Crutch Character / Role-Playing Game

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Series with enough Crutch Character examples for their own subpages:

• Final Fantasy
• Pokémon

Baldur's Gate

• Baldur's Gate
  • Khalid and Jaheira are encountered very early in the game, are both very close to hitting level 2 and belong to very fast-levelling classes (fighter and fighter/druid, respectively) with indispensable early-game abilities, especially given that the nearest other healer (outside a PC cleric or druid) is either a) evil (Viconia) or b) at least six maps and plenty of encounters away (Branwen). The Battle Couple will happily carry you through Nashkel and chapter one, but in the late-game their stats are slightly less than optimal (both are rather poor offensively, Khalid has bad synergy between his weapon skills and build, and Jaheira has poor armor class, low wisdom and bad access to magical weapons). Khalid may even be seen as this for a series play-through, as he's killed upon importing into Baldur's Gate 2.
  • Imoen in the first introductive chapter of Baldur's Gate II, as she leaves soon to make the story progress, only to rejoin later. Any scroll or potion she uses during the starting dungeon is wasted, since when Imoen later rejoins the party she is technically a different character file with set experience, spells and gear.
  • Yoshimo, from Baldur's Gate II. Encountered in the very first dungeon, he has excellent stats and is the game's only single-classed thief. Apart from Jan Jansen, is also the only NPC who can advance in thief skills. He comes with a plethora of powerful traps and a decent magic weapon. He is also True Neutral and fits into practically every party combination, with the only character who dislikes him being Haer'Dalis. All in all, this makes him almost indispensable. Halfway through the game he's revealed to be The Mole and is Killed Off for Real, conveniently leaving open a party slot for Imoen to fill up.

Dragon Quest

• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III: Merchants. While they don't get much passive power at character creation, their equipment selection is excellent early on, including several exclusive items that are more powerful than comparable items available for everyone else at the time. And, most importantly… Their EXP track is the fastest in the game. By far. Even faster than warriors. It's very common for merchants to be two full levels ahead of everyone, very quickly, and for a while the extra stats from this keep them competitive. They begin to run into high-end equipment issues beginning in Isis, though, and by then an extra few levels isn't quite so much of a swing. Once you get to Baramos, even in the later versions, a Merchant will be struggling to keep up.
  • Dragon Quest V:
    • In the first generation, Pankraz, the hero's father, is easily the strongest party members throughout that period of the game, though he cannot be controlled, and he is only with you in certain parts.
    • In the second generation, when you are first able to obtain monsters, the Rotten Apple is easily the strongest available, with higher stats than even the hero, but it caps at level 20 (though it it still fairly strong for a while longer).
    • A less extreme example is the Slime Knight; with solid stats, great equipment options, and decent healing, is like having a second hero... but by the end of the second generation, it has low stats compared to the Mons available in the area, and has learned all of its special skills... not to mentioned a better 'second hero' becomes available soon afterwards...
  • Dragon Quest VII: Prince Kiefer. Though a powerful fighter in his own right, unlike Hero and Maribel, he never learns any magic naturally, and permanently leaves before you reach the Shrine of Dharma.
  • Dragon Quest VIII:
    • For the Monster Arena, Potbelly, the Potty Dragon. He is available to be recruited as soon as the player gains access to the Monster Arena, having no prerequisites before he can appear and being located on the peninsula southwest of Trodain. With having HP over 500, attack approaching 200, and over 100 defense for his base stats, he is by a large margin the strongest monster you can immediately recruit at the earliest point you can gain access to the Monster Arena. He additionally has a flame breath attack that hits the entire enemy party for up to 40 damage each, which when combined with his very high base stats, allows him to crush the first three ranks of the Monster Arena. The power of his flame breath however will quickly grow obsolete as you go up in the ranks, which when combined with his non-damaging sand attack that usually fails to affect enemies, leads to him wasting a lot of turns in later ranks. Then with HP growth during the Hero's level ups that is merely decent at best, low attack growth, and low defense growth, his statistical prowess declines sharply in later ranks, while he gets surpassed by other monsters like Hackzilla and is unable to match the powerhouses you get later in the game.
    • Snap Case, the Man-Eater Chest you find near Trodain, is also one. He has pretty good base stats across the board, especially in attack, while also possessing highly valuable abilities in being able to attack twice a turn and critical hit. But with awful HP growth, and poor growth in the rest of his stats, he'll become really frail by the later ranks standards while his offensive prowess will become steadily less impressive.
    • Similar to Snap Case is Capers. His damage output and speed make him easily one of the strongest monsters you can obtain before you get a ship and he's even a strong contender afterwards, but his lack of HP paired with his damage output falling off later makes him unsuitable for higher ranks.
    • Brickman looks like he'll be this; he's one of the strongest monsters you can initially get at the point you gain access to the Monster Arena, with only the aforementioned Potbelly and Hackzilla having greater base stats. In stark contrast though to Hackzilla who has awesome growth rates alongside the hero's levelups to keep him one of the strongest monsters throughout the game, the player will notice that Brickman doesn't get any stronger at all when they level up, and that he starts lagging behind by E rank. This is subverted however when the hero's level reaches the 20s; from that point on Brickman starts "levelling up" with growths that are on par with Hackzilla's, allowing him to become viable again in the later ranks. He can additionally form the "My Three Golems" team alongside Goldman and Stoneman, where they can fuse into a super Golem named Mazin, and are capable of beating the S rank.
    • For "crutch weapons", there's the Hero's Boomerangs. They're nigh-essential in the early game, when you have just two characters against encounters of up to 8 enemies, while lacking attacks that hit multiple enemies at once. The first Boomerang and its upgraded Reinforced Boomerang additionally have comparatively high attack power for the early point of the game. But after the upgrade to the Reinforced Boomerang, the gaps between when you can get a stronger Boomerang becomes very long, and then the step up in power between upgrades isn't much. To emphasize how weak Boomerangs become by the endgame, the strongest Boomerang you get before the postgame, the Flametang Boomerang, has a paltry attack power of 63, when other weapons will have something around 100; most glaringly this is less than half the power of the Gringham Whip, a weapon that too can hit all enemies at once. Then with the Boomerang skills, the only worthwhile one you'll get is Super Throw; the second hit on Crosscutter Throw deals barely any additional damage while still costing MP to use, Power Throw is rarely worth using over just a normal attack while still costing MP, Firebird Throw and Starburst throw will deal less overall damage than a regular throw and Super Throw respectively in most cases by the time you get them, and Gigathrow deals marginally more damage than Gigaslash, while only hitting a single enemy and being completely inferior to Gigagash, the move you'll get if you 100 both Swords and Courage. Then with the Boomerang's declining attack power and the relatively weak skills, Boomerangs will be by far the Hero's weakest weapon against bosses, the hardest part of the later game.
  • Dragon Quest IX: At level 3, Ivor prevents the random monsters from killing or massively injuring the Level 1, unequipped, struggling apprentice... but level 3 also happens to be his Cap, which means he's soon outstripped.
  • Dragon Quest XI:
    • Every guest character has infinite HP, MP, and items, and enemies will still target them even though they can't be hurt. The last guest character in particular stands out for using an ability that directs all enemy damage onto them, effectively making the entire party immortal.
    • The Luminary himself is one in the beginning of the post-game scenario. Due to traveling back in time, he'll temporarily outlevel the rest of the party by however much you leveled him up in Act 2.

The Elder Scrolls

Examples found in The Elder Scrolls series.

• In Morrowind, a starting character with a high enough Conjuration skill will get the spell "Summon Ancestral Ghost" for free. It's a fairly weak summon which doesn't deal much damage, but as a ghost, it can only be harmed by weapons of Silver quality or higher. Most low-level NPC enemies won't be able to touch it, allowing you to use it as an effective shield to draw aggro while you take out the enemies with other means. Once you start facing higher level enemies as well as those who use magic, the Ancestor Ghost falls well behind the power curve.
• In Oblivion, similar to Morrowind, a starting character with Conjuration as a Major Skill will get the spell "Summon Skeleton" for free. While it doesn't come with the low-end weapon immunity of a ghost, it still makes for an effective "meat shield" (irony of that statement notwithstanding) to draw aggro away from your (likely Squishy Wizard) starting character. It is also useful for repeatedly casting in order to level up your Conjuration skill, allowing you to use more powerful summons once you gain access. The Skeleton will quickly fall by the wayside after your first couple of levels once you do get better summon spells.
• Skyrim:
  • The game allows you to make your main character into one: The Khajiit race has claws which give them a sizable hand-to-hand damage bonus that make mincemeat out of any enemy you'll encounter in the early game. They are stronger than any sword available at low levels and strike quite quickly as well. However, they have two drawbacks: Firstly, there are very few ways to upgrade their damage with more gear, with only a particular set of gloves found during a particular quest providing any boost at all. Secondly, unlike previous games in the series, there is no Unarmed skill. Thus, the claws stay at exactly the same power they started with, the skill XP you would have gotten drains into a black hole, and when you finally switch over to another weapon, you have to train it up from the starting level. Ouch.
  • Faendal is a potential follower you encounter in Riverwood and can recruit after completing his simple Romance Sidequest. He's an adept level archer who can shoot down low-level bandits and draugr with ease, making the nearby Bleak Falls Barrow dungeon much easier as well as the trip to Whiterun. As a bonus, he can train you in Archery. As long as you can cover the initial cost, you can pay him for training and then access his follower inventory to recover your gold, making him a very easy way to boost your Archery skill and gain quick level-ups at practically no cost. Unfortunately, he falls behind on the power curve quickly and is easily replaced by other followers readily available soon after like Lydia and the Companions.
  • Mjoll the Lioness is a potential follower you encounter in Riften. A bug related to an unimplemented questline makes her an essential character, meaning that she cannot be killed, only rendered unconscious. This makes her a good companion for players who worry about losing followers in tricky combat encounters. Unfortunately, the same bug means that she will not level with the player character, and is stuck at the level at which you first encounter her, which is less than convenient later on in the game.

