History Main / MercyMode

-->--'''Div''', '''''PennyArcade''''', "[[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/03/04 Devil May Make You Really Mad]]"
** Check below for why this is a particularly egregious case.

* In ''{{Alundra}}'', there's a sword [[InfinityPlusOneSword that can one shot any monster in the game and make short work of bosses]]. How do you get it? By dying so often that the spirit of its previous wielder pities you so much that he gives it to you.

* ''[[NewSuperMarioBrosWii New Super Mario Bros. Wii]]'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy2'', ''[[MarioVsDonkeyKong Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem]]'', and ''DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' all have the "Super Guide", a system that allows you to let the game play a level itself for as long as you want after you fail it eight times (but you miss out on certain bragging rights). [[NintendoHard There's a reason for this.]]

* This, in reference to the original difficulty of ''Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening'', which was so hard they had to ''re-release'' it with an easier difficulty ''as the default''.

* ''[[NewSuperMarioBrosWii New Super Mario Bros. Wii]]'', ''SuperMarioGalaxy2'', ''[[MarioVsDonkeyKong Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem]]'', and ''DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' all have the "Super Guide", a system that allows you to let the game play a level itself for as long as you want after you fail it eight times (but you miss out on certain bragging rights). [[NintendoHard There's a reason for this.]]

* The NES shooter ''Dragon Spirit'' would determine whether you would play as the blue dragon (which goes through all levels) or the gold dragon (which skips most even-numbered levels and has perpetual auto-fire) depending on whether you won or lost at the intro level as the blue dragon.

* The odd hybrid RPG / Party Game ''Dokapon Kingdom'' has its Darkling class: if a player is losing for long enough, they'll get a little bat flying over their head, and if the visit a particular square while the bat is present, they can choose to be transformed into a Darkling. This class is everything short of invincible in one-on-one combat, and has a whole host of powers designed specifically to screw with the other players. However, Darklings cannot capture towns (the primary scoring vector for the game) for themselves, so it generally tends to reduce everyone else's lead without adding anything to your own score.

->"'Easy Mode Unlocked?' ''You died so much the game took pity on you? '''''Man'''''."''

-->"'Easy Mode Unlocked?' ''You died so much the game took pity on you? '''''Man'''''."''
-->--Div, ''PennyArcade'' ([[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/03/04 Devil May Make You Really Mad]])

You've been playing this video game for the past three hours. Your controller has been smashed against the floor several times. Your screams of rage have caused your neighbors to seriously question your sanity. At last, your enemy lies broken before you, and the first level of your NintendoHard game is finished. What is your reward?

"Easy Mode Unlocked!"

!!Examples:

[[AC:ActionAdventure]]

* ''[[EccoTheDolphin Ecco]] II: Tides of Time'' had three difficulty levels. Easy, Hard, and a middle level that initially started you off at Hard, but booted you off to Easy if you died a lot (which you usually did), then sent you back to Hard if you did well enough. Given that Easy mode skips a couple stages here and there, beating the entire game on this level is the hardest feat in the game.

[[AC:ActionGame]]

* The ''DevilMayCry'' series

[[AC:AdventureGame]]

[[AC:BeatEmUp]]

[[AC:CardGame]]

[[AC:DrivingGame]]

[[AC:FightingGame]]

** Even then, it's still not enough.

[[AC:FirstPersonShooter]]

[[AC:{{MMORPG}}s]]

[[AC:PartyGame]]

[[AC:PlatformGame]]

** Even more death, even with "pity masks", leads random boxes to turn into checkpoint boxes.

[[AC:PuzzleGame]]

[[AC:RealTimeStrategy]]

[[AC:RhythmGame]]

[[AC:{{Roguelike}}]]
* ''DesktopDungeons'', a browser based roguelike, inverts this; The game starts out on 'easy mode' (enemy health and damage at 80%) and automatically switches over to 'normal mode' after the first time you beat it.

[[AC:RolePlayingGame]]

* In the ''FullmetalAlchemist'' game ''The Broken Angel'', there's one section where Ed is required to jump into a rather small stone pillar that [[TemporaryPlatform breaks down]] shortly after landing. Faling on reaching the other end forces the player to restore the pilar with alchemy and try again. After many attempts, the game will skip forward and show a cutscene where Ed comments on finally achieving it after thirty-something tries, and Al compliments him on being [[SarcasmMode persistent]].

