Fake Balance is about games failing at Competitive Balance. However, by Fake Balance Wick Check it's been used for:

• 21% that.
• 21% Going into Walkthrough Mode, Wall of Text tutorials which units are better and how to use them.
• 18% ZCE
• 20% potshot potholes with the tone of complaining.
• 10% used when balance wasn't inteded to begin with.

Options:

• Disambiguate between Complacent Gaming Syndrome, Competitive Balance, Character Tiers, Game-Breaker, Tier Induced Scrappy, which the trope is overlapping with.
• Move to YMMV, though it could invite more complaining.

1. VideoGame.PerfectDark -> * Fake Balance: Even though the weapons are supposed to be balanced (eg. the Falcon 2 is a small handgun, but is much more accurate than the AR-34) some are clearly much more powerful than others (the FarSight, Superdragon, anything with explosives etc.).
2. VideoGame.SuperRobotWarsJudgment -> * Fake Balance: The three original Humongous Mecha are supposed to be balanced, with Real Robots "Bellzelute" as a light, dodgy sniper and "Coustwell" the somewhat heavier, melee counterpart. "Granteed", the Super Robot, is supposed to be the tanker with balanced weapons on both ends. However, thanks to the AI's tendency to attack units with lower evasion rates, the Granteed and its overwhelming armor rating makes it better than the other two. As a bonus, because it is an L-sized unit, attack and defense bonuses are increased, with weapons so powerful its second strongest is greater than the final attack of the other originals, not to mention good weapon reach that makes it the best sniper, tanker, and melee attacker out of all three.
3. VideoGame.BannerOfTheMaid -> * Fake Balance: The game's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors is rather unbalanced in practice. Line Infantry make up an overwhelming majority of the enemy forces while Light Cavalry are rarely ever seen. This has the effect of making the player's Heavy Cavalry units much greater liabilities than they are likely intended to be, as they are ineffective against Line Infantry and have few opportunities to make use of their advantage against Light Cavalry. Conversely, it turns Light Infantry into borderline Game-Breakers, as they are effective against Line Infantry and weak against Light Cavalry.
4. VideoGame.BurnoutParadise -> * Fake Balance: The three boost types. They're supposed to be useful in different situations, but in practice the Stunt boost is the best of the bunch since it's just so much easier to refill it compared to the other two. There's actually a real argument to be made that it's better to go with Stunt cars than Speed cars in races.
5. VideoGame.Kritika -> * Fake Balance: Going by the official website's information, the stat grids of each of the player classes seem pretty balanced, but the Skillset given gives certain classes more advantage than others. For example, the Crimson Assassin's skills have debuffing properties that can break the enemy boss shields, so their attacks can actually cause more harm to them than any other classes.
6. WebVideo.TwitchPlaysPokemonArena -> * Fake Balance: After a few days of Smash betting, players realized that some fighters are better than others on the same CPU level. As such, the streamer lowered some fighter's CPU levels to balance out the game. This resulted on those who didn't get the nerf being the far superior fighter to bet. Because of this, players would easily bet nearly all of their money and receive ridiculous amounts of winnings back, that is until the streamer noticed the exploits and limited betting to 1000 Pokedollars and modified the levels again.
7. VideoGame.AceCombatInfinity -> * Fake Balance: The three major plane classes. In theory, Fighters and Attackers are supposed to be better against aircraft and ground targets respectively because of damage bonuses to each other. At the same time, they have damage penalties against targets opposed to their role (e.g. ground targets for Fighters). Multiroles can take on both without benefit or penalty, but by default have access to more parts slots than Fighters or Attackers. Fighters and Attackers are balanced out with a lack of upgrade slots, but this means that Multiroles negate their Master of None label and butcher both aircraft and ground targets more effectively than Fighters and Attackers combined. The addition of Bombers does nothing to alleviate this, either.
8. VideoGame.CrashTeamRacingNitroFueled -> * Fake Balance: Done rather Egregiously here: in the original game, Acceleration characters had a higher speed value than Balanced characters, despite the in-game stats saying otherwise. As documented here, this was inexplicably kept for no obvious reason, resulting in Acceleration characters actually being considered the superior option in terms of speed, acceleration, and being able to drift on straightways easier.