Fallout

• The original Fallout has Dogmeat, probably one of the most extreme examples out there. Early on, he's quite the powerhouse, thanks to high damage, multiple attacks, and good health — but he can't wear armor, he's restricted to melee, and his AI is pathetic. This isn't a problem in the early game, when he has enough health to soak up hits and simply running at the opponent and biting them is a viable strategey, but once you start encountering Super Mutants or traps, he becomes such a liability that getting through the game without him dying is considered a major achievement. In a nod to this, the second game revealed Dogmeat's fate: he walked into a forcefield in the Mariposa military base, just like he will for any player that keeps him long enough to survive to that point.
• Fallout 2 has Marcus, who is similarly problematic. He has Big Guns and a lot of health, enough to stomp the midgame easily. But being a giant super mutant, he can't fit into the late-game armor suits that are basically needed to survive against the Enclave. Goris has similar issues, on top of being restricted to melee.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • ED-E is a robot and the first companion one can easily obtain. He has a great companion perk in Enhanced Sensors and a decent little zapper, but he can't switch up to newer weapons and armor like your other companions, causing him to fall behind. Doing his companion quest upgrades his weapon or his armor, but not both, and removes him from the party for a bit. Fortunately, he doesn't take up a "human" companion slot, so leaving him around isn't too harmful unless you play Hardcore. Pairing him up with Boone turns the duo into a Disc-One Nuke, as ED-E's Enhanced Sensors allow you to "notice" faraway enemies, who Boone will then blow away with his maxed-out Guns skill. With Lonesome Road, though, ED-E averts this in the maingame, as going through the whole DLC results in him becoming by far the most useful companion, but in Lonesome Road proper, he gets taken over by the antagonist before the climax starts kicking in.
  • In the Dead Money DLC, Dean Domino, despite not being the strongest of the three companions, is easily the most useful. His companion perk allows you to explore the denser concentrations of poisonous clouds without taking damage (temporarily), which is essential if you want to find everything, and he's the only one with a gun. Since there are only three types of enemies in the DLC, only one of which can shoot back (and even then only five times), he's basically a killing machine if you're not boxed in. The only reason he isn't a total Game-Breaker is because he (along with the rest of your companions) disappears about halfway into the main quest.
• Fallout 4 has Codsworth, your Mister Handy butler. He shines early-game due to his buzzsaw and flamethrower which destroy most of the lower-level enemies in 1-2 hits, and being a robot he comes with natural armor. However, as he can't be equipped with armor or weapons like your other companions, his power and defence Can't Catch Up as the enemies get stronger. With the Automatron DLC though, he can be modified and upgraded to be far more powerful.

Fate Grand Order

• Fate/Grand Order:
  • One of the most common playstyles for newbies is the "Buster Meme" team: a team of Servants that all have three Buster cards, which pretty much guarantees your hand will have at least three Buster cards in it on any turn. Since Buster cards have the best damage, chaining Buster cards for your attacks increases the power of them, and most of the Servants with triple-Buster decks are Berserkers, this can do a lot of damage early on. Plus, since Heracles is a Starter Mon, and Lu Bu, Fergus, Kiyohime, and Darius all show up in the Friend Point gacha, these teams are pretty cheap to put together. After a certain point, though, the stats of your enemies become so great that simply spamming Buster chains doesn't do enough damage to kill them quickly. Their triple-Buster decks also means they don't have a way to natively build their NP gain and gain few critical stars, meaning they lack the versatility of an Arts team or the burst damage of a Buster Crit or Quick team. Triple-Buster Servants can still be very powerful, with Musashi in particular being a vital cog in Buster Crit, but building a whole team of them is a bad idea as the game progresses and you gain the tools to pursue other strategies.
  • On a similar note, though there are some very powerful Berserkers in the game, their main use is that in the game's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, Berserkers have a somewhat reduced type advantage against almost everything, dealing 1.5x more damage (but only while attacking, as they take double damage on defense). For a new player who doesn't have at least one strong Servant in the main classes, this makes "throw the Berserker at it" a good first-resort tactic for most situations. Once you do have strong Servants in every class, you'll probably prefer them since they get double damage on offense and take half damage on defense when facing someone they have advantage on. Berserkers do retain viability, though, for their ability to handle mixed formations or cut through rare classes like Avengers or Rulers.
  • Cu Chulainn's three-star Lancer form is very easy to obtain and level out, and he has three skills that all increase his durability: Battle Continuation gives him a Last Chance Hit Point, Protection from Arrows nullifies three attacks, and Disengage lets him heal and cleanse debuffs. Because of this, it's very common for new players to stick Cu on the back lines so that when everyone else is down, Cu can do his thing and chip the enemy to death while they flail at him pointlessly. Once you reach a certain level of power, though, his skillset becomes much less important; a stall team tends to prefer people like Jeanne, Mash, Tamamo, and Hans, whose defensive buffs or heals affect the whole team, while hyper-offensive teams find Cu's output lackluster at best.
  • Sasaki Kojirou is fairly memetic in the fanbase for having been borderline required in the early days to get through the Orleans singularity without Bribing Your Way to Victory, as he's an extremely common single-target Assassin who can use his evasion skill to dodge hits and has class advantage against the mostly Rider-class dragons. After Orleans, his usability falls off due to his stat ceiling being pretty bad and his skills being lackluster.

Golden Sun

• Golden Sun
  • Golden Sun: The Lost Age has Piers, who joins the party at a much higher level, with good stats, several very powerful attacks, and decent healing spells, but has the lowest EXP progression in both games. Additionally, he has the stats of a physical attacker, but as a Mercury Adept, he's stuck with mostly mage and healer reclass options. By the time the second Mercury Adept (an actual healer) joins later, he's basically just there for backup.
  • More notably, Piers joins the party with several Mercury Djinns in tow, enabling the Boreas summon to be used before every other fourth tier summon. By spreading the Mercury Djinn to every member in the party, it's possible to spam Boreas against every random encounter, trivializing them for quite a while.
  • Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has a straight and intentional version of this; in the very first dungeon, two heroes from Golden Sun join your party. They're AI controlled, but practically indestructible and deal massive damage (compared to your own characters at least), though they may not attack at all against lesser enemies. After the first dungeon, they kick you out of the house to fend for yourselves.

Kingdom Hearts

• Kingdom Hearts has this going with most of the Guest Star Party Members. Once you start revisiting all of the worlds in Kingdom Hearts II, the only really useful ones are Auron, Jack Skellington and Riku.
  • Mulan and TRON are the exact opposite. When you first visit The Land of Dragons, Mulan's disguised as Ping. Ping has poor attacks, fumbles a lot and is generally a detriment (but required to have on your party). However, later she drops the disguise and becomes one of the better fighters. Tron, on the other hand, was depowered prior to you meeting him, but after accessing the DTD, he's able to use his full power, including his Limit Break, Setup, which is considered to be one of the most powerful in the game^note it's only beaten by Captain Jack Sparrow's Bluff and Riku's Eternal Session. He gets a second upgrade through the teamwork of the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee much later on, which makes him one of the most powerful characters in the game.
  • Valor Form acts as a Crutch Power-Up. It's great early-game for dishing out powerful damage, but as you progress through the game and gain more useful Drive Forms and abilities, Valor Form's power is not as great anymore. It doesn't help that Valor Form has no way to defend or dodge attacks, and Sora can't use magic at all in this form.
• In Kingdom Hearts III, the Meow Wow Link can be seen as this. It starts off as a passable Link that can scatter and damage whole fields of enemies, so in the early game it's usually used as a backup option to heal you in mob fights, but its damage output begins to fall off once you reach the middle point of the game...which is also when you start to unlock Ralph and Simba.
  • The Mirage Staff Formchange in the same game allows for a pretty cheap strategy of using Doubleflight to a spot where bosses and enemies can't reach you, making five avatars, and spamming the orb attack to whittle at their health in complete safety, which also builds the Situation Gauge extremely fast for Grand Magic. However, the later you are in the game, the more frequently that bosses will be able to counter that strategy, requiring you to put a bit more thought into it. The Limit Cut bosses are designed specifically to counter strategies like this, attacking relentlessly and only being vulnerable at specific moments, leaving this strategy in the dust. Mirage Staff is definitely still useful in lategame, but tends to be overshadowed by other, more reliable options at that point.

