Blessed With Suck / Video Games

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• Amnesia: Memories: Ikki has his eyes. Any woman that looks into them becomes smitten and falls in love with him, which certainly gained him the popularity he once craved. But he admits that this has led to him having no male friends because Ikki can easily get any woman he wants — including other people's girlfriends — and don't believe it's because of something that he has no power over. And he has no female friends, since they all fall in love with him. And he has a growing fanclub of girls that accost him after work, making it difficult for him to enjoy his free time or time with his current girlfriend. The Good Ending of his route has him become determined to not let the power of his eyes lead his life anymore.
• Baldur's Gate II:
  • The ability to turn into the slayer works like this in Shadows of Amn, as the Player Character can transform to gain immense power and defense, but at the cost of losing control of themselves, as well as losing -2 reputation each time they do it.
  • One of the possible endings for Dorn's personal quest-line in the Enhanced Edition of Shadows of Amn is betraying both his patron fiend and the antagonist who proposed him to switch allegiance. This way, Dorn becomes finally free and also gets a powerful sword with two bonus powers (additional damage against devils and demons instead one of the two depending on whom you betray). The unannounced problem is that without a patron he becomes a fallen blackguard, being stripped of his powers and losing all the special abilities he had. Translated, he becomes like a crappy fighter with lower dice-rolls, attacks, thac0 and proficiencies compared to a true fighter (with the only good stat his natural strength of 19 being an half-orc). Was it worth for his freedom and that sword that deals additional damage to enemies you might even not encounter anymore by that point, player?
  • In Throne of Bhaal, you can upgrade the Flail of Ages to its +5 version, which among other things grants the Free Action status effect. That is, the character wielding the weapon is immune to actions or spells affecting his mobility like Hold Person, Entangle, Web or Stun. The problem is that in the Enhanced Edition it also prevents the Haste spell to work. Since by the end of the game Haste is almost mandatory to get the most possible damage per round, the +5 upgrade is regarded as an effectual downgrade by many players, who stick to the +4 version even losing one of the elemental additional damage.
• Tiefling Barbarian Hero Karlach in Baldur's Gate III suffered Unwilling Roboticisation that left her a magitek replacement heart, which gave her a Super Mode. Unfortunately, it also superheated her entire body leaving her unable to touch anyone or anything without it bursting into flames. To make matters worse, the defects from it being a Flawed Prototype ensured that every day she spends outside of Hell brings it closer to burning out entirely.
• BioForge: Congratulations, Dr. Mastaba's patient, you're a badass cyborg, but you're also a deformed freak (and can be controlled by anyone with the right remote control).
• The Plasmids in the first two BioShock games. You can get many awesome superpowers from them, such as telekinesis and the ability to control lightning. However, you eventually get extremely disfigured from them (since they're changing your genes to do so), and they damage your mental state to such an extent that you turn into an unstable, screaming killer. They are also very addictive, leaving people slaughtering each other for another dose and exacerbating the aforementioned issues further.
• Bloodborne: Any power-up that's worth something is probably going to be this. It's that kind of setting.
  • Blood Ministration is a Panacea that grants you supernatural toughness as part of the process. Yharnam's local religion, the Healing Church, even worships it as a way to transcend the human condition. What the Church is not keen on people knowing is that it's something of a Fantastic Drug, with side effects including losing one's mind and transforming into a werewolf.
  • Rom, the Vacuous Spider, was once a human who became a true Great One... but destroyed her mind in the process, leading to the 'vacuous' title. Bit hard to claim one is cleansed of beastly idiocy when one's new state is stupider than one was before.
  • Similarly, there's Provost Willem. His attempt to "line his brain with eyes" to become more than human apparently succeeded. This is 'apparently' because it's kinda hard to tell if he's got any omniscent knowledge, because whatever he did rendered him brain-dead.
  • The School of Mensis sought knowledge via audience with the stillborn Great One Mergo. This went very well, but led to "stillbirth of their brains." That said, the School's leader Micolash is quite happy with the situation, despite being dead and his soul trapped in the Nightmare of Mensis.
  • If you listen closely and catch a couple rare events, it becomes clear that Gherman sees himself this way. As the designated Mentor of Dreaming Hunters, he's secluded in the Hunter's Dream. It's a quite nice little workshop and garden, and he's apparently immortal while he's there, but he's also completely alone save for the Hunters who pass through and the Doll, who he currently hates as a hollow mockery of his beloved student Maria. He wants nothing more than to die and be free, but knows that for that to happen, another hunter must take his place. He continually frees them from the Dream to spare them from what he's come to see as an Ironic Hell.
• Bloodline Champions has the Glutton bloodline, who underwent a ritual for their (very small) people when they were being horribly beaten in a war and forced into caves against a large group of bandits. This makes them grow much stronger and larger than the rest of their people as well as giving them earth magic abilities... but made them perpetually hungry.
• Ryu from Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter has the incredibly destructive dragon abilities — which, over time, cause him to lose control and die. Better still? The counter still ticks when the powers aren't in use; it just goes faster (sometimes abysmally so) when they are. And the icing on the cake: this counter can't be reversed. Ever. In a meta sense, this ability was created to push the design envelope and give Dragon Quarter the ability to become a JRPG that was genuinely hard to complete, where every decision in the playthrough matters, and making a cynical biopunk story in a series of traditional high fantasy! It had some side effects. Specifically becoming a Franchise Killer.
• In Cafe Enchante, Misyr laments that despite being a very powerful demon king, his powers are only meant for destruction and he can't help in situations where healing would be needed, such as when Il collapses in Bestia due to the cold or when Rindo is dying due to a curse.
• John Morris of Castlevania: Bloodlines is somehow related to the Belmonts, and as a result, is able to use their Vampire Killer whip. The catch? It drains his life energy, to the point where sometime after Bloodlines and before Portrait of Ruin (the direct sequel to Bloodlines), he dies.
• Shanoa, the protagonist of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, has this in spades. Her ability to command Glyphs gives her incredible power, including the ability to command the Dominus glyphs that each contain a piece of Dracula's power, thus giving her the ability to destroy Dracula. (Like he's not used to that by now...) Sweet, huh? Unfortunately, the ritual that gave her the ability to command those glyphs also took away most of her memories and emotions. The ritual to destroy Dracula, which involves using the Dominus Union, instantly drains the user's soul... Also, while Albus's interference is implied initially to have been the cause of the memory loss, it's later implied that the ritual involving the Dominus glyphs was what caused it.
• Alyssa from Clock Tower 3 could be considered this. She has a powerful bow that only works when she frees a certain spirit, is repeatedly dragged into other dimensions and chased by supernatural monsters, and is the target of her insane grandfather who wants to drink her blood so he can live forever.
• Code Vein: Revenants — including the protagonist — are immortal, quasi-vampire warriors with a wide array of supernatural powers, most prominently the ability to come Back from the Dead indefinitely, so long as their heart isn't damaged or destroyed. The heart-weakness notwithstanding, they even lack most of the traditional vampire weaknesses, including being unbothered by sunlight (most of the game takes place in broad daylight). The downside is the near-constant blood-thirst, and going too long without fresh blood runs the risk of turning you into a Lost — a mindless, berserk monster wandering and fighting for eternity, now permanently unkillable so you can't even be put out of your misery. Even immortality has a high cost, as every time you die you lose a piece of your memories, with some Revenants having completely forgotten their human pasts, and a few (like Davis) who can't even remember their real names. Absolutely no one chose to become a revenant willingly except Eva, and were instead turned after death to swell the ranks in humanity's war with unspecified "horrors" that turn out to be the Aragami.
• In The Coma: Cutting Class, protagonist Youngho is revealed to be a 'Cold Soul'. A person that can remain in The Coma for indefinite time without succumbing to its effects, so he won't go insane like most people. But this also means that he is the perfect vessel for the Big Bad, wanting to possess him and travel to the waking world.
• Danganronpa: Every major character is blessed with amazing skill at a certain thing, but that doesn't necessarily make their life any better.
  • In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Nagito Komaeda's ultimate talent is being Born Lucky. So lucky that he can win Russian Roulette with bullets in 5 out of 6 chambers, and his Gambit Roulette plots always work. However, it falls into this trope, as all of his good luck comes about as a result of catastrophe (getting kidnapped helped him find a winning lottery ticket; losing his parents in a plane crash gained him a massive inheritance). This continued to the point where he wanted to die just to be free of it. To make matters worse, he has terminal cancer, but his luck unnaturally prolongs his life without actually improving his health.
  • This seems to be a trait of all Lucky people, in face; they tend to zig-zag between good and bad luck regularly. Makoto has it the easiest because his luck isn't very strong, so he's an Ordinary High-School Student who occasionally has minor turns of luck, usually just enough to annoy him or squeak through a dangerous situation. Those with exceptionally powerful luck like Nagito have their lives suffer for it.
  • Series-long Big Bad Junko Enoshima has the talent of Ultimate Analyst. Her ability makes the entire world terribly predictable and boring to her, which caused her to become obsessed with the emotion of despair (and thus become the series-long Big Bad), since the way it causes people to act is the one thing she cannot predict, and therefore the one thing she does not find boring.