9. VideoGame.PuyoPuyon -> * Fake Balance: Console Yo~n gives characters with situational Super Attacks faster charge times... but the quick charge times don't make the attacks any less situational. The mechanic is made moot anyway, as even the slowest characters (aside from maybe Skeleton-T) will either hit full SP or come close to it off of a decently-sized chain. The only time it even remotely comes into play is when three or four Super Attacks have already been used and SP gain thus slows to a crawl.
10. VideoGame.InfiniteSpace -> * Fake Balance: The game's balance is completely borked. Fleet composition calculus is nonexistant because bigger ships are ALWAYS better than smaller ones, with there being absolutely no value whatsoever in deploying destroyers or cruisers once you get up to battleships and carriers (cruisers in particular are supposed to specialise in shooting down support craft, but the AA mechanics are so pathetic that they're basically useless for this purpose). And support craft (fighters and bombers) are so overpowered that whoever wins the initial dogfight engagement in a battle will almost always win the battle by default.
11. Characters.PokemonSpecialTypes -> (Dragon) * Fake Balance: Between their massive movepools and above-average stats, they can easily muscle through Steel- and Ice-types that were supposed to deal with them (they're both weak to Fire, which pretty much every Dragon can abuse since, you know, they're Dragons). The Fairy-type was introduced to alleviate this, especially since they aren't weak to Fire.
12. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: ** While most screen-clearing skills have a cooldown of 30 seconds when maxed out, some skills have no cooldown and clear the screen anyways, such as Demon Cry (Demon Slayer) and Reflection (Luminous).

1. VideoGame.GoldenSun -> * Fake Balance: Jupiter in general. As an element, Jupiter clearly has the advantage in the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system, being strong against the vast majority of enemies in the game. The classes offered by the Jupiter djinni are cleanly better than the alternatives. The Apprentice and Page class line is a Magic Knight that borders on being Master of All, with powerful physical and magical psynergy, the Impact series, coupled with high stats in every area, has the notable advantages of a massive PP pool and extremely high agility stats. The symbiotic class lines available to the Mercury and Jupiter adepts are extremely useful, being buffers and healers who also get access to some of the strongest Mercury and Jupiter offensive psynergy available, essentially combining the best aspects of the Wind and Water Seer class series. The only disadvantage to the Jupiter classes is that their focus towards higher quality of offensive psynergy creates a massive gap between their psynergy progression, which is more than made up for by the higher base power of the spells, allowing them to be a strong option for a good chunk of the early game. Even the Ninja class series, commonly agreed to be the best overall class in the game, requires Jupiter Djinn. The Jupiter classes are so potent that its not an exaggeration to say that the game's overall progression is dictated by the amount of Jupiter djinni available at any given time, and the sheer advantages of the Jupiter element are already apparent in the first game, before becoming even more dominant in The Lost Age and Dark Dawn.
2. AwesomeButImpractical.EasternRPG -> * Regigigas is an Olympus Mon that has amazing power (670 in base stats, including an astounding 160 Attack and very good 100 Speed), but it also has Slow Start, undoubtedly the worst ability in the entire series: it halves both Attack and Speed for the first five turns of a battle. Five turns is way too much and hardly considered a "start" as so much damage can be inflicted in this mark. Even worse is that switching out resets the timer, and it lacks most recovery or Protect-type moves (outside of the situational Wide Guard in Gen V onwards) to help it stall foes until Slow Start wears off. One may as well use a Status Buff like Dragon Dance on another Pokemon to get the same effect quicker. It took until Gen VIII, four generations after its debut, for Regigigas to finally get Protect and Rest, which still isn't enough for it to get past Untiered.