Lunar

• In Lunar: Eternal Blue one of the main characters, Lucia, is a temporary Crutch Character. She starts out ridiculously strong (as in, "able to annihilate every single enemy on screen in one attack" strong), but the villain soon depowers her to the same level as the rest of the characters. If you try and use this to your advantage by level grinding Hiro too much during the part of the game where's she's at full power, she'll temporarily leave your party to prevent you from breaking the game.
  • Luna from Lunar: The Silver Star also this due to her multi-target healing Limit Break, which make everything easier.
  • At the start of The Silver Star, Ramus is nearly equal to Alex in fighting skill, with his extra HP perhaps just barely making him stronger. Still, even at his best he is really only equal to the other characters in strength. As the game progresses his strength starts to degrade as his stat growth plummets as he levels up. He goes from a decent front line fighter with 2 attacks to being moved to the back row (as his low defense making him too vulnerable up front) with a bow and only one shot per turn. by the time he leaves the party he gains only a few HP each level and is so weak compared to the other teammates that he barely manages to be more of an asset then a liability in combat, especially since he stops growing beyond level 12, which completely turns the idea of level grinding against you.

Octopath Traveler

• Octopath Traveler:
  • Cyrus comes out of the gate with very strong magical attacks backed up by the highest magic attack stat in the game, allowing him to wipe out early trash mobs with ease. Unfortunately for him, when you get to the late game his stat advantage is negated when anyone can hit the cap with the help of magic nuts, he's rendered completely obsolete by the Sorcerer secret class, and he is ironically the worst candidate for Sorcerer due to his base kit being made redundant by it, with the two exceptions of Analyze and Alephan's Enlightenment^note The targeted ally gains a ×2 damage modifier to AoE offensive spells for 3 turns, at the cost of turning them into single-target spells; in contrast, Dreisang's Spell makes it so that the targeted ally's offensive spells are always critical hits for 3 turns, which are a ×1.25 damage modifier, so there are situations where AE is superior to DS. This means he degenerates from the strongest party member to the weakest.
  • High-powered NPCs serve as this when you use Ophilia's Guide or Primrose's Allure skills to have them to join your party, as well as the beasts that H'aanit can capture. The mercenaries that Tressa can hire during battle also qualify.
  • H'aanit is a downplayed example. Her Beast Lore skills makes her a really nice early game nuke character, since even monsters with a level score of four will have her dealing damage in the quad digits when boosted while everyone else is struggling to break five hundred damage when boosted. However, as other characters start to gain more levels and finding monsters of higher rarity becomes more difficult, her Beast Lore skills will start to fall behind others in terms of damage output. It's downplayed though in that, unlike most examples, her Hunter skills still remain useful into the end and after game.
• Octopath Traveler II:
  • Much like Cyrus in the first game, Osvald is good in early game for analyzing enemies and dealing AoE damage, but quickly outclassed once other party members get enough attack power.
  • While Ochette is a massive improvement over H'annit in every aspect from the ability to break enemies, her summon being infinite and her ability to convert captured beasts into items for various uses to fall out of this, Tera and Glacis qualify. By the time they're captured, they can be powerful, but they're quickly outclassed as you progress. By the time you fight the final boss of Ochette's route, they're overshadowed by Acta, who gets its more powerful summon that grants the whole team many buffs.

Phantasy Star

• Phantasy Star
  • Phantasy Star II has Nei, who's also a forced party member. On one hand, she grows levels twice as fast as everybody else in her team, has the highest agility, and can dual wield claws/bars, meaning she can outdamage even Rudo. On the other hand, her growth is very sluggish, and while she's eventually caught up by the time you fight Neifirst, she leaves the party permanently afterward. In the PlayStation 2 remake, she can be prevented from leaving, but doing so causes her to permanently be stuck in the 2nd party slot with subpar stats and weapons, which can only be compensated for with rare equipment.
  • Phantasy Star IV does this twice; first with Alys, who acts as a crutch until she makes a Heroic Sacrifice to save the main character (incidentally this happens around the same time where the rest of the party catches up with her level), and second with Rune, who initially debuts with spells that can wipe out anything you face with ease, and can hit most enemies for more damage with melee attacks than anyone else in your party. When Rune shows up later to re-join the party, he's still fairly powerful, but... not as much.

SaGa RPG

• Several examples in the SaGa series, especially the Final Fantasy Legend games:
  • In Final Fantasy Legend II, Mr. S and Mask pretty much solo the dungeons they're in. Heck, Mask practically solos the Wake-Up Call Boss. However, others like Hana and Lyn are sorta average and just plain awful respectively. Thankfully, Lyn isn't around that much.
  • In Final Fantasy Legend III, none fit this trope better than Myron, your first fifth-slotter. Maybe it's because your stats are terrible at level 1, maybe it's because you made the mistake of changing into a monster when the monsters were meant to be destroyed by level 1's with terrible stats, or maybe it's because he's armed with a Battle Axe, but he seems like the only thing keeping you alive at first. Unfortunately, he's perpetually at level 5, and you have no idea where you're going, can go anywhere after dungeon 1, and face random encounters every step of the way. Poor guy never knew what hit him. The other guests are around the same strength as your main party.
  • In SaGa Frontier, Red's immensely powerful Alkaiser form is, well, immensely powerful. There are very few non-boss enemies that can stand up to it, especially as the story progresses and more Alkaiser powers are unlocked. Unfortunately, transforming into Alkaiser voids any stat bonuses that Red would receive, and since those directly influence Alkaiser's stats, the result can easily become a very weak superhero. Not to mention the fact that Red can't transform if there are any humans around...

