Abilities in Video Games that don't seem useful at first.
- In Arknights, while Amiya is shown to have offensive Arts abilities, it's her empathy (admittedly a bit more than just being sensitive) that contributes to the main plot and allows her to be Rhodes Island's young leader rather than just another child soldier. However, this ability extends way, way further - as Amiya is able to relieve a traumatized Jessica from the stress and eventually able to telepathically communicate with Patriot and influence the Sarkaz common consciousness.
- A very similar case is going on with Theresa, whose Arts has a calming influence. She has been shown using it to calm down entire hordes of Sarkaz troops. She is very highly implied to have transferred at least part of her into the aforementioned Amiya as well.
- The Binding of Isaac has the titular character being initially a Master of None, until you can unlock his special starting item... the D6, a six-faced die that rerolls pedestal items. At first, the power of rerolling items seems pretty unimpressive compared to things like Maggy's Mighty Glacier stats, Eve's Whore of Babylon, or Azazel's flight. Yet the ability to change an item if it doesn't fit your playstyle is considered one of the most valuable skills you can get in the game.
- In the Interactive Fiction game Chuk and the Arena
, the titular Chuk enters a fighting competition despite being a small, physically weak alien whose only power is to change the color of his skin — but as it turns out, changing colors is really helpful in disguising oneself, sneaking around to collect useful items, and even befuddling an alien species who's unable to see certain colors, especially when in the hands of a Guile Hero. - In City of Heroes, one of the least-played Controller powersets was Mind Control; it had a bad rep due to not having a summonable combat pet as a tier 9 ability. This would seem to give it "What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?" status, except for the minority of players who used this set could attest to just how powerful it is in capable hands. It makes the immobilization powers found in other sets seem obsolete.
- In Civilization IV, India's special unit is the Fast Worker, the Worker unit with one additional movement point. Compared to, say, Germany's Panzer, China's Chu Ko Nu or America's Navy SEAL, it is a bit underwhelming. However, the Boring, but Practical Fast Worker is one of the most useful special units in the entire game, capable of allowing cities to flourish with more growth and industry and also being more useful for maintaining larger empires and also being the only special unit that is available throughout the entire length of the game, from the stone age to the modern-day.
- This is part of Copy Kitty's premise: Entanma are beings who possess a single ability that makes them a local Reality Warper. Protagonist Boki Lamira's ability is the power to copy something. She was so desperate to gain a cool superpower her sheer envy awakened her own power to mimic others, she doesn't think much of it. Her uncle Savant thinks differently and sends her a VR training program to convince her of how versatile her powers can be. Turns out, he's right: Power Copying might not sound all that great, except that Boki can perfectly copy fighting styles, copy an enemy's Mook Maker abilities to summon her own minions, or even power herself up whenever a boss Turns Red. Oh, did we mention that Boki can combine those copied powers into a wide variety of ludicrously destructive attacks? How about the part that involves copying a (giant) robot's Magitek AI in order to take control of it?
- Taken to terrifying extremes during the Exgal fight. Whatever Boki's limitations are, the Dangerous Forbidden Technique powering Exgal's abilities (that was never meant to be copied) isn't one of them. It doesn't end well for Exgal or Boki.
- What's more, Boki's only just learning how to use her copy power, Savant hints and confirmed by Word of God that Boki's potential is vast. With proper training and the right abilities, she could potentially put a dent in the Cybers' ranks on her own.
- Danganronpa doesn't have superpowers per se, but Ultimate talents serve pretty much the same narrative purpose. You get into Hope's Peak by being extremely good at a mundane or semi-mundane profession or skill, which can be pretty much anything. Some talents are obviously pretty awesome, like Mukuro Ikusaba the Ultimate Soldier, Miu Iruma the Ultimate Inventor, and Mikan Tsumiki the Ultimate Nurse, while some are useless in-game, like Celestia Ludenberg the Ultimate Gambler, Hiyoko Saionji the Ultimate Traditional Dancer, and Toko Fukawa the Ultiamte Writer, but many students get surprising use out of theirs.
