History Main / CharacterSelectForcing

*** Also, if you want to play as any character other than Sonic in the first game, don't play the 2011 Android port - it only lets you play as Sonic.

* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'' usually averts this, as a player with some skill can avoid timing out or getting pasted with any given weapon, but there are some fights that are much easier or much harder with some weapons. For example, [[StockNessMonster Plesioth]] is typically a bow hunt because its [[HitboxDissonance questionable hitbox]] makes melee very frustrating. Fast monsters like Barioth or Blangonga are often easier with the sword and shield because it's easier to keep pace with them. [[VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld Monster Hunter World: Iceborne]] however plays this almost completely straight with Alatreon, who can cause Escaton Judgment, an instant kill nuke that can only be weakened by using elemental weapons, and some elements will be better choices in certain phases compared to others. Granted, it is possible to just use either a Raw weapon anyway and just carting to just the Judgements, but it’s not recommended outside of single player.

** HM Moves can result in this, particularly Surf. Most games before ''Black & White'' will include at least one long stretch of water route, so one will almost always require a Water-type to learn Surf to traverse them without having an 'HM slave' dedicated just to Surfing. Whether the other [=HMs=] join your main party depends on how frequently they are encountered and whether they are blocking access to a boss like Sinnoh's Cyrus. The only silver lining is that Surf, unlike other HM moves, is fairly strong and therefore usable in battling.

* One of the most divisive rule changes to the ''TabletopGame/YuGiOhCardGame'' was the set of rules that accompanied the introduction of Link Monsters. Anything coming from the Extra Deck now entered the Extra Monster Zone, of which there is only one per player. This put a ''heavy'' damper on most Decks of the time as the metagame was focused on summoning many Extra Deck monsters. However, if a player controlled Link monsters that point to their own Main Monster Zones, those Zones can then accommodate other monsters coming from the Extra Deck. Essentially, you ''had'' to dedicate parts of your Extra Deck to Link Monsters if you wanted to continue to play your old deck, and many players were not happy with the change. The rules were revised in April 2020 to reduce the need to run Links, and the change was [[WinBackTheCrowd met with much praise]].

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': The initial run through the Blackbird is much easier with the right party configuration. At the beginning of the dungeon, your party is thrown in jail, with all of their equipment, items, and money stolen. If you get attacked by anything in this condition, you have to start the whole dungeon over unless you have Ayla in the group. She is the only character who uses [[BareFistedMonk her bare hands]] to kill enemies. However, without armor, she's a GlassCannon until the party's equipment is recovered.

** ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasyOperaOmnia'' has a low-key version of this. Each week, a certain handful of your LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters will get twice the experience points, encouraging players to level them up. And during character recruitment events, two other characters (aside from the new one) will have "Boosted" stats and will probably have a 2x experience point bonus, making it desirable to bring them along. This is particularly true when taking on the multiplayer quests; the developers had to add a "just for fun" mode to keep players from reflexively disbanding any party that didn't have a Boosted character in it.

** That said, even your choice of character at the beginning of ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'' matters a lot. Choosing X means you lose Zero's arm cannon, which is annoying but of little consequence, while choosing Zero means ''you lose X's Fourth/Force Armor''. [[GuideDangIt Obviously nobody tells you about this little consequence]]. Since the game was effectively built with the armor in mind, as stages practically require air dashes and enemies do ludicrous damage and knock-back without it, choosing Zero in the beginning permanently cripples X and renders him effectively worthless until you manage to scrounge together the Falcon Armor or if you know about the hidden Ultimate Armor (both of which you can't get until later in the game). By then of course you've probably built up Zero to the point that you wouldn't want to go back and use X anyways, as discussed prior. To make matters worse, it's possible to lose Zero for good and whether or not you do ''[[LuckBasedMission is largely determined by luck]]''. There's a reason the [[https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3711/ game mod]] that lets you keep both character's abilities (along with sharing bonuses and [[invoked]][[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper disabling all of Alia's hints]]) has been downloaded over three thousand times.

