Limit Break / Video Games

Action Adventure

• Special combat moves in the Batman: Arkham Series require you to actively and continually use regular moves to build up your combos. Such a move is only available after every eight (five with an upgrade) combo multipliers, which are added when you land a hit on an enemy.
  • In battles against drones in Batman: Arkham Knight, the requirement is to destroy an enemy drone with the 60mm Cannon and the Vulcan Gun to charge a powerful Missile Barrage that can destroy multiple drones at once.
• God of War:
  • In God of War, Kratos has a meter which fills each time he deals damage. When it fills, it allows him to unleash the Rage of the Gods, which lets him attack quicker and stronger and unleash infinite magic attacks for as long as it lasts without draining his magic meter.
  • God of War II upgraded this to Rage of the Titans (which, although weaker than Rage of the Gods, can be turned off at will), and in God of War III, it got upgraded again to Rage of Sparta (where Kratos whips out the Blade of Olympus and the colors are desaturated to only show the blue of his sword and the red of everything else).
  • God of War (PS4): Kratos' Spartan Rage - Fury causes him to forego weapons entirely, unleashing his god powers through earth-shaking fist attacks.
  • God of War Ragnarök: Kratos gains two new types of Rage: Valor heals Kratos, and can be used to parry an attack and heal more. Wrath unleashes one empowered weapon attack that gives bonuses if it kills an enemy. In Valhalla, Kratos can retrieve the Blade of Olympus rage.
• inFAMOUS and inFAMOUS 2 have the Lightning Storm and the Ionic Powers respectively. The lightning storm drains ALL your energy in less than 15 seconds give or take and the Ionic powers have three uses. Then you have to go and kill people to pick up more of them. On the plus side, both of these kill basically anything in one shot.
• The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and its Spiritual Successor [PROTOTYPE] have the Critical Mass moves that are available when you have excess health or are at low HP; they kill pretty much everything visible on the screen (although regular moves start doing this when you are powered up enough.)
• [PROTOTYPE] and [PROTOTYPE 2] bring out Devastators. In Prototype, they're based around how much biomass you have, and a particular upgrade can give you the option to use one when you're at critical health. The limit actually makes sense because you're expending this extra biomass to launch the attack. They come in three flavors - Field of Blades, Wave-Motion Gun, and Sphere of Destruction. In Prototype 2, it's on a separate meter, but there's only the Sphere of Destruction variant and making your own monster bodyguards.
• Soul Sacrifice has the Black Rites, which are executed at low health because, by that point, paying prices such as burning off your skin seems reasonable.
• In Sakura Wars (2019), the members of the Imperial Combat Revue can use special attacks once their spirit gauge reaches full power including:
  • Kamiyama: Crossblades Tempest, a lightning-infused No-Holds-Barred Beatdown with his twin swords.
  • Sakura: Cherry Blossom Blizzard, a Sword Beam that can cleave several enemies in front of her. Following a Mid-Season Upgrade, her special attack is changed to Eternal Cherry Blossoms, which is functionally similar, but more powerful.
  • Hatsuho: Shinonome Ceremonial Hammer, a high-speed Spin Attack with a rocket-powered hammer that incinerates enemies in a cyclone of flame and steel.
  • Azami: Peerless Shuriken: A Flechette Storm of kunais, followed up by a powerful bomb that blasts away all enemies surrounding her.
  • Claris: Arbitre d'Enfer^note Hell's Judgment, a Magic Missile Storm that can target several enemies at once (or in the case of bosses, a concentrated barrage of magic bolts).
  • Anastasia: Apolito Miden^note Absolute Zero, an icy Wave-Motion Gun that can penetrate enemies in a straight line.
• Similar to the Batman Arkham games, Spider-Man (PS4) has a three-segment focus meter that fills when Spidey lands hits on his enemies, and can use special attacks that can One-Hit KO normal enemies in exchange for one segment of meter.

Action Games

• One of the licensed video games based on the Beast Wars franchise, "Beast Wars Transmetals", both fighters could stock up to three Super Attacks as they took damage during the battle. The amount required to earn their next Super Attack was proportional to their current HP, allowing a player at lower health to unleash more Super Attacks more often than their opponent.
• In The Bourne Conspiracy, when Bourne builds up enough adrenaline, he can execute a Takedown that often involves a combination of brutal hand-to-hand moves with using the environment to his advantage, or just a highly stylized shot — on mooks, this is an instant kill, while on bosses, it recovers some health and can possibly disarm them. (The pen stabbing from The Bourne Identity? That's a takedown.) With enough adrenaline, Bourne can also Takedown multiple enemies at once, requiring Action Commands to complete.
• Brawl Stars has Super abilities, which due to the limited amount of buttons, is initially the only attack characters can execute besides their basic one. Using it requires filling up a meter, with the exact requirements varying from Brawler to Brawler. All characters can charge their Super meter by dealing damage^note Which includes damage done via a Super, allowing you to unleash multiple Supers in a row in certain situations, but a few have additional ways of filling it, such as charging it up over time, being in a certain radius of enemies, or receiving damage. Some Brawlers have an extremely easy time charging their Super, in cases where their attack is a less flashy one meant to be used pretty often instead of being a powerful ultimate ability.
• Darksiders, a franchise widely regarded as the bastard child of God of War and The Legend of Zelda, copies this functionality and calls it the "Chaos Form".
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: The Wing of Cracked Time has an invisible progress bar that accumulates when Gun recieves damage. It temporarily makes Gun invulnerable and enemies considerably slower, allowing Gun to either obliterate them or flee.
• The Force Unleashed II has a Force Fury mode, unlocked after a certain amount of hitting the enemy. Stronger strikes, Force powers vaporizing enemies...

Beat 'Em Up

• In Big Fight: Big Trouble in the Atlantic Ocean, if one player is knocked to the ground with low health, a bar named "Anger Power" appears, the player must mash the buttons to fill it before the player gets up. If it's successful, the player will receive a power boost that increases his/her attack and gives the ability to set his/her enemies on fire for a limited time (this would be seen again in the first game of the Rushing Beat series, released later on the same year). Note that this also applies to Bosses too, and they will ALWAYS fill up his/her gauge regardless.
• The eponymous power in God Hand, which renders Gene invincible, makes his attacks unblockable and increases the strength of his attacks for a brief period. The same game has God Reels, single-use mega-attacks that are made available by grabbing special power-ups.
• Like a Dragon has Heat Actions - cinematic take-downs that are performed after filling a certain amount of heat gauge. Each game has an absurd number of unique, situational Heat Actions depending on where you and your target are, what weapon you're wielding or, when applicable, what fighting style you're using or which part of town you're in.
• The PlayStation remake of Mad Stalker: Full Metal Force introduced this feature in the game. By completely filling the Overdrive Meter, players can perform a powerful Hyper Attack indefinitely for a brief period of time.
• Paint the Town Red has a gauge that fills up with each kill. The gauge comes with three attacks that respectively consume more and more meter: Shockwave (which knocks over everyone in the immediate vicinity,) Berserk (which slows down time and powers up your melee attacks to the point that you can One-Hit Kill any non-boss enemy,) and Smite (which also slows down time and lets you gib individual enemies at a distance with a massively damaging Kill Sat.)
• The characters of Panzer Bandit can perform a Hyper Attack by filling their special attack meter to full, indicated by the flashing gauge next to their life meter. A Hyper Attack in this game is not just dishing out heavy damage against foes, but also makes them cough up much more coins for extra points.
• Toka's 1998 Playsation fantasy beat'em up Legend, the 3 characters Axel, Tara and Karo have the standard mundane combo. They each also have 3 special combos that use some of your constantly charging Combo Gauge. But if they really want to hurt someone or clear a lot of space, the characters all have a Super Combo that uses up the full Combo Gauge but unleashes an invulnerable combo that lasts far longer than any other combo you have. Additionally there's magic in the game a la Golden Axe, with 1 potion you can use Ice Magic, 2 potions you can use Fire Magic and 3 you have the devastating Frog Magic.
• The Warriors had a limit break system called "Rage". Beating up anyone except your allies builds up your rage and when it's full, activating it makes your character invincible and powers up their attacks. Doing a special attack while in rage mode would cause an instant kill most of the time, except against bosses. Once you complete a certain side mission after beating the game, using "flash" while your health was full would give you instant rage.
• In the X-Men Legends series:
  • Once you fill the "Xtreme" meter, you can use the character's strongest attack, complete with shouting the move's name ("OPTIC RAGE!", "SAVAGE RAMPAGE!", "PHOENIX FORCE!"). This continues with its Spiritual Successor, Marvel Ultimate Alliance. MUA 2, on the other hand, trades it for Fusion attacks (when much-easier-to-come-by fusion stars are filled, two characters pull a combined super-effective attack. There are only a few varieties, instead of a unique Xtreme for everyone.)
  • Certain characters (like Hulk or Wolverine) have a 'rage' meter. Once you make enough melee hits, you are for a short time powered up, with advanced, more damaging (and brutal) versions of all your attacks. It's so awesome... that you're never, ever gonna get to use it because by the time you've filled the meter, there aren't any Mooks left and it's expired by the time you find some more.

Card Battle Games

• Quantum Protocol: All operators have Ability cards, which can be activated once they execute enough cards.
  • Checkmate (Queen) activates all manual effects of the player's cards on the field and doubles any damage dealt.
  • Encore (Idol) sends all cards from the field to the hand, and then has the player place cards up to the number of the cards sent to the hand. However, these cards can't be the same as the ones originally on the field.
  • Serenity (Aurora) places 5 Serenity Tokens on this card. Whenever the player does something that counts as a turn passing, a token will be removed and the turn isn't counted for other cards and the Turn Draw mechanic.
  • WorldSeed (Esper) doesn't immediately do anything when placed, but when the player places a level 2 or lower card, WorldSeed transforms into a copy of that card.
  • Mountain (Leo) reactivates all cards on the player's field and increases their attack by 1. Exactly once, it targets a card sent to the trash and instead adds that card to the hand.
  • Imagination (Dragoon) gives all cards in the player's hand, deck, and field the wildcard suffix, which allows them to count for any archetype.
  • Paradox (Omega) selects up to two cards on the field. Any player cards selected are "automated." Any enemy cards selected are delayed by 6 turns.

Eastern RPG

• In Anachronox, each character has 4 different abilities that require varying amounts of "stored energy".
• Arc Rise Fantasia have these in the form of Excel Acts, which can be used after the characters gained enough SP to use them. What's more, when all three characters in the party use them at once, they can be combined into Trinity Acts and the much more powerful Excel Trinity Acts.
  • Characters from the Luminous Arc games appear as a cameo in a battle at the Arena. They can use Flash Drives, but they are treated with less flare than Excel Acts, which they also have (the E As have the Super Move Portrait Attack, not the FDs).
• The Vanguard of Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica can both build up their attack levels and eventually get out the Lv. EX attacks by doing what the Reyvatiels want them to do.
• Atelier Series:
  • Games starting with Totori have these (the Updated Re-release of Rorona adds them too, even though the original was released before Totori). They are not only extremely flashy, but in some games, they have an accompanying Theme Music Power-Up.
  • In some games, like Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings and Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream, the super moves are also Combination Attacks where two party members team up to unleash a powerful attack or support effect.
  • The Ryza subseries has Fatal Drives, which are powerful attacks only available at Tactics level 5. Using them will drain your Tactics level all the way back to 1, encouraging you to save them for the end of a fight.

• Baten Kaitos Origins has the MP Burst. When you fill your MP meter up to level 5, you can perform an MP Burst, which gives you infinite MP for the duration of the combo but shuts down your MP meter for several turns afterwards. Learning the various strategies for this is vital for late-game boss fights.
• Freeware RPG Balmung Cycle has this in the form of Hyper Attacks. By building up your adrenaline points, each character can perform wicked, over the top special abilities. You can also spend adrenaline on minor skills.

• The Awakenings in .hack//G.U. lets you use powerful attacks by filling the Morale gauge, which can be done e.g. by doing Rengekis or healing your party members.
• Dragon Quest IX has the Coup de Grâces. Each class has one, and each one has different effects, like healing the entire party, ensuring an item drops after the battle, or an attack that always causes a critical hit. They can even be combined, which is called a Co-op de Grâce.