- Makoto Naegi and Nagito Komaeda both have Luck as their talent. They're both pretty self-deprecating about it, because it basically just meant that they got into Hope's Peak by chance and not anything they did. But both of them do very well in the killing games, often making it through dangerous situations or finding important evidence because they got lucky. Komaeda has this to an extreme, as his luck is insanely powerful and obvious; he can win Russian Roulette with only one empty chamber, and any part of his plans that he leaves completely up to chance reliably succeeds, which he uses to nearly create a perfect murder with himself as the victim and the culprit totally unaware that they killed him. It only fails because it was based on a false premise; namely, that The Mole for the Future Foundation wasn't on the students' side.
- It doesn't come up much, but Sayaka Maizono says her Ultimate Idol talent comes with a surprising level of agility and endurance because she dances a lot on stage. It also makes her a amazingly good at faking her own innocence; if she'd been just a little more ruthless or had chosen a better target, she would've succeeded in committing murder and framing Makoto for it.
- Leon being the Ultimate Baseball Player means he's strong enough to break Sayaka's wrist when she tries to kill him, and he's able to dispose of evidence in the incinerator despite not being able to reach it with his pinpoint pitching accuracy.
- Hifumi Yamada the Ultimate Fanfic Creator can whip up a cosplay disguise overnight with limited materials.
- Ibuki Mioda is the Ultimate Musician; while her music doesn't do anything, she also has hyper-acute hearing.
- Gundham Tanaka, the Ultimate Animal Breeder, is able to train his hamsters to help him kill Nekomaru.
- Chiaki Nanami is the Ultimate Gamer and excels at games of all genres except dating sims. Her skills at mystery and puzzle games in particular allows her to be one of the most competent participants in the class trials.
- Servant talents, such as Chisa Yukizome the Ultimate Housekeeper and Kirumi Tojo the Ultimate Maid, mean in practice 'is hypercompetent at anything their employer might request of them', and both Chisa and Kirumi are skilled fighters as well as homemakers.
- Ryota Mitarai from the anime is the Ultimate Animator, and in his quest to invoke greater emotions with his anime he invented a way for his work to brainwash the viewer. Junko was able to gain most of her followers by stealing this little innovation, his anime is the 'killer' of the Final Killing Game (brainwashing victims to commit suicide), and when he has a Face–Heel Turn he uses a brainwashing video on his phone on pretty much everyone he meets.
- Tsumugi Shirogane is the Ultimate Cosplayer, which also makes her the Ultimate Master of Disguise so long as she isn't disguising herself as a real person (she's allergic... really, she breaks out in hives if she tries to cosplay someone real). The final trial reveals that she can perfectly cosplay the other characters and change clothes in mere seconds.
- The titular character of de Blob has the ability to change color by absorbing paint and then painting any object he touches. It would be pretty ineffectual if not for one important detail: Blob's entire world pretty much runs on color. In addition to his surface abilities of restoring buildings, Blob can revive dying plants, transform massive structures, and free people from mind control.
- In Don't Starve, Wilson's ability to "grow an magnificent beard" sounds pretty useless compared to being a strongman or being fireproof, but a long enough beard provides insulation to help survive winter, and it can be shaved off to provide one ingredient for a Meat Effigy and a little sanity.
- Dungeon Crawl features Cheibriados, the god of time and slowness. Followers are rewarded for pious deeds by slowing them down, but Cheibriados eventually rewards the slow with seriously great time-related powers and attribute boosts.
- Dust: An Elysian Tail has Fidget's magic attacks, which are pitifully weak on their own, but if caught in Dust's Dust Storm attack they turn into more powerful spells, and if combined with the lightning spell she eventually learns turns her into a flat-out Game-Breaker capable of stunlocking nearly anything and everything.
- One of the creatures of the entropy element in Elements is a Schrödinger's Cat — a weak and cheap creature that has the ability to die willingly while staying alive. It's completely useless unless it's used along with the element of death. Death has several cards that give positive effects whenever a creature is dying (vultures and condors gain a boost to attack and health, boneyard creates skeletons, etc.), which makes a creature that can die as many times as needed extremely useful.