* Creepily [[InvokedTrope invoked]] in ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'', as part of the game's {{Deconstruction}} of ButThouMust. The game opens with a character creation screen like most other [=RPGs=]. After the player spend the time naming and designing a "vessel" for themselves, the game congratulates them on their creation... then coldly informs them that said "vessel" will be discarded as "nobody chooses who they are in this world." The player is then placed in the shoes of Kris, a character who's name and appearance is fixed, for the remainder of the game.

** That said, even your choice of character at the beginning of ''VideoGame/MegaManX5'' matters a lot. Choosing X means you lose Zero's arm cannon, which is annoying but of little consequence, while choosing Zero means ''you lose X's Fourth/Force Armor''. [[GuideDangIt Obviously nobody tells you about this little consequence]]. Since the game was effectively built with the armor in mind, as stages practically require air dashes and enemies do ludicrous damage and knock-back without it, choosing Zero in the beginning permanently cripples X and renders him effectively worthless until you manage to scrounge together the Falcon Armor or if you know about the hidden Ultimate Armor (both of which you can't get until later in the game). By then of course you've probably built up Zero to the point that you wouldn't want to go back and use X anyways, as discussed prior. To make matters worse, it's possible to lose Zero for good and whether or not you do ''[[LuckBasedMission is largely determined by luck]]''. There's a reason the [[https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3711/ game mod]] that lets you keep both character's abilities (along with sharing bonuses and [[StopHelpingMe disabling all of Alia's hints]]) has been downloaded over three thousand times.

* There's an obscure Creator/MarvelComics-based beat 'em up/{{platformer}} on the SNES called ''VideoGame/MarvelSuperHeroesWarOfTheGems''. The [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk Hulk]] is so huge and slow that he's useless for nearly the entire game, but his range is such that he can interrupt most of the final boss' attacks, meaning that he manages to be an obnoxiously worthless character and a Game Breaker in the same game.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'', there are only two lines of Fire Pokémon in Sinnoh. If you didn't pick Chimchar the starter, you were stuck with Ponyta, a mediocre Fire type that evolves late and brings very little to the table. If you want to deal with [[DemonicSpiders Bronzor]] easily, you'll have to pick Chimchar, deal with Ponyta or grind in the Game Corner to teach Flamethrower to something without STAB. ''Platinum'' amends this by introducing the Eevee, Magmar and Houndour families to help Trainers who didn't pick Chimchar, as well as opening up the Wayward Cave secret entrance to allow Trainers [[GuideDangIt with certain Trainer IDs]] to TakeAThirdOption and use Mold Breaker Earthquake Rampardos. The remakes have the same Pokédex as the originals, but with the Grand Underground allowing the player to get certain Pokémon before obtaining the National Pokédex the player can still catch an Houndoom (or a Magby, but only in ''Shining Pearl'') before taking on the second gym.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' and [[VideoGameRemake the remakes]] have Brock and Misty as the first two Gym Leaders. Both are resistant to Fire-types, making defeating them potentially quite difficult if you picked Charmander as your starter (Brock is also completely immune to Pikachu in ''Yellow Version''), though Brock is at least tolerable because both his Pokemon have low Special (Defense), meaning Ember will hurt them a lot either way. In contrast, Squirtle and Bulbasaur are both double-effective against Brock's Rock/Ground Pokemon and resistant to Misty's Water-types. {{Downplayed|Trope}} in that Brock's Pokemon thankfully [[AntiFrustrationFeatures lack any actual Rock- or Ground-type moves in the originals]] [[note]]the remakes give his Onix Rock Tomb or Rock Throw instead of Bide[[/note]], and you may have other options besides simply level-grinding and brute-forcing it: ''Yellow'' and the remakes make Mankey available on Route 22, fix a typo in Nidoran's moveset that kept them from learning the Fighting-Type move Double Kick until Level 43(supposed to have been Level 12), and made Butterfree learn Confusion at Level 10(right when it evolved from Metapod). You can catch a Pikachu to deal with Misty in Viridian Forest.