• Enchanted Arms has EX skills, which are powerful attacks only humans can use, and require a portion of a shared EX bar. The stronger skills require more of the bar, with some using up all of it. This bar charges, but slowly, usually requiring many battles to fill it. Certain bosses tend to have EX skills as well, though they can charge their EX bar to full over the space of three turns. The computer's EX skills hurt, to say the least, and can one-shot your characters if you are not prepared. It's especially bad when you can get one-hit-killed during a Duel Boss.
• In Endless Frontier, the Frontier Gague increases by about 1% each time you hit an enemy (since each attack is a Spam Attack in some way, and a 5-skill Combo as well, this isn't as bad as it sounds.) Characters can also cancel their attack in the middle for a boost, and chain their turns together for a flat 5 (Support Powers) or 10 (next turn)% increase. At "MAX," they can launch a Super Move Portrait Attack that costs no resources and has as much spam as a full combo (and lots of chest bounce for the ladies.)
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series has featured these since the second game, accessible after taking enough damage to fill a Limit Bar:
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 2 had one for each character - Matt gets a highly-damaging five-hit attack called Cleaver, whilst Natalie gets Kyun, a powerful heal which buffs both her and Matt's stats by 40%, whilst debuffing foes' by 40%. Unlike later games, Limit Breaks take more damage to charge after each use, and they automatically replaced their standard attack when available^note This was changed for the Epic Battle Fantasy Collection.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 3 has three Limit Breaks for each of three characters - Matt has Cleaver, Annihilate and Ragnarok, Natalie has Kyun, Black Hole and Genesis, and Lance has Nuke, Ion Cannon and Oblivion.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 4 and Epic Battle Fantasy 5 both give their characters two Limit Breaks exclusive to them (Ragnarok and Cleaver for Matt, Genesis and Kyun/7th Heaven for Natalie, Nuke and Oblivion for Lance, Mighty Oak and Mother Earth for Anna, and The Creator and The Destroyer for EBF5-exclusive character NoLegs) and several additional Limit Breaks that can be given to a particular character (9 in EBF4^note Eight in the base game, one in Battle Mountain, 10 in EBF5 ^note Eight on launch, two added in the v2 update). Both games also have a rare item which immediately fills the Limit Bar (Chilli Sauce in EBF4, Chili Peppers in EBF5).
  • EBF4 and EBF5 also give bosses the capability to cast Limit Breaks of their own:
    • EBF4 lets the River Squid, The Creator and The Destroyer cast Tsunami, Absolute Zero and Supernova respectively on Hard/Epic difficulty, whilst the Dark Players have access to their good counterpart's unique Limit Breaks regardless of difficulty.
    • EBF5, meanwhile, gives most bosses a Limit Break of their own, with few exceptions.
• Eternal Radiance: All party members have a Finisher skill, which is affected by their mana attack like all other skills and is good for clearing crowds of enemies. Since Rudy and Valana are computer controlled, the control scheme reserves specific inputs to activate their Finishers. Celeste can learn a passive skill that makes her invincible during her Finisher animation.
• Etrian Odyssey:
  • The first game has the "Boost" action, which increases the effectiveness of a normal skill during the turn when it's executed. When entering a stratum, the Boost gauge for each party member starts empty; but during battle, any action performed (attacking, defending or using an item or passive skill) will gradually increase it until it's full (and only then can the Boost be performed). How effective the Boost is will depend on how leveled up the applied skill currently is. When a character is killed or knocked out and then revived, their gauge will reset to zero and has to be filled up again.
  • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard calls these "Force Skills", although not all of them are damaging: the Protector's "Painless" makes your party completely invincible for a turn. In the Fafnir Knight remake, it comes in two versions: A Force Boost which adds or enhances a certain attribute for three turns, and a Force Break that applies a very powerful skill but at the cost of disabling the Force gauge until the character returns to the Hub City (there are certain perks and skills that can restore it without leaving the Yggdrasil, but they're difficult to pull off). These two varieties of Forces return in Etrian Odyssey Nexus.
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City has the Limits. These skills perform powerful actions which involve the input of a specific number of party members, ranging from 1 to 5 (depending on the skill used), and each skill is unlocked by collecting Scripts found in specific locations or given by a supporting character.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan has the Burst skills, which operate differently from its equivalents seen in previous games. Instead of each character having their own gauge and/or individual skill to use, the Burst gauge is shared among all party members and, by filling it up during battle, can be leveled up from 1 to 5. As with the Limits in the third game, they're unlocked by finding their associated relics in the strata as well as by completing sidequests. Each Burst skill required the gauge to be at a certain level, and using it will consume the required load from the gauge (meaning that it'll have to refilled to use another skill if the resulting level isn't enough yet).
  • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: Union Skills work similarly to the Limits in the third game, as performing them requires input from a specific number of party members and they all need to have their gauges at 100% to participate (afterwards, their gauge will drop at 0% and will need to refill it). However, each race and class has their own set of skills, like the Boosts and Forces from the first two games respectively.

• Faraway Story: When a character is in their Hyper Special mode, they can activate a Finisher skill at the cost of ending their Hyper Special early.
• Noble Phantasms work like this in Fate/Grand Order. Each Servant has a gauge that fills up whenever they attack or are attacked (Arts cards fill the meter the most). Filling the gauge to 100% adds a special attack card in addition to the regular 5 that allows the Servant to use their Noble Phantasm. Higher level Noble Phantasms can be charged beyond 100% for a greater effect. Enemy Servants instead have a series of bars that fill up with every turn.
• Every Final Fantasy game from Final Fantasy VII on.
  • Final Fantasy VI had a similar mechanic, though it applied randomly (at a low percentage rate, no less) — but damned if it didn't save several players' butts from certain death.
  • Final Fantasy VII is the Trope Namer. In its world, Limit Breaks are tied to the characters' emotional states; the angrier the character is, the more quickly it will build up. In terms of gameplay, this is portrayed by the Fury and Sadness status effects. Fury makes the Limit gauge fill more quickly, Sadness makes it fill more slowly.
  • In Crisis Core, Zack's Limit Breaks are tied to a slot machine mechanic; when the right character portraits line up, Zack performs the attack associated with that character. Zack's Limit Breaks are all based on other characters he meets in the game.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Limit Breaks aren't tied to a gauge, but instead stand an increased chance of triggering the closer the character is to defeat. Low HP is the main factor, along with KOed party members and negative status effects; the Aura spell also enables Limit Breaks to trigger without the dire circumstances normally required.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, the Limit Break system is called Trance. Athough the typical super moves is just one aspect of it, it works more like a Super Mode for most characters and unlike other games, you don't get to choose whether to actually use it when you fill up the bar, meaning you might end up wasting it entirely on weak enemies. It also has plot significance and can be triggered automatically in the key points of the story. The One-Winged Angel form of the Big Bad is the result of this trope. For much of the game, Kuja is seeking out the game's Summon Magic to gather the power needed to take his revenge on Garland. After failing to take control of Alexander, however, he decides to take a leaf from the book of the player character's party, and gets them to induce a Trance in him. This results in the destruction of the planet Terra.
  • In Final Fantasy X, it was called Overdrive, and you could customize how the gauge was filled up. You started with the standard from VII, where damage is what fills it up. But you could eventually change it to have the charging activity be one of nearly any common activity in a turn based game (Attacking, healing, getting a turn, running away, ect.)
  • Final Fantasy XI:
    • Weapon Skills require 1000+ TP (which recharges with being damage or autoattacks) and drain the entire TP bar when used, but are far more frequently used than other Limit Breaks. When more than one character uses compatible Weapon Skills, together they can trigger a Skillchain to boost damage. Square went to the next logical step and created a job class based mostly on performing Limit Breaks quickly and easily: the Samurai. They even have the ability to fill the TP gauge used for these attacks by 100% nigh-instantly every 3 minutes.
    • A straighter example are 2/1-hour Job Abilities. You can only use the one of your main job, and have extremely powerful effects like making every physical attack a crit (Warrior), turning you completely invulnerable to melee attacks (Paladin), massively healing the entire party at no cost (White Mage) or casting spells for a limited time without using any MP (Black Mage); however, as the name implies, they can only be done once every 1 or 2 real life hours, making using them extremely situational and risky..
  • Final Fantasy XII:
    • The game features 'Quickenings' which are similar to your standard 'limit break' in that they deal above average damage and look particularly impressive. You can also chain the various quickenings of each of the current party members into a single chain to increase the damage, and making certain combinations can also result in finishing move called a "Concurrence." (Discovering every one of these Concurrences earns an achievement in the game's "Sky Pirate's Den" feature.) The International re-release ties them to a “mist” gauge to make them more like the standard limit break; in the original game, they're fuelled by your MP.
    • The thirteen Espers have a more Limit Break-like attack. Though they have increasingly exotic trigger conditions...the simplest ones trigger when there's less than 10 seconds of the summon time left or when their HP drops below 30%. The most insane ones are Exodus (Exodus must be paralyzed with less than 10 s of summon time left), Hashmal (you must have <10% HP), Ultima (both you and Ultima must have less than 30% of your HP left), and Zodiark (you must be petrified).
  • Final Fantasy XIII has Limit Breaks in the form of Full ATB Skills, but they limit your battle strategy if you try to spam them FFVIII-style, and by themselves are not particularly impressive. Their true strength lies in the fact that they provide some kind of damage benefit when utilized as part of a longer combo: Sazh's Cold Blood pushes up the Break Meter at roughly 3 times the speed of any other attack; Lightning's Army of One and Hope's Last Resort does increased damage on staggered enemies and is best used to lengthen the time an enemy comes out of Stagger depending on when you activate it; likewise, Fang's Highwind and Snow's Sovereign Fist immediately empties the stagger bar, and thus, is used to end combos, but doing it right means they can do upwards of two MILLION damage in one hit. Vanille's Death is a noted Game-Breaker and has found a favored use in high-level strategy, thanks to its ability to instantly kill almost any enemy in the game, including the final boss (IF the death status actually triggers).
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2:
    • Full ATB Skills return, but now they can only be used once per battle^note Unless you use an Elixir. Serah's Ultima Arrow is the best attack at increasing the Stagger Bar once the enemy is staggered, and Noel's Meteor Javelin empties the stagger bar but is the most damaging attack in the game. The Mon party members have their own form of Limit Breaks known as a Feral Link, which are usable upon filling a gauge. Sazh, Snow, and Lightning’s Feral Links are their Full ATB Skills from the first game.
    • Snow can use his Limit Break against you in his boss fight in the Coliseum DLC. If you let him keep attacking the same target for too long, he'll use Sovereign Fist to wipe your entire party.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: Army of One once again returns, and this time, Lightning is required to have activated a time stopping ability before being able to activate it, but to compensate for that, it does a ridiculous amount of hits and potentally a ton of damage while simultaneously healing her.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • A Realm Reborn possess a Limit Break system designed around party play. When players form a group of either 4 (a Light Party) or 8 (a Full Party), the party gains a Limit Break gauge. Ordinarily, only one limit break gauge may be charged; however in certain circumstances, two and even three bars may be unlocked, with a corresponding increase in the limit break's power. Whenever one or more limit break gauges is fully charged, any player in the party may activate the limit break via a general command. The limit break's effect differs based on the class role of the player. Melee damage dealing classes will initiate a powerful single target attack. Ranged damage dealing classes will initiate a slightly less powerful area of effect attack. (Magical ranged forms a circle, physical ranged forms a straight line.) Tank classes will initiate a powerful party-wide defense bonus for a short duration. Finally, healing classes will initiate a party-wide healing effect (which at level 3 will also revive all fallen party members in addition to fully restoring the party's HP). Limit breaks may be used in emergencies as well as part of specific strategies to bring down some of the most powerful enemies in the game.
    • The Heavensward expansion makes the level 3 unique for every class, rather than every "type" of class having the same one (Monk, White Mage and Paladin keep the original Level 3 ones), though they all have the same effects across types (Tanks have defensive ones, Healers have healing ones, ect.) and gives the Bard a damage dealing Limit Break.
    • Stormblood introduces "mini-Limit Breaks" for most DPS classes with the introduction of Job Gauges, special UI elements that keep track of special mechanics. When certain conditions are met (like filling up a special meter, or keeping a buff active for a certain period of time) certain classes can activate a powerful Limit Break-esque ability. This is most prominent on the DPS casters; Black Mages get a powerful instant cast nuke, Red Mages can perform an enhanced melee combo followed by a Verflare or Verholy spell, and Summoners can replace their current pet with Demi-Bahamut.
    • The Final Boss of the Shadowbringers expansion in patch 5.3, Elidibus, Warrior of Light, has a mechanic where he has his own Limit Break bar and performs altered versions of the various role Limit Breaks depending on how full it is. Most impressively, he can also perform a scripted Limit Break 4, which is a Total Party Kill unless a tank counters it with their own level 3 Limit Break.
    • Endwalker reveals that Limit Breaks are most likely tied to “dynamis”, a mysterious power that drawn through various emotions. This is confirmed during the Final Boss fight with Endsinger, as you use a tank Level 3 Limit Break to barely survive a Total Party Kill attack and Endsinger gasps out “Dynamis?!”
  • Final Fantasy XV:
    • The Armiger serves as Noctis' Limit Break, allowing him to Teleport Spam and bring out his Royal Arms for a continuous Storm of Blades. One can also prematurely end the Armiger mode by initiating an Armiger Chain, equipping each of Noct's retinue with the Royal Arms before they all make a devastating combined attack at the targeted foe.
    • The Windows and Royal editions add the possibility to upgrade Noct's Limit Break into Armiger Unleashed, an extended and much more powerful version of the old Armiger mode only available once you've found all 13 Royal Arms. The trade-off is that your companions are put on the sidelines while Armiger Unleased is, ehr, unleashed... presumably so they're not caught in the crossfire of your onslaught... but it's no big loss since you probably want to hog all the fun for yourself anyway.
    • The Techniques of Noctis' companions can also qualify for Limit Breaks, especially their Level 2 and Level 3 attacks, which are often enough to completely wreck single targets or even entire groups of enemies. Doubly so once you've bought the abilities that allow you to break the damage limit.
    • Finally there are the companions' techniques for when you switch character in mid-battle, which were added in the Windows and Royal editions.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy gives every character a Limit Break, or EX-Burst, to go with their EX-Mode. In many cases, the move is the same as the Limit Break the character had in their own game (Cloud's, Sephiroth's and in the prequel, Tifa's even include a window that says Limit Break, and Cloud and Tifa actually say they're "breaking [their] limits"), and some are references to infamous game breakers. Most characters who have multiple Limit Breaks have their moveset be made up by them, with their most powerful, or signature one as their Ex-Burst.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance actually has TWO kinds of Limit Breaks. There's regular Combos, which are easy to pull off and can deal massive damage to one opponent with enough people who can use them joining in on the attack, and Totemas. They are a more standard definition of a Limit Break as they are hard to pull off, yet deal incredible damage to ALL enemies. However, you need to advance the plot to unlock those, and each of the 5 totemas can only be used by the corresponding race (and 2 can only damage MP).
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 more or less replaces combos with Opportunity Commands, which pop up at random no matter the state of the unit. The effect depends on who you stand next to on the field (buffs if you're next to an ally, attacks if you're next to an enemy) and all these abilities can bypass the law system (unless the law says Opportunity Commands are forbidden). Totemas are replaced by scions, which are even closer to traditional limits breaks in that they're powered by a dedicated gauge, but now you need a specific accessory to use them, which also means that they're not restricted by race anymore.
  • Bravely Default has the Special moves. Each type of weapon (swords, spears, daggers, etc.) has three Specials available, and each of those requires performing a certain action (such as using Brave, using any kind of magic, or defeating enemies) a certain number of times a base number for the Level 1 Specials, twice that for the Level 2 Specials, and three times that for the Level 3 Specials. Interestingly, these can actually be powered up by unlocking certain add-on parts in Norende's shops, parts that add things like power boosts, status effects, and increased length of buffs and debuffs. This is particularly effective with the Level 1 staff special, which only heals the party's HP by default but with enough add-ons, can also heal their MP, increase their BP and grant them positive statuses.
  • Theatrhythm Final Fantasy features these on most of the characters that were also playable in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Learned at level 40, they activate immediately upon the entry of a boss-class character and do extra damage to them. They're generally named after the most powerful Limit Break in the character's home series (Omnislash for Cloud, Lion Heart for Squall) or the EX-Mode for the character in Dissidia (Soul Shift for Cecil, Blood Weapon for Firion). Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call adds these to several more characters that weren't necessarily playable in Dissidia.
• In Forever Home, each character has a Prism Link skill that costs 100 TP and requires a QTE input to use. After using it, the Prism Link has a cooldown so that it can't be spammed even if the character gains 100 TP again.