  • Shuichi from the third game hates his Ultimate Detective talent, because he's been exposed to some pretty nasty crimes but can't help their victims, only pinpoint the culprit after the fact. Then there was the case that got him the Ultimate Detective title in the first place. He solved a murder that had the police stumped, then when the full story of the murder came to light, it turns out that the victim was a horrible person who more than deserved what he got. The overwhelming public opinion was that the culprit was practically a hero for offing the scumbag, and that Shuichi should have just kept his mouth shut instead of getting him thrown in jail. This is also when Shuichi started hating his talent, because finding the truth also sometimes means finding the Awful Truth.
  • Izuru Kamukura was created to be the Ultimate Life Form with every Ultimate talent in existence. However, they had to take out his original personality and all of his emotions in order to fit all that talent in him, so what they ended up with was a terminally bored Empty Shell of a man who has no reason to ever use his vast array of incredible talents nor the ability to enjoy himself when he does.
  • At least once in the series it's outright stated that having an Ultimate talent at all can be this, regardless of what it is. After all, if you're essentially the single best person in the world at something, then everyone will naturally expect you to do that thing. Forever. Meanwhile, normal people are better off because they get to choose to do whatever they want with their lives instead of being shackled to the one thing fate decided they were amazing at, because they aren't amazing at anything. Indeed, it is possible to have an Ultimate talent for something you hate doing, as is the case with Leon and baseball.
  • An Ultimate talent or title can also come with its own drawbacks; for example, it's hard to trust the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader or Ultimate Yakuza. Both Ultimate Lucky Students have issues with feeling that they don't deserve their titles, since they were chosen randomly and not because said student actually did anything (though Nagito's luck is obviously real and very much desired by the directors of Hope's Peak). Byakuya dislikes his 'Ultimate Affluent Prodigy' title because it means everyone assumes that he was just handed everything in life. Ishimaru's 'Ultimate Moral Compass' talent causes friction with his classmates as he never lets up pushing them to do the right thing. And of course, some Ultimate abilities are What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?- try using swimming, cooking, or traditional dancing to your advantage in the killing game you wound up in because you're a student of Hope's Peak.
  • The Fan Game Danganronpa Another has Utsuro, who was an unholy fusion of Nagito and Izuru above. His Divine Luck ability essentially bordered on Reality Warping. Not only did this mean he didn't need to work toward achieving anything, but since it worked for people around him, most of people who wanted to be close to him only wanted to exploit his luck. As a result, he ended up homeless, depressed, and tired of the world and people. He couldn't even commit suicide because his luck would always save him. In the end, he ends up being groomed by Junko just like Izuru.
• Deus Ex Universe:
  • In Deus Ex, Gunther Hermann is a man who got more or less all of his limbs replaced with cybernetic augmentations that make him stronger, smarter and faster than most other human beings. The kick is that by the time the events of the game occur, Gunther's augs are already outdated and completely outshined by JC Denton's hardly visible, superior augs. Not to mention the kill switch that allows anyone to off the poor Gunther by simply uttering the words "Laputan Machine".
  • Deus Ex: Human Revolution has another, even bigger suck that goes with mechanical augs: the body will simply not tolerate bits of metal being grafted into its flesh and augs cause coagulation issues, rejection of the mechanical parts and deformities. The only way to avoid these symptoms is to take an insanely expensive drug that temporarily improves tolerance of the augs, forcing any augmented individual into ingesting a lifetime supply of meds to keep their awesome cyber-limbs in place. The main character doesn't have this problem thanks to gene therapy experiments performed on him when he was an infant.
  • The inventor of the augs himself was blessed with a mind able to come up with world-changing tech, but has to live with a body so intolerant to it that he cannot even use augmentations, medication or not. It gets so frustrating for him that he ends up despising his own creation and tries to erase it from existence by turning every augmented individual into a bloodthirsty maniac.
• Dragon Age:
  • Mages are capable of many impressive feats, including shapeshifting and healing. They are also constantly under the threat of attracting Demons to the world, or worse, being possessed by one and turned into a mindless Abomination. Oh, and the local religion loves turning them into scapegoats... Not all mage possessing entities are malevolent, like a Spirit of Faith who saved the kind old woman Wynne, keeps her alive with her will intact, and helps her to heal people. Yet despite this possibility, benevolent spirits can turn into demons afterwards, like how Anders inadvertently transformed Justice into Vengeance.
  • The Grey Wardens can detect darkspawn and are immune to the darkspawn's taint, but the darkspawn can detect them too. Furthermore, they're constantly plagued by nightmares, and due to their connection to the darkspawn, they will eventually be driven mad and die horribly. In the end, to slay the Arch Demon, a Grey Warden needs to commit murder/suicide in order to properly kill the monster, and the process by which this is accomplished destroys both their souls. They also have great difficulty conceiving children with normal people. Conception between a male and female Warden is physically impossible. Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening indicates that a mage Warden is more Cursed with Awesome, as the advantages of each cancel out the other's disadvantages, but that still doesn't say much for those not lucky enough to be born with the ability to use magic.
  • The Templars fare not much better. True, they are capable of cleansing the area from the demonic influence by sheer power of their will, but taking hefty doses of lyrium in order to do so, they end with an addiction that drives them insane. To make it worse, Templars are awful at their jobs. In Dragon Age: Origins, they only exist to be Worfed by something magical, regardless of how weak the magic actually is.
  • In Dragon Age II, Feynriel has it even worse than other mages. He is a somniari — a mage with the power to enter and shape the Fade at will without an external power source such as lyrium or blood. This makes him an even tastier target to demons than normal mages and he has suffered horrible nightmares his entire life as demons assault his mind in the Fade. Depending on how his Act 2 quest goes, he can actually be receptive to being made Tranquil if it means escaping the demons. After a lifetime of nightmares and embodiments of emotion assaulting him, a dreamless and emotionless existence doesn't seem so bad anymore. But if you decide to help him control his powers, he journeys to Tevinter, gets the proper instruction, and ends up taking a few levels in badass, while still being a good mage at heart.
• Dragon Quest V: Mada's divine powers made her a prime target for the villains; in order to protect her, the Loftians locked her away and had her constantly praying for them instead.
• Dwarf Fortress: Vampirism and lycanthropy, especially in adventure mode. For the former, for quite some time it was much closer to Cursed with Awesome, but more recent DF2014 updates introduced a major drawback: anyone who witnesses you feeding will flip out and go fully "no quarter" hostile. It doesn't matter how famous a hero, and it no longer depends on who or what you're feeding on. Meanwhile, werebeasts are only a killing machine during the full moon, and gain few useful abilities when in their normal form. In addition, they drop all their equipment when changing to and from werebeast form, potentially leaving them naked and unarmed in the worst possible situations. And just like the former, anyone who isn't a fellow werecreature will react with hostility.
• Elden Ring: The demigod Malenia was "blessed" in the womb by the Outer God of the Scarlet Rot. What this means for Malenia herself is that she is permanently afflicted with a singularly nasty disease with no cure, which has caused her to lose her eyesight and 3 of her limbs, and despite her constant vigilance against the Rot it inevitably infects anything she gets close to. Sure, she has Resurrective Immortality and the potential to wield the rot as a weapon, but that's nothing compared to what the rot has cost her.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series' lore and Backstory, there is a laundry list of powers, conditions and artifacts with extreme Power at a Price drawbacks. Vampirism, becoming a Lich, tapping into sources of divinity to become a god, and many more... almost all end badly for the people involved.
  • Several games in the series include the legendary sword, Umbra. It is regularly amongst the best weapons in the game, dealing colossal amounts of damage and trapping the souls of those who are struck by it. However, the weapon has a mind of its own and takes over the mind of its wielder if used for long enough. Slowly, the wielder loses their identity and begins referring to themselves as "Umbra". Thankfully, this never happens to the Player Character no matter how long the sword is used.
  • According to the in-game book Beggar Prince, the Daedric Prince Namira, associated with all things revolting, decay, and cannibalism, "blessed" all beggars with the gift of disease. It makes them repulsive, and this invokes pity and disregard in others. This both earns them the charity of others, while also making them the perfect spies and sources of information, because they could watch and listen to what others did, but never be noticed doing so.
  • Similarly, the favored "blessing" of Peryite, the Daedric Prince of Pestilence and Tasks, toward his followers is to inflict them with mystical diseases. This even comes complete with weaponized projectile vomiting.
  • During the events of Arena, known in-universe as the "Imperial Simulacrum", Emperor Uriel Septim VII was imprisoned in Oblivion by his Imperial Battlemage and Evil Sorcerer classic, Jagar Tharn, who then used magic to impersonate Uriel and usurp his throne. After Tharn was defeated and Uriel freed, Uriel began Dreaming of Things to Come, presumably an aftereffect from his time spent in Oblivion. By the time of his death years later, he had been plagued by terrible nightmares of things to come, including his own death, for some time.