* ''VideoGame/{{Sonic Rush|Series}} Adventure'':
** The Sky Babylon stage has a lot of fire scattered about randomly, which can get really annoying since you'll probably be moving too fast to avoid it in time. Blaze the Cat happens to be immune to fire, so unless you really want to do things the pointless and difficult way, you'll want to choose her.
** Haunted Ship as well, as some areas consist entirely of ship rigging used as trampolines to bounce over the masts. Sonic requires successive bounces to reach the heights needed to get to the next rope, whereas Blaze can use her mid-air dash to clear these areas quickly and effortlessly. In most other stages, Sonic and Blaze are pretty even with how quickly they can finish the stages, but Haunted Ship has Blaze with an unquestionable advantage.

* ''VideoGame/DarkestDungeon'': While no hero is ''useless'', there are a lot of bosses you shouldn't fight with specific people. For example, the Hag spends her entire boss fight in the rear two ranks, meaning that heroes like the Leper and Crusader (who don't have effective long-range attacks) are basically relegated to knocking over her pot every turn. Other forcing is in party comp: the Vestal won't team with the Abomination, so you need an Occultist, while the Shieldbreaker suffers from debilitating levels of stress if she gets dream-ambushed, meaning your choices are a Jester or an affliction check.

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', since the game puts a heavy emphasis on a party composition of Attacker-Tank-Healer, you'll probably want to play as Rex for the majority of the game since: a) you don't get another Attacker party member until a ways into the game, b) playing as a small party cripples survivability, c) at no point in the story does Rex ever leave the party, and d) Rex has the Aegis, a very powerful Blade, as his main weapon, and excluding him would drastically reduce your damage output early game, when you have few rare blades at your disposal. [[spoiler:His importance only becomes greater when he becomes the Master Driver in Chapter 8, allowing him to use any of the party's Blades beyond his own, further increasing his versatility in a battle.]]

* Whether or not you lose team members during the ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'''s [[SuicideMission invasion of the Collector's base]] is determined by which characters' loyalty you have earned, what upgrades you purchase for your CoolShip, and by whom you pick to fill what role. Assuming people are loyal, pick the wrong person to escort the hostages back to the ship, or to crawl through the conduit, or to shield you from the bugs, and you'll lose people. Make the right choices, and you'll almost certainly get everyone through alive. Alleviated by the fact that the selections make sense, and even the character description blurbs given on the screen do hint reasonably well at what choices should make more sense, [[spoiler: such as Tali the tech genius for the conduit crawl and Garrus leading a commando team.]]

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', meanwhile, has a much more limited cast than the second game, which lends itself to this. If you didn't keep Kaidan alive and didn't buy [[spoiler: Javik's]] DLC, Liara will be your only biotic squadmate. Same goes for [[spoiler: EDI]] being your only tech squadmate if Garrus and Tali died during the second game [[spoiler:(or in Tali's case, if you side with the geth on Rannoch)]], and James as the sole combat specialist if Ashley's dead. You might be able to reclass Shepard to fill in the gaps, but that requires some foresight.

** With ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' there may be 4 heroes, but Mario will likely be the one you'll use the vast majority of the time, given that his flip ability to go from 2D to 3D is required to solve the vast majority of the puzzles and find the most secrets in the game, with the other 3 having a handful they are specifically required for. This also true of the Pixls which aside from Tippi for puzzles and general exposition Thoreau will probably be your most used Pixi, as his ability to allow the player to pick up and throw things is much more useful for solving puzzles and fighting enemies than the rest of the Pixls, which you'll only use on rare occasions with a few only once or twice in the entire game, typically right after you find them.

* In VideoGame/OneThousandAndOneSpikes, if you want to make any genuine progress towards finishing the game, you need to complete levels as Aban, the main character. He's the only one to get the items to unlock other characters, and [[spoiler: The second half of the game]] is completely locked off to all other characters until he beats it first.
* While the ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' can be sorted into CharacterTiers, usually in the easier difficulties it's possible to utilize even the weakest characters if you give them plenty of experience and organize the other characters properly. But in the harder modes, that choice gets far more constrained. In particular, ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'''s HarderThanHard modes Lunatic and Lunatic+ are nicknamed '[[CrutchCharacter Frederick]] Emblem' by the fandom, as no other character except Robin[[note]]though even then, Fred will likely at least be leaned on in chapter 6, due to a chokepoint he holds competently even on Lunatic+, plus providing some support in the shaky first five chapters[[/note]] even has a ''chance'' of getting through the early areas without him.