• In Gems of War, each troop has a special ability which is charged up via the Match-Three Game part of the game. Each has a specific mana affinity, and matching gems of that colour charges the gauge (with varying amounts necessary). These can be attacks, but can also provide heals, buffs, and other effects. Using them takes up a turn.
• Every character in Genshin Impact has a unique "Elemental Burst" fueled by a gauge filled from using basic attacks or Elemental Skills, collecting Elemental Particles created during battle, or certain passive bonuses. Many deal large amounts of elemental damage, others provide teamwide damage buffs and/or healing.
• The summons in Golden Sun usually function as limit breaks, as you typically start the battle with all your djinn set to your party (because doing so gives you better stats and spells), then unleash them in battle over the course of several turns before finally being able to use the summon.
• Both playable characters and enemies in Granblue Fantasy have a charge attack, or ougi as referred to in the Japanese version. With enemies, it fills up through a series of diamonds while the player's characters have to fill up a bar up to 100% which can be increased through a buff to speed up the rate at which it's filled or increase the number of times they attack in one turn. Samurai-type characters have the ability to go beyond 100% and can use the extra charge to fill their charge bar faster. Playable characters also have the bonus of being able to utilize chain bursts when multiple characters use their charge attack in one turn, dealing extra elemental damage based on the element of the character who started the chain.

• Every Kingdom Hearts game has at least one:
  • The first game gives Sora several physical moves he can use at MP cost. The most impressive being ones like Ragnarok or the Awesome, but Impractical Trinity Limit, both of which went on to be Sora’s signature Limit Breaks.
  • Sleights in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Every boss has at least one high-powered one that creates a big flashy attack, and Sora, depending on where you draw the line, has a staggering number of Limits, including a repeat performance by Trinity Limit and Ragnarok.
  • Kingdom Hearts II introduced the Limit command, which sends Sora and the current Guest-Star Party Member into a big flashy combo attack, ending in a huge finish if they run through all the commands before the Limit Bar runs out. Again, Trinity Limit is one of them, combining attacks from Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and ending with a pulse of light that fries everything on the screen. Much like Trinity in the first game, the Limits drain all of Sora's MP, but there is no minimum cost, so you can use them with 1 MP if you want. Final Mix added the Limit Drive form, which brought back every other Limit Break from the first game, along with other classic moves.
  • 358/2 Days gives each playable character a Limit Break unique to them, which you can activate at low health, most of which are based on the character's signature moves, such as Roxas’s pillars of light, Sora’s Ragnarok, Saix’s Berserk, Donald’s Comet, and so on. There are also "Final Limits" which do even more damage and look even flashier.
  • Birth By Sleep has Command Styles, the Finish Command, and D-Links, all brought on by filling the Command Meter with attacks, the difference between them is that Command Styles rely on you using specific Commands and change the characters’ fighting style to various Elemental flavored ones before giving them a powerful finisher, D-Links are a not quite summon like power that changed the characters’ command deck, and gives useful abilities and a finisher based on another character, and the Finish Command is just that, a Finisher that isn’t connected to Command Styles or D-Links.
  • Re:coded has Overclock, similar to the Command Meter in that you fill a gauge with attacks to unlock the use of a powerful finisher; however, this time, for every level the meter goes up, Data-Sora unlocks more passive abilities on his equipped Keyblade.
  • Dream Drop Distance has the Link System, when your Dream Eater party members fill up their gauge by taking damage or attacking, you can team up with them to unleash either team up attacks as Sora or power up Riku's attacks similar to the command modes in Birth by Sleep.

• In Last Scenario, each spellcard has a special spell that can be used only once its user's crisis bar is full, at a large MP cost (usually) as well.
• The Spirit Attacks in The Last Story. Each character can learn his or her own ability of this type after leveling up sufficiently, and when they do so they can perform it when the Spirit Meter fills after hitting enemies and being hit. The Spirit Attacks are, namely, Accelerate (Zael, attacks much more quickly), Death Sentence (Dagran, kills enemies after 30 seconds), Ancient Barrier (Calista, repulses the attacks landed on Zael and can also be dispelled to share the effect with the other party members), Shadow Stitch (Syrenne, paralyzes enemies), Meteor (Yurick, delivers a big, almighty ball of fire that weakens the defense of the enemy), Revive (Mirania, restores fully the HP of the party members and gives an extra life to each of them), and Glacier (Lowell, casts a big, almighty iceberg that inflicts a slip status ailment to the targeted enemy).
• The Legend of Heroes - Trails has the "S-Crafts," which are usable at 100 CP or higher, with a power-up at 200 CP. The drawback is that S-Crafts have a longer delay than most other actions. The advantage is that the "S-Break" mechanic can be used to activate them instantly when it isn't the player's turn.
• Legend of Legaia games have Miracle and Mystic Arts, respectively: Miracle Arts combine multiple normal Arts together and have no cost beyond maxed out AP and long enough Arts bar to fit their lenghty input in full, while Mystic Arts also require you to have half HP or less remaining and at least 100 MP but far outdamage any other moves in the game.
• Library of Ruina:
  • Upgrading a floor to its maximum level allows you to use E.G.O. Pages in any battle on that same floor. You get to pick one when your team reaches Emotion level 3, 4 and 5, and add it to your arsenal. Any character on your team can play them, but they must be recharged with Emotion coins (which you get as the battle progresses) afterwards.
  • Equipping Roland's Key Page gives you a special deck of 9 cards marked by a symbol. When you use each card, their symbol lights up; when all nine have been used, you can use a powerful card at the cost of turning off all the symbols. It's a powerful single attack that destroys the entire enemy card if it wins (making it invaluable against cards that use multiple weaker attacks), and inflicts heavy debuffs on hit.
• Light Fairytale: When player characters take enough damage and fill their Fury gauge, they can activate a special Fury skill. However, if a character makes it to the end of battle with a full Fury gauge, their gauge will empty.
  • Haru's first Fury is Protective Wind, which heals a small percentage of HP to the party. His second Fury is Elemental Storm, which deals group damage to the enemies.
  • Kuroko's Fury is Quintuple Combo, which deals large single-target damage.
  • Ayaka's Fury is Flowerbed, which heals a medium percentage of the party's HP.
  • Kid's Fury is Jumble, which allows her to use a grenade for free.
• Live A Live has one in character form: The Humongous Mecha Steel Titan, which is activated in the climax of one of the chapters and has all sorts of powerful attacks. And a villainous example: the evil version of the Final Chapter gives you the chance to use ARMAGEDDON to erase all existence if your health falls low.
• Lufia:
  • Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is the Ur-Example and introduced a system highly similar to Final Fantasy VII's a few years earlier, under the name of "IP Attacks." Each character has an IP bar (Ikari/Infuriation Points) which fills as damage is taken. Other than that, the bar is treated like Magic Points; IP abilities can be invoked at any time if sufficient charge is available (which might be anywhere from 12% to 50%). However, the attacks available are bound to the character's equipment. Some pieces of gear have good skills, some have lame ones, and some have nothing at all; and the numerical strength of the item may have nothing to do with the quality of its IP skill.
  • IP abilities return in the sequel, Lufia: The Legend Returns, though this time they are taught to characters rather than being based on their equipment. However, IP abilities require specific amounts of Spiritual Force, which each character has one of four colors of and is shared between all characters in the same row and column. While a character only needs to meet the S.F. requirements to learn the ability, not meeting the requirements causes the ability to require 50% more of the IP meter.
  • The Gaiden Game Ruins of Lore replaces the standard IP abilities with the Installation system, which allows the three main characters to fuse with their Mon once their IP meter is full. The fusion lasts for three turns, during which the fused character is invulnerable and will use a special ability each turn. However, some Installations result in less than favorable transformations.
• Luminous Plume: When using Auradrive, the player can hold B during a tech to end Auradrive early and activate their most powerful tech, an Ace. However, some bosses have their own Aces.
  • Raven's first Ace is Silver Stream, which can be activated from a rank 3 tech. Later, he learns Lightning Moment, which replaces Silver Stream when chaining to Rank 3 techs. Silver Stream is changed to activate from Rank 2 or lower techs.
  • Valerie learns the Ace, Violet Autumn, after sufficiently mastering aura usage.
  • The Final Boss, Emilia, gets the Ace, Celestial Requiem.
  • The Black Blade, Victor, has Rending Void.
• LunarLux: Bella can attack with a Lux Combo after filling up her Lux Meter in battle. This allows her to stack three active skills together to unleash a powerful attack, similarly to Program Advances in the Mega Man Battle Network series. Unlike regular skills, Lux Combos partially scale off her level.
• The Game Boy Advance version of Lunar Legend has powerful moves for each character (accompanied by a close up of the character's face) that can only be used when the arts bar at the bottom of the screen is full. The arts moves were later imported into Lunar: Silver Star Harmony for the PSP.

• Machina of the Planet Tree -Unity Unions-: Every Amulet comes with a powerful Over-Art, which requires Corona to increase her EP gauge as she fights before she can use it.
• Later Mana series games let you execute special attacks after using enough regular attacks to "charge up". (Secret of Mana used a Charge Meter instead for this purpose.)
  • Final Fantasy Adventure had a meter that slowly charged up automatically, resetting to zero each time you attacked. Attacks were stronger the fuller the meter got, with a full meter releasing a special attack dependent on the type of the currently equipped weapon. Said game also allowed one at level up to choose one base stat to receive the most growth. Savvy players would choose Willpower, the stat responsible for the gauge's refill speed, at every single level, so that by end-game, EVERY ATTACK IS A LIMIT BREAK.
• Manafinder: Lambda and Scar have their own TP bars, which they can expend to use an Unleash skill. Lambda in particular gets an Unleash for each of her weapons.
• In Children of Mana, the Fury meter fills as you take and deal damage. Once it's full, it can be activated for a limited time to use special attacks, depending on the weapon type used. If the Fury Reels gem is used, it can also provide benefits such as a full HP refill, or invincibility for the duration of the Fury.
• In Moco Moco Friends, when the Fever Gauge gets full, Moco goes into Moco Fever, and she can spend infinite magic power that turn.

• Neptunia gives its eponymous character the fittingly named attack "Neptune Break," while Nisa has "ZHP Legend!!"
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 gives every character several Limit Breaks, executed by using standard attacks in a certain order and spending enough SP in the process. Console Patron Units and their candidates can also spend a full SP bar to activate Hard Disk Divinity to get an overall power boost. The two can be combined for more devastating finishers.
  • Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory simplifies things by giving the party a shared EXE bar, and using EXE attacks consumes a given number of segments. Again, doing so while in HDD gives the best results, and entering HDD is cheaper, just requiring 20% of the character's MP.
  • Megadimension Neptunia VII brings back the EXE bar and EXE attacks, but this time it doesn't carry over between battles, and transformations require a bar of the EXE gauge instead of SP.
• In Ni no Kuni, performing critical hits or blocking major attacks give a chance of special restorative "Glims" to drop from the enemies. One such thing, the "Golden Glim," restores the HP of whoever picks it up to full, and allows them to perform an incredibly powerful "Miracle Move" at no cost to MP.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has skills that have very high cooldown and darken the screen upon activation. In the case of spells, the casting time will also be high. These ultimate skills are also exempt from the Accelerate passive, which has a chance to instantly cool down a lesser skill. There is also a passive that has a chance of replacing a fourth-tier spell with an ultimate spell of the same element.

• Octopath Traveler II has Latent Power, which works pretty similar to traditional FFVII-style Limit Breaks. As as a traveler gets hit, as well as to a lesser extent takes turns, their latent Power gauge fills up. Once it's full, it can be selected at will during the turn, allowing each traveler to do an ability specific to them, such as turning single target into AoE for Agnea and going twice in a turn for Throné.
• Odin Sphere: Lifthrasir gives each protagonist a powerful cinematic attack that they can obtain in their epilogues. While they do deal astronomical amounts of damage, they take a whopping 50 PP to use.

• The first and second Paper Mario games have "Special Moves" that are granted to Mario upon receiving each game's respective Plot Coupon (Star Spirits for the first, Crystal Stars for the second). In both games, each special move is powered by "Star Power", the games' limit break meter. Also, in both games, Mario receives eight Limit Breaks that each use varying amounts of Star Power.
• Persona 3 lets your party do an All-Out Attack against the enemies if they're all knocked down; this usually wipes out anything but bosses. Persona 4 even shows a skull-shaped mushroom cloud afterwards if you obliterate them.
  • Persona 3 Reload introduces Theurgy attacks, which replicate the Fusion Spell mechanic of previous versions for the protagonist and serve as powerful attacks for the rest of the party. While taking actions in battle is enough to slowly fill the meter up on their own, doing certain actions with party members allows their Theurgy meters to fill up faster — for example, Yukari's meter fills up faster whenever she uses a healing ability, while Junpei's meter fills up faster whenever he inflicts a Critical Hit.
  • Persona 4 also has Follow-Up Attacks: if you knock some enemies down with an attack, sometimes your teammate will offer to strike them as well, knocking even more enemies down or insta-killing them in style. And if the Follow-Up knocks them all down...
• The remake of Phantasy Star II introduces Skills, which use varying amounts of Defend commands to activate. They range in utility across the eight characters, from area-of-effect attacks to status buffs.
• Pokémon:
  • Last Resort is a powerful move with no penalty to HP or stats... That can only be used after the player has used all other available moves at least once.
  • Trump Card is an interesting example: It can be used right away, but it is rather weak. However, the less PP the move has left (i.e., the more you use it. Without any extra items, you can use it a total of five times), the stronger it becomes. At its peak, it deals 200 damage. This can be dealt only once, and only after dealing increasingly powerful (but at most decent) attacks four times.
  • Some moves, such as Revenge, are rather average when it comes to power, but after a certain requirement is met (in Revenge's case, having received damage before in the same turn), they become way more powerful, and far more useful.
  • Starting with Pokémon X and Y, after a certain item (namely, a Mega Bracelet) is obtained and a Mega Stone is equipped to the right Pokémon (thus sacrificing the space for any other held item), the player has access to Mega Evolution, a temporary form that makes the current Pokémon extra powerful, until the end of the battle so long as it does not faint. Mega Evolution can only be triggered once per battle across the player's whole team, even if all of the player's Pokémon have Mega Stones, and if the Mega Evolution faints, it reverts back and cannot Mega Evolve again during the same battle.
  • Pokémon Sun and Moon introduces powerful Z-Moves that can be used once per battle, which are only available if the trainer has a Z-Ring and Z-Crystal.
  • Pokémon Unite has unite moves, which are granted when a Pokémon reaches a high enough level. Most of them do a lot of damage to enemies in a decent-sized area, though some have other effects, such as Wigglytuff's Star Recital, which grants itself and nearby allies a shield and protection from Status Effects. However, they all have a very long cooldown after use.

