If you’re someone like me, you’ll always be on the lookout for a way to use the game’s systems to your advantage and trivialize certain aspects of games. It’s not quite breaking the rules, but it is bending them ever slightly to make an otherwise difficult fight or platforming sequence a piece of cake.
However, even I, a certified rule-bender, have come to find that some games have systems, weapons, skills, and builds that make games so easy that it almost strips the fun out of the experience entirely.
You want to feel like your clever exploit has merit and can get you out of a jam, but you don’t want it to act as a cheat code that works in every single scenario. Which is exactly what it feels like when you discover the following skills and options in these excellent games that are ruined by Overpowered Options.
10
Fallout: New Vegas
High Speech Skill
The modern Fallout series has always been good for a few overpowered workarounds, with VATS being the most obvious and prevalent example during everyone’s playthrough. However, when it comes to the Mojave adventure, New Vegas, there’s barely any point in packing bullets at all, because a sharp tongue will do the job twice as effectively.
When you have a high speech skill in Fallout: New Vegas, you’re able to talk almost anyone out of a fight and gain access to things that less charming characters would never catch a glimpse of. Guns and grenades are great and all, but a laser pistol lacks the nuance of the spoken word.
In fact, speech is so powerful in FNV that, when face-to-face with Legate Lanius at Hoover Dam, you can actually talk them out of fighting you at all, effectively skipping the game’s final boss of sorts.
Combine this speech skill with a high lock-picking ability, and you’ll be an unstoppable force with an iron on their hip, I promise you that.
Stealth Archer Build
There are many games where sticking to the shadows is a more potent method of assassination than just charging in and slashing wildly. However, I don’t think any game has got such a bad rep for making stealth as insanely overpowered as Skyrim, because despite my best efforts to do something different, all of my many playthroughs have eventually led me down the path of the Stealth Archer.
Even from the moment you begin your adventure from Helgen, as soon as you get a bow and can take out targets from range, you’ll see just how easy it is to stay hidden and pick off enemies.
Even if an enemy has an arrow sticking out of their chest, they’ll de-aggro and say ‘Must have been the wind.’ Then you can proceed to fill them with holes until they go down. Not to mention, with added perks in stealth and archery, you’ll become an unstoppable force.
It does nothing for role-playing, as every playthrough ends up the same, but it’s so game-breaking that you just can’t help yourself. I dare you to play anything but Stealth Archer. I dare you.
8
Elden Ring
Bleed Builds
Elden Ring is one of, if not the most accessible Soulsborne games out there today, and that’s because of the sheer variety of approaches you can take as a player. This is naturally down to the open-world nature of the game, but it’s also because of the game’s very impressive and versatile build options.
However, despite the sheer abundance of options you have at your disposal, it would be silly to go for anything other than a bleed build, especially if you are a bonk stick main, as death by a thousand cuts seems to be the most effective way to fell almost all bosses in this game.
Not only can you deal decent damage with a good bleed build. You can also build that bleed status to breaking point and have your opponent lose a significant chunk of their HP there and then. Effectively cutting battle time down significantly, and making otherwise deadly bosses a little more manageable.
It’s not foolproof, as some bosses will act as a natural foil to this approach, but overall, bleed is best, and it feels like playing this taxing Soulsborne title on easy mode.
7
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Quen Shield
One of the more daunting hard-mode challenges you’ll likely encounter in the field of RPGs is the Death March run within The Witcher 3. The game is hardly a piece of cake to begin with, but on this difficulty, you need to ace combat and use every Witcher trick in your arsenal. Or, so you might think.
It turns out that, in reality, you can blitz through most fights in this game with the use of one sign, Quen. The Quen Shield is a grossly overpowered tool in your monster-hunting tool belt, allowing you to throw up a shield to protect against all manner of attacks.
You do need to invest in this one a little to ensure that it is as effective as possible, but from the get-go, this is the sign that will trivialize a lot of fights and keep you alive, even on the dreaded death march difficulty.
6
Pokémon Red
Psychic Types
While this may not be as much of an issue anymore on account of there being more Pokémon in existence than I dare to count, back in the 151 days, there was a real issue regarding offering foils to powerful types, and back then, Psychic types were borderline unstoppable.
This was because Ghost types, the designated weakness for Psychic types, were bugged and actually had no effect on Psychic types. Meaning that only Bug types could mix with those spoon benders, and aside from maybe Scyther, there weren’t a lot of big hitters.
