Awesome But Impractical / Fighting Games

• Long and/or flashy combos tend to get this, as most games since the later editions of Street Fighter II will implement some form of combo scaling to ensure that each hit gets weaker as the combo continues, on top of the large amounts of meter consumption and highly technical execution requirements most will entail. The only exceptions to this in games since tend to be infinite combos.
• Projectile attacks in many 3D fighters tend to be this way. It's hard to carry the legacy of the Hadoken when the opponent can sidestep.
• Unblockable attacks almost always tend to be this. These attacks are powerful and, well... unblockable, but are so painfully slow that even new players can easily sidestep or dodge them, and counterattack with impunity. Starting and then canceling these to psych out the enemy when possible is usually the only real use for them.
  • In Tekken, for an especially extreme example, look to Kuma. He has a Fartillery attack that can immediately knock out ANY character. Too bad he takes forever to perform it, and its range is so small that it can be avoided as long as the target is standing still. In 5, the commentator will say "Oops" if it does connect.
  • A rare few unblockables have some use by having unexpected properties, like in the Soul Series. One good example is Raphael's surprisingly long-ranged unblockable lunge. Of course, once an opponent knows what to watch for, they're worthless.
  • Also from that series, Zombie pirate Cervantes has the unblockable projectile where he shoots the enemy, but he flourishes the gun for so long that only the most idiotic of opponents won't either evade or duck it.
• Counters: which are any special move that requires the opponent to hit you to trigger them, can have legitimate uses as reversals or hard reads on the opponent. However, when connected to cinematic moves such as supers, they suddenly become tactical suicide. A key strength of most counters is how minimally they're telegraphed, which goes out the window when a mini cutscene or flash makes very clear they've been triggered. And if it fails, you wasted your meter completely, while having the standard counter downside of a severe punish if it fails and they're ready for it. They are thus only going to succeed in countering newbies who don't yet know it's a counter stance, or fighters who are already in the middle of their attack animation. Infamous cases include Remy's Blue Nocturne super in Street Fighter III, as well as Fei Long's Gekirinken Ultra and Cammy's CQC in Street Fighter IV.
  • SNK fighting games like The King of Fighters avert the above by having the flash trigger after the counter succeeds. Some Counter Supers can even be canceled into during a combo in addition to being counters, thereby giving them more utility. B. Jenet and Orochi Yashiro are the best examples of this with their respective Climax Supers (Ennui Mademoiselle and Shuuen no Daichi) in The King of Fighters XV.
• Some SNK fighting games have Super Moves (or Desperation Moves, whatever it calls) that requires the user to input additional commands in the Super Move. Super Moves are already hard to pull off, but adding those additional commands just make them more impractical. However, the damage and visual effect is awesome though.
• Athena Asamiya's Psychic 9 in The King of Fighters is a good example. It requires 2 special bars and you need to input a series of commands at a certain pace as she's attacking. Fail at the inputs and she'll be left wide open, but doing it right will make a long, flashy combo. It's made worse in that her other 2-bars super move, Shining Crystal Bit SDM, does not require additional inputs and does almost the same damage as Psychic 9 in one single hit.
• Guilty Gear's spiritual successor BlazBlue has this in Astral Heats; gigantic finishing moves that guarantee victory if they connect. Unfortunately, in order to do one, all of the following conditions have to be met: it has to be used during the absolute last round of a match, with the opponent's health at 20% or less, and you must have enough "MP" saved up for two regular specials. Since you only get one shot and your opponent has to be near dead anyway, it's usually much wiser to just use the two specials. Continuum Shift made it a bit more usable by making several Astrals more comboable, needing only the match point round and only 35% health, but it also now requires a Burst stock. In high-level play Burst stocks are absolutely necessary for character-specific combos as well as getting out of very long combos from characters like Litchi, Noel, Taokaka, and Jin. This can, like Guilty Gear, end up majorly biting you in the ass and costing you the match if you try to end it on a big finale.
