Awesomeness by Analysis in Video Games.
- Any RPG with Leaked Experience implies that the characters that don't participate in the battle still become stronger by merely watching the fights.
- Several times through Assassin's Creed Origins, Bayek manages to take in details around the scene and reconstruct events from there.
- Batman: Arkham Series: Batman, again. More observable in Asylum and City, as he figures things out in his own thoughts without any visual aide, besides the use of Detective Vision to analyze evidence, like when he figures out how to isolate Deadshot based solely on the specific type of paint used in the boxes where he hid his gear. In Origins, his cowl can recreate crime scenes based on evidence, be it a shooting scene or a helicopter that was sniped by a ricocheting bullet.
- In Cataclysm, you can dissect the various zombie and monster types in order to study their biology, which translates into combat bonuses - the next time your character fights a similar enemy type, they aim for weak points.
- In Civilization: Beyond Earth, Supremacy units have the stated ability to autonomously share information and processing power to predict the enemy's actions on the battlefield and quickly decide the most effective response. This is represented in the game by Supremacy units getting a combat strength bonus if they are adjacent to a friendly Supremacy unit, and the effect is cumulative — Supremacy units are often an unsuitable match for Purity or Harmony units if isolated and alone, but can be very powerful if used in a Zerg Rush.
- This is part of Dark Chronicle's Invention process. Max, a First-Person Snapshooter, can take pictures of ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) items, which give him ideas for creating new inventions. Some of them are easily missable, so you have to work quickly and think fast in order to get them all.
- Minor original character Fracture from the second DC Universe Online trailer has this as a power. It briefly shows his vision, analyzing statistics, probability, and structural weak points to overcome a Brainiac drone in single combat. Apparently, it only works on threats he's aware of, since purported ally Luthor stabs him in the back moments later
- In Descent: Freespace, this is what allows the Terrans and Vasudans to survive against the Shivans: reverse-engineering their shield technology, developing weapons that can penetrate it, and learning how to track their ships into subspace.
- In Disco Elysium, this is tied to the Visual Calculus skill, which governs the Detective's ability at being Good with Numbers and combining it with a knowledge of physics and then applying it to various situations, most notably forensic recreation. When used successfully, the Detective can study a shattered window, and simply from a glance be able to make very qualified guesses as to the size, weight, and velocity of the object that smashed the glass.
- In The Elder Scrolls series, this is a trait of Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order. The Library of Jyggalag contained a precise and exact record of everything that any entity in Nirn or Oblivion would ever do, which Jyggalag compiled through nothing but simple but extremely thorough deductive reasoning and logic. This was one of the big reasons why the other Daedric Princes turned on him and sealed him as his own antithesis, the Mad God Sheogorath (who promptly had the library destroyed).
- Fallout:
- The in-universe explanation for how the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) operates in Fallout 3. It creates a real-time tactical overlay that scans the threat, assesses various weak points and comes up with the statistical probability of whether the operator will successfully land any hits.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- The appropriately named "Math Wrath" perk improves the efficiency of V.A.T.S. if the player's Science skill is high enough.
- The Luck stat is explained to be this: the preternatural ability to predict probabilities. It translates to fine-tuning of one's aim to hit particularly vulnerable spots (IE: critical hits), or what amounts to card-counting, nuanced senses of the roulette wheel or tumblers at casinos. It's not entirely this though, as there are a few "dumb luck" moments, like miraculously performing surgery on Caesar's brain tumor without sufficient medical knowledge, randomly guessing the right password to call off a robot accosting you, or the inexplicable chances of finding extra ammo or money in containers via two luck-unlocked perks. Mr. House has 10 luck, the maximum possible, which enabled him to predict when the inevitable Great War would happen and was only off by a single day.
- Fear & Hunger: Termina: Daan has the Analyze skill, which can instantly expose an enemy's weak point (usually the head), making it very easy to hit. This is incredibly useful in combat, as it removes the requirement for the player to disable an enemy's legs in order to expose their weak point.
- Final Fantasy:
- The Scan spell (also known as Libra). Its effectiveness varies from game to game, but it's generally very useful to know your opponent's current hit points, immunities, and elemental weaknesses.
- Final Fantasy X has Scan as a common weapon ability. There's even an optional dungeon full of monsters immune to scanning.
- In Final Fantasy IV, a late-game goblin enemy will actually scan itself, revealing its weakness to lightning. Needless to say using lightning attacks on it is a bad idea. It's not lying - lightning does do extra damage to it - but hitting it with a lightning attack triggers its significantly more deadly AI script.