- Elden Ring: The various demigods in the setting have a wide swathe of powers, ranging from Gravity Sucks to Blood Magic to a Holy Hand Grenade... and worse. Then there's Miquella, a childlike demigod who seems to be the Messianic Archetype and odd-man-out amongst his siblings. His goals are peaceful (providing a sanctuary for the outcasts in the Lands Between) and he ostensibly has no combat ability whatsoever, delegating military matters to his sister Malenia. Nevertheless, amongst all the demigods, he is The Dreaded for having divine charisma and "wielding the power of love". In The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC - which will feature Miquella's first onscreen appearance - an NPC recounts during the trailer that "there is nothing more terrifying" than the love he wields.
- Epic Mickey uses the thinner and paint mechanic to mean destroy/kill or repair/love. There is not actually any change in battle style, except the first will remove the tank from the fight, and the second will make him fight for you. Many have also pointed out the Fridge Horror in that mind control is the far darker option.
- Fallout:
- In the earlier Fallout games, you can play your character either combat-centric, diplomatically or stealthily. Playing diplomatically may seem boring initially... but then you realize that a Diplomatic player is basically a Mage with Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards in full-effect. With a high speech skill, you can effortlessly defeat the strongest opponents in the game without firing a single shot, to the point you can literally talk down the final boss! While combat is definitely possible, it's also entirely possible to negotiate your way through the game without killing a single person, and it's generally a lot more satisfying than violence.
- This ends up being hilariously subverted in Fallout 2 where trying to talk out with Frank Horrigan... doesn't end well. Fortunately, there are other NPCs nearby who a talky character can convince to help them in the fight.The Chosen One: Can't we talk this over?
Frank Horrigan: We just did. Time for talking is over. - Additionally, Charisma can be a very awesome stat too. It may seem not too useful due to your Speech stat being perfectly fine without it, but a character with high Charisma can recruit up to five companions at once, being able to swindle merchants for hilariously low prices, and generally have yourself be able to do things that would be impossible for a character with low Charisma.
- While the Bethesda-era Fallout games and later do require your character to have some levels in your other stats, a lot of quests can be easily finished or simply beaten with little effort by just tricking your opponent with speech and science checks. New Vegas alone allows you to completely subvert fighting Legate Lanius on Speech alone, and this allows you to skip the fight with the most dangerous human opponent in the game. Sure, your speech and science skill isn't going to help in a fight with a Radscorpion, but gaining access to additional weaponry, secret locations, or just easy XP by finalizing a quest with a check, is a great reason to have the skills as high as you can.
- Final Fantasy VI:
- Gau has a lot of powers, but most players don't know how to use themnote , and lament that he is uncontrollable. He also gets to attack for quadruple damage by using the rage of a lost housecat. Or he can use flowers to turn your enemies against each other with his charm ability. And he can use a jellyfish for the one time in the first half of the game that pussycats can't kick ass. Even without the well-known overpowered strategies like "Wind God Gau", any observant player can see Gau use magic for free and earlier than normal.
- The same game also has Relm. She can draw pictures. Completely useless, right? Except that with it, she can single-handedly defeat the most powerful cephalopod in the game. Although initially her ability only lets her copy a random power, it turns out to be a Magikarp Power with the addition of a relic that allows it to specifically control an enemy's abilities.
- A villainous variant can be found in Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location — or, more specifically, the secret animatronic blueprints hidden in the game's files. In it, you find out that each animatronic has some sort of child-abduction technology put in by William Afton — Circus Baby has a chest cavity designed to capture and hold children when there's only one child in the room, Funtime Freddy has a voice mimicry module, etc. So when you get to Funtime Foxy, you find that he/she/yes has the ability to... release scents. Doesn't sound that threatening... until you realize that chloroform is a scent, which would explain how he/she/yes knocked you out on Night 3.