  • Ragna's 'Devoured By Darkness' Distortion Drive is this so much. It's one of the most powerful moves in the series and regenerates a massive amount of his health. However, to even use it you need to first burn 50% Heat to activate the health-draining Blood Kain, before burning another 50% to use the move itself. A Ragna player not using his other Distortion Drives is already a big warning flag, and with Blood Kain's obvious aura, never mind the activation animation, it serves as a big Harbinger of Asskicking that tells sensible players to stay the hell away until it runs out. It does not help either that Devoured By Darkness is a grab, with the poor range that implies, and Ragna does not have a You Will Not Evade Me move to drag the enemy into reach. All these combine to ensure that it almost never shows up in serious play, and someone actually getting hit by it is both awesome to watch and embarrassing for the victim.
• In many Bleach fighting games, Soi Fon has an attack in which she can use her Suzumebachi to, as in the anime, get a two hit KO — if she hits an opponent with the attack twice in one round, they instantly die. The impractical part comes from the fact that the attack is usually slow and hard to hit with, uses up a ton of spirit pressure, or both; and that the first hit usually does no damage. At best, using this attack can serve as a sort of alternate fighting style, as using it can be an all-or-nothing strategy.
• In Vampire Savior, the mummy, Anakaris, has a flashy super where he casts a slew of magic spells on the opponent and then crushes them with a gigantic sarcophagus. Definitely his flashiest super, but it's also one of the hardest to execute, and requires you to hit your opponent with an extremely slow, heavily telegraphed, blockable projectile.
• Shenron in Dragon Ball Fighter Z provides some hefty benefits when activated: significantly strengthening the character's attacks, giving them Regenerating Health, restoring their health to full, or resurrecting a downed fighter with 40% health, all of which can pretty much decide a match. But actually getting him to trigger requires the two players to collectively make seven autocombos or combos of specific hit counts (so a 10-19 hit combo gets the one-star ball, a 20-29 hit combo gets the two-star ball, and so on), and then one of the players to have seven full bars of super meter and make an autocombo. Needless to say, by the time seven combos with up to 70+ hits have been performed, chances are the opponent is on their last legs, and those seven bars of meter could probably just be used to kill them with regular super moves. It might be tempting to just gun for the autocombos to get to Shenron as quickly as possible, but that requires sacrificing major damage opportunities and risks giving the opponent a chance to use it instead. For these reasons, most experienced players tend to avoid autocombos unless they know that Shenron will be summoned due to their inherent predictability and blatantly suboptimal damage.
  • This is subverted with the introduction of SS4 Gogeta as a DLC character, since one of his special moves grants you a ball every time you use it. You can also set it as Gogeta's assist.
• Taito's Dino Rex suffers from a nasty case of this:
  • A game about massive prehistoric beasts duking it out sounds like a truly epic idea, but unfortunately, this game's extremely rushed state and janky frame rate means the playable dinos will often have a hard time getting a good hit at their enemies with their stubby limbs using the baseline attacks, which means you'll have to rely on the combos at your disposal to defeat your opponents. And even though the combos are fairly easy to execute, they will take up energy slots which have to be replenished by roaring, which can leave you unprotected if you're not fast enough. Not helped by the fact that you can get interrupted in the middle of a combo, and that you're almost always outmatched by the rival AI in most of the stages.
  • The Tyrannosaurus rex is this, natch. Its attacks deal devastating amounts of damage and it's a tempting choice for many first-time players, but it's slower and clumsier than many of the other dinosaurs, its kicks and slashes have barely any reach, and it gobbles up all the items that can be used as improvised weapons rather than using them to attack. Ironically, the Big Bad's T.rex is a much better fighter, but if you're crafty enough to use tail attacks, you can kick its ass without much problem.
• In the third installment of the Final Fight franchise, the enemy named Hunter has an extremely powerful overhead strike using the baseball bat strapped to his back that takes out 80% of your health in a single hit. Impressive for a garden variety mook. However, the attack has a long delay before he unleashes it, so it's easily avoided or interrupted merely by hitting him.