• Radiant Historia has the Mana Bursts. Each character has their own set of them, the meters fill up whenever that character deals or receives damage, and if the meter is full, you can perform one, which then resets it to zero. Annoyingly, some enemies can actually drain your Mana Burst meters.
• Rakenzarn Tales uses the Soul Points mechanic to deliver these. They're called Soul Breaks and take the form of either an original move or one of the character's most well-known finishers from one of their previous games.
• Rakenzarn Frontier Story allows each character to have up to three, obtained by building their Relationship Values up to a certain level. It requires building up and using all Soul Points to fire one off.
• Re:Kuroi: At level 15, characters gain the ability to use awakened magic. Once they use enough MP in one battle, they will glow and can spend their awakened status to cast a stronger version of one of their spells.
• Riviera: The Promised Land has both the Overdrive Meter, which gives you a more powerful attack once it's full, and the Rage Meter, which is the enemy's equivalent and which fills up by being attacked rather than by attacking.

• Sacred Earth - Promise: Exceed Limits are learned at level 15, and require the Limit Index to be filled before they can be chained from EX Arts. The Limit Index is filled when an EX Art is used.
• Skies of Arcadia features a number of "super moves" that can be activated after a certain number of spirit points has been amassed in battle. Prophecy, which requires all party members to be healthy and a full spirit gauge, involves crushing the enemy with the moon.
• In Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 2, the Mono Shift essentially functions like this, giving you crazy damage and a crazy damage skill when it's activated. It also comes complete with its own transformation sequence, and is actually used as a plot element.
• Super Press Space to Win Action RPG 2009 has one. You use it to kill the final boss.

• Tales games since the Tales of Phantasia PlayStation remake featured Hi-Ougis. They usually require a huge TP payment as well as low HP. In games that focus more on repeated comboing, the condition may be building up a combo meter instead, a la Valkyrie Profile.
  • In Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd, Genis, and Colette all have Limit Breaks (called Hi-Ougis), although all of them have different activation triggers. Sheena's summons require similar conditions, even if they don't techinically count as Hi-Ougis. In the Japan-only rerelease, all nine playable characters have their own Hi-Ougis. There's also has a second Limit Break system in the form of Unison Attacks. Once the Unison Attack gauge is full (it fills up for every hit the player lands on an opponent, so techs that land a lot of blows fill up the meter faster), the player can start a Unison Attack, in which all the characters do a single attack on the enemy (chosen from their pool of techs beforehand.) If certain characters do certain attacks (like if Lloyd and Kratos/Zelos both do a Sonic Thrust-type attack,) two of them will even team up to do a follow-up at the end of the attack (in the aforementioned case, Cross Thrust, where both characters do a second, simultaneous Sonic Thrust.).
  • The official translations of the later games seem to have decided to call them Mystic Artes (granted, the same games changed the translation of regular abilities from "techs" to "artes", so maybe you might call it a "hi-tech").
  • Later games also seem to have stabilized how hi-ougis/Mystic Artes are used: be in OverLimit and use a high-level arte while holding down the arte button. Some games have other, more powerful Mystic Artes, though, which have other conditions such as holding down different buttons, casting a certain spell, or being under a certain HP threshold.
  • The Mystic Artes Tales of Graces work somewhat differently. The player first needs to enter Eleth Burst, either by scoring or taking many hits. They then need to build up a meter by scoring hits, with more filling when using Artes that have been used more. Later upgrades allow a character to activate each of their Mystic Artes once per battle if there are enough hits in the current combo. F added Accel Finalities, which are used by activating Accel Mode with a full meter.
• Theia - The Crimson Eclipse: All characters have an EX gauge to fill in order to use their EX skills. However, every character has different requirements to fill up the bar. For example, Seth can only fill his bar up with normal attacks, Nimrod must use skills, and Martia can use either.
• Tokyo Xanadu has the "X (Cross) Strikes."
• Tomato Adventure has AWE! attack, a powerful move that can be used when a meter is filled by successfully using Action Commands. Each character besides DeMille (who is always in the party and will help the other character with this skill, and so this cannot be used if either party member is incapabilized or cannot move) has two of them, with one of them requiring the meter to be full and the other requiring less.

• Valkyrie Profile has these for each character, and if you play your cards right, you can use them each round. In fact, since the boost to damage is almost necessary to defeat all but the weakest enemies, and you can boost the power by comboing them, it's unlikely that the Limit Breaks are the focus of combat. These are called Purify Weird Soul in Lenneth. Since those sounds rather underwhelming, they are called Soul Crush in Silmeria. The mages, though, gets the biggest and blastiest of them, called Great Magic. Some of your enemies can also do Great Magic.

• Wild AR Ms 1 has a Force meter that increases during a battle. You have 4 increasingly powerful skills that enhance your attacks that can only be used when you have the appropriate level of Force (For example: Rudy has a skill that guarantees a hit when used in conjunction with his ARM weapon, Cecilia has a skill that allows her her to cast two spells in one go ,and Jack has a skill that guarantees he gets the first move). When a character has reached their maximum Force level, any status changes inflicted by enemies such as sleep, poison, paralyse, etc, will be removed (denoted by the phrase "Condition Green!" appearing in place of the Force meter).
  • The second and third games even tied it into the basic magic system. You need a certain amount of force points to cast spells, although it doesn't take them away to do so. They left in the super moves that actually take points away, although they became a lot less valuable when they prevent you from doing anything else afterward.
• In A Witch's Tale, every 10 or so battles is a "BURST!" battle wherein the critical hit rate for all party members massively increases and the team earns 2x the experience after winning.
• The World Ends with You has these in the form of Fusion Pins — gather enough stars via the minigame on the top screen during battles and at the highest levels, the player can do things from crushing their foes under a giant tidal wave in the middle of Shibuya to dropping the frickin' moon. Just to sweeten the deal, the latter deals almost 100x the damage of a normal attack.

• Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has several types:
  • Most characters have access to an ability called Talent Art. They are charged by successfully striking auto attacks, and once charged they allow the use of an unique ability of the character, such as Shulk's Monado Arts and Riki's "Yoink!"
  • Melia enters a state of Element Burst after several uses of elemental attacks. In this state, she gets access to two powerful arts (Burst End and Mind Blast), and her next elemental attacks do double damage.
  • A few characters have abilities that only become available when their tension reaches high levels, such as Riki's Happy Happy.
  • Filling your Party Gauge also gives you ability to perform party-wide Limit Break called Chain Attack. During it, time freezes and every member of your party can perform any of his/her skills, with extra attacks possible if their affinity is high enough. In addition, you have increased chance of inflicting status ailments, and using several skills of the same type multiplies their power. Notably, several enemies can use this technique against you!
• Xenoblade Chronicles X has Overdrive.
  • On the ground, it makes your arts recharge faster and allows for a third-level of cooldown, which boosts their effects. It also offers a scattering of other benefits based on the combo number and the color of the arts you've used in combination.
  • In your Skells, your weapons no longer use fuel and cockpit mode — which instantly recharges your weapons' cooldown — triggers more often. It has other effects that vary based on the frame you're in, but typically include regenerating HP, damage boosts and defense buffs.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has multiple layers of limit breaks, with each building off the last:
  • First up are "Special Attacks", which come in several power levels and are built up by performing "Arts" (a weaker form of Special Attack charged by hitting with basic auto-attacks).
  • If the player builds up several tiers of Specials at once and launches them in quick succession, it triggers a "Blade Combo", which deals extra damage and has extra effects. One of those effects is placing an "orb" of a particular element on the enemy.
  • Running parallel to the Blade Combos are "Driver combos", which require specific arts that inflict status effects (break-topple-launch-smash) on the enemy. Using Blade and Driver combos at the same time leads to Fusion Combos, which do much more damage than either on its own.
  • "Chain Attacks", make a return from the first game, and can be used (in addition to just being strong on their own) to break the orbs placed on the enemy from Blade Combos, allowing the Chain Attack to grow in power and last for more rounds.
  • Break at least four orbs in a chain attack, and it activates a "Full Burst". Considering that you need to do at least four full Blade Combos to get Full Burst, the damage you already did in the chain attack, and the ridiculous power of the Full Burst itself, you're almost guaranteed a kill if you pull this off.
  • Then there's Pneuma, who is basically a character-summon-as-super-mode. They can only be on the field for a limited time, and only when the player has maxed-out affinity (in-battle Synchronization) with Pyra/Mythra, but with an attack stat in the 1200's, the ability to treat all damage dealt as the enemy's weakness, and to reflect or retaliate against basically anything the enemy can throw at them, it only seems fair. They also greatly simplify doing Blade Combos and Chain Attacks, making those attacks more powerful and easier to pull off.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 once more has several types:
  • "Talent Arts" from the first game make a return, with elements of the second game's Specials mixed in. Talent Arts are charged by performing actions that fit with the current class's role, including using Arts and to a lesser extent auto attacking. Each class has a unique Talent Art associated with it, which can be used with other classes when the associated class is properly leveled up later in the game. Noah and Mio, unlock their own personal Talent Arts which can be used with any class through story progression.
  • The six main party members can "Interlink" with another party member in order to temporarily become an "Ouroboros". Ouroboros are invincible and come with their own set of powerful Arts and Talent Arts, but only last until either manually canceled or until the Heat Gauge fills. While it's possible to interlink right from the start of a battle, using "Fusion Arts" (essentially regular Arts paired with skills from another class), raises the "Interlink Level" of the party member's associated Interlink, making the Ouroboros form more powerful and longer lasting.
  • "Chain Attacks" return once more, with a slight overhaul. At the start of the Chain, one of three party members can be selected to perform a Chain Order. Afterwards each party member is allowed to any of their (Fusion) Arts once. When a party member attacks, they earn TP, which fills up a gauge. When the gauge fills up to 100, the previously selected party member performs a special move, and a random party member is "reactivated", allowing them to participate in the Chain again. The process then repeats until either there are no more active party members, or the Party Gauge is empty (usually after three or four special attacks). Later in the game, Ouroboros forms can be selected for Chain Orders, either by starting a Chain Attack with an Ouroboros in level 3 Interlink, or by completing the Chain Orders of an Ouroboros pair.

• In Yo-kai Watch, all Yo-kai possess a Soultimate Move which has a variety of effects, from a super powerful attack, status effect on the enemy, or healing allies.
• Ys Particularly Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana has Extra Skills. These attacks can be achieved when characters have increased their skill meter to Max by landing normal skills. Ys Origin also has Limit Breaks in the form of Bursts, which are only usable during Boost mode, deal decent damage, and provide invincibility frames.

Fighting Games

• 2D fighting games often have a "super bar" that fills up as your character fights, allowing your character to perform flashy special moves once it's full, such as the Hyper Combos from the Marvel vs. Capcom series or Super Arts from Street Fighter III. Boss characters may have a super bar that automatically fills up (like M. Bison's in Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Jivatma's in The King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2).
  • Art of Fighting's Super Death Blows were the first fighting game example of this feature, though they could only be unlocked after completing one of the game's bonus rounds.
  • In terms of game mechanics, the game that most closely fits the FFVII archetype is Samurai Shodown. Bar fills only as you take damage (as opposed to games where your attacks that connect can fill the bar as well), allows a super attack once it's full. In Capcom vs. SNK 2, this is reflected in the "K-Groove" meter style.
  • Meanwhile, the S-Groove in CvS2 and the super system in early The King Of Fighters games allow for unlimited Supers once the character's health is low, and, if the user has both low health AND a full meter, allows them to perform their Level 3 Super.
  • In Street Fighter IV, there is a Revenge Gauge separate from the usual Super Meter, and the player can execute a cinematic Ultra Combo after it reaches a certain point. However, the gauge only fills up as the player takes damage making this more like a Desperation Attack.
  • Certain games also allow EX special moves, which are a midpoint between special moves and super moves that require meter to use.