- Characters with the Blue Magic ability can learn enemy magic by simply observing the ability in action or surviving getting hit by an attack.
- Some games have opponents that will scan your own characters, but due to the way the AI is programmed, it really just ends up being a wasted turn because whatever boost it can get from this isn't enough to compensate for the fact that it's a turn in which it didn't get to do damage and meanwhile you get another chance to attack it.
- The Web-based Flash Animation Final Fantasy A+ spoofs Scan in this regard by renaming it "Study Guide".
- The final paladin job quest in Final Fantasy XIV does this to comedic effect. The gladiator guild master travelled to the Far East and trained as a samurai and in the process learned how to sense opponent's power akin to Dragon Ball Z. Upon his return he proceeds to challenge you to a duel and starts said duel by sensing you power. By the time of this quest you returned from The First after merging with that shard's version of you, receiving a MASSIVE power boost from the Lightwarden's power, and unlocking your Ascian heritage. The blowback the guild master got from sensing you promptly knocked him down and immediately surrendering before the fight even starts.
- Libra makes its return in Final Fantasy XV as an ability available to Noctis, allowing him to analyze enemy weaknesses and resistances to elements and weaponry. It even comes with a (timed) Time Stands Still option. Upgraded sufficiently, it can instantly scan all enemies on the battlefield like a Sherlock Scan. Ignis also has this ability, and he uses it much more creatively and liberally (i.e. planning battle strategies and exploiting enemies' weaknesses as well as turning enemies' own strengths against them) than Noctis, whose strategy amounts to hitting the enemy with his weapons until they die. Ignis' analytical abilities don't just extend to combat: he can recreate dishes from a single taste as well.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, the Dancer Tethys is extremely perceptive and good at catching details (Though this doesn't show in-story since she's a non-combatant.) In an example, as a teenager, she learned how to dance solely via mentally replaying a famous dancer's moves and practicing them from memory. She also deduces that her friend Marisa only pretends to be a southpaw, when in reality she isn't; Marisa is very surprised, meaning that no one else had managed to see through her.
- Fire Emblem: Awakening gives us the player character, Robin, whose skill as a tactician translates into being able to see the statistics and hit percentages and so on of yours and your enemy's units. Basically, it's their knowledge that gives the player all the useful information in the user interface.
- On two separate occasions, Jin from Ghost of Tsushima learns how to use an extremely powerful sword technique by watching his opponent use it on him.
- This is how Kratos ultimately manages to defeat the Aesir god Heimdall in God of War Ragnarök, though it's not obvious at first glance. During the first phase of the fight, none of Kratos' weapons work on Heimdall and he dodges all of their attacks save for the Draupnir Spear which he instead grabs out of the air, a moment in which Kratos then detonates it and produces a blinding flash that disorients Heimdall and opens a window through his Combat Clairvoyance. The objective then becomes blindsiding Heimdall with Draupnir bursts three times, with each time yielding different results: the first time, Kratos attempts three hard, sweeping punches that are easily dodged. The second time, Kratos goes for tighter, close-range punches that Heimdall is still able to dodge, except for the last, which he raises an arm to block, showing that while he has godly reflexes, they have a limit. The third time, Kratos repeats the second maneuver, but at the last blow which Heimdall reflexively tries to block, Kratos instead grabs his arm and lands a punch hard enough to leave a bleeding wound on Heimdall's face. Kratos tested the extent of his enemy's reflexes to see how he could attack to force an opening, then lured the enemy into expecting one attack and be left unprepared for another. Notably, after receiving his first real wound in a long time and for the remainder of the fight, Heimdall relies less on his power of foresight to fight.
- In Horizon Zero Dawn, Aloy's "superpower" is her Focus. No, not superhuman concentration, but a piece of Lost Technology from the Old Ones that allows her to scan objects around her to learn how they function — including enemies' weak points, various secrets in the environment that might not be visible to the naked eye, and other pieces of high technology. Between that and the fact that she's a clone of a brilliant scientist from The Beforetimes, this elevates Aloy from merely a very good hunter to one of the greatest warriors in the land.
- The Copy Copy Ability (no seriously, it's a Copy Ability that copies abilities) from Kirby Super Star. Once Kirby has this ability, he obtains an optical scanner that analyzes an opponent (complete with computer readouts and targeting reticule shown onscreen, no less) and replaces Copy with whatever ability the opponent has. If the enemy you try this on has no ability, you can analyze them to death.