  • The obscure fighting game spinoff Final Fight Revenge gives Haggar a counter super combo (which already makes it a pain to use). Not only that, your opponent has to be jumping in towards you and attacking with a kick (and only a kick) for it to activate. The only thing that even makes this move worth attempting? Seeing the animation of Haggar piledriving his foe through the earth and then spiraling off into space.
  • Many super moves in the game are governed by minigames, and Haggar gets the short end of the stick here too. His takes the form of a roulette wheel that spins around at a ridiculous rate of speed, and where you stop it determines what move you get. Sometimes you'll get something decent like a triple-powerbomb, but more often than not you'll just get a crappy leg-whip that barely does any damage.
• In God Hand, the main character has a variety of "guard breakers", attacks that stun a blocking opponent. These range from sobats to flying kicks to haymakers to spinning backfists, but the best guard breaker throughout the entire game... is the basic, boring overhead chop. Plus it somewhat adheres to Real Life in that misuse of the powerful-but-slow moves usually gets you punished.
  • The biggest offender as far as God Hand is concerned is definitely the Yes Man Kablaam, a ridiculously slow and ineffective punch that leaves Gene completely defenseless as he turns his head and smiles to the invisible crowd after the attack. Its only major advantage is that if the punch connects, it raises your Tension bar by a lot, but it's generally not worth it... unless you learn to dodge-cancel out of the recovery, whereupon it becomes the most effective way to recover Tension.
• Instant Kills in the Guilty Gear games do exactly what the name suggests: finish the round in favor of whoever connects one. Most of them look pretty cool, too. Unfortunately, to keep them from being game breakers, they can only be used once, they're extraordinarily difficult to hit with unless your opponent isn't paying attention (you have to switch into a "sudden death" stance, complete with a glowing outline, making these better suited for Mind Games and last-chance desperation attacks), and if you attempt one and miss, you can't use any move that requires meter for the remainder of the round. And because this is Guilty Gear, which places a lot of strategy on meter management and aggression, chances that the Instant Kill you just missed will cost you the match are about 99%. Small wonder they were eventually removed in STRIVE.
  • To be fair, the IKs in the original Guilty Gear were a game breaker in that a successful hit not only won that round, it outright won the match entirely and were easy to do, so IKs got nerfed HARD.
• The famous Za Warudo combo in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fighting games, seen here. With the steamroller itself, anyone can see it coming a mile away, it's blockable, Dio can be punished as he jumps up to perform it, and the damage really isn't worth it. But who can resist recreating one of the most badass and infamous moments of the entire series? The Time Stop in the game can be a pain too, since you're immobile for about 3 seconds before executing them and unless you set your SC gauge at max every round, you will have limited time to actually set up your combo. However, enjoy your 66-hit combo if you pull it off.
  • The same also goes for Jotaro, Dio and Shadow Dio's Time Stop supers. They require a lot of energy to get the most out of and they have a huge windup time and complicated button inputs but done right, they can help you deal incredible damage.
  • Giorno and Kars's transformation GHAs in Jojos Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle. While both offer new moves, properties, and very increased mobility, it's far too easy for a player to shoot themselves in the foot if their opponent smacks them before the transformation is finished. To this end both characters have a move or two devoted to creating space in order to transform safely; Kars has a kick that sends the opponent to the other side of the screen, and Giorno's HHA does the same while also briefly stunning the opponent afterward. Pucci averts this by his entire moveset being geared around getting to Made in Heaven, and Made in Heaven itself being completely worth the investment.
• Road Roller hyper combos are as bad as they are in Jojos Bizarre Adventure Heritage For The Future. All of them require that the user have enough time to jump out of the screen to start and then actually score a hit (which can be dodged or blocked). Team S.M.R.T.'s Homer has "Road Roller D'oh!" which has its own problems: he needs to be in "Beer Riot" mode (which shaves of half of his current health), lacks his Hell Candy Bar to stun opponents, and has more reliable moves such as "Touch of Death" (Homer turns into the Grim Reaper and pokes them) that require less effort to set up.