- Various ghosts get various powers in Ghost Trick, but the one who takes the cake for this trope is Missile. He used "swap the location of two similarly-shaped objects" to stop someone from being shot after the gun has fired based on the principle that a bullet in flight is roughly the same shape as a harmless knit cap.
- Discussed in Hades, where Achilles thinks that Aphrodite is the mightiest of the Olympian gods, as hurricanes and thunderstorms are preferable to a broken heart. In-game, Aphrodite's boons grant the biggest numerical damage boost compared to other Olympians, inlcuding Ares.
- Hustle Cat has Reese. While he initially appears to have the power of extremely weak Art Initiates Life, it's revealed in his route that his real power is... sewing. His friends have Shock and Awe, Playing with Fire, Rewriting Reality... and Reese is stuck with sewing. Funny, right? Yeah, well, turns out he can use a seam ripper to tear open seams in the fabric of the universe.
- inFAMOUS: Conduits are basically a sub-species of humans that have a wide variety of spectacular powers (not too different from the Mutants of Marvel Comics), from the ability to wield Electricity, Fire, and Ice, to being able to transform into a gigantic monster. Hell, even the powers Delsin receives in Second Son, while not conventional in the leastnote , still proved to be pretty powerful even without resourceful thinking. Then came Celia Penderghast, a conduit with the power to control paper! You'd think Celia would be pretty useless with a power like that, but you'd be wrong since her powers allow her to teleport, construct armor, and create extremely effective projectiles.
- Kingdom Hearts:
- It's right there in the title. At one point in the first game, six Disney Princesses and Kairi are kidnapped because their pure hearts are the key to unlocking Kingdom Hearts. To an even more basic extent, the strength of one's heart decides if the person is able to bear a Keyblade, a giant magical key that can cause a world of hurt on any creature it hits.
- It's hinted that despite saving the universe multiple times over with his entire self-taught Keyblade powers (including intuiting how to use Master level powers by the time of III), Sora's true power is his amazingly strong heart. His heart can forge nigh-unbreakable bonds with others, hear hearts in pain and instinctively reach out to them, and keep the hearts of several others inside his, among other things. It's even hinted that his heart is able to house, heal and revive people who technically never existed. Heart may just be the key to saving the universe this time around.
- Keyblades can lock or unlock anything. This means that, among other things, it's difficult to contain their wielders within conventional prison cells as their keyblade allows them to unlock the jail door without the need to steal the warden's keys. It's also possible for them to unlock every chest they come across, unseal anything that is sealed with a sort of lock, etc. As revealed in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the locks don't even have to look like a keyhole in order to work — if it's a lock in one sense or another, the keyblade can work on it. In fact, the lock doesn't even have to be physical. For example, keyblades can be used to seal or unseal the hearts inside of others, open gateways to other worlds, etc.
- LEGO The Incredibles: Power over ice-cream doesn't sound very impressive, but as shown both in her boss fight and as a playable character, it pretty much makes Brainfreezer into a less skillful version of Frozone. But what she lacks in his technique, like gliding, she makes up for in sheer power.
- Master of Magic: The Halfling top-tier unit are Slingers — a ranged unit with Luck. However, that means they always hit for maximum damage and when they're at Elite level, they can take down anyone.
- Mega Man (Classic):
- The Top Spin in Mega Man 3 is frequently regarded as the absolute worst weapon in the series. Once you figure out how to use it, however, it is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It will one-shot any enemy who's not outright immune to it, with the exception of most bosses. Even some bosses are destroyed in one shot by it, including the final boss! The only thing you have to keep in mind is which enemies are immune to it, and the fact that the weapon drains energy for as long as you're in contact with the enemy, so it can empty out its energy very quickly if you're not careful.
- Other Robot Masters exist with themes and weapons that sound silly on paper but are a lot more effective than you'd expect, such as Bubble Man and especially his eventual successor Burst Man, who combines giant bubbles capable of trapping and carrying away Mega Man with explosives and Bubble Man's Spikes of Doom-covered ceiling. The Bubble Lead is also extremely useful as a tool for identifying false floors.
