Basic Trope: A powerful item, weapon, ability, Mon, or character is obtainable early enough in a game that, if exploited, it will greatly reduce the difficulty of the early portions of the game.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia XVII, The Goombas in the Noob Cave have a 0.5% chance of dropping the Gaia Blade, a weapon with stats appropriate for the mid-to-late parts of the game. If you're lucky enough to get it, you can bulldoze most of the Mooks and even bosses you encounter for the first half of the game.
- Exaggerated: The Gaia Blade has a fairly high chance of dropping, enough that you can get Gaia Blades for your entire party to dual-wield without too much time or effort, allowing you to steamroll most of the game.
- Downplayed: The Gaia Blade is strong enough to make the first dungeon easier, but is soon outclassed as enemies become stronger and better equipment becomes normally available.
- Justified: The enemy that drops the Gaia Blade is a Beef Gate that the developers did not expect the player to be able to beat until much later in the game.
- Inverted: A powerful enemy in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon has a low chance of dropping an extremely weak weapon that you could buy in the very first town in the game.
- Subverted:
- Despite being a rare random drop early in the game, the Gaia Blade is only of equal strength (or worse) than what you would normally have access to at that point in the game.
- The Gaia Blade may drop, but it is Level-Locked and cannot be equipped until later in the game when it is no longer a nuke-level weapon.
- Double Subverted:
- Due to either a glitch or a programming oversight, the Gaia Blade is much stronger than it's supposed to be and/or is available much sooner than it's supposed to be.
- The Gaia Blade is a Joke Item...but a quest in the First Town allows you to power it up into a Lethal Joke Item.
- The Gaia Blade may drop, but it is Level-Locked and cannot be equipped until later in the game when it is no longer a nuke-level weapon. However, it can still be sold for a nuke-level fortune that allows you to stock up on enough inventory items to trivialize the first portion of the game.
- Parodied:
- The very first enemy in the game is capable of dropping the strongest weapon in the game.
- The Disc-One Nuke is a literal nuke.
- Zig Zagged: An early game item is very powerful, then loses its edge... But with enough investment and the right equipment it becomes just as powerful or useful as it was before.
- Averted: All of the items and abilities in the game are balanced appropriately for the point in the game in which you are able to obtain them.
- Enforced: The developers forgot to dummy out the 'Debug Blade' (and its associated Debug Room) from the retail version.
- Lampshaded: The item description for the Gaia Blade says, "This blade is an item of envy for low-level warriors, but far less effective among skilled ones."
- Defied: The Gaia Blade is nerfed in a balance patch.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: The Gaia Blade, while powerful, is an Evil Weapon that drains the wielder's life force or lowers your morality rating. Using it too much can lock the player out of the Golden Ending and force you down the road to a bad ending.
- Reconstructed: The game has a system for purifying evil objects. Purifying the Gaia Blade is not too difficult of a task and it actually becomes even stronger once its been purified.
- Played for Laughs: The Gaia Blade is a Sentient Weapon that gets incredibly jealous about the hero upgrading to a better one.
- Played for Drama: The hero has an emotional attachment to the Gaia Blade and is upset that it's no longer particularly useful.