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• ARMS has its "Rush Meter", a triangle that slowly fills up over the course of a fight until it turns yellow and erupts in flames. Once that's the case, the player can enter a "Rush Mode", causing the fighter to glow golden and deliver much faster and stronger punches than usual. If used at the right time, the opponent will not be able to escape the combo and take massive damage (300-400 in a game where the strongest regular attack usually deals between 150 and about 200)
  • Played more straight with the games True Final Boss, who will shoot a giant fireball at the player once he unleashes his Rush.
• Distortion Drives and Astral Heats in BlazBlue. Tager even says "Limit Break!"^note In Japanese, it was more along the lines of "Limiters released!" indicating he is now going full power (a stock phrase dealing with robots and machines). during his Astral Heat.
• In addition to their regular supers, each character in Eternal Fighter Zero has a special level 3 super known as a "Final Memory", which can only be activated when low on health. Doppel Nanase's Final Memory even requires that she must have lost a round in the best-of-three match.
• Part of the gameplay in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is that players can collect Mojo Balls to fill up their Mojo Meter. When the Mojo Meter is filled up once, it will enable the player to instantly beat away their opponent's hit points or to counter against an opponent doing the same. Filling up the Mojo Meter twice will enable the player to do a Mojo Meltdown, a super attack that instantly causes every opponent the player is fighting to lose either a life or the remainder of their health.
• The Hiryū no Ken series introduced this trope to Fighting Games with the Hiryu-no-Ken attack, which can only be used when the K.O. Gauge is full.
• Medabots AX: Metabee and Rokusho: The Medaforce. After suffering enough damage or standing still to charge the Medaforce meter, each Medabot can unleash a powerful technique. Each Medal has a unique ability, so for example the Medaforce can either be a devastating attack or an emergency heal for your Medabots. Damaging Medaforce attacks can pierce Mercy Invincibility.
• Mortal Kombat 9 and its sequel offer the "X-Ray Moves", which are as awesome as the Fatalities themselves. Mortal Kombat 11 replaces the X-Rays with "Fatal Blows", which while they don't show their skeletons (that's saved for the Krushing Blow mechanic) has the same purpose, but is used as a Comeback Mechanic if the player's health is below 30% instead of having to fill a super meter.
• PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is based entirely around a system of limit breaks. Players gather AP from fighting and have access to 3 levels of Super Attacks depending on their AP meter. These Super attacks are the only way to net a kill and gain points.
• In the computer game Sacred and sequel, special maneuvers refill over time (depending on the maneuver and its level, this may only take a few seconds, but combos take very very long to reload), or quickly/instantaneous when special potions are used.
• Soul Series:
  • Soulcalibur IV allows characters to use ''Critical Finishers" once their opponent is weak. These attacks can be things such as throwing the enemy into a black hole, unleashing a barrage of attacks, or knocking them out with their butt. Yeah. Aside from Yun-Seong's and Cassandra's (the above butt attack) Critical Finishers, they are all still pretty epic and Limit Break worthy.
  • Soul Edge, the precursor game, and Soulcalibur V have a more traditional version in "Critical Edge" attacks.
    • In SE, you can unleash a multi-hit combo against your enemy at the expense of a third of your weapon durability meter.
    • In SC V, Critical Edge attacks use up one stock from your Critical gauge, which is also consumed using Brave Edge (extended combo) attacks and Guard Impacts.
• Super Smash Bros.
  • Starting with Brawl, every character has a Final Smash that they can use after breaking a Smash Ball. Most of the time, they're either a single powerful attack or a transformation that seriously powers up the character for a few seconds. Ultimate added an option to activate Final Smashes via a more conventional meter system, though these versions are weaker than their Smash Ball counterparts.
  • Little Mac has a more traditional version. Dealing and taking damage causes his power meter to rise, and when it's full he can deliver a KO punch, which is very likely to One-Hit Kill opponents even at as little as 30% damage.
  • Cloud has the original Limit gauge from Final Fantasy VII as part of his mechanics. It rises from taking and dealing damage, similar to Little Mac, and when it's full, all of his stats increase a bit and the next special move he uses will be strengthened. He also has a move to manually charge the gauge as well, but attempting this when it is full has him use Finishing Touch instead.
  • Joker has his Rebellion Gauge, which fills when taking damage, and charges even faster with his down special (Rebel's Guard) active. It functions as a pretty nasty Comeback Mechanic for the opponent, since taking damage or playing smart with down special will quickly bring out Arsene (his first Persona) to dramatically boost Joker's attack power and upgrade his special attacks (If down special is used with Arsene active, he'll do Tetrakarn or Makarakarn instead). It even charges faster if Joker has a stock disadvantage against the opponent.
  • Terry brings his Super Special Moves from his series along with him, although they work more closely to Desperation Moves; if his damage is at 100%, or his HP in Stamina reaches one third of his total, he can perform the moves Power Geyser or Buster Wolf, both of which have devastating power.
• From Tekken 7 onward, the series includes Rage Art, a Desperation Attack that can be used when you enter Rage Mode (activated when you are at low health). It deals an incredibly powerful attack, but it can only be used once per round.
• Touhou Project flyer fighting games feature a Last Word for each character. These attacks are very flashy, complete with Super Move Portrait Attack. A Last Word attack deals enormous damage if it hits, but need special conditions to activate.
  • Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe combines the super bar with a card battle system. During the game, you have five spellcard spaces that fill as you deal damage, take damage and dodge ranged attacks. Every time you fill a box, you are dealt a new spellcard out of the deck you have previously built on the game options. You can then choose a spellcard with a button and activate it with another button. Some spellcards activate a super special move and will make you discard multiple cards at once, others activate a normal special move (the game was intended to be a gateway into fighting games for Touhou Project fans) that can improve or replace an already-possessed move, and other cards that cause special effects such as extra speed, stopping time, healing, or performing a sudden dash. If you dial a super special move manually, you won't use any spellcards.
  • In Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade, activating a Last Word requires the player to be at 100% Popularity. Activating it will reset popularity back to zero, making it risky since popularity determines the winner instead of HP in case of timeouts.
  • In Touhou Shinpiroku ~ Urban Legend in Limbo, the activation requires the player to collect at least 4 Occult Balls, and the damage gets higher the more Occult Balls are collected.
  • In Touhou Hyouibana ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers, the activation requires the player to have full Spell Gauges for both the master and the slave, as well as a full Possession Gauge. If the Last Word fails to finish off the enemy, however, the slave's Spell Gauge and the Possession Gauge are disabled, meaning the player can't do anymore tagging or Occult Attacks.
• X-Men: Next Dimension: as you punch and kick your opponent, you build up a charge bar which can be spent on a number of special powers. These range from simply unusually powerful punches or slides, to spectacular displays of ownage as Magneto sprays magnetic doom everywhere. Due to a quirk of programming, these are also one of the few ways to semi-reliably interrupt enemy attacks.

First Person Shooters

• In Dragon Rage, you have the Fury Attack, which you get the option of using after you collect 5 cow souls and deliver them to an ancient shrine.
• Doom Eternal has the Blood Punch, which is charged by performing Glory Kills. It turns one hit of your normally pathetic melee attack (which takes nearly a hundred hits just to stun the lowliest of zombies) into a devastating blow which unleashes a large shockwave that inflicts massive damage to demons all around you.
• Doom mod GMOTA:
  • Blaz has the Fatal Draw. The Fatal Draw is the ultimate sword attack that can kill most enemies in the game in one hit, and it also unleashes deadly sword beams. Using this attack needs spirit power that can be charged by dealing damage with powered sword or getting spirit gems.
  • Doomslayer has the Berserk Rune, which adds a berserk meter charged by dealing damage. When full, Doomslayer can activate it to enter a berserk state. In this state, he can pulverize enemies with very strong fists, and shoot massive sword beams from his greatsword.
• Medal of Honor: European Assault had a hilariously out-of-place Adrenaline meter that, when maxed, could be triggered at will to give the player total invincibility, unlimited ammo (even for bazookas), and increased fire rate with no accuracy drop. It borders on the absurd, considering this took place in an otherwise totally serious World War II.
• In Metal: Hellsinger, each weapon has a powerful ultimate ability. The respective meter charges by landing shots on your enemies, and once it's full, you can unleash a powerful skill that can include a very strong shot or making a temporary clone that fights alongside you.
• Each of the playable characters in Overwatch has a unique "Ultimate" ability that charges over time or by dealing/healing damage. The effects vary widely and sometimes include a drawback: Lúcio's "Sound Barrier" encases himself and any nearby team-mates in a powerful (but slowly-dissipating) shield, Winston's "Primal Rage" gives him increased health and melee damage (but disables his gun), while Pharah's "Barrage" simply fires a stream of powerful missiles at wherever she aims (but requires her to stay stock still for the seconds the barrage lasts, making her very vulnerable).
• Similar to Overwatch, Paladins has an "Ultimate" for each of its champions that charges over time, whether it's by dealing damage, or by healing allies. Examples include Fernando's "Immortal" making himself and nearby allies unable to die for a few seconds, Pip's "Evil Mojo" turning the enemy team into harmless chickens, and Drogoz's "Dragon Punch" allowing him to One-Hit Kill any enemy with a jet-powered punch.
• Collecting a certain number of souls in Painkiller causes Daniel to Demon Morph, gaining invincibility and one-hit-kills on almost everything for a short time. It also grants a cool greyscale vision with enemies tinted red and black. One of the key reasons for the leap in difficulty up to the game's final Trauma Mode is due to the removal of souls and thus the Demon Morph. Demon Morph also activates whenever a boss is killed, though it's largely useless there since, you know, you just killed the boss (except in the case of the first boss, who is still alive when the player goes to Demon Morph, and has to be finished off using the Demon Morph attack). It's all for effect.
• PAYDAY 3 has Overkill Weapons, which are earned by finishing objectives and racking up kills. Once called in, they provide a highly powerful weapon of your choice that has limited ammo, but can tear through cops and specials with impunity.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Medic has a special ability to give himself and his current healing target 8 seconds of invincibility in the form of the ÜberCharge, give his healing target 8 seconds of 100% critical hits in the form of the Kritzkrieg, or give his target immunity to movement impairing effects and 300% heal rate with the Quick-fix. The Vaccinator grants a great deal of resistance and crit immunity to a specific type of damage for a few seconds, and is split into four charges. The medic has to build up charge from healing teammates to use any of these, charging faster the more injured they are.
  • The Scout has the Soda Popper, which adds a Hype meter charged by dealing damage. When full, the scout can activate it to Double Jump up to five times in a row for ten seconds. Before being Nerfed, it was charged by simply running, and granted mini-crits for eight seconds automatically when full.
  • The Soldier gets three in the form of his Banners. After causing enough damage to enemy players, the Soldier may unleash the Buff Banner and give him and allies near him a mini-crit boost for ten seconds. The Soldier also has access to the Battalion's Backup, which provides damage and Critical Hit resistance instead of mini-crits, and the Concheror, which provides a speed boost and Life Drain. The latter two also provide +20 max health and a slight health regen effect, respectively, to the Soldier at all times, while the Buff Banner has no benefit until charged.
  • The Pyro's Phlogistinator requires that the Pyro cause 300 points of fire damage to fill its Mmmph meter. Once full, the Pyro can taunt to activate its effect, which grants a moment of invulnerability and ten seconds of Critical Hits.
  • The Sniper has a rifle known as the Hitman's Heatmaker, which gains Focus on each kill (less if you merely assist in a kill). Once the Focus meter is full, the Sniper gains the ability to remain constantly zoomed in (normally he would have to zoom out in between shots) as well as a faster charging time for his rifle. This setup is meant to encourage numerous powerful headshots while it lasts. For a short time, Every Bullet is a Tracer as well, which is more of a downside. He also possesses the Cleaner's Carbine, a sub-machine gun which fills a Crikey meter as it deals damage. Once filled, the Sniper can unleash several seconds of mini-crits.
• Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 have adrenaline. You gain adrenaline by collecting pick-ups on a map, completing the mode's objective, or killing enemies. Once you have 100, you can input a specific key combo to give yourself a powerful buff, which can include a damage boost, speed boost, or rapid health regeneration.

Hack and Slash

• In the Afro Samurai video game, Afro can go into over focus, which gives you a sort of Bullet Time for a short while. In order to activate it, Afro has to fill his Focus Meter by killing enemies.
• There are two different examples of this in Asura's Wrath. The first is Unlimited Mode, which basically makes Asura's rune like imprints in his skin glow white, and he can effectively run through anything and takes little to no damage from regular attacks. The other example, which is a unique case that's actually a necessity to get past a level, is the Burst mechanic, which effectively allows Asura to execute a powerful attack via a Quick Time Event that destroys all opponents in the area, as well as being able to get past an area to the next one. Basically, with each burst done, Asura is technically getting more and more powerful as the episodes progress.
• The "Devil Trigger" in the Devil May Cry series transforms the activator into a powerful demon while it lasts. Also a Super Mode.
  • In Mission 22 of the first game, Dante acquires a Devil Trigger form that resembles his father Sparda. During the first phase of the boss fight against Mundus, pressing the Devil Trigger button allows Dante to summon a demonic dragon that breaks through Mundus's defenses, but each summon attempt consumes all of Dante's DT runes.
  • Devil May Cry 2 has an even more powerful one, dubbed the "Desperation Devil Trigger" by fans, that activates if Dante goes into Devil Trigger mode on low HP. It's hard to get into, but a bad thing for any enemies around if it happens.
  • It's also possible to charge up the Devil Trigger in the third game to create an implosion upon releasing that absolutely destroys most enemies and causes heavy damage to bosses, but greatly reduces the length of the Trigger.
  • Devil May Cry 4 gives these to Nero that are only useable in Devil Trigger and instantly drain the gauge in the form of Showdown; a very slow to charge but exceedingly powerful array of slashes delivered with Red Queen and Yamato that will kill nearly anything it hits, and Maximum Bet has him draw an X-shaped Sword Beam before launching it off, any enemy caught by it will be carried by the relatively slow moving attack and severely damaged every frame it's trapped in the beam.
    • 4 Special Edition meanwhile gives one to Lady, as the cast's resident Badass Normal she doesn't have a super mode, so instead her devil trigger is expended by her pulling out grenades in the immediate area around her. An extre grenade is added for each pip of Devil Trigger gauge and each one does good damage on its own, so with a full, maxed capacity DT gauge, her grenade storm can do enough damage to chunk even the final boss close to death.
  • Devil May Cry 5 has different Limit Breaks for each playable character:
    • Dante keeps his original Devil Trigger, but later gains a special Sin Devil Trigger that has its own moveset, it's vastly more powerful, and cannot be deactivated manually.
    • V can summon Nightmare to attack his opponents.
    • At the end of the game, Nero regrows his arm and obtains a new Devil Trigger form, which grants him ghostly claws and enhances his Buster grabs.
  • In the Special Edition for 4 and 5, the playable version of Vergil has Judgement Cut: End, which is a variation on the Desperation Attack Vergil uses as the final boss of 3, where he fills the screen with slash marks that causes space itself to shatter like glass when he sheathes his sword. 5 added three more to his arsenal with World of V; where he summons V from his body and has his familiars run rampage, Hell on Earth which is a single, gigantic explosion with his Beowolf gauntlets, and Deep Stinger with the Yamato-Force Edge combo, where he goes into a VERY long lasting spinning attack. These are only usable if Vergil's unique Concentration gauge is maxed/near maxed, which requires not getting hit, not wasting time, and not whiffing attacks, but each one is more than enough to kill every enemy that they hit and take chunks of boss' HP bars.
• Drakengard involved an effect that you picked up after defeating 50 enemies in a row (with a time limit between each kill). Your character would get supercharged for a time, basically able to kill most enemies in a few hits.
• The Dynasty Warriors franchise and related games have these: it, Samurai Warriors, and the Warriors Orochi triology call them Musou attacks. You get True Musou attacks by performing them while your character's health is low enough for the bar to be red (or if you equipped an item or ability to do this any time the bar is filled); during the attack the character becomes temporarily invincible. Normally, the Musou bar fills when you attack, when you take damage, when you collect restorative items, or when you manually charge it. A notable change in the Warriors Orochi game was that without the Absorb attribute on your character's weapon, he or she doesn't fill the bar with attack damage, bringing it close to Too Awesome to Use.
  • The Orochi games also utilize passive skills (which includes a game breaking ability that triples your attack speed) that require a full bar to utilize, further trivializing Musou Attacks.
  • The Musou attack is upgraded in Dynasty Warriors 7, where rather than just elaborate combos the character unleashes a single powerful move. Some are even grabs that deals particularly massive damage to a single enemy while still having some degree of AOE.
  • On top of the Musou meter (which gives the player access to three different Musou attacks: a normal Musou, an aerial Musou, and a Musou activated by holding down the Switch Weapon button while activating it,) 8 has a Rage meter that fills as you attack enemies (but unlike the Musou meter doesn't have restorative items to fill it quickly.) Once full the player can enter a Rage state where they become invincible, their attacks are faster and more powerful, their Musou meter is maxed out, and in place of a Musou attack they have a True Rage attack, an extremely long but steerable flurry of attacks that lasts as long as the player holds down the Musou attack button and slowly drains their Musou meter, and is capable of annihilating hundreds of enemies (including enemy officers) in one go.
• In Hyrule Warriors, each character has super attacks which they can use to wipe out enemies. In general, there are three varieties for each character/moveset: the normal one that takes one bar of Special gauge to use, the Focus Spirit finisher that's used automatically when the bar runs out, and a different variant that's triggered when you use the special during Focus Spirit (which also has a secondary property of instantly stunning giant enemies and opening them up for a Weak Point Smash).
• Ninety-Nine Nights is an interesting example because it has a Limit Break that is used to charge a second Limit Break. Killing enemies with normal attacks fills the Orb Attack gauge. Killing enemies with Orb Attacks fills the Orb Spark gauge. The Orb Spark kills all the Mooks you can see and heals you and your allies, but the mooks don't award Experience Points directly. Instead, enemies killed by Orb Sparks are worth more points on the end of mission score, which affects your rank and the amount of bonus Exp you get.
• In No More Heroes, Travis has a random chance of shouting an attack name from his favorite anime and going into Dark Side Mode after defeating an enemy. These range from getting a new long-range attack for a short while to increased speed and attack power, and the most powerful of these attacks, Anarchy in the Galaxy, clears the screen of enemies and is triggered whenever the player feels like it. However, beating the level without using it nets you extra money.
  • In the sequel, he has a standard "Ecstasy" meter which, when filled up, lets him attack crazy-fast as well the slot-based Limit Break which goes from things like letting him unleash Sword Beams to turning into a tiger and just straight-up maul the mooks trying to get the hell away from you.
• "Onimusha mode" in the Onimusha series. On second thought, a lot of Capcom games have this trope.
• In the earlier Rune, Ragnar also has a meter which fills every time he deals damage (and drains slowly over time), when it's full (or he picks up a red rune) he immediately launches into a berserker rage and the meter starts draining rapidly. Ragnar's eyes glow red and he roars with fury, dealing enormous amounts of damage until the meter empties all the way, although he can prevent the rage from ending indefinitely as long as he causes enough damage continuously to outpace the draining meter.
• In Sengoku Basara the Basara gauge fills every time you kill a certain amount of enemies, allowing to to perform a special attack. This attack can be upgraded to the Super Basara Attack if you execute it while in Hyper Mode.
• Spartan: Total Warrior has rage attacks fueled by attacking enemies. The attack used is based on the weapon the Spartan is holding and if it was a group attack or a single attack. They are all done in slow motion and with lots of gore. The most notable thing is how fast the rage bar charges: in large battles, it is possible to use the rage attack every other attack.
  • Then there's the God Attacks, fueled by a separate gauge that increases as you kill enemies and doesn't decrease. While Rage Attacks boil down to elaborate sequences of hacking and slashing, God Attacks range from turning enemies to stone and shattering their bodies to making them explode.

