Hard Work Hardly Works / Video Games

• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Greybeards of High Hrothgar live lives of seclusion, spending their lives to learn the Thu'um. The Dragonborn just has to kill a dragon to learn a shout instantly. Interestingly, they acknowledge this and claim that instructing you is an honor beyond honor. Also it should be noted that they are much, much better at it than you are.
• Pick an RPG, any RPG. In most cases, the ancient and terrible evil that terrified the world for centuries is Punched Out by the hero who goes from zero to hero in about a month. Yes, those guards at the towns who have been training their entire lives are useless.
  • Final Fantasy XI both subverts and averts this. Storylines sometimes laud the fact you defeat powerful foes compared to other hardened warriors...though they never mention the other five people you had to group with to do it. Then you go to Besieged or a Campaign battle and see the generals do 1000+ damage every 15 or so seconds and take hits like you never, ever, will. In fact, the only reason you're normally involved in the story is that you keep putting your nose where it doesn't belong, You Meddling Kids!
    • To be fair, those guards in RPGs never had to worry about fighting against monsters or people that can easily destroy the world so they didn't have to train as hard. Now the heroes on the other hand...
  • Inverted in Final Fantasy IV. Golbez comes right out of nowhere and is easily able to get everything he desires right from the start. No matter what you seem to do, he is always one step ahead of you, and nearly every time you encounter him, it's a Hopeless Boss Fight. When you do manage to actually defeat him in a fight, he's able to escape with the MacGuffin as though nothing had happened. And if it weren't for FuSoYa, you wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop him. This also applies to the Man Behind the Man, as he is able to easily defeat Golbez and FuSoYa in a fight, and if not for the Plot Coupon Golbez gives you and your allies assisting from afar with a Combined Energy Attack, you can't even touch him.
  • In Final Fantasy III is perhaps one of the most egregious examples. All the characters are orphans, and only one has any battle experience. They all can learn any job very easily, especially if you use the job level glitch in the DS version. From a story standpoint though, they defeat the ultimate evil in what we are led to believe is a few days. Of course, the actual amount of time it takes to beat him is subject to how long you stay at ye olde Trauma Inn.
• FEAR is a particularly jarring case, as it's suggested this is your character's first time working with the team, and fresh out of training. You promptly take out an entire army of clones, while your teammates are either turned into ash or helpful chatterboxes by the end of the first level. It is eventually justified, as the Big Bad that fried your teammates only wants to give you a hug that would instantly kill you. On the other hand, he has been a spec ops soldier for quite some while and has gone through some pretty intense training (that is since he was born).
• Played With in Katamari Damacy with second cousin Miki. According to the King, she's a Spirited Competitor who always aims to land herself in the top three... but tends to end up in the top six instead. While that might not be as impressive a record as she might like, it's pretty high up there all the same. Particularly when you consider just how many of her cousins she might be competing with.
• Knights of the Old Republic. All it takes is a visit to Dantooine and a literal Training Montage (a week, maybe a month?) and you can go from a simple republic trooper to full-scale Jedi. The montage includes a scene of one of your teachers stating that to learn so fast is unheard of and that you have learned in weeks what takes years for others. The reason for that? This is not the first time you are going through the training.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Local mentor Orca teaches Link the Hurricane Spin, a technique gained by gathering ten Knight's Crests (a feat in and of itself) — and lots of practice. Before performing the technique, he'll mention that it took him years to become so accomplished and that age caught up to him before he could fully realize his dream. He's moved to tears upon witnessing Link execute it flawlessly in a matter of seconds.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Byrne is an improbably old warrior who's left completely aghast when he's taken down by the mortals Link and Zelda.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Played with in regards to Zelda. She was initially fiercely jealous of Link for so easily being chosen by the Master Sword when she's worked for years to awaken her own powers to no avail. It's heavily implied in-game that her father forcing her to try and awaken said powers by constantly praying to Hylia and putting immense pressure on her is what stopped her from awakening them sooner. Not only does hard work hardly work, but it was also quite likely actually impeding her!
    • Out of the Champions, Revali is implied to be resentful of Link because of this trope. Revali is acknowledged in-universe as a skilled warrior and has trained very hard to perfect his abilities, but (in his view) he was told that some random knight has been handed the important role of defeating Calamity Ganon while Revali is given the role of support, just because Link was chosen by the Master Sword.
• Maplestory has Kaiser's and Angelic Buster's friend Velderoth get hit with this. With the former two gaining obscene powers from sheer luck of the draw he's left in the dust with nothing to show for it. Sadly, this leads to his Face–Heel Turn.
• Averted in Mass Effect, in which pretty much every character (including Shepard) has been a soldier or at least getting in a lot of fights for the best part of their life, making your Badass Crew perfectly believable.