  • In both Morrowind and Skyrim, the PC can be infected with Lycanthropy, turning them into a werewolf. It is considered a "gift" by the Daedric Prince of the Hunt, Hircine, bestowed upon his followers. In Morrowind, sufferers transform every night, are permanently marked for death if any NPC witnesses the transformation, cannot use/pick up items/spells while transformed, and must kill a sentient life form every night or else be severely weakened the next day. In Skyrim, the transformation is controlled by the sufferer, making it more useful in-game. In addition to the ability to transform into a powerful beast at will, the "Beastblood" makes them immune to all other disease. However, it also prevents them from getting quality sleep and requires great willpower to avoid going feral. Further, upon their deaths, the Werewolves' lycanthropy manifests as spirit wolves that drag their souls to Hircine's realm, where they join his endless Hunt. For some of the Companions, like Kodlak, Vilkas, and Farkas lycanthropy is this trope and they want to be cured. Others, like Aela and Skjor love being Werewolves and actually look forward to being part of Hircine's Hunt in the afterlife.
  • The Greybeards, who make their first appearance in Skyrim, are an order of old philosopher monks who have mastered an ancient art of vocal magic called the Voice that takes many years to learn and gives them truly incredible powers. But on the other hand, they have to take an oath of utmost silence, because even a faint whisper from a Voice practitioner can rumble through the world and shake mountains, and they can possibly wind up killing outsiders accidentally.
  • In Oblivion, there's the Grey Cowl of Nocturnal, a hood that gives all sorts of bonuses that a thief would love to have. The problem? It was stolen from the Daedric Prince Nocturnal, and as punishment, she cursed the Cowl; whoever owns it has their identity erased from existence. You could be wearing it and tell someone your name a thousand times, and they'll never hear it; any and all evidence that you ever lived magically ceases to be, and people will only remember you as the Gray Fox, the avatar of the Cowl. The ultimate goal of the Thieves' Guild questline is to remove the "Suck" from the Cowl. This is actually extremely useful if you remember to wear the Cowl while committing crimes. The guards will try to arrest you by default when wearing it in their vicinity but you can remove it in front of their faces, erasing your bounty and they will be none the wiser.
• Eternal Darkness has the eponymous Tome of Eternal Darkness, which grants the wielder the ability to read it no matter their own literacy and mother tongue, the ability to cast spells, an instant recap of everything that has happened to every previous wielder of the book, and the quite handy ability to write down anything they wish in the book for future generations to read, effectively making it the best weapon in existence in more ways than one. The drawback ? It forces you to take part in a cosmic scheme that will likely end with your death, possibly much worse, you may not like what you get to see, and you have no choice but to pick up the tome and carry the will of its maker, whether you realize it or not.
• In Eternal Sonata, Characters who can cast magic spells capable of doing anything from super-healing to terrible destruction (as opposed to weapon-based abilities that do pretty much the same thing, with no apparent penalty) have the fiddling little downside that being a magic-user slowly kills the wielder, whether they actually use their magic or not. Also, they tend to be heavily persecuted, as a result.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • The Enclave Power Armour is the single strongest suit of armour in the entire game, but as Arcade Gannon will tell you, due to its associations, wearing it in the NCR is likely to get you shot, lynched or arrested. That last one is what actually happens to Gannon if you make him wear it for the Final Battle and help the Legion win, as he's recognised by an NCR Ranger during the retreat and consequently tried as a war criminal and imprisoned indefinitely.
  • Joshua Graham has the blessing of being Made of Iron. The sucky part? He is tough enough that being set on fire doesn't kill him, but the burns which now cover his entire body causing him ceaseless, agonizing pain. He's also so tough that he's Immune to Drugs so he can't even take anything to lessen the pain.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Bedivere's Noble Phantasm is a replica of Airgétlam, the arm of the Celtic War God Nuadha, which is as powerful as the name implies and allows him to keep up with the other Knights of the Round Table despite being just a human. The cost for using it? Destroying part of his soul every time he activates it.
  • Mordred's Gift in the Camelot Singularity allows her to deploy her Noble Phantasm every single turn... and destroy her soul in the process.
  • Gawain's Rank Up Quest upgrades his "Charisma" skill to "Nightless Charisma", which allows him, on top of the attack boost, change whatever field he's in into "sunny". This enables him to use his extremely powerful Situational Sword at any given time. Why is it a bad thing? Because "Nightless Charisma" is the Gift he received from the Lion King during the Camelot Singularity, in which he committed atrocities in her name out of Blind Loyalty. He considers this his greatest failure, and "Nightless Charisma" is a permanent reminder of what he has done.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy III, Noah gave one disciple the gift of magic, another the gift of dreams, and the third the "gift" of mortality. Any guesses as to which of these goes insane and tries to unleash the game's eventual Big Bad on the world? First two don't count.
  • Crisis Core gives us the Cursed status, usually equipped to certain stat-boosting items. These items usually increase your stats by loads of points, but they make your DMW inactive, which means you can't level up or activate any of your Limit Breaks or summons.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Ellone's born power does something involved with time, making her being wanted by bad guys ever since she's a girl. Her parents are killed, she gets kidnapped, being briefly placed as a science rat, and has to spend most of the game escaping from Galbadia's Army.
  • The plot of Final Fantasy XIII revolves around l'Cie, people chosen by the godlike fal'Cie to accomplish some mission. Being an l'Cie gives you special powers but means the most powerful government in the world wants you dead and you must figure out what on earth you are supposed to do based on a vague vision and complete it within a time limit. If you fail, you become a Cie'th, a Body Horror-tastic crystal-covered zombie-like monster that lives in eternal pain and regret, unable to think of anything but their failure And eventually turns into a rock while still suffering from horrible regret. If you succeed, you turn into crystal. And the fal'Cie can revive you to force you to do another task later. The fal'Cie are utter pricks.
    • Vanille, Fang, Serah, Dajh, Lightning, Hope, Snow, and Sazh all manage to get themselves back to humans. In the case of Vanille and Fang, it isn't necessarily the best thing, as they end up crystallized again.
    • Also, when turned into Cie'th, Lightning, Hope, Snow, and Sazh manage to "will" themselves back to normal. Said cases are very rare, however.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 also has Paddra Nsu'Yeul, a seeress who is born into every generation, and forced to see various visions of the future. This may sound alright on the surface, but each vision actually drastically shortens her lifespan, meaning that no Yeul in history has ever seen adulthood. Then it turns out that the main character of the game has the exact same ability. Guess how that ends.
    • The Big Bad is also an example. He is an immortal who fell in love with the original Yeul and was devastated by her death. Thanks to his immortality, he has to watch the girl he loves be reincarnated only to die young again and again and again. By the time the game starts, he's willing to cause a Time Crash to prevent her death.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII sees all of mankind "blessed" with an indefinite lifespan. The warping of reality by the Chaos has caused every human in the world to stop aging. So although monsters, disease and the like could still end your life, keeping yourself healthy would mean living to the very end of days. But many people end up losing any zest for life after so long (five flipping CENTURIES). Some eagerly await the end of the world, others simply commit suicide. Notable characters even have crippling emotional hangups that they've spent 500 years carrying.
  • The Warrior of Light in Final Fantasy XIV has the Echo, a power that makes them immune to tempering and grants them the ability to see a person's memories as if they were with them when it happened. The downside is the Echo's ability to read memories can happen at any time and without any way to control when it happens. This means that the Echo can trigger at the wrong time during instances like the Warrior of Light being in the middle of a battle and putting them in danger (and it has happened more than once). Fordola has an artificial version of the Echo and has the same powers, but it's implied that her Echo's memory triggers happen much more frequently, and she doesn't have the willpower to not break down after seeing so many terrible memories (most of which she caused previously).
• Fire Emblem:
  • The GBA games turned the Constitution stat to this. On one hand, having higher constitution allows units to easily carry heavier weapons. On the other hand, having too much consitution results in depending on what type of unit: For mounted units, this essentially destroys the point of their mounted class, as they cannot carry footlocked units, including lords. For footlocked units, this makes them much harder to carry around, making moving them around a massive chore, especially if they're an Armor Knight.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:
    • Micaiah's "Sacrifice" ability is hyped in the storyline up as being unique and magnificent. However, in an example of Gameplay and Story Segregation, in-game the ability is only useful for level grinding and healing status effects as it uses up her HP. Combine this with the fact that she already has difficulty taking a hit and you get a very bad ability. However, when coupled with Edward's Wrath or Tauroneo's Resolve, Micaiah becomes an untouchable, double-attacking, always-criticalling power machine, making it a case of Cursed with Awesome.
    • All people who have one laguz and one beorc parent, or beorc with a laguz ancestor somewhere in their family history, known as Branded, are examples of this. You age slowly, gain various abilities that make you more powerful than the average person, etc. — oh, and you are an absolute pariah in both societies. And either you can go to the laguz (who can sense you, and age even slower) or the Beorc (where you have to move around every few years) societies to live. There are quite a few of these in the list of main characters, including Soren, Micaiah and Stefan.
    • Mostly fixed after the game ends when one of your party members, Stefan, goes on to found an (understandably small) nation of the Branded in the desert, provided you recruit him... which is somewhat of a Guide Dang It!.