[[AC:ShootEmUp]]
* The NES shooter ''DragonSpirit'' would determine whether you would play as the blue dragon (which goes through all levels) or the gold dragon (which skips most even-numbered levels and has perpetual auto-fire) depending on whether you won or lost at the intro level as the blue dragon.

[[AC:SimulationGame]]

[[AC:SportsGame]]

[[AC:StealthBasedGame]]
* Normal and up modes in both ''{{Tenchu}} 3'' and ''Kurenai'' force the player to start from scratch after being killed. Playing on Easy, however, gives the option to respawn on the spot at full health to continue the mission.

[[AC:SurvivalHorror]]

[[AC:ThirdPersonShooter]]

* In a PS2 ''ArmoredCore'' game, if you died or lost enough to go really far into debt, your character would undergo an experimental procedure (or something like that) which would give you a special ability. You could get several abilities in this fashion and it made the game considerably easier.

[[AC:WideOpenSandbox]]

* Minecraft has Peaceful Mode, where no deadly monsters appear and you regenerate health.

** Another example from [[GodOfWar God Of War II]]: By obtaining hidden items called Urns, you could unlock different abilities, like Infinite Mana, Infinite Rage of The Titans, and costumes that enhance different stats (or, if you could beat [[NintendoHard God difficulty]], all of them)... but only for the same difficulty or lower. [[WallBanger Of course, if you were capable of beating the game without these enhancements on that difficulty in the first place...]]

* Losing 100 fights in the recent ''PunchOut!!!'' sequel on the Wii lets players wear Glass Joe's headgear that makes them completely invincible to enemy attacks... and reminds them that they suck just as bad (or worse!) as Glass Joe.

[[AC:MMORPGs]]

[[AC:ShootEmUp]]
* The NES shooter ''DragonSpirit'' would determine whether you would play as the blue dragon (which goes through all levels) or the gold dragon (which skips most even-numbered levels and has perpetual auto-fire) depending on whether you won or lost at the intro level as the blue dragon.

[[AC:ThirdPersonShooter]]
* In the online third person shooter ''S4 League'', the fumbi will gradually decrease the skill points of whoever is holding it. If your team is losing badly enough, the penalty is much less harsh - you still won't regenerate skill points while hanging onto it, but they won't be automatically drained either. The playerbase refers to this as 'pity SP.' Also, the losing team gets steadily increasing damage until they cap out at doing 50% more damage with any hit.

!!Unsorted
* Similar to the ''Aladdin'' example, and also from a Disney game: in ''Mickey Mania'', failing the trolley level in the Mad Doctor stage enough times causes the game to let you through regardless, with the message: "Uh oh! Mickey has broken all the trolleys but he manages to continue..."

* ''SuperSmashBros. Brawl'' will hand out "pity [[EleventhHourSuperpower Final Smashes]]" to players who are losing quite badly.
** Even if the items are turned off, this can still kick in, making a planned out long match go sour.
** Not a big deal in shorter matches, though, due to the conditions required. Basically, a player has to die three consecutive times without KO'ing anyone else. KO'ing includes finishing off weakened opponents as well.