  • The only exception is Grunt, who due to his origins comes right out of the cloning tank a fully-grown super-soldier ready for combat. This troubles him to the point of having a crisis of faith about his status as the 'ultimate' krogan, leading him to seek a personal connection with his race.
• In Mega Man Battle Network Chaud is shown to spend most of his time training. However, Lan (who is clueless, lacks foresight, and is later flanderized into being Book Dumb) always winds up beating him senseless (at least 3 and 6 make him a difficult boss) and admits he isn't strong enough to help Lan when he decides the fate of the world in the final battle (barring the Big Damn Heroes moments he is always in), all because 1) Lan is the Player Character, and 2) His navi is Megaman.EXE, the title character.
  • The games DO go out of their way to attribute a great part of Lan's success to The Power of Friendship, which "Lord Chaud" clearly lacks.
  • That, and apparently training ten hours a day makes Protoman very predictable.
  • There's also the fact that Chaud's entire training process doesn't even make sense. Supposedly, he spends ten hours a day secretly training... leading to the following questions.
    1) How do you keep something you do 10 hours a day a secret?
    2) Since Net Battling is usually measured in minutes, if not seconds, how could you spend ten hours on it?
    3) The games note that Chaud doesn't actually operate Protoman, so presumably he's just watching the entire time. How is this supposed to help him?
    4) Protoman is a program. He can't really "train", as he doesn't have anything to develop.
    5) The only thing Protoman could conceivably fight for ten hours are viruses. Moving away from the fact that repeatedly battling extremely predictable enemies isn't really going to help in an actual Net Battle, how does this make him different from Megaman, who also spends a lot of time virus busting?
  • By the time Battle Network 5 and 6 rolls in, this trope starts losing force. So much that in the last game of the series, Megaman himself needs the combined Power of Friendship and the Deadly Upgrade of a digital monstrosity to keep up with what Protoman can deal with by his own vanilla self!
• A recurring theme in the Metal Gear franchise is proving this trope wrong. The series is full of super soldiers with innate powers, artificial augmentations, virtual quick-training technologies, and gene therapy all being used to make superior soldiers, but it's always the soldiers who have worked hard to train and gain experience who come out on top. The Genome Army are just "video game players" according to Solid Snake as he takes them down by the dozen, the elite Cobra Unit with all their abilities lose to Naked Snake because he was trained by The Boss, the effectively robotic B&B Corps go down to the experienced Old Snake and his bag of obsolete guns and the cyborg Raiden takes the most savage beating of his life from the guy with a robotic arm and a lot of training with a sword. At the end of the day, the series makes it very clear all these special abilities and augments only serve to enhance what has been built by rock-solid training and experience.
• Nasuverse:
  • Played with, as Archer trained and fought and worked his entire life and eventually became who he is today. Tohsaka, in contrast, is a played straight counterexample of what geniuses can do compared to a normal person, does work hard but doesn't need to and not nearly as hard as Shirou.
  • This is true of Nasuverse mages in general, at least in the case of the Magic Association. The main way of becoming a good magus is to inherit a magic crest from your ancestor to the point that, in general, a magus family will only train one successor (hence why Sakura was given away to the Matou family). Good training can help, but to get anywhere in the Association, you have to be the heir of a prestigious family.
  • This is a major part of Waver Velvet's character arc. When he was a young man, he would often claim that, despite not coming from a notable mage family, he could still be the equal of the great masters if he worked hard enough. Many years and many adventures later, he remains mediocre at best, and he admits that the people telling him he would never be as amazingly powerful and talented as them were right. Nevertheless, while he cannot become a master magus, he finds that he can still contribute in his own way: he's an excellent teacher, a skilled detective, and while his actual magic is poor, his knowledge of magic is not.
• Persona:
  • In Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5, this is averted when it comes to increasing your character's non-combat statistics. Before exams, you'll need to have studied quite regularly to get the most out of it, and one of the characters in Persona 3 even tells you that studying a bit each day rather than just cramming will go further.
  • Played straight at one point in 3 though. You can try talking to distressed Junpei a few days before the exams, which makes him sarcastically note that it seems the only thing you do is just walk around talking to people... which you actually find yourself doing. And given the protagonist really seems to be successful in whatever he does, you can totally understand Junpei's grudge. And thanks to New Game Plus, at least in Persona 3, you get to keep all your progress in academics.