Shin Megami Tensei

• The Crutch Character of the Shin Megami Tensei series has traditionally been Cerberus. You get him in the first game by fusing a demon with your family dog, and in the second game he's a servant of a powerful demon and is "lent" to you for a short period of time at the start. In the online game, he's the partner of your Devil Buster mentor and joins you during the first couple of missions. Even starting at level 1 and under a condition that reduces his XP gain by 90%, he's still far more powerful than anything you can recruit or fuse at that point.
• Persona 3:
  • Shinjiro Aragaki has all the traits of a Crutch Character: advanced abilities, hits harder than any other character, and is pretty damn cool to boot. His incarnation in Reload adds onto this by making him Purposefully Overpowered, with the aforementioned abilities that made him a potent fighter, on top of a unique buff he can learn and a Theurgy attack that is easy to prepare and use. His dorm hangout events in Reload can create some of the most powerful healing items available to the player. This is balanced by him only being available for a short while during the midgame, where he leaves the party at the start of October, and the rest of your team is already leveled enough for him that he theoretically could sit out of most battles. His overwhelming power makes the boss fights a joke if you use him, but it's doable without him.
  • Akihiko rejoins the main party at a higher level than the rest of the cast and as the only member capable of inflicting strike attacks. As he levels up, he becomes capable of wasting enemies in one blow, as well as learning some very helpful status effect spells (even if you have to nudge him into using them). He's also the first one to gain an upgrade to his Persona midway through the game. Like the protagonist, he hits diminishing returns toward the end of the game, and unless Monad is unlocked, he'll be unable to gain enough experience to finish leveling up. That being said, it's difficult to form a party without him, as he's arguably the most well-rounded character in the game, doesn't have abilities that consume his HP to use in the original releases (Reload gives him Strike skills that do consume HP), and can be equipped to deal with his one weakness. Doubles as a Brick Joke in-game when he tells you that his persona is "balanced" and that not relying too heavily on one stat is essential.
  • Junpei boomerangs on this. He starts out as a decent tank, but eventually the player hits several bosses in a row that can take advantage of his weakness, turning him into a liability. However, this eventually tapers off, and if the player sticks with him and keeps him leveled up he can learn some powerful attacks by the endgame (which also happens to coincide with his Character Development).
• Persona 4:
  • Naoto Shirogane's skillset allows her to access the high level Light and Darkness magic, as well as abilities to boost their effectiveness, and several powerful Almighty spells as well. This combination of powers makes her brutally effective against a surprisingly wide variety of Shadows, including some very annoying ones that most other party members can barely even damage. The letdown aspect of the character, however, comes when you take her into a boss fight... and realize that all those spells listed above are now underwhelming at best, totally useless at worst, as her stats have no correspondence to the skills she learns. One of the major effects of these being that she doesn't even have the MP to be repeatedly casting Almighty spells. Averted in the Golden re-release, where Almighty spells had their MP cost reduced AND she is capable of learning every single elemental attack in the game, along with a slew of other useful abilities, including one that restores her MP, one that buffs every stat of a party member, one that buffs her own evasion stat to all attacks making her nearly untouchable, and a skill that makes the entire party invincible. She later gets a weapon that makes her Ice Attacks even more powerful than both the other ice users in the game, making her good for bosses, is the second fastest character in the game, and her final persona upgrade has absolutely no weaknesses at all (all the other party members keep their weakness, despite gaining good buffs).
  • Chie is the polar opposite. While Naoto is good for random encounters and bad for bosses, Chie is a physical fighter and becomes useless if the enemy can block/repel her attacks, but, if you buff her speed and critical hit, she can knock most bosses, and you know, knocked enemies lose their turns... Chie also has the interesting issue of being a character who's strong early on, but weaker at midlevels, but then gets strong again. This is because her skill learning is unbalanced and she learns no midlevel skills, leaving her with basic ice spells and a mid level physical attack while everyone else is learning Dyne spells or support magic or strong attacks, but once you level her past 60 she learns Power Charge and God Hand, making her the next strongest boss killer in the game barring Kanji and the MC. Golden fixes this by letting her learn additional skills through her S.Link, letting her get Bufudyne and other skills to keep her useful until you learn God hand.
• Persona 5:
  • Ryuji is similar to Junpei in that he boomerangs back around near the endgame. He is a tank with great physical skills, and easily your biggest source of damage in Kamoshida's Palace. Unfortunately, he has the worst magic skills out of all party members, and Yusuke very quickly shows up and outclasses him in raw physical power, leading to his usefulness falling off. However, if you keep his level up throughout the game, he picks up Matarukaja to keep the team's offense buffed up, then eventually Charge and God's Hand, enabling him to do insane amounts of damage. It helps that one of his strongest weapons grants a free attack boost at the start of the battle, while his absolute strongest grants Elec Boost, allowing his electric attacks to at least do decent damage if needed without spending a skill slot on it.
  • Downplayed with Morgana. For a good amount of the first dungeon, he'll be the one keeping you afloat through Dia and Patra. However, Ann, who also knows Dia, is acquired before the dungeon ends and cuts down on the need of relying on him for healing. In addition, Morgana is such a good medic that taking him is always a good idea at almost any point in the game. It takes until Makoto hits level 65 and picks up Mediarahan for him to truly fall off, as she has better stats in general thanks to her Judge of the Dead and Salvation is Awesome, but Impractical due to the lack of status ailments in the endgame. It gets Zigzagged in Royal. The True Final Boss can inflict Fear, Dizzy, and Forget, giving his Salvation more use. Morgana also has Lucky and Miracle Punch (as well as Miracle Rush in Royal), which can be reliable ways to inflict crits and down enemies without elemental weaknesses. However, his Proud/Majestic Presence Persona Trait becomes redundant once heals all become full heals, which makes it the weakest trait in the endgame by a decent margin.
• In Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Naoto escapes this status, benefiting from the Boost system all but making MP management irrelevant and the fact that just about everything in the game is weak to One-Hit Kill spells, but it still has a straight example in the form of Zen and Rei. Zen and Rei (yes, they fight as a single unit) can't equip Sub Personas, but to compensate they have very slightly above-average stats in all areas, and learn a huge variety of skills covering physical attacks, elemental spells, HP and status healing and buffs. They first join when the Sub Persona system isn't available yet, so at that point they're extremely strong compared to the rest of the party, and they remain strong while Sub Personas are still low-level. At higher levels though, the skills available from Sub Personas vastly eclipse theirs, and their skills take far longer to upgrade than the rest of the party members, so their damage output really lags behind. They're also unable to use the Skill Card system to learn new skills due to lacking Personas.
  • The game also features a crutch item, the Heal Stone. It can be obtained from the 100% map completion chest on the first floor of the game, and it's an infinite-use healing item that recovers 50 HP, which is amazingly useful early on. By the mid-game though, 50 HP is nothing, so it becomes virtually useless.
• In Shin Megami Tensei V, at the start of the final region of Da'at, Taito, you acquire a new demon, Tao in her creator goddess form. She's Level 60 at a time when the player is likely 55-60 and has a skill called Light of Order that heals a good amount of health and buffs all three stats. She will prove rather useful for much of Taito, but unfortunately, cannot be fused to other demons, nor can she be fused. She leaves late in the game, whether just before the final battle (Law or Chaos) or at the start of the final area (Neutral or secret route), so it may not be a good idea to invest too many items in her to boost her abilities.

Skies of Arcadia

• In the Dreamcast (and later Gamecube) adventure Skies of Arcadia, the Ahab caricature with a metal prosthetic arm, Drachma joins the team at a substantially higher level (considering the point in the game) and brings a new elemental affinity. Soon enough, he actually strands the party, only to rejoin them, and then leaves, on multiple occasions. When he finally stays with the party, the other characters have caught up, and perhaps superseded him.
  • Drachma is unusual in that he still remains useful as a Tank, as his ATK and DEF stats are the highest in the game, not to mention he has a fairly useful Special for charging up the party's SP gauge^note Shared pool that is used to cast magic and Special attacks. And before you ask, no, Drachma's "Spirit Charge" does not use any SP. Indeed, there are guides out there that recommend bringing him along for the Final Battle and Bonus Bosses. However, most folks don't like to bother, preferring the skills of Enrique and his insanely useful "Justice Shield" special. It doesn't help that Drachma will probably require some level grinding, since he gets Put on a Bus midway through the story and doesn't become playable again until The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
  • A better example is Aika. While she may seem a bit weak at first with her attacks, she's the fastest character in the game and if you give her Moonberries, you'll quickly be rewarded with several of the most useful S-Moves in the whole game a few hours in. While Drachma and Vyse are stuck doing single-target attacks, Aika will be demolishing crowds of random encounters with Alpha Storm and its upgrade, Lambda Burst. She'll be one-shotting random battles on her own soon after and carrying the party through non-boss battles, and remains very strong until you either gain the SP to fire off Rain of Swords, or the enemies' magic resistance starts to stack. Either way, she'll gradually become more of a support character midway through the game, but it's still one heck of an advantage.

Star Ocean

• Star Ocean
  • Ashlay in Star Ocean: First Departure starts out relatively powerful, but will easily be surpassed by characters like Ratix/Roddick by the end of the game, and so he's considered low-tier. Conversely, Cius/Cyuss might not seem that great at first, but can become a real powerhouse. As it so happens, Ashlay and Cius are mutually-exclusive Optional Party Members; you can't have both. Perhaps to give a reason to choose Ashlay over Cyus, the remake makes Ashley a requirement for getting the game's secret party member, who surpasses all of her fellow mages in battle.
  • Likewise, if you're playing Star Ocean: The Second Story (remade as Second Evolution), Dias Flac is one hell of an invincible demon when he is first seen in battle (as enforced by the ensuing Hopeless Boss Fight). But if you're playing as Rena and he joins, most players agree he will be surpassed by Claude and maybe other characters as well, primarily due to his lack of multi-hit special moves, laggy normal attack, and the fact that the special ability granted by some weapons and accessories that gives normal attacks extra hits doesn't work on him either: this is even worse in the endgame where all special attacks fall under Awesome, but Impractical and everyone will be spamming their normal attacks which take no MP to use and hit a stupid amount of times.
    • Dias' regular attacks are lacking, but his Air Slash is so spamable, it can be used all the way until the end of the game, and is extremely useful in Fun City.
    • Speaking of Crutches, Claude himself starts with an energy weapon, which serves the same purpose until it gets a dose of Gameplay and Story Segregation and runs out of power. Since it One-shots everything to there, and uses no MP, it's totally understandable.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time has one in the form of Nel. She'll act as the party's indispensable Symbologist and healer for a majority of Disc 1 on top of having good battle skills and decent speed. Her usefulness wanes towards the endgame as her flaws (such as her fragility, long stun time, and bad AI) become more apparent and detrimental, although she's still be able to hold her own fairly well.