3. VideoGame.EntryPointRoblox -> * Fake Balance: Stealth VS Loud. In theory, Stealth is supposed to be more rewarding than Loud, given that there's a extra bonus for not having the alarm being raised, and even locks behind certain bonus money behind objectives that are much harder to do in Loud. In practice, however, the difficulty of maintaining Stealth, combined with the fact that Freelancers who are focused on Stealth tend to get shredded apart in Loud, and on Legend, the need of specialization is further incentivized, meaning that Stealth-based Freelancers have a much higher risk of dying when the alarm is sounded. Meanwhile, there also exists an Experience Booster in which the multiplier is increased for every successful mission. Given how at the max experience multiplier gives much better rewards than not raising the alarm and killing people, not to mention the cost is basically neglectable after obtaining the basic equipment needed for weapons and modifications, and how easy Loud is to complete once you know how to accomplish objectives fast, and you pretty much have a reason to not build more than one Stealth-based Freelancer. Cishshato likely took notice of this imbalance and not only made the majority of the badges that require various missions to be completed on higher difficulties to be done on Stealth, but also made sure that there were Stealth-only missions in the expansion packs.
4. VideoGame.BedWars -> * Fake Balance: Swords vs Bows. In theory, Swords have better DPS than Bows due to having the benefit of having the least delay in attacks compared to Bows, which need to aim in order to make their mark. In practice, however, the Bows' massive range essentially nullifies the advantage of the Sword, which not only has somewhat wonky hit detection, but also has a Game-Breaking Bug that sometimes slows the sword swinging down for no reason. Even without that, it's typically better to spam arrows in close range unless you're surrounded by multiple enemies. This trope was the main reason why Bows received not one, not two, but three nerfs. The Dodo bird also helped tipped swords in its favor: You're not going to ever hit a player riding a Dodo, unless you get up close to them in the first place, and Swords are capable of inflicting enough damage to knock the player off the Dodo with the right upgrades. There is a good reason why there wasn't a kit that came with a sword or based their playstyle with it until the release of Freiya, and even then, the frost debuff she can inflict is available via other methods. Later patches have since fixed the wonky hit detection of the swords and improved charge time and reload time, a later nerf reduced the uncharged knockback, forcing bow users to either take their time aiming their bows or buy the more powerful yet expensive Crossbow.
5. VideoGame.Patapon -> * Fake Balance: ** If you're serious about playing later stages in 2, Robopon Hero+level 4 Damage-increasing mask^note You can also use the one that increases all your stats if your Hero is becoming too much of a Glass Cannon+Divine Gauntlet+Demon Gauntlet. You have now created a whirling tornado of death that no other Hero class can match.
6. VideoGame.Patapon -> * Fake Balance: ** If you're playing online in Patapon 3, expect other heroes to almost always be A) Grenburr (deals ridiculous amounts of damage) B) Cannasault (deals ridiculous amounts of damage) C) Cannogabang (deals ridiculous amounts of damage) D) Tondenga (though slow, deals great damage and has decent HP, and is one of the earliest classes unlocked). There's a surprising decent number of the two mage classes though, both the healer and the ranged attacker. But other classes such as Wooyari and Pyokorider are seldom seen.
7. VideoGame.CommandAndConquerRenegade -> * Fake Balance: The multiplayer was balanced in that GDI and Nod each had an approximately equal chance of winning a given match. Other than that, you had infantry which were only worth a damn fighting other infantry, matches that devolved into neverending reverse tug-of-war tank battles due to the repair mechanics, hitscan snipers who could kill with 1-3 bodyshots, and so on. It even fails at the most basic form of game balance, in that the basic rifle does two more points of damage in the hands of GDI characters than it does for Nod ones, which isn't much per-bullet (the GDI rifle only does 7 damage per shot) but makes a difference across the entire magazine. Ironically, it's been observed that this actually translated the RTS series quite well, given that tank rushes have been at the heart of it for years.
8. Characters.PokemonSpecialTypes -> * Fake Balance: ** Within the Starter elemental trio; not only does Water have the least number of weaknesses^note 2 types, Grass and Electric, compared to Fire's 3 and Grass's 5 and types that resist it^note Only 3 types, Water, Grass, and Dragon, resist Water, compared to Fire's 4 and Grass's 7, meaning that they can easily beat Grass-types despite the type disadvantage thanks to their access to Ice-type attacks, and Electric-types (their only other weakness) due to them not resisting Water attacks and their Glass Cannon tendencies.