  • Persona 2 zigzags this, as it does work largely like "any RPG" as mentioned above — you go from normal high school student (or magazine editor, or cop, or whatever) to monster-slaying, god-enslaving, world-saving badass in what might generously be two weeks. However, some of your biggest foes are other people who have been granted immense power... and used it as a crutch to lord over others. So all your hard work lets you kick them in the face. Seemingly played straight again at the end of Innocent Sin, where you beat up Nyarlathotep, except shortly thereafter Nyarlathotep reveals he was just playing down to your level and isn't remotely inconvenienced, then goes on to end the world while you just stand by exhausted from the fight. No, you didn't just Punch Out Cthu- er, Nyarlathotep like you thought you did, and it takes another god's intervention to turn back time. Played more straight in the end of Eternal Punishment, though the hard work has been put in twice over by some people, this time. Though all this is probably Justified because the collective unconscious is reshaping the world, meaning heroes can rise up out of nothing because enough people believe they can.
  • Persona 5 has an example in Ann and Mika. Both of them are popular models, but Mika has to follow a careful diet and exercise regime to maintain her looks, whereas Ann doesn't do any of that and even eats cakes and sweets whenever she feels like it. But ultimately zig-zagged during Ann's major social event when she tries to land a serious modeling gig against Mika. Yeah, Ann is lucky with her fast metabolism, but doesn't understand that it takes more than looks to be a top model. She also needs to have good social skills, charm, persuasiveness, the ability to pose in all the right angles, and a competitive edge. Because Mika took modeling seriously, she had all these traits and wins the audition. Afterwards, Ann promises to take modeling more seriously and work hard at it.
• A big case of this afflicts the ARKS Defenders of Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis in a vicious zig-zagged deconstruction. After the events of one thousand years ago, ARKS gradually demilitarized because they did not need an overwhelming defense force in the wake of the Primordial Darkness' eradication; this turned out to be a fatal oversight as, five hundred years later, a new threat known only as the Starless emerged from nowhere and destroyed dozens of star systems, killing no less than seven hundred billion people in the process before they just disappeared without a trace. Resurgent ARKS, rightly fearing their return, launched several parallel initiatives, with the one on planet Halpha revolving around mass genetic engineering and brutal combat training in an attempt to rebuild ARKS to its long-lost military might, and created the DOLLS as an adversary with which to measure their progress; Zephetto, the mastermind behind these war games, stated that gentler training methods could not yield results within their estimated time frame before the Starless' return. The first generation was annihilated outright. The second generation survived, but failed to advance photon sensitivity in any appreciable manner, and it is this generation that overwhelmingly comprises ARKS' presence planetside. This led to such catastrophes as ongoing ARKS casualties against Nex Aelio, Renus Retem and Nils Stia, and - most importantly - the obliteration of Aelio Town and almost all its inhabitants by Dark Falz around the time the first third-gen ARKS started touching down. This makes Aina - a descendant of this same second generation - such a welcome peculiarity in Zephetto's eyes, as her ongoing struggle with the DOLLS alongside the third-generation Manon and RA9G3-T909 has amplified her photon sensitivity to levels competitive with theirs, even as those same threats - up to and including Dark Falz itself - were struck down by the third-gen ARKS defenders.
• In Psychonauts, Raz can pick up psychic abilities almost instantly and far outperforms children who have been coming to Whispering Rock for years. His mind is also so shielded that not even Oleander can read his thoughts, despite the fact that Raz has never had psychic training.
  • His dad's training probably had something to do with that. Also remember that Raz is much more focused than the other children, and actually is training throughout the game while the other kids just worry themselves about trivial things.
    • There's also the merit badges, which seem to have an active role in allowing him to use the attendant powers; sort of like training wheels, they enable him (and, theoretically, any other camper who's actually putting in the work to earn them) to use the power until he has enough of a handle on it to use it unassisted.
• Radiata Stories subverts this. Every Hopeless Boss Fight is against people older, or at least more experienced than the protagonist. And there are many hopeless boss fights, even in the late game (in one path). Gerald personally lampshades it.
  Jack: [after getting utterly defeated in his entrance exam to the warrior guild] Aw man! I didn't even come close to winning.
  Gerald: What did you expect fool? I was a swordsman years before you were born.
• Zasalamel from Soulcalibur 3 and 4 has been cursed with immortality. This SHOULD have given him countless lifetimes of fighting experience, but game-wise, he is an average fighter.
  • Subverted in that Zasalmel isn't the traditional type of immortal, he lives a normal life, dies, then is reborn with his memories intact. While he remembers how to fight, he needs to retrain his new body. You'd expect those lifetimes of experience to at least give him a boost, though.
  • Like the Street Fighter example, this is a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation. Zasamel was able to beat Killik and Xianghua simultaneously without too much effort.
• In Street Fighter, Zangief is a Russian professional wrestler who trained in Siberia, by wrestling polar bears. In contrast, Sakura is a Japanese schoolgirl who taught herself martial arts by emulating Ryu, possibly after seeing him on TV. However, in various medias, Sakura is able to go toe-to-toe with Zangief just fine.