- It's really not uncommon for this series for the final boss of a Mega Man game to be hurt the most (or in some cases only hurt) by the weapon that's the most stupid-sounding or cumbersome to use. The most infamous example is in Mega Man 7, where the weapon you get from Spring Man (Who looks about as stupid as he sounds, likewise for his attacks) is one of the best to fight Dr. Wily's final weapon.
- The Cobras in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. The Pain controls bees and is effectively a living beehive. This makes him pretty much unstoppable on an open battlefield, stinging to death any soldiers without having to even be present himself. The Sorrow is kind of a spirit Aquaman. He didn't just talk to spirits, he could pull battle plans, orders and other assorted information regarding the opposition from ANY dead soldier, which, you know, there can be a lot of in a war.
- Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood can famously hold his breath for 10 minutes. The Pirate Elders are, to say the least, less than impressed when Guybrush mentions this as his special skill. As it turns out, being able to hold your breath for 10 minutes is a DAMN useful skill for, y'know, A PIRATE.
- Mother:
- In EarthBound (1994), Paula's Pray ability produces unpredictable results throughout the game. However, it's absolutely essential to defeating the final boss, Giygas. When Paula prays during the final battle, it deals five-digit damage to Giygas and eventually kills him.
- EarthBound Beginnings has a similar sequence, wherein after all the weapons that Ninten and company bring have failed to scratch Giygas, they defeat him... through the lullaby, his adoptive human mother sang to him as a baby. The Melody of Love causes the psychic alien to break down and cry before retreating, and presumably are what drove him to become the mindless Eldritch Abomination he appears as in the sequel.
- And in Mother 3, PK Love is the name of Lucas's special move, due to his great compassion. It's what allows him to pull the Needles. That being said, sometimes Heart isn't so awesome, when the villain turns your twin brother into a soulless cyborg because he has that power, too.
- Nasuverse examples that don't belong to the Anime section:
- Tsukihime: Tohno Akiha's power is called Plunder, which gives her the ability to "steal body heat." ... well, okay, but we have people that can kill absolutely anything and others that can drop the moon on you, so what? How about being able to steal all of it from a person at any range, with such sudden violence that the target will instantly and functionally Self Combust? note
- Shirou in Fate/stay night is so limited in magic that he can only use two kinds; Reinforcement and Projection. Neither seems very useful because Reinforcement just strengthens existing objects and Projection can only create an object for a very limited amount of time. In Shirou's case, however he can use Projection to recreate any weapon he's seen before as a slightly weaker copy. Shirou is surrounded by heroes and demigods who use absurdly powerful weapons. And since Shirou is making disposable copies of the weapons anyway, he can reinforce them to the point that they explode on contact with a target, eliminating the power gap between the copy and the original. By the end of the three routes, Shirou is... rather dangerous for a human.
- Fate/hollow ataraxia has a non-magical example with Sella, who is really good at housekeeping. How good? Nobody knows that she's been squatting in a vacant room in Shirou's mansion until she tells them, even though the building is cleaned regularly and has five part-time occupants.
- Your player character in Fate/Grand Order has barely more magic circuits than a normal human. Your only actual qualities are high compatibility with Chaldea's Magitek, and The Power of Friendship. The former lets you convert other sources of energy to power your spells, overcoming your lack of magic circuits, and the latter lets you command every Heroic Spirit ever with perfect obedience. By Part 2, Chaldea is actively downplaying your abilities to keep the Mages' Association from finding out and putting a bounty on your head.
- See the Anime examples for The Garden of Sinners.
- The Advocate from Nexus Clash has no direct combat powers and their main class-unique ability involves spending enormous amounts of their limited Character Points on stat buffs to others that do not have any direct benefit for the Advocate. However, there's no upper limit to the number of people the Advocate can buff this way, and an Advocate who can give full buffs to dozens of characters at once edges into Game-Breaker territory, altering the outcome of the whole war at the price of individual power.