Suikoden

• Suikoden:
  • Suikoden II has Jowy, the main character's best friend with which they can perform the single best unite in the game, and who gets the Black Sword Rune until he betrays you and joins Highland, though he does come back for the battle against Gorudo later on.
  • Suikoden V
    • First, there is Georg Prime, a powerful bodyguard who must, for plot reasons, abandon the hero soon after the main plot kicks in. And even before that, he's only available sporadically. By the time he joins for good, he's still one of the best physical attackers in game, but he's not ludicrously overpowered compared to the rest of the party. He's still rendered unavailable for the final battle, unless you are in a New Game Plus.
    • From the same game, Sialeeds starts out as a useful ranged fighter/mage, but since she has only one rune slot, which is permanently equipped with a relatively weak Wind Rune, she gets less useful later on. (This is probably the game's way of subtly discouraging dependence on her, so that her Face–Heel Turn about halfway through the game doesn't cripple your party.)
    • Also happens with Kyle, another of the Queen's Knights like Georg joins your party briefly during the intro part of the game. One notable thing is that his equipment and rune can be taken except for his weapon like with everyone and equipped on the Prince, yet his level is high enough that it doesn't effect his usefulness at all. In fact, it's pretty much mandatory to swipe his stuff and give it to the Prince to have any real chance of "winning" against the Hopeless Boss Fight not long after Kyle leaves.
    • Logg joins the Hero's party at the beginning of the first real dungeon after Georg is Put on a Bus, and for a good reason. He's a decent physical attacker, has high HP, and his cooperative attack with his daughter Lun is perfect to get rid of enemy groups during the random encounters. Therefore, he'll most likely be a must in the team for the early game. However, he suffers from the comparison with other physical fighters and tanks the Prince can recruit later, so it's easy to bench him. In late-game, the main reason to still include him in a team is probably his cooperative attack with Lun.
  • Suikoden Tierkreis gives you Citro Village's best warrior Dirk for the first dungeon, who is several levels higher than Sieg, Marica, and Jale and does more damage, though once they start gaining levels, and become Starbearers, he is quickly outclassed. He ends up betraying you, too. In an interesting variation, though, he betrays you BECAUSE he's a Crutch Character — his entire complex boils down to 'they're stronger than me, it's all the fault of those books, MUST BURN'.

Tales Series

• The Tales Series has a few examples of this:
  • Tales of Phantasia has Chester, who starts out as a reasonable character early on, but is then lost due to the game's storyline. It is only much, MUCH later in the game when he becomes available again. His level does not rise in between, meaning that he will be sorely underpowered unless special effort is taken to level him up.
    • In the re-realeases, though, Chester is given massive boosts in EXP to bring him back up to par with the party, and is given several unique skills besides. He goes from being a Crutch Character to dominating both the early and endgame (being absent for middle.)
  • Tales of the Abyss has Jade Curtiss, who joins the group at level 45 when the other two characters in the party will be lucky to be level six. He's promptly reduced to a level lower than theirs by a Level Draining trinket. This is even lampshaded when he gets to level 50 "naturally" with an in-game skit.
    • There's also Guest-Star Party Member Asch, who joins with a large variety of combat artes and magic spells. You can get him in your party a second time during an optional subquest, and although his level is scaled up he is still stuck with the same equipment he had during his first stint. This makes Asch drastically underpowered to the rest of the party, which (thematically) is the whole point.
    • Also, if playing on a New Game Plus, assuming you kept your capacity cores and artes, all the other characters are actually vastly much better than Asch, because in spite of his level being scaled, he doesn't have the bonus stats from capacity cores, and his artes aren't anything special, meaning that the parts of the game where he joins the party are much harder than the rest of the game.
  • Like Asch above, Richard from Tales of Graces joins the party with a good mix of physical and magical artes, several of which have HP-absorbing properties. He leaves for the rest of the main story after the Disc-One Final Boss, but the Updated Re-release's extra story brings him back, giving him new artes and other upgrades to allow him to keep up with the much more fleshed-out main cast he'll be fighting alongside.
  • Tales of Xillia has Milla Maxwell who, while she starts off only one level higher than the other protagonist Jude Mathis, possesses inflated stats and four powerful spells based on the local elemental beings that all but one-hit any enemy she touches. Naturally, an event early on causes her to sacrifice this power, removing both the inflated stats and the spells. This actually becomes a plot point, as she must now come to terms with the things humans do in order to fight and stay alive; previously, she had relied almost entirely on said elemental beings for things like walking and eating.
  • Tales of Symphonia has Kratos, who, despite being the same level as the protagonists, has good stat growth and skill in both damaging magic, healing and close-combat attacks (although not quite to the degree of the party specialists) that makes him invaluable. He leaves the party at the end of the Journey of Salvation and is replaced by Zelos, who has notably lower stats and knows none of the advanced attacks that Kratos did when he left. However, this pattern can reverse itself later in the game and on New Game Plus runs, since stat growth is determined largely by the titles a character has earned and Zelos has a much wider variety to choose from; his "Gilgamesh" title in particular provides a +8 modifier to stat gains on HP, Strength, and Defense, which is at least double what any of Kratos's titles can provide all at once. Kratos can still achieve better growth on magic-based stats, but by the time he can rejoin the party, offensive magic is only a viable option for the dedicated spellcasters, making him a Master of None.
  • In the original Tales of Destiny, Leon Magnus is one. He comes several levels ahead of the main characters, has similar moves to Stahn. But later on, Stahn will gain many variative moves, including some of Leon's. Then he betrays you.
    • He may also be one in the remake, because he's broken wide in half. He's fast, hard-hitting, and has an extremely high critical hit rate which just allows him to chain more and more attacks without giving the enemy any openings. If that wasn't enough, one of Chaltier's abilities gives a chance of petrifying enemies upon hitting them, so his low defense and HP are completely meaningless. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to play as him. He still betrays you. But at least if you somehow limp through the game and can't properly handle being without him, you can buy a Narikiri Doll to get him back at a reasonable level.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has the Tales of Symphonia cast and Richter, who are unable to change equipment or level up via experience points like Emil, Marta, and the Mons. Their levels and equipment do jump up with the occasional plot point, and when the entire original cast joins you at the end of the game, they are all capped at level 50.
  • Tales of Arise has Zephyr, who is a Guest-Star Party Member in the area between the first realm and the second. He isn't controllable by the player, but will usually end up carrying the player until they reach the next area.

Trails Series

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has three of these, Toval, Claire and Sharon, each joining you for one of the first three parts of Chapter 1. Toval plays this trope the most straight though: he starts out at a higher level then your other party members, has some powerful Crafts and a unique accessory (which you can't take from him) that halves the casting time of all his spells, which at that point makes him very powerful. After Chapter 1, you don't get him back until the final dungeon, and while his level has been raised to compensate, his overall stats are mediocre compared to the members of Class VII you've now been reunited with. Sharon averts this though, she's a borderline Game-Breaker when you first have her, and her Crafts have such strong secondary effects that she's still useful at the end.
  • In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, Randy Orlando at the start of the game will be 20 levels higher than the main cast which translates to more of everything. He also has Wild Rage that sacrifices some of his HP to add more Craft Points so he can use his Craft skills easily. And at this point in the game, he'll have the highest damage output from his Limit Break compared to everyone else. Even when the Time Skip happens and the other members nearly catch up to his level, he'll still be stronger than them. However, at the end of the first section, he leaves the party and Ash takes his place in the team. He does come back however when the plot takes Rean, Class VII, and Tita to Leeves and he's still as strong as ever but players can't take him to the final dungeon (mainly because he and a lot of characters are dealing with their own final dungeon sections) though he can be taken towards the True Final Boss.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie has a variation: Rean and Rufus can be considered as this trope in the main game with their powerful and versatile crafts, great orbment lines, decent Brave Orders, and the fact that they're the protagonists of their own route means that players will get a lot of use out of them. However, relying on them too much means that the rest of the cast (and there are a lot of them) will be underleveled due to the game not having any Leaked Experience system unlike the previous games (though partially rectified by EXP items that allow you to quickly level characters up). And unfortunately, they're not available for the Final Boss of the main story as they fight off their own final boss on the only winnable mech fight of the game. Crow is also this trope as well due to him joining with Rean and Rufus in their final boss fight and he is considered to be the best art caster of the post-game content.

Xenoblade

• Sharla in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 — early on she is a godsend with her healing abilities, as well as the fact that she is quite tanky and ranged. However, later on, it becomes better to just burn enemies down with damage over time effects and Sharla makes fights drag on too long with her lack of offensive powers. Sure, Headshot is very damaging, and the AI actually does usually wait to use it on dazed enemies, but it has a terrible cooldown.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X has a late game example with the Excavator Skell. It's the only level 60 Skell that can be made before the postgame, since its plans are obtained from completing Alexa's second affinity quest. It has improved stats compared to level 50 Skells, and is the first Skell that can equip level 60 gear. Once you do reach the postgame and other level 60 Skells become available, it becomes apparent that the Excavator is by far the worst level 60 Skell, since it has much lower attack, worse armor than even the light Skells even though it's supposed to be a heavy Skell, and is weak to Gravity attacks when all other level 60 Skells are resistant to it. The Excavator may be useful for finishing the final story missions, but it will not help if you want to take on the level 90+ Tyrants.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • Nia. She's the party's only dedicated Healer character and is pretty much a staple party member for players unwilling to toy around with their blade setups too much. However, when you get to the late and post game she doesn't really excel with any weapon in particular, she only gets one exclusive blade (the serviceable but mediocre Dromarch), and anything she can do the other party members can do better. It's to the point where she's outclassed by her own blade form.
  • Tora. Early on, he's an extremely effective Tank character due to his high HP, but his continued usage is heavily hampered by the fact that he can't use any rare blades, and the only way to upgrade his own blade is by playing a minigame. Early on, this isn't a big deal because none of the other party members can fill his role in the party and only a limited number of blade are available anyway. But once the player obtains another character who can fill his role, his usefulness takes a dive. That said, it becomes a Subverted Trope in the endgame and postgame once his blade's final form is unlocked, and with sufficient minigame grinding he can actually do more damage than anyone else in the party.