• Killer Instinct newcomer Omen possesses a 100% potential damage command grab called Demonic Despair whenever he has all of his Shadow Meter filled, and not only does it do ludicrous damage, it also looks really badass. However, it is plagued with so many problems that almost no Omen players use it. To start, Omen needs his Shadow Meter to perform the mixups essential to his offense, so using all three of his bars in one go is already a risky proposition. Also, the move has 24 frames of startup,^note For reference; Jago's light Tiger Fury, one of the most punishable moves in the game, has 27 frames of recovery. and the animation doesn't resemble any normal of his, so the attack is incredibly telegraphed. Another problem; if the opponent Combo Breaks Omen's attempt to cash out the damage and finish his opponent, then they get all of that health back, since Demonic Despair deals potential damage. And to top it all off, even if you do land it, it sends the opponent flying across the screen and leaves Omen taunting in place for several seconds; more than enough time for an opponent to take a breather and assess their options. On the plus side it can be cancelled into from blocked normals, so it has its place catching opponents who like to block.
• Medabots AX: Metabee and Rokusho: A Full Belzelga kit can dish out enough damage to destroy enemy parts in one hit, but you have to destroy his arms to do that. His headpiece's Revive power is meant to mitigate that by restore lost parts, but they come back at low health.
• Mortal Kombat: Brutalities. Flashy, incredibly nasty ways to finish your foes. Also nearly impossible to pull off. They require a sequence of button presses that's near impossible to actually do. It's awe inspiring to see it pulled off though.
  • For that matter, uppercutting. Takes away one quarter of your opponent's life, tosses them up in the air, and they make a cool screaming sound, but it's really hard to hit anyone with it, unless it's the first battle in the one-player game. It's also impossible for most characters to combo with the move because of the forced delay on a successful hit.
  • For that matter, Fatalities in general. Sure, the franchise pretty much invented the concept, and they are really cool, but in most games, they and the other finishing moves provide no real tangible benefit to gameplay. The first game was an exception; you did gain bonus points for doing them, and it was also a requirement for unlocking Reptile. (For some time, that meant Sonya could not fight him, because her Fatality required the Block command, which disqualified her due to another requirement. This was fixed in a later edition of the arcade game and all home ports.) Ironically, in many other fighting games that have similar moves (like say, the Soul Series) there is a tangible benefit for doing the finishing moves.
  • X-Ray attacks in Mortal Kombat 9 are insanely gruesome, showing your opponent's bones breaking and organs rupturing in slow-mo from the brutal strikes. They also require 3 bars of meter, which is also used for the extremely important and useful breaker move. On top of that, many of them are slow and easily blocked or dodged, meaning that the only way to reliably land them was to use them mid-combo, where damage scaling severely reduces their damage.
  • Mortal Kombat X brings back Brutalities, although they're completely different from their MK3 predecessors. This time, they are performed by using a specific move to take off your opponent's last bit of health. Many also require additional conditions, such as having a certain amount of health left. Since a move which can become a Brutality may not always be the best way to KO your opponent, and even if it is useful you may not meet the additional conditions, they can be almost impossible to intentionally pull off outside of low-level play... but it's SO satisfying when you DO get one off!
• Deathblows in Mutation Nation. Basically a screen-filling Smart Bomb that severely damages all enemies and knocks down the ones that manage to survive, which come in four flavors of varying power (with the most powerful one actually being able to hit some enemies twice.) However, it requires the player to stand still for almost 2 seconds to charge it, and the charge is interrupted when you're hit. And while you can hold the charge after you've finished and even move around while doing it, it doesn't last long before you'll lose it and have to charge up again. Effective against bosses and mid-bosses, but when you're dealing with large groups of enemies it's too difficult to pull it off for it to be worth it (and the lower damage ones like the Spirit Attack just aren't worth it, period.)