* The ''GodOfWar'' series will give you the choice to play on Easy Mode, which makes combat easier, if you die at the same area more than three times in a row. The problem, of course, is the time you're most likely to die repeatedly is when you're forced to traverse over spinning, chainsaw-edged balance beams, which the Easy Mode has no effect on whatsoever. And in some cases, the only noticeable effect will be to make you die slightly less.
** Triggering Easy Mode gives a trophy in the PS3 re-release.
* Die often enough on the same level in ''[=~Chip's Challenge~=]'' and the game ask you whether or not you want to go to the next level.
* ''TheMatrix: Path of Neo'' opens with a dream sequence battle. Die during it, and the game offers you Easy Mode.
** Actually you almost always die in the dream sequence, as it keeps hurling enemies at you until you face Agent Smith himself. It's the point at which you die that determines your difficulty level options (managing to defeat smith unlocks the Harder than Hard "The One" difficulty mode)
* In ''Enter the Matrix'', if you die in the fight in the Dojo, the game skips to around the second to last level.
* ''Spikeout: Battle Street'' for the Xbox initially offers no difficulty settings. Die three times on any level and it'll offer you the Easy mode. Thing is, though, this doesn't carry over if the system is reset - so you have to kill yourself three times every time you boot up the game if you actually want to play in Easy mode.
* The item selection algorithm in the ''MarioKart'' series works like this. If you're in first place, expect nothing useful. If you're in 8th/12th, the game will give you everything short of a instant-win button.
** Since it is still randomly chosen (albeit the chances have changed), it is quite possible (and very interesting), to get a Blue Shell [[PressXToDie just as you're about to pass the leader...]]
* Interesting in that it also possesses not one, but ''ten'' [[HarderThanHard Extreme Mode]] settings, ''SilentHill 3'' also has an unlockable "Beginner Mode" which it will announce to you in mid-gameplay after dying a few times.
* Despite being the trope makers for {{SNK Boss}}es, a lot of SNK fighters actually offer you some sort of a handicap vs. the unrelenting AI when you choose to use a continue. These include giving you maxed out or infinite super meters, dropping the enemy's health to 1/3rd of the normal or making them unable to block your attacks, amongst other things.
** Even then, it's still not enough.
* ''[[EccoTheDolphin Ecco]] II: Tides of Time'' had three difficulty levels. Easy, Hard, and a middle level that initially started you off at Hard, but booted you off to Easy if you died a lot (which you usually did), then sent you back to Hard if you did well enough. Given that Easy mode skips a couple stages here and there, beating the entire game on this level is the hardest feat in the game.
* In ''{{Alundra}}'', there's a sword [[InfinityPlusOneSword that can one shot any monster in the game and make short work of bosses]]. How do you get it? By dying so often that the spirit of its previous wielder pities you so much that he gives it to you.
* In ''TheWorldEndsWithYou'', once you obtain the "Retry" sticker, losing a battle lets you retry (naturally), quit the game (which was the default action before getting the sticker), run away (if possible, of course), or retry on Easy Mode (this trope). Once the battle ended, your difficulty would be returned to normal, but [[EasyModeMockery your time and level wouldn't be recorded]] for that battle.
* ''ResidentEvil 4'' has multiple difficulty settings, hidden from the player. If you are doing well the difficulty will increase. But if you die and continue there are fewer enemies and more ammunition.

* In ''TheLostVikings 2'', getting yourself killed in the first level unlocks new special abilities for all the characters. Although the game ''claims'' to be having mercy on you, it's really a subversion: there are no dangerous obstacles or enemies in the level at all, and so dying doesn't mean that you suck but rather that you found an inventive method of suicide. The trick is to [[spoiler:have Olaf stand on high ground and hold up his shield, so Erik can take falling damage by jumping off the upraised shield and down to lower ground]].
* In one particular quest in LegendOfMana, you need to make your way through several rooms full of Shadoles (mook-like NPC's) and coming into contact with any of them sends you back to the beginning. Some of the later rooms can be a bit frustrating since the Shadoles turn invisible and you have to remember exactly where they all are. However, every time you're sent back, there's one less Shadole per room the next time you try. Do this enough times and you can get it down to one or two of them per room, making this mission really easy.
* The Game Boy ''Game/MegaMan'' games played this straight. ''IV'' gave the player a high velocity, rapid fire ArmCannon to replace the default one if the player got a repeated Game Over. ''V'' upgraded the RocketPunch ''twice'' in a row with higher flight speed.
* ''Lego IndianaJones'' does this during the famous boulder escape in the first level of Raiders of the Lost Ark. If the boulder catches up to you, you have to restart the chase. Take too many tries and the game skips it, showing a different version of the next cutscene where Indy and his partner are stuck to the boulder, then dumped out of the cave when it hits the opening.
* ''Drift City'' makes each mission slightly easier after you fail it. Make sure you don't crash once? Now it's make sure you don't crash two times. Or three. Etc. Same with time-based missions - the amount of time you have to complete it increases by a few seconds with each failure.
* In the browser-based MMO ''CyberNations'', the penalties you get for being in Peace Mode (in which nations cannot declare war on you or vice versa) don't apply to you for the first several days. Afterwards, however, [[EasyModeMockery your daily income and population happiness will start to suffer in if you stay in Peace Mode]], with the penalties getting greater with each day as a peaceful nation.
** It also cuts you off of much of the game economy, as you can no longer send cash or technology to other nations.
* If you are defeated by specific bosses in ''KingdomHearts II'', rather than restarting the battle or giving up, there's a chance you're given an option to instead continue the battle playing as Mickey Mouse, who is actually stronger than Sora. However, since Mickey has no combo finshers, he can't actually finish off the boss and so the real aim of playing as Mickey is to fill up the Drive gauge and use it to revive Sora. He can help you multiple times per boss, but the said chance of him doing so decreases from the initial 100% every time you use it, ultimately dropping down to 20% or so.
** In ''358/2 Days'', dying gives you the option to Continue (exactly what it says on the tin) or Retire (leave the mission so you can go into the menu or shop). Dying ''repeatedly'' opens up a third option, "Easy Continue".
* In every ''MarioParty'' game, a character, often Bowser, will give a randomly-chosen bonus to whoever is in last place at the start of the last five rounds (though they may mix it up by giving a penalty to the leader).
** Not strictly true of the first three games, where a random character would randomly "predict" a winner and grant them a (usually 10-coin) bonus. The chances did heavily favor the last-place player, though, but this troper has received such bonuses in first before.
* Lose any mission in EndWar on the handhelds, and you're given the option to try again with additional units.
* Many ShootEmUp games have what is called a "rank system," a hidden value in the game's coding. The rank will slowly rise as the player goes without dying; the higher the rank, the more bullets will be onscreen, and the faster they'll come at you. In most games with the system, such as the first six {{Touhou}} games, dying lowers the rank, making it easier to survive.
** In addition, in ''Imperishable Night'' you unlocked the ability to start with more lives (up to seven) by getting bad endings a couple times.
** In a slight deviation from typical MercyMode, a recent {{Touhou}} game, ''[[GaidenGame Double Spoiler]]'', has a second playable character, unlocked after clearing the entire game. This character makes playing the game much easier, mostly because she doesn't take as much time to recharge between shots. What's wrong here? Well, perhaps it's the fact that she's unlocked ''after'' the player has endured the [[NintendoHard normal]] game. In that case, they probably don't need the game to be made any easier for them.