    • Zelgius aka the Black Knight became The Dragon because the Big Bad was the only one who accepted his Branded nature.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Crest bearers are people descended from one of the great heroes of Fódlan's past, having inherited a special ability, the ability to wield their bloodline’s specific Ancestral Weapon, and physical abilities beyond those of normal people. They’re also seen as hugely valuable commodities rather than people due to their increasing rarity as the descendant bloodlines thin and many Crest bearers in-game recount people wanting to get close to them only for their Crests, family relationships between non-Crest descendants and descendants with Crests turning murderous, their families forcing them into loveless arranged marriages in order to get more Crest bearers, and abuse by their parents in order to ensure they are attractive for marriage.
    • It is possible to forcibly implant a Crest onto someone, including someone who already has a Crest, like Edelgard and Lysithea, but the procedure has a high risk of failure, resulting in madness and death, as what happened with all of Edelgard's siblings. Even success will leave you permanently marked with white or silver hair, and if you're particularly unlucky, like Lysithea, your lifespan will be dramatically reduced as long as you carry the implanted Crest. This entire state of affairs, and the torture she and her siblings went through, is what drives Edelgard to declare war against the Church of Seiros so Fódlan can be remade into a meritocracy and the idea of Crests as a social construct to be done away with forever. This is only from an in-universe view, as units with Crests often are very useful gameplay-wise.
    • The Crest of Maurice, also known as the Crest of the Beast, is said to bring bad luck and turn all that inherit it into horrible monsters with the passing of time. It has such a bad reputation that Maurice himself was the only ally of Nemesis who did not receive an In-Universe Historical Hero Upgrade.
    • In the only route you can recruit him on, Jeritza gains no benefits from his crest. It would allow him to rarely conserve a use of recovery magic, but he's lousy at learning Faith so it's better to stick to his default physical class. It's also the only route that won't give the matching Relic, as he was the boss in the Paralogue that gave it.
• Ted Taylor, aka "Man-Bot", from Freedom Force was blasted by a massive dose of Energy X that causes his body to constantly generate the energy in large doses. This renders him the potentially most powerful superhero in existence, but his body is wracked by constant pain by the enormous amounts of energy that build up inside his body. In addition, he has to wear a specialized containment suit powered by his own energy emissions or the build-up of energy leads to irregular and painful detonations capable of killing people and leveling buildings. The suit is also limited in its durability, which means he's never truly able to cut loose and use his full potential either. To add to all that, he inadvertently killed his brother with one of his blasts by hesitating in taking up the suit, giving him a massive Guilt Complex as well.
• Genshin Impact:
  • For Chongyun, having an abundance of Yang energy in him is great for exorcising evil spirits. Too bad it also sends him into an intense heated state that he can't remember afterwards. To make it worse, even simple things like eating spicy food, exposing himself to the sun for a long time, or wearing warm clothing can trigger this condition. And even if it's useful in his exorcism duties, Chongyun himself expresses disapproval towards his unique ability, labeling it as a cheap trick.
  • Diona sees her talent for creating amazing alcoholic drinks as this, given her goal in life is to destroy Mondstadt's wine industry and the fact that she can't make a bad-tasting drink no matter what she does. Her character story shows that she was literally blessed by a spring fairy in Springvale, making her concoctions always be "refreshing as springs of ever-melting snow". Diona never realized that her "talent" for mixing drinks was because of what happened when she was seven.
• In Goblin Noir, casting elemental spells can affect your body in differing ways. The earth mage who explains this states that depending on the strength and complexity of the spell, it could be something as minor as a mole turning into a pebble or as major as having his soul trapped inside a pile of rock for eternity or even worse. (Willing to risk an explosion into a pile of gravel that not even your soul can survive, anyone?)
• In God Hand, the main character Gene loses his right arm while saving Olivia's life, and is rewarded with having his arm replaced by the God Hand, a severed arm of a legendary fighter that grants Gene superhuman fighting skills. Unfortunately for him, the God Hand is extremely desirable to the villains, and Olivia has a bad habit of constantly sending Gene out to do her dirty work.
• God of War (PS4): The Stranger, also known as Baldur, was blessed by his mother Freya to be invulnerable to any physical or magical threat. He can technically be hurt, but any damage he takes heals near-instantly and he can't feel pain anyway, which makes him nearly invincible. The 'suck' part comes from the fact that the blessing also rendered him unable to feel anything. He is extremely bitter about the loss of his senses to the point that he considers his condition a Fate Worse than Death and he's hellbent on making his mother suffer for making him like this.
• Golden Sun:
  • At the end of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the Golden Sun event grants vast power increases to present Adepts, heals the dying Adepts present, and slows aging. Kraden, who was neither Adept nor dying, gets extremely slowed aging to the point of being immortal. Kraden was, at the time, over seventy. Nearly everybody who encounters Kraden in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, thirty years later, comments first on the fact that he isn't dead yet, and then on how much it must suck to live forever as a feeble old man.
  • Sveta from Dark Dawn has decidedly mixed feelings about being a badass psychic werewolf princess of Morgal, given that it comes with Fantastic Racism, unwanted telepathy, and being personally responsible for a new-minted nation of bloodthirsty revolutionaries.
• Guilty Gear:
  • Zato-One was given a demonic entity that made him very powerful and granted him control of shadows. However, the process blinded him, the entity (now calling itself Eddie) gradually begins to take over his mind, and Zato finds that Eddie is killing him (and succeeded at the end of Guilty Gear X, taking over his former host's corpse).
  • Millia Rage is starting to have the same problems with her own power granted by the spell Angra, since her magical hair has also become sentient due to all the fighting she's had to live through.
• The titular spear in Gungnir. It's essentially a Fantastic Nuke and can summon beings known as War Gods to turn the tide in battle. However, it's only given to a successor who has the Stigmata, which is a mark that seems to be detested, the War Gods are indiscriminate about who they hit on the battlefield, meaning the tide may be turned against you^note unless certain conditions (which are not given, let alone told that any conditions exist) are met, and Gungnir is said to bring destruction to the wielder.
• Brandon "Beyond the Grave" Heat, the protagonist of Gungrave. The necrolization process bestowed him with vast strength and agility, as well as the ability to regenerate from most wounds almost instantaneously. And he has not lost any of the skills with firearms he learned while alive. However, necrolization has completely ruined his memories, leaving them fragmented "snippets", and he has lost a great deal of his ability to feel emotion. And because his body is not much more than a reanimated corpse (albeit a powerful one), his whole body needs fresh blood periodically. In the game continuity, Mika uses her own blood to maintain Grave's body, as she and Grave share the same blood type. The strain of having to keep Grave sustained has weakened Mika and made her anemic. The cost of having to meticulously preserve his body means having to stay sealed in a hibernation state for long periods of time, only to be brought out so he can blow something up.
• Fiona of Haunting Ground was born with vast amounts of Azoth in her body. This primordial life essence is very powerful, and allows those who utilize it in alchemy to become immortal and create powerful artifacts. It's also the reason she is abducted, and why her stalkers are out to get her by any means necessary, since she doesn't need to be alive for them to take that Azoth from her.
• Like most card games, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has its fair share of powerful cards with large downsides.
  • Warlock as a class has the most examples, with cards like Flame Imp, Soulfire, Pit Lord, Shadowflame, and Succubus being very over-statted for their cost, but require losing health, sacrificing minions, or discarding cards in order to be played. Some of the more unique ones are Anima Golem, which is a 5 mana 9/9 that dies if it's your only minion, and Wrathguard, which is a 2 mana 4/3 that causes your hero to take damage every time it's hurt.
  • Millhouse Manastorm, while not exactly intended as a serious card, fits the bill. He's a ridiculously over-statted 2 mana 4/4, with the downside of making all your opponent's spells free for 1 turn. With a lucky hand, this will could let your opponent OTK you. Even with an average hand, they'll usually be able to clear Millhouse, play buffs or card draws or other beneficial effects, and still play the rest of their turn as normal.
  • Many consider Majordomo Executus to be the worst card in the game for this reason. His Deathrattle effect transforms your Hero into Ragnaros the Firelord, who has the incredible Hero Power of dealing 8 damage to a random enemy for only 2 mana. The issue is that Rag only has eight health total with no way to gain more (outside of armor-granted spells and the rare interaction with Alexstraza), rendering you basically into a One Hitpoint Wonder. And since it's bound to a Deathrattle on a card that isn't all that tough, it easily allows your opponent to kill you before you can prepare.
  • If Majordomo isn't the worst card, then it's certainly Cursed Blade. Cursed Blade is a solid 2/3 weapon for 1 mana. However, it has the unbelievable downside of causing your hero to take double damage while it's equipped. Not just during your turn, the entire time! That makes it hard to even gain value out of the card's stats, since attacking anything but the weakest minion suddenly results in taking massive damage. Not to mention, once it passes to your opponent, it's free rein for them to deal huge burst to your face. And its three durability is just another a downside: that means without a replacement weapon, you're stuck with Cursed Blade for at least 3 turns.
