since it takes longer for your victim to stand up than it takes for your Über-shotgun to cool down]]... It's also devastating with the sniper rifle, which very nearly overheats after every shot ''anyway''.

* ''MassEffect'' has the high explosive weapon upgrade, which basically makes guns into rocket launchers. The problem is that they also instantly overheat your weapons, making them useless for a few seconds. That, combined with the fact that the game has plenty of grenades, makes high explosives fairly useless.
** It's situational. High Explosive works well with the shotgun; explosive rounds and a few other upgrades give it an absolutely monstrous knock-back effect, without increasing the cooldown time beyond the maximum. [[CycleOfHurting Since it takes longer for your victim to stand up than it takes for your Über-shotgun to cool down]]... It's devastating with the sniper rifle, which very nearly overheats after every shot ''anyway''.

** The other backpack-based items aren't much better. The Darwin's Danger Shield gives 25 more max health, and that's it. The Cozy Camper slows you to a crawl when scoping or drawing a Huntsman arrow, but also stops the aim from jerking when getting hit and gives a very slight (as in, 1 HP per second) RegeneratingHealth function.

** The Frog Suit makes traversing water levels easier, but on land, it hops as opposed to walking, which makes it much more difficult to control and prevents Mario from building up running momentum. The only way to circumvent this is by carrying an object, but nothing in the game can be carried indefinitely.

** Another PowerUpLetdown is the Mystic Melody. It extremely hard to find, [[GuideDangIt wasn't ever mentioned or even hinted at]], and could only be used for two things: Completing a mission to earn HundredPercentCompletion and finding shortcuts/power ups.

* ''EndlessFrontier'' -- When combat robots Nacht and Abend join your team they act as a PowerUpLetdown: they share a character slot with Gespenst whose provides the best support attack in game. Since the robots take turns to appear whenever you summon them, the support attack become less reliable. This is somewhat made up by the fact that after they join, Haken gains a new special skill that involves calling them to gang up on a single enemy. While this attack can't be comboed into or out of, it also isn't a subject to [[ScrappyMechanic Forced Evasion]] and it does roughly the same amount of damage as Haken himself would've done with his full set of attacks, if not more.

*** [[JokeCharacter Delibird]], [[ButtMonkey as usual, seems to get it the worst.]] Its Hidden Ability is the sleep-preventing Insomnia, which doesn't seem too bad, until you remember that one of its original abilities, Vital Spirit, ''[[RedundantDepartmentOfRedundancy does the exact same thing]]''.

** Fortunately, not all is lost; against the [[DemonicSpiders annoyingly lethal]] Chain-gunners, the "Blur" significantly reduces their accuracy rendering them (and all bullet-shooting monsters) far more manageable when fought in groups. Against projectiles, it is just best to save the power-up for mobs that can pump you full of lead.

** Fortunately, not all is lost; against the [[DemonicSpiders annoyingly lethal]] Chain-gunners, the "Blur" significantly reduces their accuracy rendering them (and all bullet-shooting monsters) far more manageable when fought in groups. Also, it can be used decently against projectile monsters at a distance as long as the player only moves when a projectile is actually coming for their true location, but it still becomes more unpredictable the more monsters there are. A level designer may want to consider providing these power-ups in levels that contain many of these bullet-shooting enemies.

** Though note, it makes you basically immune to all enemies except named ones,drow, giants, demons and dragons for all of the expansion pack, except for a handful of guards here and there. Also, if you activate it before finishing the trials, the trial of wrath is rendered harmless as he only has a +1 weapon. The massive Oasis in ToB battle is a joke with that power, as only the commander has weapons that can hurt you. The abilities are actually more a play through perk then anything. Much like the stat manuals in the first game allowing you to have ridiculously high stats starting in BG2, BG2 had the hell trial abilities, which a fresh character in ToB would completely lack, in addition to most of the best gear.

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has a few as well. Consider the "Elijah's Last Words" perk. It's obtained by completing a very difficult DLC, finding a hidden message, and giving it to Veronica, one of your companions. It increases her Melee Weapons speed and gives her a chance to knock down enemies with every melee hit. Too bad she's an UNARMED specialist and her Melee Weapons skill can never rise above 18, making this promising-in-theory ability absolutely useless.