9. Characters.PokemonSpecialTypes -> * Fake Balance: ** The weather condition related to the Water type, rain, is far superior to the other weather conditions. Intense sunlight powers up Fire-type moves, but the Abilities powered up by intense sunlight are usually given to Grass-types, which are roasted even harder by the powered-up Fire moves. Rock- and Ground-types might enjoy having their weaknesses to Water being reduced, but in turn, they risk taking a no-charge Solar Beam. Sandstorm's powering-up Abilities, Sand Force and Sand Rush, are mutually exclusive and not innate boosts. Rain gives a boost to Water-type attacks and its Abilities are granted to mostly Water-types, who make extremely good use of them. They do have to watch out for perfect-accuracy Thunder, but that can more often than not be avoided by just OHKO'ing any Electric-type that switches in.
10. Characters.PokemonSpecialTypes -> * Fake Balance: Despite Gen II ostensibly reining in the Psychic-type dominance of Gen I with the addition of two new types, an expansion of Ghost-type moves, and the Special Attack/Defense split, the Psychic-type still has a tremendous advantage in the subsequent Kanto and Johto-based games. To note: ** In Gen II, a quality Psychic-type can still run roughshod over most of the game owing in large part to the sheer lack of Dark- and Steel-type mons. Most of the new Dark-types (Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel) are reserved for the post-game in Kanto in Gold/Silver, while Jasmine's gym is really the only place you'll encounter Steel-types outside of the odd Magnemite. Further, Morty's Ghost-type gym uses the part-Poison Gastly line only, excluding Misdreavus altogether, and, despite having some better moves like Shadow Ball, this was before the physical/special split, so they can't really take advantage of their physical-classed STABs due to being special attackers. Finally, the only new Ghost-type, Misdreavus (the first which isn't part Poison), is only encountered very late in the post-game. Crystal makes some of the Dark-types appear sooner, but they're still rare and not major threats. ** The Gen III Kanto remakes also face this issue for very similar reasons. Dark and Steel-types are very rare, while the only Ghost-type line is once again the part Poison-type Ghastly line who can't even take advantage of their improved Ghost-type moveset due to the physical/special split not taking place yet. Thus, a good Psychic-type will still dominate most of the game. ** Even as late as the Gen VII Let's Go games following the plot of Gen I's Yellow, this issue remains for the exact same reasons.
11. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: ** Demon Avengers have 4x the health of everyone else when buffed. This is due to their main stat being max HP instead of STR and their buffs giving you more than 200% bonus max HP. Expect a buffed 40,000 HP by level 120.
12. VideoGame.PokemonGoldAndSilver -> * Fake Balance: Downplayed in comparison to the Gen. I games, but the Psychic-type still has a tremendous advantage owing in large part to the sheer lack of Dark- and Steel-type mons. Most of the new Dark-types (Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel) are reserved for the post-game in Kanto in G/S, while Jasmine's gym is really the only place you'll encounter Steel-types outside of the odd Magnemite. Further, Morty's Ghost-type gym uses the part-Poison Ghastly line and, despite having some better moves like Shadow Ball, this was before the physical/special split, so the they can't really take advantage of either of their physical-classed STABs due to being special attackers. Finally, the only new Ghost-type, Misdreavous, is only encountered very late in the post-game. Thus, a good Psychic-type Pokemon can still run roughshod over most of the game. Crystal makes some of the Dark-types appear sooner, but they're still rare and not major threats.

1. YMMV.AgeOfEmpiresII -> ** Most people try to avert this by having all players mandatory pick Random for civilization selection, but this has its own problems.
2. Main.ACommanderIsYou -> * The Game-Breaker Faction. This faction is too overpowered, in one sense or another, because of a certain ability or (abilities) that shifts the game in their favor, or some other loophole, that makes self-respecting gamers avoid this faction like fire. Either these factions have no disadvantage to outweigh their broken advantage (in which case this is intentional), or their weakness isn't very noticeable, or easy to override. Often an unplayable "boss" faction of a campaign.
3. VideoGame.Splitgate -> * Fake Balance: The Uneven Modes, Fight or Flight and Unfair Swat. These modes are intentionally unbalanced in practice and are meant to be silly.
4. VideoGame.DeadAheadZombieWarfare -> * Fake Balance: Agility is this for melee units since it acts as a way of keeping them in check. The issue is that it does so in an irrational way: it runs a check that determines if a unit will pause after their next attack or not. It turns using melees into a gamble unless you get lucky with extra buffs on your items, or outright sacrifice the convenience of faster preparation time for an agility-boosting watch.