* Want to play through the ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' series with your favorite partner? Too bad, you're going to need to switch out every 60 seconds to solve puzzles, sometimes even on the ''overworld'' (and warping via Warp Pipe doesn't bypass them).

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', since the game puts a heavy emphasis on a party composition of Attacker-Tank-Healer, you'll probably want to keep Rex around for a while as: a) you don't get another Attacker party member until a ways into the game, b) playing as a small party cripples survivability, and c) Rex has the Aegis, a very powerful Blade, as his main weapon, and excluding him would drastically reduce your damage output early game, when you have few rare blades at your disposal. [[spoiler:His importance only becomes greater when he becomes the Master Driver in Chapter 8, allowing him to use any of the party's Blades beyond his own, further increasing his versatility in a battle.]]

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'', there are only two lines of Fire Pokémon in Sinnoh. If you didn't pick Chimchar the starter, you were stuck with Ponyta, a mediocre Fire type that evolves late and brings very little to the table. If you want to deal with [[DemonicSpiders Bronzor]] easily, you'll have to pick Chimchar, deal with Ponyta or grind in the Game Corner to teach Flamethrower to something without STAB. ''Platinum'' amends this by introducing the Eevee, Magmar and Houndour families to help Trainers who didn't pick Chimchar, as well as opening up the Wayward Cave secret entrance to allow Trainers [[GuideDangIt with certain Trainer IDs]] to TakeAThirdOption and use Mold Breaker Earthquake Rampardos.

* The main source of difficulty in the ''Protector'' series of Flash TowerDefense games. Most stages require you to specialize in one or two specific elements, and sometimes specialize on one or two specific [[StandardStatusEffects special abilities]] for your mages and combat specializations for your fighters.

* In ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic'', the On-Site Refining missions are tremendously easier with a Driller on the team. The Driller's most important ability is that he can [[DungeonBypass drill through pretty much any terrain in seconds]]. The On-Site Refining mission involves laying pipes from a refinery to Liquid Morkite spouts scattered throughout the map, and it is vastly easier to lay down these pipes with the Driller cutting through the intervening terrain. The mission can still be done without a Driller, but it is so much quicker and easier with one on the team.

* The TropeCodifier and possibly {{Trope Maker|s}} is ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. Nearly all official modules assume the party has access to at least one of each of the main character classes. If your party didn't have the character type who could do the thing to the thing (wield the special sword, cast the right spell, disarm the immensely complicated trap before it buried you all alive, etc), expect a much harder time in the dungeon. For further information, see any given module of TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons or TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} since the mid-1970s.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' downplays this to an extent: dungeons can be run with team of up to four members of any composition, as long as the team is already in a party when the leader starts the dungeon. Otherwise, queueing up for a dungeon will put together a team which enforces the "1 healer, 1 tank, 2 DPS" class balance to make sure that the dungeon is doable without being frustrating. Endgame/End of Content dungeons and trials, like Castrum Meridianum at the end of ''A Realm Reborn'', forces an 8-person team of "2 healers, 2 tanks, 4 DPS", unless, again, the full party is assembled beforehand. Raids, consisting of 3 8-person parties, likewise enforce proper class balance.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' downplays this to an extent: dungeons can be run with team of up to four members of any composition, as long as the team is in already a party when the leader starts the dungeon. Otherwise, queueing up for a dungeon will put together a team which enforces the "1 healer, 1 tank, 2 DPS" class balance to make sure that the dungeon is doable without being frustrating. Endgame/End of Content dungeons and trials, like Castrum Meridianum at the end of ''A Realm Reborn'', forces an 8-person team of "2 healers, 2 tanks, 4 DPS", unless, again, the full party is assembled beforehand. Raids, consisting of 3 8-person parties, likewise enforce proper class balance.
*** The Duty Roulette, which allows a player to sign up to participate in a dungeon run, features another downplayed example of this: the role that is least represented among all the players signed up for the Roulette gets an experience and money bonus for being the "role in need". The most common role in need is usually Tank, followed by Healer, but of the 20 combat classes available to players, only 3 classes are tanks and 4 classes are healers.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' downplays this to an extent: dungeons can be run with a four member team of any composition, as long as the team is in a party when the leader starts the dungeon. However, if you're looking to do a dungeon in a party of less than three people, the game will enforce the "1 healer, 1 tank, 2 DPS" class balance to make sure that the dungeon is doable without being frustrating. Endgame/End of Content dungeons, like Castrum Meridianum at the end of ''A Realm Reborn'', forces an 8-person team of "2 healers, 2 tanks, 4 DPS", unless, again, the full party is assembled beforehand. Raids, consisting of 3 8-person parties, likewise enforce proper class balance.