* Losing 100 fights in the recent ''PunchOut!!!'' sequel on the Wii lets players wear Glass Joe's headgear that makes them completely invincible to enemy attacks... and reminds them that they suck just as bad (or worse!) as Glass Joe.
* In ''{{Brothers in Arms}}'', your current health is saved whenever you reach a checkpoint. As there is no way to do healing, you can end up with a savegame that makes it night impossible to finish the mission. Fortunately, if you fail to reach the next checkpoint (or finish the mission) several times, the game will offer to heal and rearm you, giving you a fighting chance as you continue from the same location. This greatly reduces the difficulty as it sort of "bypasses" the need for watching your health and ammo. Of course, the game is usually quite difficult, and it also has separate low-difficulty modes which you can select freely anyway.
* In ''{{Klonoa}} 2: Lunatea's Veil'', when you're down to 2 lives, an extra life is given to you as you respawn. It is only given twice in a row though.
* ''[[NewSuperMarioBrosWii New Super Mario Bros. Wii]]'', ''SuperMarioGalaxy2'', ''[[MarioVsDonkeyKong Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem]]'', and ''DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' all have the "Super Guide", a system that allows you to let the game play a level itself for as long as you want after you fail it eight times (but you miss out on certain bragging rights). [[NintendoHard There's a reason for this.]]
* ''TheSimpsons Hit and Run'' let you skip a mission after about five failed attempts. However, you can't skip the final mission, which just happens to be the [[ThatOneLevel most difficult and]] [[NintendoHard frustrating mission in the game.]]
* ''Spyro: Year of the Dragon'' has this for its bosses, but it doesn't give you an option and in fact doesn't even tell you when it kicks into mercy mode.
* The odd hybrid RPG / Party Game ''Dokapon Kingdom'' has its Darkling class: if a player is losing for long enough, they'll get a little bat flying over their head, and if the visit a particular square while the bat is present, they can choose to be transformed into a Darkling. This class is everything short of invincible in one-on-one combat, and has a whole host of powers designed specifically to screw with the other players. However, Darklings cannot capture towns (the primary scoring vector for the game) for themselves, so it generally tends to reduce everyone else's lead without adding anything to your own score.
* In the FullmetalAlchemist game ''The Broken Angel'', there's one section where Ed is required to jump into a rather small stone pillar that [[TemporaryPlatform breaks down]] shortly after landing. Faling on reaching the other end forces the player to restore the pilar with alchemy and try again. After many attempts, the game will skip forward and show a cutscene where Ed comments on finally achieving it after thirty-something tries, and Al compliments him on being [[SarcasmMode persistent]].
* Normal and up modes in both {{Tenchu}} 3 and ''Kurenai'' force the player to start from scratch after being killed. Playing on Easy, however, gives the option to respawn on the spot at full health to continue the mission.
* At one point in ''FinalFantasyVII'' while infiltrating Shinra, the player must maneuver the characters behind statues to hide from guards. If the timing is botched enough times, the game cuts to Barret berating Cloud. At this point the guards are gone, and the player can simply walk past.
** Basically every minigame in a ''FinalFantasy'' game that must be cleared to continue is either (near) impossible to lose or lets you skip it if you screw up enough.