5. VideoGame.WorldOfTanks -> * Fake Balance: The perception of this leads to arguments.
6. YMMV.PuyoPuyo -> *** Another winning point for Champions coming to the West is that Western players haven't gotten a pure Puyo game in a while, particularly one that uses the much-vaunted Tsu rules and has netplay; Puyo Tetris lacks segregated rankings for the different play styles and modes, forcing Puyo players to bear the Fake Balance that comes with inevitably fighting Tetris players online unless they use community-run lobbies that agree not to use Tetris. Champions remedies this issue by being strictly a Puyo game with the two most commonly-used rulesets in competitive play.
7. GameBreaker.Warframe -> ** Another fairly popular Helminth ability is Sevagoth’s Gloom, combining a decently strong enemy slowdown over a large radius around the user with a Life Drain affect for any damage done in the radius by the user and their allies, lasting as long as until energy reserves run out. Its only flaw is the lack of a Death Well to fill, a moot point on all other frames, as well as Lavos only being able to use it for ten seconds before a twelve second cool down. While universally decent, it proves very powerful in the hands of certain frames, such as Mesa gaining health from enemies shot down via Peacemaker and Garuda gaining an infinite health to energy feedback loop via use of her Bloodletting ability.
8. YMMV.DungeonsAndDragonsFourthEdition -> ** It was also very much appreciated for helping to balance the martial and spellcasting class. 3.5E and even Pathfinder were notorious for warriors only being able to hit harder at higher levels while wizards could solo entire encounters, while clerics and druids made martial classes almost completely redundant, and many things intended to balance them didn't work or were controversial. Additionally, utility spells saw a new use in combat allowing wizards to manipulate the battlefield and see more results.
9. VideoGame.Patapon -> * Fake Balance: ** In the original Patapon. Yumipons + Yaripons + Megapons. It's on walkthroughs, it's on forums. It can punch through anything.
10. VideoGame.Patapon -> * Fake Balance: ** The Rarepons from the two previous games were the rarity-based variant, purposefully done.
11. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: Many classes had examples of this before balancing patches that took cues from player feedback: ** Arans were limited to using a special melee combo as an ordinary attack, and could only use their skills by consuming their combo count. They both deal piddly damage.
12. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: ** Angelic Buster was known easier time upping the damage cap. She didn’t have an easy time upping her actual damage.
13. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: ** Evans used to get over eight job advancements as opposed to everyone else's four (their revamp occurred before 5th job existed). You wouldn't receive your best attacks aren’t until level 160, and your damage would be subpar until then.
14. VideoGame.MapleStory -> * Fake Balance: ** Mercedes has incredible combat mobility and subpar DPS outside of burst.

1. ThatOneBoss.Pokemon -> * Sabrina at Gen 1. Her team of Psychic-type Pokemon is fifteen to eighteen (depending on which version you're playing) levels higher than the last gym leader. It doesn't help much that Psychic-types were also extremely overpowered in Gen I due to a glitch making them immune rather than weak to Ghost, contrary to in-game advice and Nintendo's own guides, and a poorly-balanced elemental system in which Psychic's only weakness, Bug, had lackluster Pokemon and moves. To rub salt in the wound, the only Ghost types at the time were also part-Poison, creating a vulnerability to Psychic moves. Thank goodness this has been fixed in the remakes.
2. Sequelitis.VideoGames -> * The Soul series got hit with this pretty hard in The New '10s. Soul Edge was a respectable 3D fighter, though it wound up being overshadowed by its sister series and then displaced by its sequel Soulcalibur, which became a major Killer App for the Sega Dreamcast. Soulcalibur II continued to improve upon its predecessor's refinements and is considered one of the best fighting games of all time. The third and fourth Calibur games aren't bad, but couldn't match the standards set by II. Then came Soulcalibur V, which was full of Fake Balance and a number of changes to the story that were met with a lot of derision from the fanbase. Major League Gaming, the crowd that V was meant to appeal to, rejected it outright. Then, the series shifted focus with Soulcalibur: Unbreakable Soul and Soulcalibur: Lost Swords, which got even more backlash from the inclusion of microtransactions and online DRM, respectively. ^note The always-online DRM was seen as a particular sticking point since it was a single-player-only game. Couple that with all three of those titles coming out in a twelve-month period, and for a long time, the subsequent fall from grace had left the fate of the series up in the air. Subverted with Soulcalibur VI, which fortunately managed to reverse the downwards spiral and won acclaim from critics and fans alike.