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• Absinthia: In the first battle against Lilith, Freya is at level 8 when everyone else is likely level 3 or 4. She can also draw aggro, which can help keep the other party members alive. The other party members will eventually catch up to her over the course of the story, and in Ambervale, Freya admits that Sera surpassed her. However, she never loses her usefulness as the party's primary tank and defense buffer.
• Virgil in Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura starts out incredibly useful for the less combat-oriented character builds who may end up having trouble getting through the starting area (since acquiring any decent armor or weapons requires reaching a town first, and levelling up takes time). His melee skill is enough to fight the random animals you might stumble upon, plus he knows a healing spell. However, he never invests points into the Strength stat, and his magic doesn't get the same power boost dedicated mages receive because he only learns one spell college; this means that you'll be eventually relying on other party members for combat, and should you go the technological route, Virgil's healing won't be of much use for the main character.
• Kewne in Azure Dreams, who's the monster you start out with is somewhat of a subversion, as it's true that there are definitely stronger monsters you can get in the monster tower, but only much later on. While its true those monsters have stats and abilities that outclass Kewne, you can still easily work with him to reach the top of the tower considering he's still a slightly above-average Jack of All Stats and never stops being useful in the long run.
• The PC version (only) of the original The Bard's Tale Trilogy has an undocumented cheat: pressing Z will summon a free Stone Elemental, taking up the party's NPC spot. The creature is many times the power of low-level characters, and better than those that can be summoned by even mid-level spells, but of course it never advances at all.
• In Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, after defeating the B-Ball Monster, Charles Barkley meets Vinceborg, a robotic revival of Vince Carter, whose Eye Beams deal devastating damage to enemies. In fact, whereas Barkley might need two turns to bring a monster down, Vinceborg can defeat that same monster in a few zaps of his eyes. (Vinceborg gets nine zaps per turn.) His services might not ruin your other characters' experience gains, but once he leaves the party and takes his eye lasers with him, your party suddenly feels crippingly empty.
• Beyond the Beyond has super-knight Samson and his weak charge, Prince Edward. Soon, Samson takes a cursed scarf to the face and becomes de-powered to near-uselessness, due to his inherent unreliability whenever you give him a combat command.
• The Death Knight in Beyond Divinity wears his own armor and thus is powerful in the beginning, but has to be safeguarded from harm as the game progresses if you want to keep him around because of his hilarious remarks and the fact that he's soul-forged with the protagonist, so if either dies, it's Game Over.
• Bleu/Deis from the first two Breath of Fire games fits this trope well. When you first get her, she boasts superior magic power and high level (and is an outright Game-Breaker in the second game), but eventually levels off with the rest of your party by the end of the game. Despite this, while she does become less powerful relative to the rest of your party, she never becomes useless. And while she can't fuse with shamans in the second game, she remains decent enough without them.
• The Brief and Meaningless Adventure of Hero Man: The marionette party members start with the expected stat spreads for their job class and exist to help Hero Man survive the early mobs. Soldier marionette in particular starts out a bit physically stronger than Hero Man despite equipping the same tier of equipment. However, while the marionettes can level up, they cannot change any of their equipment except for rings, meaning Hero Man will eventually outclass them.
• Aurora's older step-sister Norah from Child of Light joins the team quite early, has fantastic stats, levels up really quickly, and learns many very useful skills (Quicken hastes allies, Lull slows foes, Petrify paralyzes foes, Unstoppable prevents interruption, and Charm Time gives Norah a head start on the Combatant Cooldown System). She's a great asset in the early-to-mid game until she reveals her true colours as The Mole and the Big Bad's daughter, leaving the party forever. Along with any Stardust and Oculi you gave her..
• Raw weapons in Dark Souls are basically this trope in weapon form. Upgrading your weapons into raw weapons give them massive physical damage boosts, at the cost of not being able to scale to strength. With a few exceptions, raw weapons are typically best when you're relatively early in the game, but if you're playing a fighter-type you're better off eventually reverting it back to a normal weapon once your strength stat is leveled up enough, since strength scaling ultimately gives out better returns on damage (while non-fighter builds would be better off utilizing divine, magic or chaos weapons instead.)
• In the Game Gear RPG Defenders of Oasis, the first character to join the prince is the Genie, who is at that point a combat monster and nicely carries you through the early battles. However, unlike the other characters (eventually you're a four-man party), he doesn't get experience and doesn't level up. His stats can be improved by expending special Genie power-up items, but they're extremely expensive in shops and are fairly rare in treasures, and by the end of the game the Genie is running healing potions for the other three characters and hiding in his lamp so that he doesn't get killed.
• Destiny Of An Emperor has Liu Bei, who while having far more Soldiers (Hit Points) than his allies, gains no Soldiers upon level ups. Luckily, given the way the game is set up, this is a convenience. There's a case of Guide Dang It! Permanently Missable Content involving him, however; he leaves upon an event after defeating all 3 Zhang brothers, after which you won't get to fight anymore enemies before the event. If you haven't leveled up to 12, kiss a certain Tactic goodbye, because he's the only person for long enough with the required Intelligence to learn it.
• Orca in .hack starts at level 50, making the first dungeon a snap. Then he gets Data Drained. Eventually, you get him back, but he's still level 50, while your whole party is 90+.
• Dragon Age: Origins has Dog, who is a potent melee damage dealer / tank in the beginning of the game. He starts off with "Dread Howl" one of the invaluable area of effect stunning talents in the game and later on can learn the very useful "Overwhelm" attack. Later though, his lack of threat management abilities, limited selection of talents, lack of bonus stats, and his somewhat lackluster unique equipment cause him to fall behind the rest of the party somewhat. However, he can be built to have high health to compensate for his lack of equipment, and one of his abilities, Overwhelm, is nearly game breakingly powerful, being able to kill high level mage enemies in one hit. Thanks to Leaked Experience, your other party members won't suffer for it either.
• In Dungeon Maker, after the first dungeon you get a pet Mimic Slime. It's great early on because it copies the stats of enemies, but while you get steadily more powerful, the slime does not, and eventually its stats will stop growing altogether.
• EarthBound (1994) contains an example that you can periodically restock on: the Teddy Bear and its superior version, the Super Plush Bear. When carried with the party, enemies will have a chance of directing attacks at the bear instead of at the party, with the odds of them being destroyed as they accumulate more damage^note Teddy Bears have about 100 HP; Super Plush Bears have about 450, and they also soak up status effects with no drawback. But as you get further into the game, PSI attacks which target the whole party become more frequent, taking the bears' usefulness away.
• Even though she doesn't join for more than a couple of battles, Yamato Takeru in Eiyuu Senki: The World Conquest is essential for surviving the battles prior to the unification of Japan.
• NoLegs in Epic Battle Fantasy 4. When you first get NoLegs, you have essentially no abilities that hit multiple targets at all; NoLegs can do so for free, and once you get the Knight's Helmet (which you do very shortly after), you can use this ability twice per turn, without even using up a character's action. With all of this, NoLegs can potentially carry you through the first region entirely by himself, even at the hardest difficulty. The problem here is raw power; in the early game, NoLegs' attack power is very good, but there is absolutely no way to upgrade it like you can the other characters' weapons, so late-game NoLegs just translates to Scratch Damage compared to your other abilities, most of which by then can hit multiple targets anyway. On top of that, the Knight's Helmet carries elemental resistance penalties; in the early game this isn't a big deal, but in the late game, almost everything else is offering bonuses to your resistances and you'll want as many of these as you can get.
• Eternal Sonata has Viola, who is far stronger than the rest of your party when she joins. She is the first character to have a "heal entire party" ability, and by using manual aim she can head-shot enemies from a distance for incredible damage. However, her actual attack rate is quite low, so when Harmony Chains (and the need to rack up a lot of hits as quickly as possible) become more important to the combat system she loses a great deal of her advantage. This was exaggerated in the PS3 version where her movement and speed growth were nerfed.
• Faraway Story
  • Marinet joins at a slightly higher level than Pia and has a healing skill in order to make the starting dungeon a little easier, though Pia will quickly catch up.
  • Ellevark defies this by not allowing himself or anyone else to act as a full-time party member until Pia bests them in a Duel Boss battle, under the rationale that relying too much on stronger allies is bad for her training.
• Finding Light: Roxie is able to learn certain useful skills like Regen before the other party members can, since she can consume and adapt to monster meat. This makes her the best support character until the best support skill orbs can be found in the endgame.
• Genshin Impact has its three starter characters, all of whom are useful in the early game but have crippling weaknesses that become apparent later on.