* The last three levels of ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'' force you to keep the same plane and weapon for all three, regardless of what you actually go up against. Pick a dedicated bomber for "Avalon"'s [[AirstrikeImpossible trench run]] and you'll have trouble taking care of the enemy aces in "Demon of the Round Table"; conversely, go for a decent air-to-air fighter to take out those ''eight'' aces and you'll have to make multiple runs through the trench as it's [[TimedMission slowly closing itself off]]. That being said, a fast air superiority fighter like the [=F/A-22A=] (which is usually the best non-super plane in the series) is more than capable of taking on all three missions without an issue, as it can fly fast enough to finish the trench run easily, and absolutely dominates air-to-air combat.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' and [[VideoGameRemake the remakes]] have Brock and Misty as the first two Gym Leaders. Both are resistant to Fire-types, making defeating them potentially quite difficult if you picked Charmander as your starter (Brock is also completely immune to Pikachu in ''Yellow Version''), though Brock is at least tolerable because both his Pokemon have low Special (Defense), meaning Ember will hurt them a lot either way. In contrast, Squirtle and Bulbasaur are both double-effective against Brock's Rock/Ground Pokemon and resistant to Misty's Water-types. {{Downplayed|Trope}} in that Brock's Pokemon thankfully [[AntiFrustrationFeatures lack any actual Rock- or Ground-type moves in the originals]] [[note]]the remakes give his Onix Rock Tomb or Rock Throw instead of Bide[[/note]], and you may have other options besides simply level-grinding and brute-forcing it: ''Yellow'' and the remakes make Mankey available on Route 22 and fix a typo in Nidoran's moveset that kept them from learning the Fighting-Type move Double Kick until Level 43(supposed to have been Level 12), and you can catch a Pikachu to deal with Misty in Viridian Forest.

** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' and [[VideoGameRemake the remakes]] have Brock and Misty as the first two Gym Leaders. Both are resistant to Fire-types, making defeating them potentially quite difficult if you picked Charmander as your starter (Brock is also completely immune to Pikachu in ''Yellow Version''), though Brock is at least tolerable because both his Pokemon have low Special (Defense), meaning Ember will hurt them a lot either way. In contrast, Squirtle and Bulbasaur are both double-effective against Brock's Rock/Ground Pokemon and resistant to Misty's Water-types. {{Downplayed|Trope}} in that Brock's Pokemon thankfully [[AntiFrustrationFeatures lack any actual Rock- or Ground-type moves in the originals]] [[note]]the remakes give his Onix Rock Tomb or Rock Throw instead of Bide[[/note]], and you may have other options besides simply level-grinding and brute-forcing it: ''Yellow'' and the remakes make Mankey and Nidoran [[note]]a typo in the moveset in ''Red'' and ''Blue'' means Nidoran doesn't learn Double Kick until Level 43; this is corrected to Level 12 starting in ''Yellow''[[/note]] available on Route 22, and you can catch a Pikachu to deal with Misty in Viridian Forest.