* In the Tanker episode of {{Metal Gear Solid 2}}, you are supposed to take 4 pictures of the new Metal Gear prototype within a given time limit. If you run out of time, the game will actually give you some more. Also, if the time is running short, Otacon will settle for three photos.
* If you fail a minigame in ''RhythmHeaven'' a certain number of times, you can talk to the barista in the cafe, who will offer to let you skip that particular game and let you progress anyway.
* ''DesktopDungeons'', a browser based roguelike, inverts this; The game starts out on 'easy mode' (enemy health and damage at 80%) and automatically switches over to 'normal mode' after the first time you beat it.
* Inverted in ''[[DemonsSouls Demon's Souls]]'', where every time you die in your real body, the games gets [[HarderThanHard even harder]]. Because of this, and how hard it is to get the difficulty back to where it was before, some guides [[DrivenToSuicide suggest killing yourself]] in TheHub, which is the only place MercyMode does not kick in.
* The "fugitive" difficulty level of {{Max Payne}} employs this. The game constantly adjusts its difficulty based on the player's performance. So if you keep dying in the same spot, the game will go easier on you each time, until you can finally make it. Remember, however, that this works both ways; if you walk through the game with relative ease, you are going to encounter tougher enemies in the upcoming levels.
** The second game mostly adjusted the number of health items laying around. If the player is constantly dying and limping around on the brink, there are pills all over the place. Blitz through levels without injury, and they might only find a couple of drops per level (not that they needed them, apparently).
* Dying repeatedly in {{Eversion}} unlocks the ability to evert (backwards) at will. Just don't Evert past Layer 1, or the game will glitch out for a few layers and eventually crash (which can actually be quite amusing if you enjoy making games glitch out).
* GrabbedByTheGhoulies has an option called "Butler's Brew" hidden in the back-sections of the various menus. It will, after multiple player deaths in a single room, offer assistance to the player. As the game puts it though, "this is only intended for younger players or [[EasyModeMockery those who are rubbish at games!]]"
----

* The item selection algorithm in the ''MarioKart'' series works like this. If you're in first place, expect nothing useful. If you're in 8th/12th, the game will give you everything short of a instant-win button.

* ''New SuperMarioBros. Wii'' and ''SuperMarioGalaxy 2'' have the "Super Guide", a system that allows you to let the game play a level itself for as long as you want after you fail it eight times (but you miss out on star coins in the former and the star in the latter). [[NintendoHard There's a reason for this.]]

* Similar to the ''FinalFantasyVII'' example below, ''TalesOfTheAbyss'' includes a brief stealth section. You're supposed to have your party sneak through a forest while avoiding soldiers and guard dog patrols. If you're caught, you fight off the enemies, but return to the start of the area. However, if you get caught too many times, the game will let you brute force your way through, fighting the enemies and not bothering with stealth.
* In the online third person shooter ''S4 League'', the fumbi will gradually decrease the skill points of whoever is holding it. If your team is losing badly enough, the penalty is much less harsh - you still won't regenerate skill points while hanging onto it, but they won't be automatically drained either. The playerbase refers to this as 'pity SP.' Also, the losing team gets steadily increasing damage until they cap out at doing 50% more damage with any hit.

* ''{{Warcraft}} III'' - Losing any mission unlocks Easy Mode.
* ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}} Nightmare Troubadour'' - losing too many duels increases the chance of meeting Mokuba, one of the weakest opponents in the game.
** Also in ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}} World Championship 2004'', in which losing a certain number of duels in a row is the only way to unlock Mokuba... who you can't lose to unless you're ''really'' trying.
* The NES shooter ''DragonSpirit'' would determine whether you would play as the blue dragon (which goes through all levels) or the gold dragon (which skips most even-numbered levels and has perpetual auto-fire) depending on whether you won or lost at the intro level as the blue dragon.