  • In the Whispers of the Old Gods set, several "corrupted" versions of popular cards were released, with new, interesting, and often backwards effects. Although, a few cases were simple stat changes. Naturally, this trope is played with in Twisted Worgen's flavour text.
    Sometimes the Old Gods' corruptions gives you power untold, sometimes you get +1 Attack. We can’t all be winners in the Eldritch lottery.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic, magic immunity tends to be this. On the one hand, the opponents can't debuff or damage your magic immune units with spells. On the other hand, you can't buff, heal or revive your magic immune units with spells either. The worst part is that most magic immune units tend to be powerful and expensive high-tier units you really want to keep alive as much as possible. On the other other hand, they also can't be harmed by the Armageddon spell...
• Jak and Daxter: Poor Daxter. While being an ottsel turns out to be quite useful throughout the course of the series, he's still got to deal with being short, hairy and itching in strange places. Although when given the chance to become human again, he settles for a pair of pants instead. Being one of the Precursors is worth it.
• In Kid Icarus, Pit is an angel, and has many of the powers one would expect of an angel except for flight. In Kid Icarus: Uprising, Palutena grants Pit the ability to fly with her power and guidance, but the power can only be used for five minutes at a time, after which point Pit's wings would burn off.
• Kingdom Hearts: Having a Keyblade sounds absolutely awesome on paper. Be able to unlock or lock any door, gain superhuman physical attributes, perform functional magic. There's a lot you can do with a Keyblade. It's too good to be true up until you realize that having one basically means you're doomed to be hunted by the Heartless forever meaning it's basically impossible to live a normal life.
• As revealed in the 2009 Crimbo holiday in Kingdom of Loathing, whoever "runs" the holiday (normally Uncle Crimbo, but that year's Monarch was Don Crimbo) is destined "to give away everything and receive nothing.". This allowed the players to convince Don Crimbo to give up his ownership of the holiday and return to his other businesses, of which his acquisition of Crimbo was simply one.
• Kirby's Return to Dream Land: The Master Crown, the hidden treasure of Halcandra guarded by the four-headed dragon Landia, promises limitless power to whoever wears it. But once someone puts it on, the crown sets right to work on its true purpose — filling its wearer's heart with darkness and hatred, so that it can take their body for itself and eat their souls. In the end, the Master Crown exists only to corrupt people so absolutely that they become nothing more than a puppet for it to channel its omnicidal desires through.
• Klonoa is a Dream Traveller. His job allows him to travel to fantastical worlds, going on adventures and making friends along the way. This sounds wonderful until you realise that he has no license to stay in or go back to any world he visits — all goodbyes are final — and it's not even clear if he retains any memories of the worlds he visits either, as he never once mentions Huepow or the events of Door to Phantomile in any subsequent games. Klonoa is not a happy character.
• In both Left 4 Dead games, the Survivors are all immune to the Green Flu that has been putting nearly every human they encounter into zombie-like states. From all the story currently released, this seems to just be by luck of the draw that their immune systems can hold it off. Sounds nice until you realize that those infected appear to be in a rabies-like rage, are able to tell that the survivors aren't infected, and the survivors aren't immune to acid burns, strangulation, being beaten to death... In one of the tie-in comics, it's revealed that they're actually carriers. Though they don't get turned into zombies, they are still infected and can spread the infection just by being near someone.
• Legacy of Kain:
  • Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver introduces the titular sword, which has both a material and immaterial form. Being able to cut people so hard their soul gets hurt may sound like a good deal at first, but the thing will start absorbing the wielder's own life energy if it doesn't get what it wants, and it having a mind of its own mean the wielder doesn't even get a choice as to whether he wants it or not. It essentially traps them in a constant cycle of finding more people to murder to keep the weapon satiated, lest they end up eaten alive by their own weapon.
  • The protagonist of the Soul Reaver series is also a good candidate, seeing as he is blessed with a pair of wings only for them to be torn off and his body tossed into a pit where he gets to suffer eternal anguish for almost all of eternity, until an elder god pulls him out and makes him a slave, where he is once again blessed with suck — being able to shift through dimensions and making him practically immortal so long as he keeps feeding on souls. The suck part being that he also gets to be stuck in a permanently rotting carcass without a lower jaw that hates itself and absolutely everyone around it. He gets it even worse since he is destined to become the spirit inhabiting the Soul Reaver.
• Link, from The Legend of Zelda can be considered as such in the grand scheme of things. Due to Demise's cursing both him and Zelda at the end of Skyward Sword, the three of them are destined to be reincarnated through multiple timelines as the wielders of the Triforce. Link still manages to end up with the short end of the stick since, as the chosen of the Triforce of Courage, unlike the other two, he has to repeatly earn his power through trials again and again, with each new reincarnation.
• In Life Is Strange 2, Daniel's telekinesis might sound cool at first, but it seems to be less of a helpful tool and more of a hindrance. For one, he can't really use this power in a meaningful way because he has to keep it a secret, or else risk putting a target on his back. The powers are also alarmingly strong, meaning he can quite easily hurt others without meaning to. Especially if he loses control of his temper.
• Love of Magic:
  • Being a werecreature. Superspeed, superstrength, regeneration, and the ability to transform and become even better at all of those...and a lifespan in the 30s because your body wears out too fast.
  • This is Owyn's opinion of his situation.
    Owyn: And as long as I'm useful, the Voices will keep me around. But I'm a tool. You keep a wrench around, in case you need it. But if you need to jam it into the gears to save your kid, you don't hesitate. Even though it might be rough on the wrench.
• In Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Alrevis, there is a powerful Mana aligned with the element of Light. Someone is desperate to pact with this Mana. After they did make a pact, the Mana makes it his job to publicly humiliate his "owner", whenever the Mana is bored and in need of entertainment, which is very often. The Mana even admits it to being his hobby. Simply put, bonding with the Mana of Light cements the poor fool into becoming The Comically Serious and Chew Toy status of the game.
• Mass Effect:
  • Biotics are people born with latent telekinetic abilities. However, in order to be born with these abilities, their mother must be exposed to potentially lethal doses of Element Zero while pregnant, but that only has a ten percent chance of inducing biotics in humans, thirty percent of the time they get brain tumors that kill them before their third birthday. Then, the real problems begin. In order for the abilities to be anything but useless, Biotics must be outfitted with Biotic Implants which allow them to focus and control their abilities. Modern ones are fine, but earlier models could cause a range of side effects including migraines, insomnia, and insanity. In the early days of the Alliance, many biotics were drafted into a special military program, forcing them to go through Training from Hell to get the best use out of their powers. Kaidan will tell you about it if you ask him.
  • We also have the drell, a race of reptilian-humanoids who can remember every moment of their life with perfect clarity (except for their birth due to it being so traumatic). They are able to feel sensations of past memories including kisses and other intimate moments, but also any physical or emotional pain. There is also a risk of Solipsism, trapping a drell in a certain memory, this can include horrific experiences including gunshot wounds or torture. As Thane puts it, "Remembering times I've taken bullets is... unpleasant"
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code:
  • Pucci Lavmin has the Forensic Forte of Audial Aptitude, allowing her to hear at least 500 meters away from her current location. This excellent hearing has unfortunately been to her detriment, as her ability to sense has increased tenfold and she feels a separation from her physical and spiritual sense of self, which has an effect on her focus on everything around her.
  • Vivia Twilight is an apathetic, slothful detective who is an incredibly Lazy Bum and is willfully distant from the idea of seeking the truth. This is due to his Forensic Forte, as he has the ability to project his body into a ghost form and defy the laws of physics, a most definitely powerful ability for a detective. Unfortunately, this also comes at the expense of being able to see how people act when no one is around to see them, which ends up driving him to apathy and changing him into a Death Seeker who sees death as a necessary circumstance in life.
  • The homunculi of Kanai Ward all have Resurrective Immortality, allowing them to live forever and revive whenever they die. Unfortunately, for everyone except Makoto Kagutsuchi, who is a perfect homunculus, this also comes at the expense of their intelligence, turning them into mindless zombies who are drawn to eating human flesh like predators.
• Metal Gear:
  • In Metal Gear Solid, we get Psycho Mantis. He outright states in his death speech that as a kid, he was unable to shut off his powerful telepathic ability (learning that his father hated him, ouch), and that looking too deep in too many minds of Serial Killers drove him off the deep end. Apparently, he still can't completely shut off his Telepathy, since he asks for his mask back to block the voices out, and complains about "How everyone thinks of only one thing".
  • Fortune from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty lost her father and her husband in quick succession, and the stress caused her to miscarry her unborn child. She was suicidal, but discovered she could not die: no matter how improbable, events conspired to keep her alive, cursing her with good luck. Explosives near her are duds, and bullets miss. At first, this ability came from a device on her that she didn't know about, and a shot actually hits its mark once Ocelot removes it, but right before she dies, she invokes the power naturally to save the Snakes and Raiden from Ocelot's Metal Gear RAY assault.