- In the Persona series, starting from Persona 3 this trope is used extremely literally. The series uses Tarot Motifs to refer to numerous characters and individuals met throughout the protagonists' joinery through the game. The protagonist is somebody represented by the Fool card, which is noted to be like the number 0 — 'empty, but with limitless possibilities'. Interacting with people who represent the other tarots in the game and forging meaningful connections with them allows the protagonist to create a 'social link' with them, granting them benefits on their journey. In-game, this grants them the power of the 'Wild Card', allowing them to not be restricted to a single Persona like their other teammates, and even use the Velvet Room to fuse enemy shadows they encounter into beneficial persona they can utilise the strong abilities of. Each persona has their own arcana connection, and increasing the corresponding social link allows the protagonist to fuse higher-level Personae as their heart becomes strengthened by the bonds they forge with others to withstand the immense power of the Persona. In fact, the climax of both 3 and 4 end with the respective hero successfully defeating a negative aspect of the collective consciousness of mankind by summoning a greater power than them through the bonds they've forged throughout their journey. In which respect, reaching 100% Completion and maxing out every link before that point feels even more rewarding for the player for successfully summoning the necessary power to win through their efforts all game long.
- Persona 5: In the finale, the belief in the heroes, which has so far just been a glorified popularity poll from an in-game Message Board of how much you're encouraging people to stand up for themselves, summons a fifty-foot tall demon king who uses the hopes and dreams of the people of Tokyo to shoot a giant mecha god in the head and save Christmas.
- In Pixel Dungeon, one of the Random Drops you can find is a Wand of Flock — basically, it summons a couple of indestructible sheep. Sounds lame, but these sheep can help keep mooks from hitting you.
- Some Pokémon have an ability called "Klutz," which makes them unable to use most held items. No healing with berries, no powering up moves of a certain type, etc. This may sound beyond useless until you remember there are a few held items with negative effects. Disability Immunity comes into play in competitive battles, where items that reduce speed, cause poisoning, and the like are frequently used in combination with moves that transfer held items onto the enemy. Klutz foils opponents who swap nasty items onto your Pokémon, and lets you bring your own trap items into battle without them harming your own team.
- The Realm has 5 schools of magic, magic costs mana crystals which cost gold. One of the circles is Enchantment, which lets you permanently enchant items. But the enchantment has no innate spells so its entire circle requires you to have learned other circles, but with enough ability, you can enchant any spell to any item.
- Played for laughs in the South Park games The Stick of Truth and The Fractured but Whole, where the player character's "power" of gaining social media followers really quickly is treated as somehow more amazing as their highly-destructive, time-warping farts. In the latter game, however, Cartman does manage to make use of the New Kid's social media power by making them take selfies with people wearing Mitch Conner (AKA Cartman's hand) merch, which causes all the easily influenced idiots who follow them to vote Conner into power.
- Taking a cue from the show, The Fractured But Whole also makes sure Mint-Berry Crunch still qualifies for this. Mint and Berry isn't just control over cereal, but the power to infuse allies and enemies with the very essence of Mint and Berry, respectively. And those Minted are utterly immune to those Berried, so this power over cereal has the potential to keep your entire team invulnerable to attack if you manage it well. Fittingly, Mint-Berry Crunch is top-tier as far as team members go.
- In the Super Smash Bros. series, a number of characters have moves fitting the description of this trope. However, an extreme example of this is seen in the case of Jigglypuff, whose "Down-B" special attack is "Rest". This doesn't even heal the character, as it does within Jigglypuff's origin franchise. However, if used with perfect timing, it can cause a two-hit KO, since KO's at 30 damage, and it DOES 30 damage. Until they Nerfed it in Brawl. Even then, it can KO in 3-4 hits against an opponent with full health, as well as inflicting a health-draining status (which helps reach the KO-mark).
- Touhou Project: A lot of powers in the series may sound useless or very abstract, but have the potential to be creatively abused:
- Reimu has the power to fly, something which nearly everyone else in Gensoukyou also possesses along with their other powers. Except Reimu can also fly away from reality, making her completely untouchable for as long as she wishes.