3. XUniverse.Tropes0ToF -> * Fake Balance: ** Fansite owner ApricotSlice wrote an entire essay/rant on this trope in regards to Reunion. In theory the ships in the game have two axes of balance (Faction Calculus and ship classes) and are pretty well designed. In practice, Artificial Stupidity, the Schizophrenic Difficulty of in-sector versus out-of-sector combat, and the lack of a good fleet command interface put the balance into a blender.
4. XUniverse.Tropes0ToF -> * Fake Balance: ** In the sequel, Terran Conflict, in addition to the above Terran, ATF, and OTAS ships are mostly balanced by being more expensive than other ships. By the time you're buying ships in large quantities you'll likely have more money coming in from your investments than you know what to do with.
5. FranchiseOriginalSin.Pokemon -> * The first Pokemon games are the least-balanced in terms of competitive play in the entire series (Mewtwo had no counters, Psychic and Normal types were hilariously overpowered, and 90% of Pokemon were overshadowed or useless). This was seen as alright because competitive battling and balance weren't important considerations - most of the fanbase were too young to care, and the competitive scene wasn't large at all. Decades later, Game Freak made clear efforts with Competitive Balance in mind (nerfing some types or moves and buffing others, for instance) and hundreds of major tournaments have taken place. Despite this, Power Creep, Fake Balance, and Purposefully Overpowered Pokemon led to multiple major tournaments seeing their top rankings being stormed by near-identical teams.
6. Trivia.PokemonRedAndBlue -> * Executive Meddling: Game Freak originally did not plan to have any Player Versus Player functionality— just trading— but Nintendo requested that it be added. This may partially explain all the Fake Balance in the games.
7. Main.BornUnlucky -> * Sonja in Advance Wars often gets unlucky and does less damage than she should, as a trade-off for enhanced Fog of War vision. As enhanced vision is only situationally useful, and even then not very, she basically amounts to the worst character in the entire series.
8. ScrappyMechanic.Warframe -> * Certain units, such as all Eximus, Noxes^note though upon breaking their helmet they lose it regardless of how much damage was dealt, recipients of Ancient Healer/Corrupted Ancient buff, Kuva Trokarians and Thrax units are in possession of a special kind of protection: Overguard. This health buffer renders the unit immunity to crowd control, and turns the otherwise fragile unit into a tank on par with their Heavily Armored Mook companions, and the previously armored mooks even more durable. And while Overguard is meant to be taken down via Void damage, there are some issues with this intended counter^note 1: This forces you into combat with a very strong and tanky unit with a Squishy Wizard character, 2: The intended counter falls off hard in higher levels thanks to the relatively harder to modify nature of Amps, and 3: It is unavailable prior to The Second Dream and inconsistently available prior to The War Within. Even then, the portion of the gameplay this change was aimed at (late/endgame players who can effortlessly steamroll 99% of the game's content) are typically dealing so much damage that the need to use Void damage to crack Overguard is rendered moot by raw numbers.
9. Main.PaddedSumoGameplay -> ** While it is possible to use stealth or cover in Fallout 3, the game's economy makes stimpak spamming a much easier tactic. In particular, many of the added enemies in the Downloadable Content have pointlessly high amounts of HP and qualify as Demonic Spiders for most of the game due to the fact that they get damage bonuses with the weapons they use and being as tough as nails coated with more nails, as part of a failed attempt to balance them towards end-game characters who are putting off replaying the finale to screw around in new locations rather than new characters who are check out the new content as they re-explore the original wasteland. By the time you hit the cap at level 30, they will not individually be threats to you, but they will take forever and a day to kill, even with your Infinity +1 Sword.