• Metroid:
  • Samus Aran. Found and raised by Precursors, she is able to manufacture by herself a personal gunship which can travel through the galaxy and has some impressive firepower, can hack through any computer, and is such a badass that the most ruthless, militaristic, intelligent race of the universe crap their pants when she is in the same solar system. On the other hand, she has to clean up the mess produced by the Chozo, will probably have to fight in a galaxy-wide conflict until her death, and any planet she sets foot on tends to explode.
  • Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has Hypermode, a Limit Break in which Samus becomes very powerful and invincible. But, it involves Phazon, so excess use of it will cause Samus to get slowly corrupted, and if corrupted far enough she will become terminally corrupted, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over.
• Pokey (Porky), the Big Bad of Mother 3, has a device known as the "Absolutely Safe Capsule" which he enters after being defeated by the heroes. The machine works exactly as promised; he can't be harmed within it. He can't leave, either, since the capsule keeps him absolutely safe and he wouldn't be safe anymore if he left. The capsule also has no way for anyone on the inside to interact with the outside world, because that would require leaving a flaw in its absolute defenses. And since he can never die as a side effect of repeatedly time travelling, he's destined to spend the rest of eternity in a small box only slightly bigger then himself.
• In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, the Knight-Captain is afflicted by a curse that requires him/her to periodically consume spirits or die. Whether this is Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck depends on how you approach it. An evil character who sees it as a blessing and eats spirits willy-nilly will find that the more souls they eat, the faster they die. However, if the KC approaches the curse with practical restraint (pushing one into good-aligned, especially since taking that approach can net you a power that allows you to quench your soul thirst on undead, of which there's no shortage), s/he can get most of the benefits with few of the side effects.
• NieR:
  • Emil gains tremendous magical powers, at the cost of his appearance; it turns him into a floating skeleton with a permanent Slasher Smile stuck on his face. Before that, his eyes could petrify anything he looked at... but he had no control over it. He ended up wearing a blindfold everywhere.
  • Also, the Shadowlord, a.k.a. gestalt/shade Nier. He happened to have, for reasons unknown, the intrinsic ability to be able to stay stable in gestalt form, and provide maso to keep other gestalts/shades stable too. This came at the long term cost of his having this harvested from him consistently for thousands of years, solely because of the carrot dangled of curing his sister, who turns out to be incurable.
• Oswald the Shadow Knight from Odin Sphere is the wielder of the Belderiever, an extremely powerful magic sword that gains power from killing and allows him access to a near-unstoppable shadow form. Unfortunately, the sword is cursed and the shadow knight power-up came from having Oswald's life and soul sold to the Queen of the Dead (and to make matters worse, Oswald himself didn't get any say in the matter; his foster father did it to him without his consent). Not only is he hated by every living being on the planet and plagued by weakness as the dead pull on his soul; he cannot let the Belderiever out of sight or the shinigami will hunt him down, kill him and drag his soul to the underworld where he'll be the Queen of the Dead's plaything for all eternity.
• Overwatch:
  • Tracer is desynchronized from the flow of time, and needs to wear a Chronal Accelerator in order to keep her anchored. On the plus side, it gives her some nifty time manipulation powers. On the downside, if she's ever separated from the accelerator, she flickers out in quite a horrific way.
  • Reaper can teleport, break himself into an intangible mist, and regenerate From a Single Cell. Unfortunately, a side effect of his powers is that his body is constantly decomposing and reforming, meaning he lives in constant agony. That, and whatever is under that mask is apparently disturbing.
  • Genji used to view his condition like this. After being fatally wounded, he was rebuilt into a Cyber Ninja by Overwatch. As a cyborg, Genji couldn't eat and had trouble connecting with both people and Omnics. The dualility of his nature drove him to depression, and it took years of study with the monk Zenyatta before he came to terms with who he is.
  • Gameplaywise, D.Va's signature ability to eject from her MEKA suit rather than die and run around on foot can get exploited by the enemy team. Sometimes it's just better to die. "Bullying Baby D.Va" is a common tactic to neither kill her nor allow her to re-mech, stalling her out and making her unavailable to rejoin her team at full strength for the next fight.
• Persona:
  • In Persona 3, to gain and control an all-powerful shadow-fighting Persona, you must have the "potential", a trait only a few are born with. If you don't, it can be artificially induced, but you have to take experimental suppressants with deadly side effects, and if you ever forget to take them, your own Persona will try to kill you or anybody around you. There is also a slim possibility to lose control of a Persona even if the ability awakens naturally. The poor guy with the worst of it is Shinjiro Aragaki. He leaves the group out the safety of his friends (and they still want him back anyway out of worry), forced to make shady deals with an assassination group to obtain above deadly suppressants because he learned the hard way what happens when a Persona goes berserk by accidentally killing an innocent woman, you know who's blessed with suck. The son of said victim wants him dead.
  • The PSP port/remake of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (Which wasn't localised) reveals in the newly added Tatsuya scenario another possible outcome to giving someone artificially given a Persona: their psyche can get fractured, and they can turn into demons. Certain Personas can be this depending on their skills. Some Personas only sport physical attacks which deplete health (which draws you closer to Critical Existence Failure), or Personas who only sport status spells, since being offensive and tactical is usually required by the persona you have equipped. And if you'd guessed, spells are element based, and shadows sport elemental weaknesses.
• Planescape: Torment: The main character can rise up from the dead every time he is killed (which is even used in a few quests to your advantage), but loses his memory of his previous life (except for the incarnation you control, but that's because of external Applied Phlebotinum), and every time he comes back from the dead, someone else dies in his place. Oh, and he also brings tormented souls to him, which are caught in a cycle of tragedy. The fact he did this to correct something he did which is causing the Multiverse to slowly die means the attempt has backfired spectacularly.
• In later Pokémon games, certain natural abilities can function this way.
  • For instance, Klutz is an ability which doesn't prevent the Pokémon from holding an item, but rather from using it. This means that they can't pump up their attacks with stat-raising items. On the other hand, negative-effect items like Toxic Orbs and Iron Balls also don't affect them, and the Pokémon with Klutz can learn moves that make good use of those items. This ability is ineffective around Mega Stones as well, which provides those inadequately equipped to utilize Klutz another way out.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon makes it so that each Pokémon has all of its possible abilities simultaneously — good and bad — AND makes several once-decent abilities worse. So now, Klutzy Pokémon can't hold any items, even the few they could before...Run Away makes a low-HP Pokémon panic and go into an uncontrollable retreat...and so on and so forth.
  • Lucario (and its pre-evolution Riolu). In the main games, it either gained speed when it flinched (the Steadfast ability) or was immune to flinching (the Inner Focus ability). In the second pair of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, Steadfast is, outside of very specific situations, completely nullified by Inner Focus.
  • Non-ability wise, we have Absol. Absol have the extraordinary ability to sense impending natural disasters, and naturally try to warn humans who are in danger. Humans mistakenly end up thinking that Absol cause the disasters and hunt them down for it.
  • Psyduck needs to have a painful headache to even use its powers.
  • Skitty and Delcatty can have an ability called Normalize. This ability turns all of its moves into Normal-type moves. While it gets an attack bonus for being the same type and it is able to use Thunder Wave to paralyze Ground-types (Which are normally immune to Electric moves), this means that it is unable to counter things that Normal-types are weak to, can't cause significant damage to rock- or steel-types and it cannot touch Ghost-types at all.
  • Darkrai is also blessed with suck, as its Bad Dreams ability automatically does damage to any Pokémon who is sleeping. In some forms of Pokémon media, this is portrayed as a curse which has caused him to be feared and unable to interact with friends.
  • Then of course there are "abilities" like Truant (only able to attack every other turn), Slow Start (Attack and Speed are halved for the first 5 turns) and Defeatist (Attack stats are halved if HP drops to 50% or less) which only serve to limit Pokémon that would otherwise be Game Breakers, except for Durant, which can instead use Entrainment to give its horrible ability to the opponent.
  • For certain Pokémon designed to fill a niche, their typing can often screw them over. For instance, Avalugg is designed to be a physically oriented Stone Wall/Mighty Glacier, with its highest stat being Defense... unfortunately, it's an Ice type, one of the worst defensive types due to it having a resistance only to itself, no immunities and four weaknesses, limiting its usefulness. It was even worse in the years when whether a move was physical or special depended on its type and not the move itself. One example is poor Absol, who has a high Attack stat, but couldn't use it with STAB in Gen III due to all Dark type moves back then being Special in nature.
  • In Generation II, gender was determined by the individual value (IV) of a Pokémon's Attack stat, with the greater range (8-15 in species with a 50-50 gender ratio) going to males and the lower range always going to females. This was also tied to the gender ratio of a Pokémon's species, meaning that females of a species with a seven-to-one ratio of being male could only have a value of 0 or 1. So if you got a unique female Eevee or starter Pokémon you could breed its species more easily, but its physical attacks would always be weaker. IVs also determined whether or not a Pokémon would be "shiny" (having a unique color). Because of the specific combination that was required, shiny Pokémon could never have particularly great IVs (besides Attack if you were really lucky); Defense, Speed and Special stats would be no greater than 10, and due to how IVs were calculated, the value for HP would only be 0 or 8.