  • Amber, as a Pyro archer, is useful for solving torch puzzles, and her Utility Passive decreases stamina consumption while gliding, making her useful for exploring Teyvat. However, she suffers from low DPS, meaning that players are likely to bench her after they pull better Pyro or bow units.
  • Lisa, although useful when fighting near water or in the rain, is overly dependent on charged attacks and suffers from poor durability (this being a common weakness among Catalyst units) and long cooldown times, and even her utility passive (a chance of refunding potion materials) does not require her to be in the party.
  • Kaeya, the last of the starters, has the most longevity - while not a Game-Breaker, he does have higher DPS than Amber and is more durable and focused on quick attacks than Lisa. However, he isn't particularly useful against Cryo enemies (such as the Cryo Regisvine or Andrius), meaning that the player pretty much has to invest in the other characters to advance.
  • Noelle, who is guaranteed by the Beginner's Wish banner, is a Stone Wall with the ability to heal the party while her shield is active. These qualities are beneficial in the early game, but her shield has a long cooldown and Geo's lack of offensive reactions lead to her lagging behind in the damage department. However, with the right build and some Constellations, Noelle can become a powerful Jack of All Stats in the right hands.
  • Guest Fighter Aloy (only available during Version 2.2, and 2.1 for Playstation gamers) has good stats, useful abilities, and gets a further attack boost from her Predator bow. However, she has no constellations (meaning that other characters can easily catch up) and, unfortunately for those who started playing during that time, her Ascension materials are located in Inazuma, behind multiple Fame Gates.
• Interestingly, Granblue Fantasy, a game where most characters are acquired at random, has an example of this with Yodarha. His charge attack, when timed right, deals an additional 999999 damage to its target. As awesome as this sounds, it's a drop in the bucket to most bosses past the first tier of Omega bosses.
• Grandia III: Miranda, protagonist's Action Mom, starts at level 5, while the other two party members are both level 1. She also has a strong, wide-range Special Move, and pretty powerful equipment and magic from the get-go. Once Yuki and Alfina well and truly cath up with her, she leaves the party to go on her own adventures.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia V has Nepgear starting off at level 10 while Neptune is back to level 1 instead of level 99 thanks to her laziness. And that's not all: when she eventually rejoins the party proper at level 38 her STR stat is easily more than 300 points above the main cast at similar levels, essentially making Nepgear the single most powerful attacker in the game for a very, very long time. And just when you thought all is finally well, the game abruptly kicks out the crutch from under you by forcing you to fight her and Vert in a 4 vs 2 bossfight which, unsurprisingly, is tough as nails even though your party has the advantage in numbers unless you have been grinding...This trope was lampshaded by both sisters.
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • Zaalbar is the most egregious case. Being a Wookiee, his incredible strength and constitution make him a stellar melee tank during the beginning of the game when your gear is subpar and you lack Force abilities, his inability to wear armor and headgear make him less than ideal by endgame.
  • Carth is a Subverted case if you know how to build him. He starts out as level 4 when your own character is level 2, has a really good blaster, and his Soldier class is a reasonable DPS or Tank. However, if you take advantage of his Dual Wielding and blaster-oriented feats, and equip him with upgraded high end blasters (like the Cassus Fett blaster), he becomes a monster in ranged DPS.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: Kreia gives a boost to your experience points when she's in the party, the Force chain allows her to cast buffs that apply to her and your player character. However, overusing her may lock you out of chances to build influence with your other party members So you can't cross class them to Jedi/Sith, her inability to use two handed weapons of dual wield makes some builds inaccessible, and She bails on the party at the start of the last act, which could leave you with Visas as the only Force wielder if you didn't cross class anyone.
• Legend of Dragoon has Rose, who, while still gaining experience and being around the same level as your party, is a bit stronger and has more attacks than you have access to. However, she tapers off a little bit and many players often bench her in favour of other party members. She's still useful, just a bit Overshadowed by Awesome depending on who you chose to prioritize. In fact, it makes sense in a rather subtle way — She's the only party member who comes with a Dragoon spirit already, whereas pretty much everyone else had a "Badass Normal" period before acquiring their spirits. She's not becoming useless — you're catching up to her.
  • A case could be made for Rose ultimately averting the trope for a number of reasons, assuming she is not benched. The timing on her combo attacks is much less strict than the rest of the cast, making them easier to pull off and deal full damage with consistently. She'll also have her highly damaging Demon's Dance well before any other character masters their final addition. To top it off, one of, if not the best weapon in the game is given to Rose right before the final battle. By the end of the game, the rest of your party might still be playing catch up to her.
• Early in Legend of Legaia, when you take control of Noa, you are accompanied by a wolf who is indestructible and heals your wounds indefinitely during battle.
  • An odd case in the sequel. Kazan joins fairly early literally 15 levels ahead of Lang and Maya, with a solid 3 more Art Blocks than Lang. He easily plows through all opponents for the next few dungeons, but levels up so slowly that Lang and Maya will quickly catch up with him. However, he remains a viable fighter for the rest of the game.
• In LISA: The Joyful, not only are healing items much less frequent than in the previous game, Buddy starts out at a low level with two mediocre attacks (while one is good for giving critical hits if you time the quick time events right, it takes awhile for a new player to master). This is offset somewhat by Rando, who joins your party after the first fight of the game — he starts out many levels higher than Buddy and has an extensive moveset similar to Brad's at the end of LISA: The Painful. He leaves the party after the first three warlords are killed, by which time Buddy is capable of holding her own.
• Live A Live:
  • In the Prehistory chapter, Pogo is accompanied by Gori, who starts out at a higher level and has much better initial stats. However, as the chapter progresses, Pogo will learn more powerful attacks, have actual equipment and become the party's main source of damage. Gori can still contribute to fights late in the chapter, but in more of a support role than before, such as using Poop Throw to chip away at enemies from a distance or Scare Face to reduce the damage Pogo will take.
  • In the Near Future chapter, you get the very strong Matsu and his arsenal of high-speed attacks (one being multi-target) to help out your main character, who at the beginning is laughably weak with no decent attacks, for his first fight. You ultimately get Matsu back for the final mission (though not the final boss itself), but he's still incredibly useful just on the same tier as your character now. A bit later on, you also get Taroimo, who's another example — he starts out with good stats and has two long-ranged attacks (something Akira is sorely lacking in at first), but he can't level up naturally, only through Robot Enhancement items, and even then, those only increase his HP.
  • The Middle Ages chapter gives two of the heroes who destroyed the original Lord of Dark, the Magic Knight Hasshe and the White Mage Uranus. While the two both are much higher levelled than the rookie Oersted and Streibough and hit much harder, their stats won't raise upon level-up and are gradually overpowered by Oersted and Streibough. Then Hasshe dies, Streibough supposedly does as well, and Uranus does not long after. By then, Oersted is able to do almost anything that Hasshe could do, and better, even inheriting Hasshe's weapon.
• Jansen from Lost Odyssey could be seen as playing this role. He is no more competent at his primary role as Black Mage in the start of the game than he is later on, and he also starts the game with a very small repertoire of low level White Magic spells. He is the only person with access to healing in the first section of the game, which of course every starting party must have. He will never learn new healing spells, and his white magic will quickly fade in usefulness as enemies grow strong enough to outpace the damage of his spells. However, his healing is just solid enough to last until a proper dedicated healer joins the team, allowing Jensen to fall back to his primary role of black mage.
• Magical Starsign:
  • Surprisingly, your Player Character ends up as a downplayed version of this trope. Early in the game, their ability to stay powered up half the time is useful, and they can deal consistent neutral damage to most enemies without worrying about Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. A Light-element hero will be especially useful for taking out Master Chard, due to hitting him for double damage. Later on, while they're still useful in some fights, they don't have the durability to last on the front row, and their skills aren't a good fit for the back row, relegating them to getting in a big hit or two with Nova Sword/Zero Joker and trying their best not to get knocked out. The Light hero also has relatively redundant support spells for their level 3 and 4 attacks, so when the power of Crystal Laser starts to taper off, they'll feel weak until they learn Nova Sword.
  • Subverted by Lassi. She makes for a decent attacker in the earliest stages of the game, where most enemies are Earth-element and so weak to her Wind Talon spell. Later on, her offensive power isn't too useful, but she remains invaluable as a Combat Medic due to her ability to fully heal the party with Healing Wing and give regeneration with Mother's Nest.