Of course, you could also go with big physical hitters to get at their low defense stat, but it was hardly the great equalizer that players needed back then. This meant that, if you had an Alakazam in your team, you would be in the fast lane to Grand Champion status.
5
Kingdom Hearts 2
Reflect
As someone who has a proud KH2 platinum, in my acceptance speech for this coveted prize, which I suppose is happening right now, I dedicate the win to the glorious spell, Reflect.
In the original KH, blocking was such a big deal. You had to time your block with precision to be able to launch a counter, and even then, because Sora moved like he was walking through molasses, you still might have taken the hit.
However, in KH2, that all changed as you gained the spell Reflect. A spell that blocked all incoming damage if you timed it somewhat accurately, and as the name suggests, reflected that damage in a return-to-sender fashion.
Provided you had the MP and the Ethers to keep it up, you could spam the life out of this spell, and believe me when I say, it made some bosses that were otherwise painstakingly difficult a walk in the park. Truly, an OP spell for the ages.
4
Baldur’s Gate 3
Haste
DND has always had its fair share of Overpowered spells, which is perhaps why new rulebooks balancing and tweaking them come out quite as often as they do. However, when someone like Larian takes liberties on how certain things work in a video game format, you’ll find that things are more exploitable than ever.
You have classic Overpowered spells like Chain Lightning and Eldritch Blast that are broken in their own right. But that’s nothing compared to Haste, an ability that, if assigned to a character built correctly, can end battles before they even begin.
It doubles your movement speed, allows you to attack up to six times via an action surge, and helps with dexterity saving throws into the bargain. Meaning, if you use this alongside your other party members’ turns, you can attack about nine times with little to no restriction before the enemy has a chance to reply.
In normal DND, this move would only allow for an additional action that’s not a spell, and not an additional attack, which sounds much more reasonable. But, in Larian’s world, Haste is a one-way ticket to blitzing every encounter.
3
Hollow Knight Silksong
Cogfly
Hollow Knight Silksong is a tough game. So much so that a lot of players may never see this tool I’m including on this list, as it appears in the second act. However, once you have this in your possession, you can start bending the rules slightly and spamming this tool in battle to great effect.
Most tools can’t be spammed as you need to line them up, time the attack, or risk wasting your shards and limited resources. But that’s no issue when you have the Cogfly, a minion tool that allows you to passively deal damage to foes without so much as brushing them with your needle.
With the ability to spawn four of these little pests at once, you can load up the battlefield and effectively cheese hard phases of fights that would otherwise have you tearing your hair out.
I’ll grant you, even with the Cogflies, the game is still super difficult. But, this is a tool that is good for all situations, and feels like playing the game, not on easy mode, but certainly on something closer to a normal difficulty.
2
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Stendhal
Clair Obscur, despite not technically being a JRPG, certainly riffs on the typical turn-based JRPG setup, which means that synergies among party members and overpowered abilities are par for the course. However, even when making allowances for this, Stendhal is about as broken as abilities get.
Granted, it has been patched and nerfed since launch, but back then, and to an extent still now, this move was powerful enough to level just about any boss in a single hit.
Using tricks like Gault’s Fury, All Set, and Fortune’s Fury helps to get the most out of this attack, but even in its raw form, it would decimate anything that stood before you, to the point that I beat the game’s mega boss, Simon, in two rounds of turns.
Even now, nothing compares to the supreme power of Stendhal. You will need to beat Simon fair and square these days. But Stendhal will still certainly play its part.
1
Cyberpunk 2077
Contagion/Overheat Quickhack
I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a big advocate for the netrunning side of Cyberpunk 2077’s combat system. Mainly because I was too focused on getting gorilla arms and hacking folks to bits. But, over time, I have come to understand that sitting back and letting the ones and zeros do the heavy lifting is the way to go.
Contagion with a sprinkling of overheat tends to be the way to go if you never want to fire a single bullet again. The former allows you to link and poison everyone within the vicinity of the first victim, and then you can light them all up at once to clear the room in seconds flat.
It’s staggering how effective this can be, and provided you don’t get compromised, you can just sit tight and do it again until there’s no one left to come looking for you hacking in the rafters. It doesn’t exactly lend itself to an all-action playthrough, but it sure is effective.
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