• In Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?, Etna issues the titular Prinny a special scarf that stops him from exploding like Prinnies are known to do when tossed or handled recklessly — and then demonstrates it by kicking him into a wall. Sounds neat, right? Then she drops this little beauty:
  Etna: You've got until tomorrow morning. Understand? If you don't bring me the Ultra Dessert by then, well... you'll be begging me to let you explode! Capiche!?
• In Robopon 2, Mushroom effects in the second game basically fall into this. There are three different mushroom colors, and each one has a specific set of spirits that can be summoned from it. Since the spirits are chosen at random, one may get the spirit that makes stuff cheaper at shops... or the spirit that throws stuff out of your inventory for no reason.
• Runescape:
  • Zanik is truly Blessed with Suck — she's a Dorgeshuun goblin, a tribe that fled beneath the earth when their god, Bandos, ordered them to fight a war they couldn't possibly win for fun. Zanik is the Chosen Commander of a prophecy, who will lead goblins to victory all over the world. However, the Dorgeshuun have become learned pacifists, so to fulfill the prophecy, Zanik would effectively get her tribe and thousands of other goblins killed. The entire quest 'The Chosen Commander' involves the player helping Zanik to escape this destiny, and after the two defeat Bandos, Zanik's friend Juna, a giant snake who is a Guardian of Guthix (god of balance), ends their friendship because of Zanik's defiance of her destiny (Juna says that since Bandos brought the goblins to Runescape, they were his, so Zanik should have gone along with him), which makes Juna a really nice "friend". Though to her credit, Juna does later acknowledge her way of thinking was wrong and wishes to apologize to Zanik.
  • The entire race of Mahjarrat have immortality and incredible sorcerous powers but they are forced to fight among themselves eternally as their immortality comes from absorbing the life force of the weakest among them. Those who have gotten sick of the violence have thus far all been consumed.
  • In the quest "The World Wakes", the player is granted semi-divine power as the "World Guardian", along with the job of preventing gods from killing or abusing the mortals of Gielinor, such as starting a new God War. The good news? No god's power can affect you directly unless you grant them permission ("Fate of the Gods"), and your special fate gives you Resurrective Immortality. The bad news? Sliske, a mortal Mahjarrat, started a new God War anyway by distracting you ("Missing Presumed Death"), you're still capable of bad decisions and misplaced trust, your friends and loved ones are fair targets, Sliske could still kill you and enslave your soul to prevent your resurrection ("Kindred Spirits"), and your immunity to gods can be outpowered by Elder Gods like Jas ("Sliske's Endgame").
• Being able to turn everything around you to sand sounds cool, if not particularly useful. Tell that to Kyrie of Sands of Destruction. He just wants to be normal and doesn't enjoy the fact that his Power Incontinence makes him a danger to the entire world, including his True Companions and especially his Love Interest.
• Silent Hill has the horrific example of Alessa. She was born with vaguely-defined psychic powers that included a link to the supernatural and "doing things" with her mind. As a result, she was tormented and abused by her peers and her mother, burnt alive as part of some unexplained ritual at the age of seven, then spent the next seven years in unending agony from burns that wouldn't heal, all for the purpose of summoning a being that would plunge the world into darkness. Even when she finally dies, she's merely reincarnated into another body so the ritual can be completed, with the implication that this will continue forever.
• Soul Series: In Soulcalibur III, Zasalamel discovered the secrets of Reincarnation, effectively making himself immortal as he is simply reborn with his past memories and personality intact every time he dies. However, reincarnating causes his soul to go through an incredibly painful and agonizing process, and he quickly decided living forever wasn't worth putting up with that over and over again. He now seeks the combined power of Soul Calibur and Soul Edge in the hope that it can kill him for good (he previously tried just getting Soul Edge, but this wasn't enough). Ultimately ends up averted in Soulcalibur IV when, during one of his reincarnations, he glimpses a vision of the modern day, and is so amazed by it that he decides he wants to keep living after all so that he can see it in person. We then see him in modern-day New York as a big-shot CEO.
• In Spandex Force 2: Superhero U, the elderly Infinitorax Supreme's only superpower is immortality. When the player character asks what else he can do, he replies that he can bite really hard.
• Ghosts in StarCraft. If you have those amazing Telepathy and Mind over Matter, chances are that you will end up in Ghost Academy and be subjected to brutal training regimes that may even cost your life, ruthless indoctrination, and a memory wipe so that you become a mindless walking weapon.
• Stellaris: The "Life-Seeded" origin for star empires gives you a large (size 30) Gaia world with special planetary features as your homeworld, but sets your primary species so they can only colonize Gaia worlds, the rarest type in the game. Though you can still claim systems and build space stations as normal, you'll probably be stuck with your one home planet until the mid-game when Terraforming technologies allow you to transform planets into Gaia worlds, gene-editing techs allow you to change your primary species planetary preferences, or you can set up some immigration treaties with other empires to get other populations to colonize worlds for you. Don't be surprised if your rivals have established colonies on about ten or twelve planets by that point, giving them a large population and production advantage over you.
• Suikoden: Possessing a True Rune stops the character from aging any further and comes with a whole host of really spiffy abilities besides. Sounds great...but True Runes also seem to possess a will of their own, and tend to "force" their bearers into conflict. On top of that, there are many cases where even using (or unlocking) a True Rune's full power causes an additional nasty side-effect. Some examples:
  • In Suikoden IV, the Rune of Punishment can be used to dismantle enemy fleets... but it drags its bearer a step closer to death each time it's used in this way. It's implied that the Rune itself orchestrates events around the bearer, so that they're forced to use its power. Mostly in the form of making huge armies or powerful monsters attack the home of the bearer and easily threatening to kill everyone the bearer knows and loves. It only stops doing this if it goes into its "Forgiveness phase" (as the Rune of Punishment governs both punishment AND forgiveness), but this is apparently an exceedingly rare event.
  • The Rune of Life and Death in Suikoden earns its name by causing people close to the wearer to die and then eats their souls. On the plus side, the Soul Eater allows its user more powerful abilities every time it does so.
  • Suikoden V's Sun Rune causes mental instability along with wielder-willed climate change. This is inherent trait of the Rune, but it can be controlled by possessing the Dawn and Twilight Runes. Consequently, possessing all three runes mitigates the side effects of bearing the Sun Rune. Too bad that the Dawn Rune had been stolen before the start of the game...
  • The Moon Rune turns its bearer into a vampire. It takes a few years to get their bloodthirsty instincts under control, by which point they'll more than likely have killed a lot of people.
  • The Rune of Beginning is usually split into its two component halves, the Bright Shield and Black Sword Runes, which are usually borne by two close friends. The two Runes will compel their bearers to put them back together again by slowly draining their lives. To be merged back into the Rune of Beginning, the bearer of one must kill the bearer of the other and take their Rune. That's right, the Rune of Beginning will force its bearer to kill their own best friend. Also, unlike the only other known "split" True Rune (the Gate Rune whose Front and Back halves carry identical powers), the Bright Shield and Black Sword Runes don't grant immortality unless they're joined together as the Rune of Beginning in a single host.
  • Remember Luca Blight? It's very subtly implied that one of the reasons he was so Ax-Crazy was because of the influence of the Beast Rune, which governs over "passion and bestial rage". It eats people to power itself.
  • The elemental Runes actively try to cause their bearer to lose control of them. We don't know what happens with the other four, but when this happened with the True Fire Rune, it caused a massive explosion that wiped out both armies in the conflict it was being used in at the time and continued to burn for seven days and seven nights. And True Water froze the entire area of Sindar Ruin when it just lost control for a little bit. We know that Luc gets some fun post-apocalyptic images/messages from his rune — and these are the ones that lack well documented curses!
  • The Night Rune currently takes the form of a talking sword. It's also rather arrogant and mouthy, and is prone to attacking its own wielder over real or imagined slights.
  • The King of the Sindar is the current bearer of the Rune of Change. As a result, the entire race is incapable of settling in one location for very long.
  • Conversely, The Circle Rune is in the hands of the Holy Harmonian Empire's High Priest Hikusaak has the powers of order and stagnation. Yeah, they've had centuries of peace and prosperity, but a decent chunk of their human population are little more than slaves, and the non-humans should be so lucky. Harmonia goes even further with this trope, given its tendency to revert to Artificial Human creation to maintain power. This is considered less than successful given that Luc is willing to blow up a continent to end the rune's hold of humanity.
  • Finally, proof you don't even need a True Rune to fit this trope in the game: Thomas. Given that he was a bastard child given hold of a castle to keep him out of the way after his mother's death, you'd think that he'd have some well-deserved angst.
• Although it's a side-story, Suikoden Tierkreis gives us Manaril, the pre-teen princess of the Magedom of Janam. She is blessed by the chronicles to be a "reader", which allows her to transcribe the text of Chronicles. This power is capable of making great magical (mage arts) or technological (developing firearms) advances, but the strain of reading is so great that a reader typically dies within a few years of doing it. She is also forced to do this by her own mother. Fortunately, the mother allows Manaril to leave following a coup, but still, damn, that girl has it rough.