MMO

• In AdventureQuest Worlds, the Undead Slayer's Dragon Lance attack, probably the most damaging move in the class's entire arsenal, is only available if you have accumulated 20 or more points of Spirit Power through autoattacks on undead foes. Because Spirit Power powers your attacks and your heals, and using this attack burns ALL of your Spirit Power, its best use is as a Finishing Move against an undead boss, which means you need to bring the boss down to low HP before unleashing on him.
• Bloodline Champions has an ultimate ability requiring 100% energy (build up by effectively using abilities) and EX abilities that require 40% (usually a added effect onto a current skill, but occasionally a rather different one) for each bloodline.
• Dominators in City of Villains have the Domination meter, which fills as they attack opponents. When full, Domination can be activated to increase the damage, duration, and effectiveness of all powers for up to two minutes, then it must recharge and cannot be reactivated even if the Domination bar is refilled until the cooldown period is over. Brutes similarly have the Fury meter, which fills up as they are attacked or use their own attacks and boosts their damage output as it rises for a total boost of 200% of their base damage. This Fury boost stacks with all other damage buffs the Brute has on him. Blasters in City of Heroes have a similar system to Fury called Defiance, with the added feature that they can still use their weaker attacks even when paralyzed by a hold power.
• Player characters in DC Universe Online have "Supercharge" abilities that are built up from using weapon attacks or specific powers and can then be activated to deliver a powerful attack, heal, or transformation. Depending on the strength of the ability, it will use either a quarter, half, or all of the meter.
• EVE Online sort of incorporates this, in the form of Overheating and Siege Mode. If players have trained the appropriate skills, they can overload many modules to push their performance up, but this, of course, damages the modules over time, eventually breaking them. Dreadnought ships, while only able to equip three capital weapons of their racial default, can equip a special Siege Module that multiplies their weapon damage by 625%, halves the duration on self-repair modules and doubles the amount repaired as well as making the Dreadnought immune to enemy electronic warfare (warp scramblers, targeting jammers et al.) however this cripples the tracking speed of the turrets/reduces the explosion radius of missiles and completely disables all ship navigation and warping, and the Dreadnought cannot be affected by friendly electronic warfare or repairs until the Siege Module runs out.
• Global Agenda has the Morale Boosts, powerful class-specific buffs that affect the entire team. Using them requires the Morale gauge to be full. The gauge charges over a lenghty period of time from pretty much any action taken in combat.
• This is how the "Daily Powers" in Neverwinter work, since of course few would want a combat ability with a 24-hour cooldown.
• Phantasy Star Online featured sidekicks called Mags, who could perform various different Photon Blasts after a gauge filled up. A slight subversion in that these abilities were of extremely limited utility on higher difficulty levels.
• Phantasy Star Universe has two different limit burst abilities for CASTs and Beasts: CASTs can summon SUV Weapons to inflict large amounts of damage, while Beasts can use Nanoblast to transform into hulking bruisers. Humans and Newmans lacked an equivalent ability until Phantasy Star Portable 2, where they were given Mirage Blasts, summons that function in a similar capacity to a MAG's Photon Blast from PSO. Deumans, in Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity, have their own special ability in the form of Infinity Blast, a Super Mode that grants super-powered attacks.
• Phantasy Star Online 2, in addition to seeing the return of Photon Blasts, has Compound Techniques, which require the player to charge a meter by attacking enemies with techniques, combine two elements together for heavy damage. These include Zandion, an electricity/wind technique that sends the user flying while coursing electricity; Formelgion, a fire/dark technique that fires a devastating energy beam; and Baranstion, an ice/light technique that assaults enemies with swords made of ice.
• Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis also features Photon Blasts, but in a new form: instead of being dependent on your MAG, Photon Blasts are based on what weapon you're currently using, making them more traditional super attacks, including (but not limited to) striking with a massive photon blade with Swords, calling in a Kill Sat with Assault Rifles, or firing a small-scale Wave-Motion Gun from Rods. Several classes also have their own Active Skills which function as smaller-scale Limit Breaks, and Technique-based classes once again can use Compound Techniques, albeit in different forms: Fomelgion is now a fire/dark Technique that summons a gargantuan Flaming Sword to unleash a Sword Beam, Baranstion is an ice/light Technique that summons a spear to skewer its targets with spikes of rime and light, and Zandion is a lightning/wind Technique that conjures electrified tornadoes to devastate enemies.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean Online, certain weapons have powerful Break Attacks, which charge upon taking damage or successfully performing Combos.
• With the change to the Evolution of Combat, Runescape now has a form of this. Before EoC, some higher-level weapons had a special attack gauge that could pull off powerful abilities when they were full, but it was more akin to a Charged Attack than a Limit Break. Now, all players have an adrenaline bar that fills up over time in combat by using basic-level abilities. Threshold abilities are a sort of mini-limit break that require 50% adrenaline and drain 15%, whereas Ultimate abilities require a full bar and would be of almost game-breaking power if it weren't for the long cooldowns and time needed to build up the adrenaline.
• In Runes of Magic, the entire warrior class is built around this. Warriors have exactly 1 damage skill that can be used without any Rage (warrior mana, basically) and it requires you to be a certain distance from the target, and it's on a 12-second cooldown. As you attack and get hit, you build up rage, which is then used to fuel anything you can do from a big old slash attack to bashing heads to stab-stab-stun combos, boost defense at the cost of attack and vice versa, use area of effect attacks, etc.
  • Offset by Runes' dual class mechanic, where there are about 5 to 7 skills available from your secondary if both classes are high enough level to unlock them. These skills use Focus (Scout class mana), Energy (Rogue class mana), or Mana, and are usually on short/nonexistent cool-downs. Also, starting at 15/15, then 20/20, 25/25, ... 50/50, you can obtain Elite Skills that are usually either buffs or attacks. Those that are attacks are pretty powerful, and normally use your secondary class's energy.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic has this in the form of "Heroic Moments" which heals you and your companion over time as well as resetting the cooldown on your class's stun ability.
  • By completing the storyline with each class, you also unlock a specific attack related to that class for using during Heroic Moments... which is then available to all of your characters once unlocked. This means you can have Jedi busting out grenades and flamethrowers or Bounty Hunters shooting lightning while calling down orbital strikes!
• In Tower of Fantasy, delivering attacks builds up a meter that, when full, allows you to unleash a powerful "Discharge" attack the next time you switch to a different weapon, depending on the weapon type in question.
• Warframe: Finishing the quest "The Second Dream" unlocks Transcendence, which takes three minutes to charge up. When triggered, you turn into your Operator, turning you invulnerable for 10 seconds while firing a gigantic beam of Void energy that does massive damage to every enemy in its path. Finishing "The War Within" removes this ability and replaces it with Transference, which is not as spectacular but can be toggled on and off without limit, thus no longer qualifying as a Limit Break.
  • In Duviri, when you’re otherwise stuck in Drifter form and the Warframe is restricted to Undercroft missions, you can learn Transference Surge, which lets you switch to your Warframe for a short time (five seconds, ten if upgraded further), but since the Dax soldiers in Duviri lack armor or shields, your frame and weapons will usually cleave through them like a hot knife through butter.
• Warhammer Online has Morale abilities: as you kick ass on the battlefield, your Morale gauge builds up, allowing you to make, for example, a devastating attack at the 25% Morale level that's capable of dropping a weak foe in one hit, or a really devastating ability at the 100% level capable of turning the tide of a battle.
• World of Warcraft has many player-character mechanics that work this way:
  • Warriors gain "Rage" points from dealing or taking damage in combat (or from certain skills, such as Bloodrage), which they spend on their abilities.
  • Rogues are largely built upon using certain special skills to build up "Combo Points" followed up by a "Finisher", which has a more severe effect (be it more damage, longer incapacitation, etc.) based on how many Combo Points you have accrued on a target.
  • The Druid's bear form has rage like a warrior, and its cat form has combo points like a Rogue.
  • In addition, most if not all classes have abilities that can only be used after something happens in combat. (When available, these abilities are said to "proc".) The warrior ability Overpower can only be used in a window of a few seconds after an attack by the warrior has been dodged, blocked or parried, and the Execute ability can only be used on targets that have been reduced to less than a fifth of their total Hit Points.
  • Death Knights gain Runic Power as they use their abilities, and depending on how much they have they can empty it to use a special ability; frost spec Knights use a decent strength attack or an AoE freeze (although using the right glyph takes away the latter's cost), blood Knights (no, not those) summon an animate sword to fight with them, and unholy users call a gargoyle in to bombard the enemy. In addition, Unholy Death Knights have Shadow Infusion, which increases the power of the Death Knight's ghoul every time they cast Death Coil; upon reaching five stacks, the Death Knight can consume them to temporarily increase the power of their ghoul even more, and give its abilities additional effects.
  • Paladins have a resource called Holy Power and several spells or attacks that do more damage/healing depending on how many charges of Holy Power are available. Certain abilities, such as Shield of the Righteous and Templar's Verdict, require the paladin to accumulate 3 charges of Holy Power before they can be used at all.
  • Prior to Mists of Pandaria, Priests had Evangelism, which had different effects depending on whether the player used Shadow or Holy spells. The holy side built up by casting Smite or Holy fire, and gradually increased their power while reducing their mana cost; consuming it restored mana and temporarily improved the priest's healing abilities. The shadow side built charges by casting Mind Flay, and gradually increased the power of their damage over time spells; consuming it restored mana and temporarily increased the power of many of their direct Shadow attacks.
  • Elemental Shaman have Fulmination. When they cast lightning spells, they have a chance to add charges to their Lightning Shield (if it's up). The charges Lightning Shield has above three are consumed when they cast Earth shock to increase its power. Enhancement Shaman have Improved Lava Lash, which increases the power of Lava Lash for each stack of Searing Flames(a damage over time effect inflicted by Searing Totem) on the target, and Maelstrom Weapon, which has a chance to build up every time the Shaman strikes an opponent and reduces the cast time and mana cost of various spells to potentially nothing.
  • Marksmanship Hunters have Master Marksman, which gives them a chance to receive a buff whenever they cast Steady Shot; when this buff stacks to three (previously five), the hunter's next Aimed Shot (a powerful attack that normally has a long cast time) cast instantly and with no cost. Beast Mastery Hunters have Frenzy, which increases the attack speed of their pet every time said pet attacks; consuming charges of this restores the pet's Focus and temporarily increases the attack speed of the hunter.
  • Balance Druid's Eclipse worked a bit like this. They had a bar with two halves, Nature and Arcane; casting direct damage Nature spells brought it closer to the Arcane end, and casting direct damage Arcane spells brought it closer to the Nature end. Once the druid reached one end of the bar or the other, they gained a brief spell haste buff, a mana recharge and a buff to one of their magic schools, depending on which end of the bar they were on, which lasted until they reached the middle of the bar again.
  • Before Legion, Warlocks had a Demonic Fury bar. Casting Shadow spells earned Demonic Fury, and when the DF bar topped out they could transform into a demon version of themselves, which could wreck things.
  • The Shadow Priest's Shadow Orbs worked like this: each time the priest cast Mind Blast or Shadow Word: Death, they gained a Shadow Orb. They could obtain a maximum of three and the more used, the more powerful the spell. They could use it on a short, powerful Damage Over Time or a single target horror effect. Shadow Orbs were eventually replaced with Insanity, which is a resource generated by damaging abilities; at full Insanity, the Shadow Priest can use Void Eruption and enter Voidform, consuming their Insanity to enhance their spell damage and casting speed.
  • Paladin tanks now have Bastion of Glory, which they gain a stack of each time they use Shield of the Righteous, up to five. Bastion of Glory increases the amount the paladin is healed by their own Word of Glory, a decent healing ability. Similarly, Death Knight tanks get Scent of Blood, which has a chance to gain a charge whenever the DK auto-attacks, up to five. Said charges increase the amount the Death Knight is healed by their next Death Strike, and increases the Runic Power they gain by using it.
  • As of Mists of Pandaria, both DPS Warrior specs have a new one as well. Arms Warriors have Taste for Blood, which gains a charge when their Overpower ability procs another use of Overpower, up to five. Said charges increase the power of the Warrior's next Heroic Strike or Cleave. Fury Warriors get Meat Cleaver, which procs whenever they use Whirlwind, and increases the number of opponents their next Raging Blow is capable of hitting by one, up to a max of four.
• zOMG! features a rage meter that slowly fills as the player takes damage and uses rings. By quickly pressing the hotkey, one uses a RR 1 skill, such as a slashing with a sword, shooting a handgun, or tossing a water balloon. By holding the key down, the skill's power increases, and the animation gets progressively more spectacular. For example, the sword now performs a complex combo, the number of guns you wield reaches The Mask-like proportions, and the water balloon turns into a screen-filling liquid nuke.
  • Quite possibly the most hilarious is the RR4 Taunt. The Taunt ring has you gesture at the enemy or yell at them to draw their attention. Rage Rank 4 has you give them The Double Deuce and yell obscenities at them. What enemy wouldn't want to tear your face off after that?