10. CrutchCharacter.Pokemon -> * Butterfree and Beedrill start the series trend of early game Bug-type crutches. Their pre-evolutions can be caught early (before the first Gym) and they evolve to their final stage at level 10. They pack quite a punch that early and Butterfree's various status powders gives it utility as a status spreader, as well as being the first Pokemon you can get that learns Psychic moves (Confusion early and, if you level it up enough, Psybeam). Butterfree in particular is a major crutch in getting through Mt. Moon where it's Psychic-type moves will make short work of the part Poison-type Zubat and low Special stat Geodude. (Nearly anything else you can reasonably have at this point will struggle with one or the other.) Their usefulness peters out fast though once you've caught and evolved other Pokemon, as their stats are exceeded by even mid-evolutions and since they're Bugs in Gen 1, they'll never get good STAB moves (and with Beedrill's part Poison typing, if you try using it to counter Psychics with its Bug moves it'll just get destroyed). Then if you want to keep Butterfree around for its status infliction, there are plenty of other Pokemon that can inflict status while being much more durable and being able to deal actual damage to opponents.
11. YMMV.GoldenSun -> ** For those who actually used those two, Piers gets some of this due to his class options clashing horribly with his stats. He is supposed to be warrior-based, but being a Mercury Adept, most of his class options are mage-based causing his attack stat (which he mostly uses) to be rendered much lower than acceptable for a frontline tank if placed in most of the classes he has access to. The uneven djinn distribution (due to the Fake Balance of the classes) can make him worse than he already is. While most Adepts can function perfectly fine just going with a monotyped Djinn build of their element, Piers really needs to branch out to compete with everyone else. His Mercury classes do give him Diamond Berg...but his PP is horrendous no matter what, and outside of Felix he has the most uses of psynergy in any given dungeon.

1. VideoGame.SuperRobotWarsMX -> * Fake Balance: In what is probably SRW's most infamous use of this trope, MX Portable tried to solve the PS2 MX's notorious lack of difficulty by multiplying every enemy's HP. In practice, the game didn't become more difficult, just much more tedious. (More enemy health is not a balance issue)
2. Main.LawOfInverseRecoil -> * The remake of Resident Evil even notably has different levels of recoil depending on whether you're playing as Chris or Jill. Chris, being a veteran marksman, is able to fire the shotgun from the hip and fire the powerful .357 magnum under control, while Jill who is far less experienced with firearms can only fire the shotgun from the shoulder and stumbles back slightly every time she fires the magnum. This also makes a noticeable difference in gameplay as Chris's superior control over recoil lets him fire his weapons faster and with more accuracy, which somewhat helps close the gap between he and Jill in the original game. (Sounds like intentional design choice)
3. VideoGame.The7thSaga -> * Fake Balance: Enemies have skills you cannot use; enemies have chances to resist/dodge status effects you can acquire only via very obscure to be found equipment garments; enemies will one-shot you often if unprepared/not defending. (This is The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard and not balance)
4. VideoGame.Shifter -> * Fake Balance: The unique weapons are supposed to be balanced by the fact that they can only be found in one or two places in the game, but in practice, even finding one of them is enough to trivialize most enemy encounters. The Railgun and Jackhammer in particular are easy to find (the former is located in the arms dealer's apartment in Paris, and the latter is beside the security robot when you enter Smuggler's hideout for the third time), and can break the challenge curve because they're far more powerful than anything else. (I don't think if they're meant to on the same level if they are secret items.)
5. WebVideo.TwitchPlaysPokemonArena -> * Fake Balance: Version 1.0 to 1.1.1 had a set RNG seed that will always cause attacks and effects happen in certain turns, such as flinch-inducing attacks causing three consecutive flinches or OHKO moves hitting their opponent on the first attempt, both starting on the first turn for the out-speeding Pokemon. Version 1.2.3 brings back the set RNG (although temporary due to a save bug), and both seeds allow savvy players to bet on a team in order to exploit these effects. (Sounds like something only accessible through hacking.)
6. VideoGame.Darkeden -> * Fake Balance : In case warrior class vampires were not powerful enough they have now been granted a skill to reduce the defense and protection of their enemy of about 200 points each. Reducing the cooldown time of darkness while increasing the length in which it stays on the map was also a bright idea. (No mention of balance)