• One of the reasons why Pichu is placed at the very bottom of the tier list in Super Smash Bros. Melee is that most of his electrical attacks damage himself as well as their targets. Combining this with the fact that he's one of the lightest characters in the roster makes him a very easy target to smash from the ring.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Eternia: Since she is descended from Shizel, Meredy possesses the power of Nereid, the god of the void. This makes it so she can resonate with Reid, identifying him as The Chosen One, but also means she can be possessed by Nereid, an Omnicidal Maniac.
  • Tales of Symphonia Colette's powers as the Chosen gives her pretty hard light wings and a cadre of powerful and useful Angelic Attacks. However, she loses some aspect of her humanity every time she gains another power, including the ability to taste, sleep, and eventually her voice. She eventually loses her soul, but luckily, she loses the bad side of this without having to lose the cool angel powers.
  • She also later suffers from an extremely rare illness related to her powers which starts turning her body into crystal. Her powers remain the same, but being the type of person she is, she never tells anyone about it until it gets too big to hide anymore. A substantial portion of the game is dedicated to you trying to cure her.
  • Tales of Legendia: Shirley is The Chosen One of Nerifes, the water god. This leads to Shirley constantly getting kidnapped, her mind getting broken by both factions as both try to use her for nefarious purposes, and her possession by the water god and the near destruction of the world at her hands.
  • In Tales of the Abyss, Jade Curtiss's extreme intelligence and superior control over fonic artes allows him to apply a Dangerous Forbidden Technique to his eyes as a child which immensely increases his power, followed by inventing an entirely new branch of fonic artes a few years later. Of course, he gets even more powerful as he gets older, needing to wear a Power Limiter over his eyes to keep from overloading with fonons to the point where he literally explodes. And that new branch of fonic artes, that can duplicate anything perfectly? Turns out replicated humans don't have the original's memories, and that's not even getting into the imperfect copies and Clone Degeneration. Figuring this out cost him ten years of wasted effort during which he committed numerous acts of extreme moral ambiguity. Oh, and even after he stopped using those techniques himself, that same branch of artes nearly caused The End of the World as We Know It some dozen years after that. Meanwhile, Jade may still be brilliant, but he seems totally incapable of interacting normally with other people, and can hardly identify, much less express, affection for others even when he feels it.
  • Luke fon Fabre was born with the ability to cause hyperresonances on his own, which makes him a borderline Reality Warper. However, hyperresonance is so destructive and difficult to control that it's almost useless in battle because he risks blowing everything up, including himself. His status as The Chosen One also results in the original Luke being kidnapped and replaced with a replica, and the replica ("our" Luke) being manipulated into destroying a city of ten thousand people.
• Since the world of Touhou Project overflows with people with special powers, this trope tends to pop up a little bit here and there:
  • Satori Komeiji, and the satori race as a whole, has the power to compulsively read people's hearts and minds out loud. For the most part, this means that she knows exactly what people think about having their innermost thoughts and feelings read, how much they hate her for reading their minds and how badly they want to punch her in the face because of it. Her sister, Koishi, ended up closing her heart's Third Eye just so she could block out these thoughts and feelings, effectively opting to live as an Empty Shell rather than putting up with all that contempt. It's also implied that Satori and Koishi are the Last of Their Kind because the satori, being universally hated and feared by humans and youkai alike, have been systematically hunted to extinction because of their power.
  • Toyosatomimi no Miko has the power to listen to ten voices at once. Heart Is an Awesome Power, so what this means is that she can listen to the voices of the ten desires that make up a human's psyche, effectively making her able to know people better than they know themselves. Which comes in really handy since she is an aspiring Messiah Figure. However, she cannot turn this power off so her supernatural hearing subjects her to some pretty bad Sensory Overload. She deals with this by wearing earmuffs which, while they do allow her ears some much needed reprive, unfortunately also nullifies her power.
  • Sagume Kishin has the power to reverse the course of any situation by speaking about it. This power is active all the time and is furthermore beyond her control. Primarily because it's not so much her power as it is the universe itself having decided to turn everything she says into lies... On one hand, this is a Story-Breaker Power that allows her to resolve any situation by just talking about it. On the other hand, she is unable to affect in which way the situations are resolved, and they may just become even worse. Consequently, Sagume speaks very little, covers her mouth with a hand at all times and has to carefully think through what she wants to say, how she should formulate it, as well as the possible risks and consequences of speaking, before she opens her mouth.
  • One of the most infamous examples is Rumia, who has the ability to create darkness around herself, but lacks the Required Secondary Powers to see through it. She seems to have at least better night vision than normal, so she's still better off in her darkness than a regular human, but not good enough to avoid crashing into things while flying with her field of darkness around her.
  • Shikieiki Yamaxanadu has once warned Cirno that she's starting to push the limits of power possible to achieve for a fairy. Why is that a bad thing? If she were to become strong enough to transcend her fairy nature and turn into a youkai, Cirno would also lose the Resurrective Immortality proper to fairies — and given her tendency to get in way over her head, she very much needs that immortality. And it's very much not a case of Who Wants to Live Forever? either, since fairies are permanently stuck in a childlike mentality and suffer something of a partial memory wipe on each death, ensuring they don't suffer the usual problems of immortals.
• Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children: Leton is a born Ice ESP user, which lets him create ice at will, including in some very spectacular combat applications. It also means that he needs constant intravenous injections of expensive drugs to survive, and will probably, even with the drugs, freeze his own blood and die before he reaches middle age.
• Tsukihime:
  • Shiki gains the power to "understand the concept of death" after a near death experience as a child, which allow him to destroy almost anything within knife range, bypassing a variety of forms of Nigh-Invulnerability (including reincarnation). Unfortunately, it also reduces his lifespan and health (somewhat variable depending on the route), puts increasing amounts of strain on his brain (to the point of threatening to explode the blood vessels) as he perceives harder and harder to comprehend deaths (buildings, undead, poisons...), and can't be turned off. Seeing a world that can seemingly crumble at a touch was terrifying when he first woke up with his power; if he had not been given indestructible glasses to block his eyes, he would have probably gone insane soon after. And his eyes will eventually become too powerful for even those glasses to contain...
  • Arcueid has this as well; she is easily the most powerful character in the game, able to summon a phase of the moon that will only happen 1000 years in the future into present reality. Anybody who she gets serious against will not last long. Problem: she has to use over 70% of her power to hold back her vampiric blood-lust from taking over and massacring everything.
• World of Warcraft:
  • There are a few things like this in the game, but a particularly interesting one is the case of Sir Zeliek, a paladin so strong in faith that even after a necromancer killed him and raised him as a Death Knight, he retained his own mind, will, and his paladin powers. Problem is, the necromancer does control Zeliek's body, so while most of those who became Death Knights unwillingly (itself considered a Fate Worse than Death) are obliviously Brainwashed and Crazy, he is a fully aware puppet who begs forgiveness whenever he kills a player. Taken a step further, his Light-based powers cause him extreme amounts of pain whenever he's forced to use them.
  • Being a healer in PvP can evoke this feeling as any smart opponent will aim to take you down first. And then you get blamed by your teammates for not healing them.
  • Magic has a hint of this in the backstory, as it attracted the Burning Legion (and hence most of the trouble the world has seen) to Azeroth to begin with.
• The freeware game Wrath of the Sea King has a premise built on this trope. The main character is a treasure hunter suffering from headaches so strong, they are driving him to suicide. He finds an amulet that makes him immortal — but the headaches remain, and he feels the pain of each death. Ouch. In the game itself, it translates in having unlimited lives, but the twist is, you have to die as few times as possible if you want to see the complete ending sequence.
• So you are a pure-blood High Entia from Xenoblade Chronicles 1? Well, that's cool, since unlike the other races of Bionis, you have complete mastery of ether from birth thanks to your genetics. The Bionis itself also has a liking towards you, with his very soul telling you that you are his "chosen people". You will certainly love what exactly he choose your kind for, unless you find the idea of your latent genes forcing you to devolve against your will into a Telethia, leaving you a mindless husk of a monster whose primary instincts are to follow the evil Bionis' every command while leaving you completely aware as you endanger all life including your loved ones undesirable, then you will find being a pure-blood High Entia rather uncool. The royal family is actually aware of this, which is why they instituted a policy of interbreeding with Homs to ensure that some of their people would survive if/when the time comes for them to be turned into Telethia.
• In Zero Time Dilemma, some of the characters are SHIFTers, which means they can transfer their consciousness to alternate timelines. Sounds like a nice power to have, but later in the game, it's revealed that every time they jump to an alternate timeline, their consciousness enters the body of their alternate selves. That alternate self's consciousness is then transferred back into your original body in your original timeline. Since the time where you're most likely to want to SHIFT is when you're about to die, this means that from your alternate self's point of view, they were suddenly teleported into a deadly situation with no warning. Your alternate selves also have this power, and they can use it on you, so it's only a matter of time before one of them decides to swap with you, and you find yourself suddenly stuck in a Death Trap with no warning.

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