  • This is even lampshaded in the Sakura Ganbaru! manga adaptation, where, in the first few pages, Dan demonstrates his Gadoken and explains the basics of Ki Manipulation to Sakura. It takes her less than a minute to perform a complete (albeit still weak) version of the Hadoken, and in no time at all, she's using full-power versions of the technique. Seeing this, an outraged Dan pauses for a minute to comment on the absolutely terrifying potential she possesses.
  • Dan himself is an example. Despite being the son of a master and training for years, he just plain sucks at martial arts, with any improvement or advantage he has being totally eclipsed by his sheer lack of talent.
• Agria in Tales of Xillia believes in this trope, and she even berates Leia for the latter's insistent belief in getting stronger via hard work. This is because she was once Lady Nadia of House Travis, who lost her family, affluence, and sanity to a fire (and she ironically uses that element in combat).
• Terry and Andy Bogard of the Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series are both solid and versatile fighters. However while Andy spent years abroad honing his skill and training under the Shiranui style of ninjitsu, Terry trolled the streets of Southtown and just mastered fighting the old fashioned way. Come time for them to compare skills, Terry's "do what works" background ended up giving him the superior fighting talents. Sometimes this gets under Andy's skin but it's not enough to ruin their relationship.
  • Truth in Television, as real life Mixed Martial Arts fighters learned how being a specialist in a single fighting style may not prepare you to handle other styles. Andy might win every time against a ninjutsu fighter from who he knows what to expect and how to react, but Terry's practical training means he taught himself to face any fighting style.
• In Team Fortress 2, it takes a lot of practice to become a good Spy, possibly the most practice of any class. Spy's best counter? The Pyro, a class that can be used fairly effectively with almost no practice.
  • In fact, all of the classes except the Spy and perhaps the Scout can be used at least somewhat effectively with a small amount of practice.
  • This can be mostly attributed to the fact that the spy isn't effective at straight-up fighting like all the other classes, just about all of his tactics revolve around being behind enemy lines, being unnoticed, destroying structures, and backstabs. All things that usually amount to pass/fail — hence a bad spy dies either failing to get anything done or before they can even try, while any other class playing poorly can at least get some shots in at the enemy team.
• Touhou Project features this in its heroine, Reimu. She is specifically noted to be extremely lazy and relies upon her bloodline's innate superpowers and her magically sharp intuition to defeat the various Gods, demons, and monsters with powers on par with Eldritch Horrors of Gensokyo on a regular basis. In contrast, her main rival is Marisa, who relies upon a variation of Charles Atlas Superpower to learn her magic, having no talent for anything but a single-minded devotion to becoming a "Magical Girl".
  • How hard a worker Marisa is may depend on how you interpret "steals a lot of stuff", though. You didn't think she developed the Master Spark herself, did you?
  • It's stated in Perfect Cherry Blossom's manual that Reimu does not believe that effort will be rewarded (so much so that her shrine's paper fortune does not carry the fortune "Least Luck," which can be interpreted as "You will get exactly as your effort").
  • Subverted in the (borderline Canon Discontinuity) Silent Sinner in Blue manga, where Yorihime, pretty much a Reimu who did actual training, starts curbstomping the main characters.
    • Even before that, though, Lunarians are considered something fierce. Houraisan Kaguya is the kind of person you'd expect to give no effort at all and, though her spellcards are considered to be not so difficult by decent players, she has more cards than any other boss in any of the games.
  • Reversed with Meiling. The character who is said to train the most (and be in a position to be challenged more often than others) can never claim canon combat success over anyone. It doesn't help that her few victories with plot were All Just a Dream.
• Undertale: Papyrus and Sans are royal guards for King Asgore. Papyrus takes his job seriously and practices constantly, both at work and at his cooking skills, but never seems to get any better at either of them. Sans bums around, flat-out refuses to do his job, and takes laziness to what other tropers describe as an art form; not only does he cook delicious hot dogs, he is by far the strongest single entity on the planet, serving as the True Final Boss of the Genocide ending. While not thematically related, he's also stronger than Flowey, the Big Bad, who has spent a century or two trying to manipulate an Eternal Recurrence to his favor; the Fallen Child, the Greater-Scope Villain, who has been training in the afterlife about as long as Flowey; and the player character, who is required to go Level Grinding no fewer than nineteen levels to even be allowed to battle Sans. Only a Fusion Dance of the Fallen Child and the player character is enough to finally bring Sans down. The battle part is justified in that Sans cheats with the mechanics of the game. By the game's stats, he only has one attack point and one defense point, implying that his lack of work really does result in him being weaker... on paper. In-game, he gets around the latter by simply side-stepping attacks, which no other enemy does, and he gets around the former with a combination of bypassing Mercy Invincibility and overly long attacks that require fast reflexes to dodge.
• Inverted in Valkyria Chronicles — hard work always works, but natural-born talent (if it puts you in a class above your peers) is completely and irredeemably evil.

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