• The Special or Ultimate attacks from Naruto: Clash of Ninja are like this. Especially in the first game the attacks generally did a fair bit of damage but cost all of your charge bar. They're also pathetically easy to dodge, making them all but useless against human opponents.
• In Skullgirls, a few characters have a level 5 Blockbuster, which is usually worthless:
  • Valentine's "Forbidden Procedure: Rebirth Ex Machina" can revive an ally or damage an enemy, but the damage is not that much better than her level 1 Blockbusters, and the meter would generally be better used towards finishing your enemy since by the time you gain 5 bars and have a dead character, the fight should be nearing its end.
  • Double's "Megalith Array" has her turn into a Bullet Hell-spewing Moai statue which can potentially deal insane damage, but she turns back if she takes even a single hit, potentially wasting your entire stock of meter if timed improperly or if your enemy is skilled enough, which makes the move Difficult, but Awesome.
  • Big Band's level 5 is confusing to pull off, requiring you to play the first five notes of the game's opening Leitmotif on his trumpet, which leaves you wide open to attack since only the first of those honks will hit an enemy. And to make matter worse, Big Band's level 5 itself doesn't do any damage, but rather stops time for the sake of giving you time to play without being attacked, or use to unleash Satchmo Deathblow, which can be used much easier (but in turn dealing much less damage) by taunting the enemy and then hitting with his ground level 1. Even if the time stop occurs, the opponent is probably poised to block the ensuing Satchmo Deathblow.
    • A much more ridiculous one is the "Happy Birthday Combo", which involves pulling off a very specific combo that gets Big Band's Blockbuster Meter to full in a single go, enough so one can play every note of "Happy Birthday" and finishing with a Satchmo Deathblow. This is an unstoppable instant-kill on the opponent, and comes with a popup emulating Mortal Kombat's "Toasty!" to signify accomplishing it... but even pulling it off on a practice dummy is nigh-impossible, and anyone who can do it in a live match deserves to be immortalized, especially since Skullgirls has a burst mechanic in place to stop excessively long combos like this one.
• Many fighting games have super moves that do insane amounts of damage and are awesome to watch, but often require complicated button combinations that only Mr. Fantastic can pull off. One example is Ivy from Soul Series, whose telekinetic attack Summon Suffering is absolutely amazing and devastating, but the human players who can pull it off can probably be counted on one hand. Not that you won't see it often, but it won't be against a human.
  • There is actually an Achievement for pulling this off in Soul Calibur 4.
  • There's also Talim's "Whirlwind Festival" throw: a multi-part, highly damaging throw that requires you to input very odd button combinations in very short windows of time as she performs the throw. Fail, and the throw's animation cuts off at the first part or so and does far less damage.
• General Grievous is a playable character in the duel mode of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith game where he can wield four lightsabers, uses a blaster as a charged special attack and has an impressive grappling move where he neck lifts the opponent and proceeds to break their body wrestling style. Unfortunately, he lacks the ability to use the Force unlike other playable characters and can't use special powers like Force Heal to regenerate health.
• Street Fighter:
  • In almost every Street Fighter game, Akuma's Raging Demon is this. A devastatingly powerful super that eats away half of your opponent's health bar, leaves them in a knockdown state, and provides you with a badass win pose◊ if you win with it... too bad it requires a strict, awkward sequence of button presses to make it happen. And not only that, but it's nigh-impossible to set up appropriately if you aren't incredibly tight with your execution. In order for it to land, the opponent has to be on the ground and Akuma can get hit out of it by projectiles. Interestingly, starting with Street Fighter III, the Raging Demon can be cancelled into from other attacks (inputting the commands for one attack while another hits, thus cancelling the recovery animation of the attack in progress into the startup animation of the next attack, leaving the opponent unable to react), thus being able to consistently and quickly cancel into it out of a handful of moves is required at high level play. With the correct setup, it's actually a really viable choice.