** A depressing number of Perks from ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'', ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout Tactics|BrotherhoodOfSteel}}'' fall into this category. An unnecessary number of Perks only give flat bonuses to skills (and you have more skill points than you know what to do with by level 12 or so). Others are incredibly situational (Silent Death has 6 separate prerequisites that have to be fulfilled for its double damage to take effect), useless in general (Adrenaline Rush maxes out the easiest stat in the game to max out normally, but only when you're on death's door), too weak to matter (Bonus Ranged Damage grants a measly +2 damage), or broken (one of which is ironically named "Break the Rules). In some cases, Perks did this between games--the version of Quick Pockets in ''Fallout 2'' is vastly superior to the one in the original game, and the change of engine between ''2'' and ''Tactics'' made the formerly BoringButPractical Bonus Move useless 90% of the time (originally, it granted 2 AP that could only be used for movement. This allowed melee characters to close faster and all characters to move tactically while saving their real AP for attacks and items. The ''Tactics'' version increases how much ground a character covers per AP spent, which means it's only useful when a melee character is pursuing a new target).

*** Scizor is an example of both reasons at once. One of the main reasons it has become so popular is the synergy its moveset has with its Technician ability, so it would take a ''really'' good ability to outdo it. However, Scizor's Hidden Ability is Light Metal, whose only practical use is reducing the damage taken from Low Kick and Grass Knot, neither of which Scizor was particularly concerned about in the first place, meaning it's comparatively useless.

**** Light/Heavy Metal as Hidden Abilities are relatively useless in their own, for the aformentioned reasons- the only Pokemon who have the Ability usually don't worry about Heavy Slam, Heat Crash, Grass Knot, and Low Kick, since they're heavy enough it doesn't matter much. Bronzong also suffers because both of its regular Abilities remove one of its weaknesses (especially Levitate, against the omnipresent Ground-type moves). Aggron doesn't really benefit anyways, as it already has the maximum weight for Grass Knot/Low Kick to do most damage, and Heavy Slam gets full power + STAB even without Aggron's Ability; its original Abilities (Sturdy lets it get in at least one move without dying to Earthquake or Close Combat, and Rock Head has only three recoil moves to work with, one of which is at least STAB Head Smash) are okay, but better than Heavy Metal.

*** Wobbuffett gets Telepathy as its Hidden Ability, which makes it immune to ally attacks. While it does make it slightly more useful in double/triple battles, keep in mind that its original Ability Shadow Tag (prevents enemy from switching) was what made it a GameBreaker in the first place.

* ''BattleGaregga'': Anything that could be considered an upgrade to your ship will turn up the DynamicDifficulty. Thus, in order to keep the game manageable, you'll need to keep your shot power and option count down.

* ''{{Gradius}}'': the speed-up powerup is useful for the first few iterations, making your slow-as-molasses ship move more like a starfighter should. However, the last few levels make the ship fairly difficult to control, especially for new players. This is a hazard because [[EverythingTryingToKillYou everything, environment included, is trying to kill you]]. [[hottip:*:''{{Gradius}} III'' avoids these problems and so is not an example. It is possible to set up your ship to actually have a speed-''down'' powerup, and ''Gradius V'', on hitting maximum speed, turns the "Speed Up" icon into an "Initial Speed" icon that resets your speed.]]
** ''[[{{Gradius}} Gradius ReBirth's]]'' hidden Type E configuration allows you to get the V. Shot which grants you the ability to fire simultaneously up and down...''at the cost of being able to fire forward''. It also has the Vector Laser, which can pierce through structures, but it's weaker than the main shot, and can't destroy combustible walls, which means if you get trapped by Stage 2's regenerating walls or go into a bonus stage, you're ''screwed.'' Double is this in most games up to ''Gaiden'', because selecting it halves your fire rate.