- Kogasa is an umbrella youkai with the power of "surprising humans", and she's not even very good at it. She appears as a Stage 2 midboss and boss, and that appears to be the height of her power. Until she suddenly appears as the mid-boss of the EX-Stage, complete with the massive power boost that suggests! What a surprise for us!
- Subverted with Yuuka, whose mastery of flowers is explicitly noted to be just as useless as it sounds. However, she's still one of the oldest residents of Gensoukyou with physical and magical power to match.
- Lily White has the power to announce the coming of spring. She does this by showering you with an unholy amount of bullets.
- Rin Kaenbyou has the power to haul corpses to fuel the fires of Hell. It isn't just their body though, but also their soul, breaking them from both the cycle of reincarnation and the easily accessible (and escapable) afterlife. In a setting where everyone and their grandmother wields a Story-Breaker Power, the cat is one of the only ones that can render you Deader than Dead.
- Koishi Komeiji gave herself a Poke in the Third Eye to stop her Telepathy and escape all the hurtful thoughts people harboured about her because of her power. This had the side-effect of making her unable to read her own heart and mind as well as giving her the ability to manipulate the subconscious... How exactly is that useful? Well, it gives her a Perception Filter that makes her so unnoticeable, you may not notice her even if you look straight at her, and also wipes her existence from the minds of everyone who take their eyes off her.
- Besides being an ancient wizard-messiah with all the power that entails, Toyosatomimi no Miko has the power to listen to ten voices at the same time... which includes the "ten desires" that make up the human psyche, meaning she can effectively read minds (or at least, personalities). This ability also causes divine spirits (physical manifestations of human desire) to be drawn to her, which she can absorb for power in a small-scale version of Gods Need Prayer Badly.
- Raiko Horikawa can ride any rhythm, which sounds really abstract and useless... until she starts shooting lightning everywhere. Then you realize that in classic Touhou fashion she found her way into the repertoire of another rather notable drummer and suddenly her Ex-boss status makes rather more sense. Another way to read her ability is that she can make anything follow a rhythm, which doesn't sound too formidable either, but she could totally kill you via cardiac arrhythmia.
- Yukari Yakumo has the power to manipulate boundaries. This seems like a fairly useless power until you realize that she can manipulate ALL boundaries, physical and otherwise, since boundaries are what basically makes up reality as we know it. The applications for her powers are varied and highly creative, including manipulating the boundary between truth and lie to use a reflection of the moon to commence a lunar invasion note . When not using it as a Semantic Superpower, she creates gaps — portals to an eye-filled dimension that (according to the fandom) she uses mostly for stupid pranks.
- Okina Matara has the less-than-awe-inspiring ability to "create doors on the backs of anything," these doors lead into the land of the back door and fans quickly took to mockingly referring to her as "nerfed Yukari"... However, these seemingly unimpressive doors also allow Okina to control physical and mental energies, Super-Empowering individuals, enfeebling them, driving them insane and, if she applies a door to the back of an inanimate object, even allowing her to bestow that object with life. All of this, in addition to the fact that Okina is a goddess of formidable power, supports her boast that she could remake Gensoukyou from the ground up with a snap of her fingers if she so desired.
- The series also has an inversion with Rumia, who has an awesome-sounding power (manipulation of darkness) that turns out to be really lame, or at the very least she sucks at it — her vision is weakened by her own darkness. According to ZUN, he intentionally gave a first boss an ability that sounds like it would be more at home on a final boss.
- Sagume can't talk about anything without having it fail: if she says she's going to take a holiday, events will conspire so she can't. This proves remarkably handy when she's talking about bad things.
- In World of Warcraft, engineering was largely considered a joke profession, most of its unreliable gadgets being watered down versions of better spells. Then The Burning Crusade expansion was released, and some smartass figured out that you could use the otherwise pointless Gnomish Remote Control to take command of the unstoppable Fel Reaver. Hilarity Ensued. Briefly.