  • Balrog (Boxer) has the Turn Punch, which is a charge move charged by holding all the punch or kick buttons. It's actually a great move in normal usage (it can let him dodge projectiles and melee attacks if timed right), but becomes this trope when charged for a long time. At full charge in Street Fighter IV, it can do a staggering 560 in one blow, making it the most powerful single attack in the game (even more than any Ultras). Of course, charging it for an extended period requires sacrificing half his moveset just for the chance at landing a rather predictable move. Especially since getting hit once will remove all the charge, and a smart opponent will notice if you're going for it. And it has increased endlag the longer it goes, ensuring a vicious punish on block.
  • In Street Fighter III, Gill has the super art Resurrection: if he's KO'd with a full super meter, he stands back up and starts regaining health up to full. This is an incredibly scary-sounding ability, and it is when you fight him in the arcade mode and you don't know about it ahead of time, since it essentially gives him two health bars. The problem is, Gill is basically helpless during the animation, and he can be knocked out of it, which will halt the health gain and leave him open for a combo to take away all his health again. What's more, after Gill uses Resurrection, he can no longer use his super meter for the rest of the round, meaning that you'd be going into Round 2 with a gimped Gill. On top of that, Resurrection happens automatically with no player input as long as its conditions are met, and Gill can't deselect it due to his design making all his super arts constantly accessible. Consequently, against a skilled player (which they'd have to be to KO Gill to begin with), Resurrection might actually prove to be a downside more often than not.
  • Want to get a massive boost to R. Mika's command throw damage in Street Fighter V, enough to end a round with one shot? Use her V-Skill and let her cut a live wrestling promo. For twenty seconds straight. If your opponent is patient enough not to interrupt you, you don't end it early, and you don't whiff, you get that obscene damage.
  • Vega's jump from the fence looks spectacular but once the opponent figures out how to counter it, it becomes useless as they get plenty of warning for the attack.
  • Ibuki's ultra grab Yoroitoshi is the only grab in the series to have a projectile if it whiffs that still damages the opponent if they are in range. The issue is that it doesn't do much damage and many characters have projectile immune attacks which could bypass the projectile in question.
  • Ibuki also gets the semi exclusive Super Jump Cancel ability in Street Fighter IV that lets her do a complex motion to let her cancel any normal attack into one of her ultras. The issue here is that with either of them the harsh 2 point scaling applies from the previous hit and Ibuki can't do much after either of her ultras making her special attacks or linking into sweep superior in most instances.
  • The most powerful attack in all of Street Fighter V is one of G's moves. It deals 500 damage (or 600 on a counter), which is enough to knock off half the health bar of most characters, and stuns the character enough that it can be easily followed up with a combo or a juggle. What is it? It's the bit in his Idle Animation where he points to the sky and flashes—and he hits that bit if you leave him idle, neither hitting a single button nor having your opponent hit him, for 64 seconds. This is well past the point of practicality and straight into Easter Egg territory; you are not hitting this in a match unless your opponent falls asleep.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Several of the Final Smash attacks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and onwards qualify for this trope. For example, any one that requires a player to catch an opponent will often do large amounts of damage and kill at low percentages to those unfortunate enough to get caught in one and are often very flashy. But, they usually have very short range, making it easy for zoning characters to try and hit the smash ball out of you, and will go to waste if dodged, which is often easy given that the short range most of them have often forces predictable usage of them. Special mention to Marth's (and Lucina's) final smash. It does 60% damage and an almost guaranteed kill on hit, as well as having an absolutely insane amount of movement range. But, not only is it just as easy to dodge as any other similar Final Smash, but the range is also so large that it's easy to self-destruct with it if you use it carelessly (such as using it in the air on a small stage). This is subverted if you press B again to cancel the movement and end the attack, though the game doesn't explain this up front.