* In the {{Dragon Quest}} series spinoff ''Torneko: The Last Hope'', the titular character's wife will give him the powerful Metabble Sword and Shield if he fails to clear the first dungeon eight times - not THE best equipment in the game, but if you still can't get through with those, you should probably just give up.
* In the Genesis ''{{Disney/Aladdin}}'' game, if you die too many times in the Rug Ride level (which is a frustrating reaction test of a level bordering on Battletoads' level 3 in difficulty with no checkpoints and several spots where the game doesn't show which way to go like it usually does, making survival during these parts a LuckBasedMission on the first time you attempt them), the game will automatically let you skip it, giving you the message "Nice Try".

* In ''GuitarHero III'', if you fail too many times on a boss battle, the game gives you a particularly insulting message allowing you to skip it and get on with the career. You actually get a secret achievement for doing so.
** Just to add insult to injury, the secret achievement is worth zero gamerpoints, and serves just to tell anyone looking at your achievements that you wimped out from a boss battle.
** It does not work on the final battle, incidentally, unless it takes more than fifty tries for it to work, anyway...
* In ''[[SonicTheHedgehog Sonic]] Adventure 2'', every time you die while facing a boss, Omochao will appear at the beginning of your next try, giving you increasingly obvious hints on how to beat the boss with each death. Most characters could also pick him up and throw him at the boss for massive damage, but that was probably not intentional.
** This also happened in ''Sonic Adventure'' and ''Sonic 2006''. ''ShadowTheHedgehog'' gave constant hints, as part of the game's [[StopHelpingMe nobody-ever-shuts-up]] theme.

* Dying repeatedly in {{Eversion}} unlocks the ability to evert (backwards) at will. Just don't Evert past Layer 1, or the game will crash.

** It's triggered if you die three or more times in the first level on Easy mode. This troper found that the game doesn't start getting really hard until Level 4 or 5, so you're likely already far into the game by the time you start wondering if you need it.

** The most notable game would be the third one. For some reason, Capcom made Hard mode for the Japanese version into Normal mode for the North American and European versions, leading many to criticize the game for its difficulty. Things were so bad, that Capcom had to ''release a second version of the game'' with rebalanced difficulty.
*** To understand how bad it was, look at the page quote.

* In ''GuitarHero III'', if you fail too many times on a boss battle, the game gives you a particularly insulting message allowing you to skip it and get on with the career. You actually get a secret achievement for doing so. This troper is not sure if it works on the final battle.

* In the ''CrashBandicoot'' games, dying too many times in a given level will cause you to start re-spawning with mask power ups, which let you survive an extra hit. This troper and his friends like calling them "pity masks".

* This troper remembers the jigsaw puzzle completion required to unlock new levels in the N64 game ''[[{{Banjo-Kazooie}} Banjo-Tooie]]''. It had a time limit, but if you fail three or four times, Master jiggywiggy would say somthing about "mercy upon you" and you could finish the jigsaw at your own pace.

*** Then again, once you get to that point, you've [[strike:probably]] died several [[strike:hundreds]] thousands of times.
*** Also, you can unlock Hatate with only about 2/3 of the stages cleared. And while most cards become easier with her, some become next to impossible, due to her limited range. Finally, she also has different commentaries for every level, so making the game easier is not her only purpose.
* In a PS2 ''ArmoredCore'' game that [[WolfSamurai this Troper]] can't recall much about, if you died or lost enough to go really far into debt, your character would undergo an experimental procedure (or something like that) which would give you a special ability. You could get several abilities in this fashion and it made the game considerably easier.

*** Oh no. There is [[NintendoHard no mercy]] to be found anywhere in FinalFantasyXI.

* The Game Boy ''MegaMan'' games played this straight. ''IV'' gave the player a high velocity, rapid fire ArmCannon to replace the default one if the player got a repeated Game Over. ''V'' upgraded the RocketPunch ''twice'' in a row with higher flight speed.

* In ''GodOfWar'', dying enough times will prompt the game to ask you if you want to try the next lowest difficulty setting.