- If you choose the Dark Side Path in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, observe your character fight Jedi Masters in a one-on-one battle to the death and learn to perfectly copy the enemy's Lightsaber Fighting Style while taunting them and stomping them into the ground afterward. Probably with their own moves.
- Live A Live: in the Modern Day chapter, Masaru goes on a personal quest To Be a Master by fighting against the toughest martial artists in the world and learning from them. In gameplay, he can learn how to use his opponents' moves after being struck by them.
- Mega Man (as well as Mega Man X) can copy the weapons of bosses after having defeated them.
- Ocelot from the Metal Gear Solid series. He's a talented enough shot that he can shoot people from ricocheting bullets within a second of studying and analyzing the angle. Later on Ocelot's able match Snake at CQC, a technique he and The Boss spent years perfecting, simply by watching Snake use the moves and then mimicking them.
- In No More Heroes, Travis Touchdown can learn new wrestling moves just by renting out wrestling tapes and watching them.
- In Persona 5, Sojiro says that Futaba's mother, Wakaba, was so smart that she was able to improve his curry recipe just by looking at the ingredients.
- Toranosuke Yoshida (Sun Arcana Confidant), turns out to be good at this too. In his final Link event, he reveals that he'd deduced Joker's Secret Identity on his own, simply by observing his mannerisms and behavior.
- Pokémon:
- The ability Analytic can give any Pokemon this, giving it a boost to its attack power if it attacks last.
- The abilities Download (ups a stat based on opponent's defenses), Anticipation (shudders depending on the power of its foe's attacks), Trace (copies the foe's ability), Rivalry (raises Attack if the foe is of the same gender), and Impostor (transforms into an opponent in front) all involve reacting to the opponent in some way. Telepathy takes this and applies it to ally Pokemon in Doubles.
- An inversion exists in the ability Unaware, which completely ignored the foe's stat changes.
- There are several moves that are used by analyzing the opponent. Detect requires the user to avoid the opponent completely by knowing what move they'll use next. Role Play allows you to copy the foe's ability just by pretending to be them. Mind Reader is said to do Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Predicting your opponent's moves is also a given for anyone wishing to compete in the higher levels of the metagame.
- Project Wingman: During Monarch's solo nighttime assault on the AA defense system at Wensleydale Range, the Federation base commander there is able to deduce from the echoes in the mountains that there's only a single attacker. He's also able to tell that the attacker is a mercenary, reasoning that mercenary pilots often use foreign fuel that is cheaper and has a distinctly different sound when burning. Both explanations described Monarch very accurately. It's especially impressive since he made these two deductions just after being dragged out of bed.
- Galen Marek/Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was a Child Prodigy put through Training from Hell that Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training. He was given little-to-no formal lightsaber training by Vader. The reason why he's a Master Swordsman is that he observed and reverse-engineered Vader and his training droid PROXY's moves... while struggling to survive them.
- Emerl from the game Sonic Battle is a good example of this. He gains ALL powers of an opponent simply by watching them fight or being beaten up by them. In the final battle, Emerl takes all of Sonic's abilities, powers them up to the point where some of them instantly KO you, and becomes a star killing machine by seeing Eggman's battleship in action.
- Super Robot Wars:
- Latooni's whole shtick. Well, that and massive quantities of Shrinking Violet cuteness.
- Bartolls/Valtols from the OVA and Original Generation Gaiden. Attacks become useless on them after they've been used once since they can dodge any future attempts of that attack pattern.
- Fiona from Tales from the Borderlands has been a Con Man since she was a child along with her sister Sasha, and a life spent using her head to get out of tricky situations has led her to use information from her surroundings, as well as Combat Clairvoyance, to defend herself and her team.
- Marisa from Touhou Project uses a combination of analysis and theft for her Power Copying. If it comes from a spellbook or an artifact, she'll "borrow" it. If it doesn't, she'll study it in action and invent a spell wholecloth to imitate it. The side series The Grimoire of Marisa has her notes on every enemy's spellcards, how each works, and other possible applications for them.
- Welkin Gunther from Valkyria Chronicles achieved this in Operation Cloudburst. He drove his tank through a river, Oregon Trail-style, and all he had to do to make it happen was watch how the grass grew in the shallow parts and ask Isara to waterproof it. Being a nature lover sure comes in handy, and the surprise attack gave the imperial soldiers to watch a spooking.
- In the Yakuza series, from the third game onward Kazuma and other protagonists can get inspiration for new combat maneuvers by watching other people perform out of the ordinary stunts (i.e. a middle-aged woman flipping on her motor scooter as the basis for a jumping attack, or a girl fending off a drunken pervert to learn how to counter grappling moves).