  • Donkey Kong's Final Smash, a rhythm minigame with a soundwave that grows bigger with each beat that's hit correctly. It takes some time to get its range to anything useful and has no outstanding damage output or knockback. It was even worse in Brawl, where the player wasn't even given a button prompt, so it ended up being luck more than anything. Small wonder it got replaced in Ultimate.
  • Lucario's Final Smash in the fourth game. In Brawl and Ultimate, he got an aimable Wave-Motion Gun, but in 3DS/Wii U, he uses his Mega Evolution. He gains a huge boost in power and knockback and his neutral B Aura Spheres are now much bigger and stronger. The problem is that unlike all other Final Smashes of this sort, Lucario gains no other real benefits. He doesn't gain the speed boost Wario gets with his or the size and range increase Bowser gains with his, meaning Mega Lucario is basically just regular Lucario with more knockback, and is normally pretty easy to just avoid entirely.
  • Lucario's Final Smash in Brawl as well. While the beam is aimable, it takes a while for it to move, and the charge up time it takes before Lucario fires gives the opponents a good amount of time to start running away. More often than not, other fighters can just go to the corner of the stage, jump out of the way when the beam's about to hit them, and before the final smash can do much damage, it'll already run out.
  • The Home-Run Bat became this in this game. In the original and Melee, it had a slightly unwieldy swing time but was still usable much of the time and was a reliable one-hit KO, stage obstacles notwithstanding. In Brawl, it works more-or-less the same way, except the swing time is dramatically increased. It makes a highly effective thrown weapon in every single game, however.
  • Luigi's secret taunt trick: If he does his kick taunt while an opponent is hanging on a ledge, it's a down diagonal meteor smash (usually an instant kill unless the opponent knows how to meteor cancel). (Melee requires getting a KO using a taunt for 100% Completion, and Luigi's taunt is among the few, if not the only, taunt in the game that does damage, even if it isn't much compared to an actual attack.)
  • Then there's Captain Falcon's famous signature move, the Falcon Punch. One of the most damaging attacks in any of the games, but its charge-up time not only makes it extremely difficult to land a hit without proper planning and/or a bit of luck, but it also leaves him wide for attack. Needless to say, when someone does manage to pull it off, it can only be described as awesome.
  • Ganondorf's Warlock Punch is the most powerful punch in the game, but one of the slowest attacks. He also has an overhead kick that's even more difficult to hit with, but even more powerful.
  • Byleth's Aymr, which is the same kind of move. While it lacks the raw power of the Warlock Punch (and unlike the punches, doesn't gain extra power from being turned around), it makes up for it by punishing anybody foolish enough to try and shield it with an instant shield break.
  • The reverse Falcon Punch and its stronger variation, the reverse Warlock Punch. These moves require that you turn at just the right frame to make Cpt. Falcon or Gannondorf spin around and punch the opponent. Amazing when successfully pulled off, but it takes even longer to get to the actual punch and only does slightly more damage.
  • The Ice Climbers' chain grabs. Having the ability to infinite-combo anyone makes them incredibly annoying to play against (the strategy for dealing with them is "don't get grabbed and separate them whenever possible"). Actually pulling it off requires a long series of two-frame timings that vary based on the weight of the chain-grabbed character, having both Climbers close enough together that your opponent can't escape before you begin the throws, not being interrupted by an environmental hazard or other player as applicable, and, because everyone knows that one grab is death, having to deal with the aforementioned strategy just to get the grab in the first place. Granted, it's somewhat easier than it sounds. The "impractical" part comes in when you factor in the mental fortitude required to pull it off two or three times per game (they still can get kills the old-fashioned way, after all)... two or three games per set... and, depending on the size of the tournament, 7+ sets per tournament. And you could have put all the practice you did into Meta Knight instead.