• Jacob Taylor of Mass Effect 2 essentially fills this role during the first half of the game. Jacob automatically starts with Pull and his Ammo power unlocked, leading to him being the fastest character to gain access to Squad Ammo Powers and "Warpslosions". But after a few hours of gameplay, you can recruit Grunt, who's vastly tougher and uses assault rifles instead of Jacob's weak pistols, gets Impact Shot instead of Pull (giving him an anti-Barrier attack), and the ability to use the Claymore Heavy Shotgun. Add in other party members like Jack, Samara, and Zaedd, who not only have better powers than he does by the midgame, but are also far more interesting to have around, and poor Jacob just gets left in the dust.
• In Miitopia, the legendary Great Sage will join your team once you enter Karkaton, who has moves like Tower of Flame, which does triple-digit damage; and Panacea, which heals your entire party's HP; at a time your own Mage is likely still using Fire and Cure for less than half the effect. However, as a Guest-Star Party Member, the Great Sage cannot gain any EXP and will leave the party shortly afterwards. They join your team primarily because the protagonist is fighting alone at that point and, as there's a Boss Rush coming up, you'd likely be completely overwhelmed otherwise.
• The original The World Ends with You has Shiki, to a certain extent. Her Bravery stat(which determines what clothing you can equip) is much higher than Neku's at the start of the game, as well as Neku's other partners, enabling you to give her significantly stronger gear than the other two. This, combined with her relatively simple and reliable method of getting Fusion stars, makes her a good choice in the early game, but by the time she rejoins for the final boss and in the post-game, the other two partners should have similar levels of Bravery.
• NEO: The World Ends with You has Sho Minamimoto, reoccuring villain from the first game now Promoted to Playable. His stats are drastically higher than Rindo, Fret, and Nagi's; however he leaves the party at the end of Week 1, and can't be used again until the postgame. He's also an in-universe example, as many fights plotwise go from "exceedingly difficult" or "unwinnable" to "actually manageable at worst" for that entire first week based on his presence alone, and the three remaining Wicked Twisters are significantly demoralized when he finally leaves.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Amalie starts at level 16, Aeyr and Mia start at level 5. The latter two have low defenses, making it necessary to use Amalie's tanking abilities to keep them alive. However, due to the EXP scaling mechanic, lower-leveled characters will get more EXP and close the level gap faster than if EXP wasn't scaled.
• Rave Heart: Bryan and Lumina are guest characters, with the former starting at level 4 and the latter having powerful offensive and support skills. This allows them to carry the otherwise weak party for the first few dungeons of the game, but they both leave the party during the events of Planet Orion.
• Re:Kuroi: Marie starts at level 7 and her healing spell is the same as her primary element, making her an efficient healer with high enough stats to deal with the first dungeon. However, she isn't available in the second dungeon, making it harder to manage the resources needed to heal. She rejoins by the fourth dungeon, but Kaito and Nina are closer to her level by then.
• RealityMinds: When Kvena is in the party, Astrake can continue fighting even at 0 HP. Kvena is also capable of dodging any physical attack and has decent magic defense, so she's unlikely to get knocked out. However, she permanently leaves the party after the second dungeon.
• In Reverse: 1999, you're given an assortment of free units as you progress through the game's first chapters. One of them is APPLe, a sentient, magical, talking apple that acts as a Combat Medic. While he's great for keeping your team alive when you have no other options in the starting hours, he will quickly become outclassed by better, more specialized options you can get from the gacha, and good luck trying to use him in Hard Mode.
• The DS remake of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure gives us Kururu, who has good stats and blessed with powerful lightning-elemental spells (lightning is not resisted by any element other than itself, which only a few enemy types possess to begin with). However, she is forcibly removed from the party at the start of the game's last chapter and if you haven't raised any other characters to replace her, you'll be in for a world of trouble in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• A rare end-game example happens in Secret of Evermore when you reach Omnipota and the Dog transforms into a robot. Now he moves faster than the Hero, can continue to run at high speed even when his stamina is drained, has a projectile attack that does hundreds of HP damage at 100%, can casually reach two thousand if fully charged, and even deals damage in the hundred range when the Attack Gauge is completely empty. As the enemies here casually have health in the thousands like Rimsala and the Raptors, the Dog is basically your only realistic option to stay alive in some areas unless you're really patient or are willing to spam high-level alchemy attacks.
• Bowser joins the party in Super Mario RPG right before entering the longest dungeon up to that point, and his skillset is good for it. He's likely to be one or two levels higher than anyone else, his HP is unmatched, his attack and defense are great even before he gets weapons/armor, and his Terrorize spell can inflict Fear on all enemies in a fight, cutting their attack and defense in half. He can easily replace Geno (who is starting to stagnate around that point) for a few hours. However, Bowser's main flaw is his awful magic defense; magic is uncommon enough when he joins, but later bosses can tear through all his health in one spell. His armor is weirdly weak and uncommon compared to most characters, his speed is always very low, and all of his spells after Terrorize are situational (later enemies and bosses start to resist Fear as well). He's never completely obsolete since there are only five playable characters and he's still a good tank, but Geno's equally strong basic attack and stronger spells can replace his damage, while Toadstool's magic is much more valuable despite her low attack power.
• Sword of Paladin: Lena is the first party member to have an AOE skill and has above average physical stat growth. After the Paladin trial, Nade surpasses her in stat growth, though Lena still remains a consistently useful physical AOE attacker.
• Remilia in Touhou Labyrinth, whose high stats are backed by a barren spell list consisting of one average powered single-target skill and one self-buff. Incredibly useful early on as one of the two only real tanks until about mid-way through the main game; fades to obscurity as stronger characters that actually have more specific uses join up. And of course, the longer you use her, the more skill points you sink in that becomes useless later.
  • Remilia appears to be this, but she's a very powerful character up until the last couple of bosses in the Plus Disk. Early on, she has by far the best damage output out of all of your characters, up through the 6th floor or so, even longer if you choose not to use Iku as your buffer. Her staying power as a first-slot tank wanes somewhat by the 5th floor, but you should definitely have Meiling at that point, who is generally regarded to as the best tank in the game. A better example might be Eirin, who packs the only percentile healing spell in the game, and is one of two characters who is able to support Komachi well, but she severely lacks the attack power of practically everyone except Cirno, and the flexibility of other healers.
• Treasure Hunter G has Red and Blue's grandfather along for the ride in the first dungeon. Unlike the boys he has unlimited movement range, unlimited HP, high attack, and his basic attack hits all enemies adjacent to him.
• In Riza's chapter of Treasure of the Rudra you get Garlyle in your party early on who, while not a Crutch Character in and of himself, comes equipped with the T-Decline machinegun which is not only stronger than Riza's basic attack but also attacks all enemies on the field. You'll get a lot of mileage out of it before becomes so outclassed attack-wise that its secondary ability is no longer worth it.
• Teagan in Uncommon Time. She has the best HP and defense, making her useful for the early battles that mainly come down to damage races. However, she never gets very varied or impressive skills — she gets no multi-target attacks at all, and in fact has the only Limit Breaks that don't target all enemies. This ends up leaving her behind other characters who get more distinct specialties, and she's quickly outclassed by Alto for pure damage potential. She also spends the longest time outside of the party in Movement 2, so she's likely to be severely underleveled when she rejoins.
• The Goddess Freya starts out as both a crutch and as an in-game guide for Lenneth in the original Valkyrie Profile, but it's more of a subversion - it is the very first and easiest dungeon in the game that was meant to serve as a tutorial ground for first-time players.
• Wasteland 2 features Angela Deth, a Desert Ranger veteran who helps you on your mission in hopes of avenging her lover, Ace. She starts out with a Level 7 weapon skill and significantly high stats in other areas as well, allowing the player to deal with early-game hazards much more easily. Naturally, she leaves about halfway through the first act to help with an important mission elsewhere, though by this point your characters are generally well-off enough to handle basic threats. She was toned down dramatically in the Director's Cut to avoid overshadowing the party so much (starting at level Eight instead of level FOURTEEN)
  • The main problem in this case thus has less to do with her (significant) combat-prowess, and more to do with the fact that you're likely to have specialized her in several valuable skills — namely Brute Force and Weaponsmithing (and the somewhat-less-useful Hard Ass and Outdoorsman). Thus, her unexpected disappearance is likely to leave a large hole in your team's skillset until you're able to rectify it. (Exacerbating this is the fact that one of the very rare cases where you might need a high Hard Ass skill is RIGHT after she leaves.)
• Magdalen Harts in the remake of Wild ARMs has some good stats and a some impressive sword moves. He's really there to carry Jane through her portion of both Volcannon Trap and the Barrier Shelter. When you get to recruit Jane permanently, Magdalen is revealed to have injured himself after one stunt too many, so he cannot join with her.

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