MOBA

• In Gigantic the heroes' ultimate abilities are called Focus abilities, and require a bar to be filled up before each use. Characters can build up Focus by dealing damage to enemies or killing them, but Focus is also granted for taking damage or dying.
• In League of Legends, Shyvana has a fury bar which fills up when she deals damage with her abilities and basic attacks. Once it is filled up, she can execute her ultimate, transforming into a dragon and flying for a short while, knocking enemies back in the process. Not only that, but her abilities are buffed, and she can gain more fury in order to extend the duration of her dragon form.

Platform Games

• Item Crashes in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night allow Richter to use a powered up version of his current sub-weapon in exchange for a large heart cost, ranging from the Dagger's Flechette Storm to the Holy Water's screen hitting Hydro Storm. Even when Richter doesn't have a sub-weapon, activating Item Crash will ether cause him to use a large Flame Whip (Rondo) or imbue his whip with blue flames for a limited time (Symphony).
• The Kong Pow from Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Collecting bananas gradually fills a gauge on the HUD that, when full, allows the Kongs to transform all onscreen enemies into extra lives, recovery hearts, or Banana Coins, depending on which partner you currently have. It takes two characters to pull off the move, though, so Donkey Kong is out of luck if he's by himself.
• Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure: The title character, once he fills his Super Meter to 100%, can take a Mid-Battle Tea Break to summon his Robot Suit, making him invincible and have extra-powerful attacks until the Super Meter fully drains.
• In Iji, Iji can activate the secret ability Retribution when at <= 5 HP and knocked to the ground. It's very powerful, theoretically capable of dealing 418 damage, compared to the Nuke which does 5.
• In Jak II: Renegade and Jak 3: Wastelander, Jak can turn into Dark Jak after absorbing enough Dark Eco. You can launch a flurry of rapid attacks with reduced risk of injury. Or, you can kill everything on the screen with a massive spray of purple lightning. Guess which one is more fun.
• In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, you get a Super Ability if you eat certain enemies. The Super Ability gives you an incredibly powerful attack, and even comes with a slightly flashy cutscene with its first use.
• The Legend of Spyro has Fury in all three games, though they differ a bit between games. In the first two, the fury bar is filled by collecting purple gems, and obliterates all the enemies onscreen in a blast of whatever element Spyro is using at the time. In the third, it's filled simply by fighting enemies, and when activated briefly allows both Spyro and Cynder to use Convexity/Fury breath, which is ridiculously overpowered.
• Several of Mega Man X's armors have a meter that fills up with damage. This full meter can be used for a single powerful attack or a screen-clearing blast. The Ultimate Armor lets you use the attack unlimited times.
  • Mega Man X8 would later introduce a third meter in addition the Life and Weapon Guages called the AT Gauge, which is used for team powers. If the player's teammate is down, filling this meter will bring them back with a fraction of the their HP. If both team members are able, then filling this meter will allow them to perform a powerful Combination Attack that destroys weaker enemies on screen and heavily damages bosses when it connects. X can also gain unique Giga Abilities depending on which armor set he's using. The Icarus Armor grants X the Giga Crush attack, which functions similarly to the ones seen in previous installments in the series, while the Hermes Armor grants the X-Drive ability, which temporarily powers up all of the components of the Hermes Armor based on how much Weapon Energy was stored.
  • Mega Man Battle Network had the Program Advance. If you put certain set(s) of 3 or more specific Battle Chips in your folder, saved them when they were drawn in battle until the full set has been drawn, then selected the set in order, the chips would merge together to form a Program Advance. A Program Advance was extremely powerful (in fact, one of them was a Game-Breaker in Battle Network 2), and some came with temporary invincibility for the duration of the attack. However, the same Program Advance could not be used multiple times in one battle from the fifth game onwards.
  • Mega Man Star Force has the Big Bang attack. When you counter an enemy attack, you get an extra card. But if you are in a special form, then you may get a special Big Bang card, which is ridiculously powerful, hits most enemies, and hard to dodge.
  • Mega Man X: Command Mission uses Action Commands for its Limit Breaks, similar to Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X, although they are more unique in that they feel more like minigames rather than power enhancers. One character's Limit Break effectiveness is determined by the player's luck at poker!
• In a variation, the Mega Man Zero series gives limit breaks (known in-game as EX Attacks) to some of the bosses that you fight, especially certain bosses like the Four Guardians or Copy X. Often these manifest as a particularly powerful attack that the boss starts using at low health (and only while you have an A or S rank), and many of these also give the boss a brief period of invulnerability. While Zero doesn't get any limit breaks himself, fighting a boss that's using an EX Attack means he'll get a new technique after beating it.
• Michael Jackson's Moonwalker offers a variation where, if they can catch a shooting star, the player will morph into Mecha Jackson, the King of Robo-pop, a 10-foot-tall robot with a pair of rockets strapped to its feet, lasers in its eyes, and bombs to scatter all over the screen. Yes, it is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
• Sonic the Hedgehog's "Super Sonic" form could count as a Limit Break as well as (obviously) a Super Mode, especially in the classic games. In Sonic Adventure 2's two-player mode, characters are granted "special moves" after getting 20, 40, and 60 rings respectively - the 40-ring one is an attack on the opponent which also shows up when said character is a computer opponent in story mode, such as Sonic's "Sonic Wind" and Shadow's "Chaos Spear".
  • "Time Break" and "Speed Break" in Sonic and the Secret Rings. Both require the Soul Gauge to be full before using. Sonic and the Black Knight has "Soul Surge", which functions in a similar way.
  • Defeating enemies and collecting rings in Sonic Heroes fills a power meter that allows you to use a "Team Blast" that destroys all regular enemies on screen and gives an after-effect depending on which team uses it that lasts until the bar empties (letting Sonic use the light speed attack, Team Sonic; freezing time, Team Dark; leveling up, gaining a shield and invincibility, Team Rose; and getting rings for every enemy defeated, Team Chaotix).
  • Defeating Black Arms in Shadow the Hedgehog fills the good side of the Karma Meter that temporarily allows Shadow to use Chaos Control to fly through a large portion of the level (which can ironically lead to Shadow fulfilling the neutral ending for the level rather than the good one), whereas defeating G.U.N. troops fills the evil meter that temporarily lets him unleash a Chaos Blast to attack all surrounding enemies. Both options also make him invincible for their duration.
• One of these serves as a secret Special Attack in Super Metroid; the Crystal Flash can only be triggered if Samus has less than 50 units of energy, no reserve energy, at least 10 Missiles, at least 10 Super Missiles, and at least 11 Power Bombs. The player must then select the Power Bombs and input a very complicated button combination. If pulled off, it drains 10 of each missile and 11 Power Bombs, but fully replenishes Samus' energy.
• Vexx features a meter that fills up as you attack enemies. It fills up quicker with consecutive hits. When full, it can be used to activate a special mode that allows you to run fast and shoot energy blasts from your hands. It's only actually required at one point in the game, though — and that spot has a special area-only powerup that fills it instantly.

Puzzle Games

• Puyo Puyo:
  • Puyo Puyo Fever introduced Fever Mode, which a player would enter when his or her power bar was full. During Fever Mode, sets of already-built Puyo chains drop into the playing field, just waiting for you to pop them and unleash a huge attack on your opponent.
  • Puyo Puyo 7 added henshin mode, which actually causes your character to transform, along with all their Puyo. Chibi mode is like Fever, only the Puyo are tiny, whereas in Deka mode, you play with huge Puyo that pop in groups of 3 and every match counts as a chain.

Racing Games

• The Burnout games from Takedown onwards are similar to Need for Speed, but add refilling the boost all the way by making your opponents crash, and triple the fun quotient.
• F-Zero 99: When two cars collide on the track or when a car drops from the Skyway, they drop Super Sparks that can be picked up by any cars behind them. Super Sparks are also spawned frequently by Gold Bumpers, which will drop Super Sparks onto the track automatically and will immediately grant a large amount of Super Sparks if struck. Collecting Super Sparks fills the gold gauge below your health, and once it is full, your car will shine gold and pressing A will activate the Skyway, floating your car to a faster and more efficient track above the main track that allows you to gain a significant lead. Skyway access lasts until the gauge expires (depending on placement), upon which your car will be dropped off back to the main track at the next appropriate opportunity.
• Gensou Skydrift: In this Touhou Project fangame, items work like a downplayed version of this, being tided to a two-tiered gauge that fills over time based on your board's "spell" stat, but fills faster while passing through rings. once it turns green, you can either press the "spell" button to draw a random level 1 "spell card", or wait until it turns blue and then press the button to draw a level 2 card. Each character also has a more conventional Limit Break called a "Last Word", activated by drawing a level 2 spell once a separate yellow gauge has been filled. These vary radically between characters, from Nue turning into a Flying Saucer that automatically navigates the course, to Cirno freezing all of her opponents and messing up their controls, to Suwako creating a rainstorm that slows down everyone except herself.
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles, in addition to a standard Nitro Boost replenished each lap of a race, has a Slipstream Boost, which is charged by riding an opponent's slipstream (draft).
• Need for Speed
  • The nitrous oxide in Need for Speed: Underground 2 counts: you refill it by narrowly avoiding cars, tailgating, drifting, and pulling enough Slo-Mo Big Air.
  • Need for Speed: Undercover has a similar mechanic. Nitrous and Speedbreaker both recharge normally, but by "pushing the envelope" with dangerous driving techniques like near-misses, trading paint with other cars, and drifting, the player gets more Zone points to signify going deeper and deeper into The Zone. As the meter fills up, the player gets a multiplier, effectively increasing the amount of zone points they get, and the speed at which nitrous and speedbreaker recharge, up to five times. Crash into a wall, though, and you lose a multiplier.

Real Time Strategy

• Dawn of War features "Relic Units." These units require a relic to be held (essentially a certain point on the map), tier 3 or 4, and usually a few expensive and time-consuming researches. Relic units generally kick the shit out of most other units, and are limited to one at a time.
• Dawn of War II and its expansions, there's a meter for each faction like Space Marines' Fury or Orks' WAAGH, these fill as you kill enemies and your own units die. When it reaches a certain number depending on the faction, you may be able to summon a special unit like Terminators or drop down a turret. When your meter is almost full, you can use your faction's strongest special attack (such as the Imperial Guard's Rocket Volley) to target a visible point on the map.
  • In the campaign, there's also Thaddeus who may gain an ability (if you attributed his skill points accordingly) to enter a state in which he will be able to use his abilities with no energy cost and no recharge time after he takes a certain amount of damage. Pair that with another ability, allowing brief invulnerability after a successful jump/teleport and you have a Lightning Bruiser/Glass Cannon.
• EndWar has an unusual form of this — when one side is close to defeat by the opposing side meeting the objective, Defcon 1 triggers and Weapons Of Mass Destruction (ranging from tactical nuclear weapons to orbital energy cannon strikes, along with the ability to crash an uplink, making it irrelevant for the scenario objectives) become available to the losing side for the first salvo, and then to the winning side as retaliation if they're used. These WMDs are a weapon powerful enough to instantly wipe out units at ground zero (at full health and shields), and to cause units to require evacuation at a near-miss.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has Plant Food. Giving it to a Plant causes it to use a powerful attack (usually enough to off most tougher zombies), inflict status on all enemies on screen, produce a huge amount of sun, increase its defences, or self-duplicate. The Mega Gatling Pea has a chance to randomly use his Plant Food for free instead of a its normal shot barrage.
• Syndicate reboot has the DART Overlay, which slows down time and allows you to keep track of enemies, which are highlighted in orange against a darkened background, even through cover.

Rhythm Games

• Euphoria in DJ Hero which automatically handles crossfading while active.
• Fever in DJMAX has effects that vary from game to game. In the more conventional games, Fever makes each note add more to your combo. In DJMAX Technika, it makes your gauge recover faster with each note hit and also converts "green" MAXes into a slightly better "rainbow" MAX. In DJMAX Respect, it also gives you more points per note. In all games it's featured in except in Technika, if you fill the Fever gauge again before your current Fever runs out, you can extend the Fever duration and gain additional buffs.
• Star Power in Guitar Hero, which not only doubles the player's score for each note, but makes the player's "Rock meter" rise more dramatically, which can be a great strategic advantage in beating more difficult songs.
• Overdrive in Rock Band, which has the added effect of reviving band members who've failed.