  • The S-Flag will grant one more point in Time mode and one additional life in Stock if you can fulfill its conditions: Pick up the S-Flag and hold it up continuously for about 3 seconds. However, it disables most of a character's moves when they're holding it, and it's pretty unlikely you'll be able to stand in one place undisturbed for three seconds in a game as fast-paced as Smash Bros. Also, holding up an S-Flag cannot be canceled once started. When they do so, they're vulnerable to any of their opponents' moves, and if it's interrupted, they have to start all over again.
  • Roy's Flare Blade in Melee and 4. If fully charged, it can OHKO almost anybody, provided there isn't anything blocking their path. However, you can't hold the charge or move during the move, meaning either your opponent has to be holding still for a while or you need to read them really well. And using the move at full charge will do damage to Roy, making it even less advisable.
  • The Hero's Command Selection in is a zig-zagged example. It gives the Heroes access to a wide plethora of different spells that can be used in a multitude of situations. However, you can only select from four at a time, and they're always random. Plus, you can't do anything except shield or jump when you're selecting the spell you want to use. Because of this, it's quite a gamble to actually get the proper spell for the proper situation, but it's certainly a lot of fun to use with some very potent spells to make it worth the trouble. However, there are some that are too useless or risky to be worth it in most situations:
    • Kaclang turns the Hero metal, renders them immune to all harm and knockback, and even allows him to block Final Smashes. It also renders them completely stationary and the Hero cannot manually end the spell, forcing them to wait it out and allowing the opponent to simply bide their time and prepare an attack for the second Kaclang's effect ends. Even worse, if used against another Hero they can simply use Metal Slash and kill them instantly.
    • Hocus Pocus is a wild card spell that has some very powerful and unique effects such as becoming giant, becoming invincible, or randomly casting different spells. However, it also has some very negative effects as well, such as slowing you down or even casting Kamikazee when the player might not want to, meaning that it's best used as a last resort gamble when you have nothing left to lose.
    • Hatchet Man is a very powerful move that either does 45% damage and/or kill at very low percents or an instant shield break if it connects. The downside is that it's very slow and has limited range, when using Command Selection takes enough time as it is, so Hero players will be very hard pressed to land it in an actual match.
    • Magic Burst seems like the mother of all Game-Breakers: it deals an absurd amount of continuous damage and knock back over a huge area, and it covers so much of the stage that it's practically a guaranteed KO against a recovering opponent. However, it also consumes all of the Hero's MP, with its power and size dependent on how much MP was used. Hero happens to be a Mighty Glacier who's extremely reliant on his MP to function, so a Hero who's been using a lot of spells won't have a very strong Magic Burst, while even if he lands a KO with it he'll now be at a severe disadvantage unless he can get his MP back.
• Some hyper combos in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom are Awesome, But Impractical. Ippatsuman has it the worst, though. His Level 3 Hyper Combo has him summon his signature robot for the player to control. However, all of its attacks are slow, don't do much damage, and can't combo past two hits. He does have 3 unblockable moves in the mode, two of them being telegraphed sword attacks and a humongous unavoidable flash that kills the opponent if it connects. The problem with the flash, however, is that it takes ten seconds to even hit with the move, the most time of any non-boss character in Capcom vs. history, and can be interrupted by attacking the robot's head during the charging sequence. Finally, in the international release, the time the robot stays on the field decreased by a large margin and ate every bit of meter when used.
• In later entries of the Tekken series, the player is given a chance to dress up their characters however they wish. This includes giving them accessories that include weapons of all kinds, from swords to bludgeons to firearms. These weapons can be used, deal respectable damage, and are unblockable. Unfortunately, much like the unblockable attacks that are part of characters' regular movesets, they have significant windup and can be easily evaded or interrupted by attentive opponents. In the case of firearms, they can be evaded simply by ducking.
• In the Virtua Fighter series, some characters have a stomping move to use after they knock their opponents down. When the ninja Kage does it, he jumps ridiculously high and turns upside down to hit the fallen opponent with his head. It's cool, but even the CPU on easy mode can easily roll out of his way. If it hits, it doesn't do more damage than the other stomps anyway.

---