* Some of the ''{{Raiden}}'' games have the Plasma Laser, which locks onto enemies, but does less damage than the spreadshot and regular laser.
** ''RaidenFighters'' has a special [[AttackDrone Slave]] formation that causes your Slaves to automatically seek out enemies and latch onto them, allowing them to be easily destroyed. But unlike other ShootEmUps, {{Attack Drone}}s in this game have limited health (too many hits to a drone and it's destroyed). Not just that, but on some stages, they can destroy targets you don't want to destroy, such as the Miclus-hiding turrets in ''Raiden Fighters Jet'' Simulation Level 05.
* SigmaStarSaga was a GBA RPG/SHMUP hybrid. You could customize your cannon with different styles of firing, bullets, and effects on impact. There were multiple cannons (firing directions) which were basically devoted to firing only vertically, only backwards, etcetera. Usually, they all had one use somewhere, like in a mini-boss battle, but with these kinds of battles being random battles, you were usually best off with just your good old "Shoot Straight" cannon.

* ''{{Zanac}}'': the shield powerup causes the DynamicDifficulty to go batshit.
* ''HeavyWeapon'' has your first level of SpreadShot. This changes your shot into a double shot, which makes aiming somewhat weird because you will not have a shot that goes straight. Not that big of a problem until the third level where you fight [[GoddamnedBats trucks]], and aiming your gun directly straight at them will cause your shots to hit the ground if you are too far away.

* ''FireShark'' has the common blue and green powerups. Once you get the rare [[GameBreaker red powerup]] (deadly flamethrowers that sweep the whole screen), these will replace it with the blue SpreadShot or the green wave laser (decent, but pale in comparison to the flamethrower). Worse still, once these powerups appear on screen, they will bounce all over the place a few times before disappearing. Which means you will want to avoid them along with the fast-moving enemy bullets!

*** Any Steel or Ground-type Pokemon with Overcoat (nullifies damage from sandstorms and hail) as a hidden ability. Because of their Ability, they're already immune to sandstorm damage, and Hail is basically unheard of in the metagame.

*** Forretress has Overcoat as its Hidden Ability, which makes it immune to sandstorm and hail damage. Except that because it's part Steel-type, it's immune to sandstorm damage, anyways; hail is basically unheard of in the metagame.

** ''OrderOfEcclesia'' features the Volaticus glyph, which is an awesome glyph that allows you to fly freely around the screen. So why is it a letdown? It's gained so late in the game that you barely get to ''use'' it unless you do the BonusDungeon Large Cavern. Does make Dracula much easier, though, reducing him to an easily-dodged flame pillar attack.

** Another PowerUpLetdown is the Mystic Melody. It extremely hard to find, [[GuideDangIt wasn't ever mentioned or even hinted at]], and could only be used for one thing: Completing a mission to earn HundredPercentCompletion.

** Protectors Anti(element) skills will ''completely'' block attacks of the corresponding element at level 5. If you upgrade them to 6 or higher, you will absorb the attack's damage and heal you, but will also let through any [[StandardStatusEffects secondary effects]].

** Due to a bug in the code, the Evade stat is never checked; the "Magic Block" stat is used to determine evasion rates for for both magic and physical attacks. Since shields primarily boost Evade, they're virtually useless. This was fixed in the GBA rerelease

* ''EndlessFrontier'' -- When combat robots Nacht and Abend join your team they act as a PowerUpLetdown: they share a character slot with Gespenst whose provides the best support attack in game. Since one of robots will appear ''randomly'' whenever you summon them, the support attack become less reliable. This is somewhat made up by the fact that after they join, Haken gains a new special skill that involves calling them to gang up on a single enemy. While this attack can't be comboed into or out of, it also isn't a subject to [[ScrappyMechanic Forced Evasion]] and it does roughly the same amount of damage as Haken himself would've done with his full set of attacks, if not more.
** It isn't random. They take turns. Gespenst always comes first, then Nact and finally Abend.

** The ''Meltdown'' spell itself can be one of these, since it damages the party when you cast it. If your party members have good magic defense or Fire-absorbing gear, it's not such a problem. Quake is similar, but the can be mitigated by the Float spell. Probably the worst example, besides the aforementioned Crusader, is ''WhirlWind''/''Tornado''; not only can it reduce your party members to critical HP, no equipment in the game will block it.