Roguelike

• Darkest Dungeon 2 has several examples:
  • The Occultist has several skills that can only be used when he has 2 Unchecked Power tokens. They are quite powerful, but gaining the tokens requires careful use of his basic skills.
  • An interesting case of the enemies getting these: Cultists generate "Worship" tokens every time they act, and can transfer these tokens to stronger Cultists. After two transfers, Mini-Boss Cultists can use the tokens to perform a powerful "Exultation" attack, with every Cultist having their own unique Exultation.
  • Attacking the Dreaming General's taproot makes it generate a token. Once it gains enough of these, it enables the Dreaming General to perform "The Waking Dead", an attack which hits two heroes for a lot of health and stress damage.
• Each class in Dicey Dungeons has a Limit Break (although some episodes change what it is), which is charged by taking damage:
  • The Warrior has "Fury", which doubles the effect of his next action. This is changed in Parallel Universe, where it's the same as regular Fury but locks him out from using the same weapon in his next turn.
    • In the Halloween special, he gets a 6-point heal with "Recovery" instead.
    • In Reunion, he gets "Barricade", which instantly adds 3 Shield. There are also various Workout Tapes that change his Limit Break, including four tapes that give Victory Points, which teach him Omnislash.
  • The Thief has "Unlucky Roll", which instantly rolls four "1" dice.
    • In "Finders, Keepers", this is changed to "Hook", which gives him the Re-Equip Next status, allowing him to reuse a weapon.
    • In his "Uptick" challenge, where all of your dice are a rolled at a specific value each turn, he instead gets "Trips", which rolls three dice at the current value.
    • In Reunion, he gets "Berserk", which makes him deal double damage for the rest of the turn.
  • The Inventor has "Focus", which turns all her unused dice into 6s.
  • The Robot has "Autoroll", which guarantees a Jackpot.
    • In their "You Choose, You Lose" challenge where you pick your dice, you instead get "Two More Dice", which gives you two random extra dice that don't have a risk of knocking out equipment.
    • In Reunion, they get "Fury" instead.
  • The Witch has "Crystal Ball", which rolls 3 extra dice.
    • In her Halloween episode, she instead gets "Jetpack" to instantly let her flee a battle, useful if the player messed up a puzzle.
    • In Reunion, she gets "Skip", which gives her a new puzzle.
  • The Jester has "Snap!", which allows them to instantly use any duplicates in their hand at maximum value, no dice required.
    • Their "Not Just A Jester" challenge has them copy The Warrior's "Fury" limit break.
    • Their "Losers, Weepers" challenge gives them "Magic Trick", which discards their entire hand and draws three new cards.
    • In Reunion, they get "Draw 3", which lets them draw three cards.
  • The Bear has Bear Smash, which instantly deals 10 damage, no catch.
  • In the Back Stage area, your team has Against All Odds, which gives 4 random dice with even values.
• In Hades, most Olympians have a Boon that lets you use their Call. Calls cost a segment of your God Gauge, which fills up as you inflict and take damage, and have powerful effects depending on the god who granted it, such as Athena making you temporarily invincible, Zeus calling a thunderstorm on your enemies, or Dionysus creating a toxic cloud around you. If the God Gauge is completely full, then the Call is replaced with a Greater Call which drains the whole gauge, but has a massively improved effect, usually lasting several times longer or doing much more damage.

Shoot 'Em Up

• Raiden V has Cheer system, in which when performing certain actions (such as reaching a target score, clearing a stage, or beating your personal best score), you may receive "cheers" from other players, and likewise you may "cheer" on other players doing the same. And the Cheer meter can also be filled by shooting down more enemy units. When the Cheer meter is full, you can perform a special attack by summoning an aircraft to do that.
• Raystorm has the Special Attack that is refilled through use of the lock-on laser.
• In Touhou Project, the eighth game, Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night features Last Spell. If you bomb right at the moment you get hit, instead of casting your Spellcard, you cast a Last Spell instead. A Last Spell is considerably stronger than a regular Spellcard, but consumes two bombs.

Sports Games

• 1080° 2: Avalanche features a power meter that fills up as you perform tricks, when it's full your character glows with exhilaration and can now instantly recover from a fall or smash their way past an opponent.
• Ace Fishing has a Fever Mode gauge which fills up everytime you catch fish. When activated, the player's attack increases.
• In Backyard Basketball, the team gets Hot Hand if it makes 3 shots without the other team scoring, a dunk powerup if it makes 3 outside shots without the other team scoring, and a butterfingers powerup if a player makes a steal when the team has a powerup. Hot Hand and Dunk have shot limits, and Butterfingers has a time limit.
• The Mario sports games tend to do this a lot.
  • In Mario Power Tennis and Mario Tennis: Power Tour, each character has an Offense and Defense Power Shot. Offense Shots are powerful shots that are difficult to return successfully (usually going absurdly fast or having a ridiculous curve) and, if they are returned, have some sort of negative impact on the player who returns it (spinning him around, shocking him, pushing him back, etc.). Defense Shots can hit the ball from (almost) anywhere and negate the damage done from power shots.
  • Making good plays in Mario Super Sluggers will fill your Star gauge. Every time it's completely filled, a star will be added to the counter. Using a star in batting will make the contact more prone to being a base hit, and using it in pitching will produce a faster or tricky pitch. Team captains may use two stars instead of one sometimes.
  • Super Mario Strikers has the Super Shot which, if timed perfectly, can't be stopped even by a goalie. It's sequel, Mario Strikers Charged has an even flashier version known as the Mega Strike: The captain launches into the air with the ball, temporarily transforms and, again depending on timing, can potentially score between 3-6 goals.
• In NBA Ballers, you can "bring down the house" when you fill up the House meter. Performing the move results in a one-man alley oop that destroys the hoop and instantly ends the match.
• Some iterations of the NHL Hockey games allow you to build up power by performing tricks and cool stuff (like scoring from miles away), and once the bar is filled, you can hit a button to slow down time for a few seconds, theoretically helping you to plan and execute even more cool moves.

Survival Horror

• A variation crossing over with Super-Power Meltdown is "shorting" in Galerians. The more Rion uses his powers, the more he builds up his "shorting" meter. When it fills completely, he "shorts"; his powers go out of control, causing any enemy he looks at to die instantly as their heads explode. The drawback is that Rion's health gradually drains while in this state. It can be cured by using the drug Delmetor, and triggered on the spot by using the drug Apollinar.

Third Person Shooters

• Bullet Girls Phantasia features the Scramble Overdrive (S.O.D.), and its Desperation Attack version, Final Panty Strike (F.P.S.). While usually a powerful AoE attack unlocked by filling the S.O.D. meter, it can also summon robot minions, turrets, or give the player a powerful buff.
• In The Grid, if someone manages to amass $4,000 before the round ends, they will gain access to a special attack called Da Bomb. Using Da Bomb kills all of your oppponents instantly and results in a unique "DA BOMB!!" voice clip that uses a subwoofer installed in the cabinet just for this clip.
• When the power of flight is active during Kid Icarus: Uprising, Pit gets two slowly filling gauges, which fill faster when narrowly dodging attacks in glide mode, and let him do special attacks when full. Blades bring down lightning bolts, staffs shoot a gigantic Magic Missile, orbitars shoot a scattered Magic Missile Storm, palms let loose a circling Spread Shot, bows shoot a Rain of Arrows, cannons cause explosions to happen all throughout the air, arms simply punch as much as possible, clubs generate multiple tornadoes and claws produce a Razor Wind tornado.
• Max Payne:
  • The first game has a meter that allows him to engage bullet time. Filling the meter involves killing enemies, you get a bonus when you kill an enemy while in bullet time, and you can manually toggle the bullet time. It's possible to stay in bullet time near-indefinitely with well-timed activation, killing, and deactivation.
  • Max Payne 2 expands on this mechanic — by killing enemies while in bullet time, the screen turns more and more sepia, and time moves slower and slower and slower, to represent Max getting in the zone.
  • Max Payne 3 follows up by allowing you to use bullet time even when your bullet time meter is empty; Max jumps out of the way and bullet time lasts for most of the time that he's airborne. The cost is that it ends with Max whacking the floor, which leaves him prone to gunfire as he needs a few seconds and both of his hands to get back up, and takes damage if he falls from a great height.
  • The multiplayer in 3 is centered around RPG-mechanic gang wars, which involve multiple types of limit breakers (and the aforementioned jumping bullet time no matter which you equip). Examples include a superior bullet time (relative to your enemies), perfect-detection sonar, perfect-stealth cloaking, extra damage, extra health, strengthen your teammates, sabotage your enemies' weapons, etc.
• Both Richard and Michael get limit breaks (officially called "Blaze Attack") in Metal Wolf Chaos, which are executed by firing every weapon, equipped on their mobile armor, at once.
• ONE. has a Smart Bomb hyper attack available when the Rage Meter is maxed out and pulsing out of the screen.
• In The Punisher, killing bad guys fills up a rage meter that eventually will let you go into Slaughter Mode, where the eponymous protagonist pulls out a pair of knives, with which he can perform both melee and ranged one hit kills, and becomes invincible.
• Splatoon has the special weapons, which is activated once the player covers enough empty or enemy-colored turf in ink to fill the special gauge, though it also fills very slowly over time on its own. These weapons are wildly varied, with specials across the series ranging from temporary invincibility, Grenade Spam, a BFG, and Death from Above, among others. With clever and well-timed use, these weapons can help to turn the tide of battle.
• The Tequila Bomb meter in the John Woo game Stranglehold is filled up by taking out enemies stylishly, and when the meter gets filled up enough, you can either recover some health or execute a Tequila Bomb attack — sniping someone off from long distance with Precision Aim, doing a rock-and-roll Barrage attack, or wiping out everyone in the vicinity with the Spin Attack.
• Warhammer 40000 Spacemarine has a Fury Mode very similar to the Force Unleashed 2 above, except that instead of improved Force powers, you get Bullet Time shooting.
• Wild Guns has the Vulcan gun, which does extra damage, has a wide area of effect, and makes you temporarily invincible. You get it by shooting enemy bullets until you fill up the green meter at the bottom of the screen. Once it's full, boom.

Turn Based Strategy

• The Advance Wars games have "CO Powers" which work like limit breaks.
  • The second game introduced Super CO Powers which was a buffed/different variant of a CO's normal power.
  • Dual Strike introduced Tag-Powers which allowed you to execute one Super CO power and then switch to the next CO and use their power next to gain two turns at once, which can be lethal depending on which CO's you pair up together.
  • Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict changed it that CO's board a unit of your choice at a factory/airfield/port/HQ for half the unit's price and they gain an aura around their unit (excluding one CO) that boosts it's effectiveness and units inside the aura, which increases in radius and power when they fill the meter halfway (and again when you charge it up all the way).
• In Atlas Reactor, characters gain energy when using their basic attacks and cooldown abilities. Once at full energy, the character unlocks a powerful 'ultimate ability' that works like a limit break: Using the ultimate drains all energy from the character and they have to build up their reserves again afterwards.
• Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance introduces Revenge Mode and Overloads. Revenge Mode is a downplayed version of this trope, giving the character critical hits, reduced SP costs, and reduced inbound damage for a few turns. Overloads, on the other hand, play it straight, with effects like instant dopplegangers, charming every male unit within 5 panels, and even some transformations.
• In Dota Underlords, the Mana Meter works more like a Limit Break: heroes with activated spells start off with no mana, gain mana by dealing and taking damage, and use their spell once their mana is full.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Laguz transformations in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn operate on a meter. Once it's filled, the unit transforms into their animal form and gains boosted stats for a few turns.
  • Engage Attacks in Fire Emblem Engage are powerful skills that can be used once each time a unit engages with an Emblem. Some effects of Engage Attacks include attacking a unit multiple times for massive damage, attacking multiple units in a line, and warping far away and attacking at the new spot.
• In the PSP SRPG Jeanne d'Arc, there is a system of transformations that act something like a Limit Break. During the course of the game, several characters find magic Bracelets that let them grow fancy shining armor for around two turns during the battle. While transformed, the characters' stats are boosted, they have access to super-strong attacks, and once they kill an opponent they get "Godspeed" — a free turn all for themselves. And since this is a SRPG, having free turns is a friggin' godsend. Played right and just one character can wipe out the enemy team all by herself.
• In the RPG The Last Remnant, many of the main characters have a limit break, usually powered by Remnants (it could be said that some limit breaks belong to the Remnants themselves, rather than the character using them). Rather than a limit break guage, there is a small chance of characters being able to use their limit break on any turn. There's a much greater chance of this happening if your team is losing badly, although many other factors come into play.
  • Rush Sykes sheathes his weapon and uses his talisman to become a human blur, then beats down his enemies too fast for the eye to see.
  • David simply pulls out the Gae Bolg and blasts everything on the battlefield.
• All the playable characters in Luminous Arc can use Flash Drives, once they build up enough Flash Points (FPs) in battle. They're strong, as well as Super Move Portrait Attack.
  • Same system came back in the sequel, Luminous Arc 2 with Drive Points (DP).
  • Along with the typical Flash Drives for every character, Luminous Arc 3's Refi can gain a Zodiac Card and use a Unison Strike with his partner.

• In the Super Robot Wars series, each character has a "morale" or "Will" meter, which can increase and decrease over the course of battle. Nearly every combat-oriented character has some attacks that are only usable with high enough morale. So while a Super Robot may start off with Eye Beams and a Rocket Punch, as the battle rages, it can pull out a big-ass sword and start swinging.
  • Endless Frontier has actual Limit Breaks, performable by filling up the combo meter. If the character's BGM isn't already playing for the battle, it does now, making this also a case of Theme Music Power-Up.
  • From Super Robot Wars Destiny onward is when it became the norm for the leads to have a unique final attack complete with a different version of their theme.

Western RPG

• In Costume Quest and its sequel, every costume has a unique ability that it can use every 3 turns, either doing raw damage, protecting the user or an ally from attacks, or healing one or more party members.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition introduces Focus, which all party members accumulate when anyone in the party inflicts damage (and builds faster with Combination Attacks). Each specialization has its own unique Focus ability, with the Inquisitor also having access to Mark of the Rift. You eventually gain the ability to raise your Focus to twice or triple its initial limit, enabling even more powerful tiers of these abilities.
• In the computer game Dungeon Siege 2 the special class abilities refill only when you fight, but the more you fight the faster they refill, meaning there's no need for tedious hanging back and waiting for your big attack to reload.
• In Fallout 4, Critical Hits, rather than occurring by chance like in previous games, use a meter that is filled by successful attacks in VATS. The Critical Banker perk allows the player to store multiple criticals.
• South Park: The Fractured but Whole: The player has an Ultimate Meter, which is filled by correctly performing Action Commands while attacking/blocking - certain items can be equipped to boost Ultimate Meter gain. Once the Meter is full, the player can expend it to perform a character's Ultimate Power Move. The New Kid has 10 Ultimates to choose from (plus 2 from DLC) thanks to their customizable moveset, while the allies have 16 between them - Mysterion has 2 different Ultimates based on his resurrection powers, and Super Craig and Wonder Tweek share a combined Ultimate after completing a specific side quest. This makes for a total of 28 different Ultimate moves - there is also an achievement for performing every single one, but The Coon's is not required, owing to his status as a temporary ally.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Grand Theft Auto V introduces special abilities to the series that last for a short amount of time depending on the special ability meter. Trevor's is greatly increased defense and every attack pulled off from him deals a large amount of damage.
• The Blind Rage mode in Scarface: The World Is Yours, which is fueled by "Balls" and grants Tony invincibility, Bottomless Magazines and quasi-vampiric healing-through-killing.

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