Damned by Faint Praise in Video Games.
- In a guide (fanmade or official) for a character seen as a Low-Tier Letdown or Joke Character, a common refrain is "good in the right hands." Sometimes this means the character has some hidden trick or high skill floor, to make them Difficult, but Awesome or a Lethal Joke Character - but more often, it means "this character can only be played proficiently if the user is already really good at the game, at which point playing as this character is basically a Self-Imposed Challenge."
- In Assassin's Creed, the Rafiq in charge of the Assassin Bureau in Damascus will tell Altaïr that he deeply envies him. Well, except for the fact that his arrogance got Altaïr stripped of his rank and equipment and got him stabbed in the gut, and every other Assassin hates his guts now.... or rather, are able to openly hate his guts now.
- Bear & Breakfast: After Hank repairs the Workbench, Tony says that it's good... enough. Hank doesn't appreciate it, but Tony assures him that he'll get better at repairs soon.
- Deltarune: When pressed to try and flatter Berdly, the best Queen can come up with is "I Love Tolerating You". Fortunately for her, Berdly is self-deluded and self-absorbed enough to take that as a sincere compliment.
- Shows up during one of the Multiple Endings of Disgaea 3 when Flonne is pressed to find something good to say about Laharl. Flonne, after some hesitation, manages to say that she could like how everything revolves around him, how he has the heart of a young boy, and how sticks to his beliefs even when it causes people to get hurt. Laharl is altogether less than pleased.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, The Warden is offered a vote on how to dispense with a magical criminal responsible for poisoning a nobleman. The Warden can give a response like "He did agree to help us... though he didn't have much choice", to which the Arl calls the trope out by name.
- This little ditty from IGN's review of the horrendous budget game Extreme PaintBrawl 2: "There is one good thing I can say about Extreme PaintBrawl 2: it doesn't cause cancer, bursitis, or scurvy — at least according to the Surgeon General."
- There is a rare inversion of the trope in Final Fantasy XIV. Gigi, an NPC in the Goldsmith's Guild, gives such over-the-top criticism of the player's first couple works (a copper ingot is "not fit to make a chamberpot", and a copper gorget is "an affront to the gods themselves") that his only response to a box of copper rings being "I've seen worse" is treated as high praise.
- In Fire Emblem Fates, King Garon insults his child Corrin this way just before the first phase of the Final Battle of the Birthright route.Garon: For someone who spent much of his/her life as a pampered shut-in... You've achieved something approaching competence.
Corrin: Gee, thanks for the compliment. - Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's character bios list Karis, an overbearing and easily-annoyed Tsundere, as the "most levelheaded" of the starting three characters. This speaks volumes (or not) about Matthew, the hero.
- Katamari Damacy: In Beautiful Katamari, if the King of All Cosmos isn't impressed with your rolling results, but still turns it into a star, he'll observe "At least it doesn't take up much space..." Of course, he doesn't shy away from straight insults, either...
- The RoboKing in Katamari Forever is even better at this, in part thanks to his tendency to blame himself.
- The Disciple, from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, will give you a laundry list of complaints he has with the Jedi if you ask him: they're arrogant, they're out of touch, and their greatest Knights keep on falling to the dark side. But he will concede that people are wrong to conflate them with the Sith, and they do have symbolic value. He supposes.
- In Mutant Football League, if the Leaveland Burns manage to eke out a win, "Brickhead" Mulligan will congratulate them on how, "...for one glorious night, they weren't the worst."
- After 10 days into Papers, Please and again after the 20th day, you receive a plaque from your supervisor recognizing you for your excellence if you have not received any citations. If you have gotten any citations, up to 20, you instead get a plaque recognizing you for your "sufficience". If you have gotten more than 20 citations, you "earn" a plaque recognizing you for your "presence". Lampshaded by a Scripted Event entrant on day 12 who snarks at you if you have a Sufficience plaque, and outright sarcastically remarks "way to go" if you have a Presence plaque.
- Persona series:
- In Persona 4:
- Kanji does his best to not insult Yukiko's cooking. He ends up with "It tastes really... boneless?", then notes "It's pretty impressive that you put so many ingredients into a dish and it came out tasting like nothing." Granted, it apparently turned out slightly better than Chie or Rise's cooking, the latter of which causes Yukiko to pass out after a single bite.
- Yukiko possibly unintentionally does this when she remarks that Chie gets above average grades in the subjects she doesn't fail.
- In Persona 5, near the end of Haru's Confidant, Takakura, the new president of Okumura Foods after her father's death asks her what she thinks about her fiancé, Sugimura. Haru, still a bit guarded around Takakura, politely describes Sugimura as "an intelligent man," but says she has no interest in being his wife. In reality, Haru had previously called Sugimura a "creep," and had decided to steal her father's heart so she wouldn't have to go through with the Arranged Marriage with Sugimura.
- In Persona 4:
- In Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, the second gym leader, oddly enough, does this to himself when he says, "IF IT'S WORM ELF, I'M NOT DEFEATED BY EVERYONE."note
- Later in the same game, a trainer in the Fighting Gym declares that, "OUR FIGHTERS ARE NOT TERRIBLE!"
- Salazar in Resident Evil 4 manages to do this to himself when taunting Leon over the radio about finding the hedge maze. Salazar remarks that, "as sagacious as I am, even I get lost here sometimes", while the hedge maze itself is rather small, straightforward, and Leon finds his way through with little difficulty despite having to also search it for Mac Guffins while being attacked by parasite-infected wolves. As a large part of Salazar's backstory is that he was too stupid to realize Saddler was manipulating him by feeding to his guilt and playing off his religious beliefs, and not to mention views him largely as expendable while he thinks he's someone important now, this speaks volumes about how "sagacious" the little freak really is.
- The introduction to Shadowrun Returns explains that you are currently living in an apartment that has four walls, a roof and isn't on fire. Also there are no cockroaches because they have higher standards.
- In Shadowrun: Dragonfall, if you accept a particular assassination job, choose to spare the target, then have a change of heart and kill him anyway when the client's goons show up to check on you, you'll receive your payment along with a note from the client that your performance was "satisfactory"... and that you shouldn't expect to receive any more contracts from them.
- Splatoon:
- At one point in Splatoon 2, Pearl asks Marina to tell the viewers about Inkblot Art Academy, but all Marina can come up with is "It's a place that exists." They later admit that they can't badmouth the Academy on-air because it's one of their sponsors.
- Splatoon 3 awards the player various medals after each match according to their performance. Most of them are genuinely positive ("#1 Turf Inker", "#1 Enemy Splatter"), but if you don't do well you'll start to get medals like "#1 Ink Consumer" or "#1 Ground Traveler." If the the best thing the game can say about your performance is "you used a lot of ink" or "you sure walked a lot", chances are you didn't do too well. The most extreme examples are probably the "#1 (Special) User" medals, as the game will award them to you even if you're the only player using a loadout that includes that special and are thus the only player in the match capable of earning it. This means the game is patting you on the back for managing to activate your special at least one time.
- Towards the end of Spec Ops: The Line, Big Bad Konrad claims he's not a madman by telling the Captain Walker "I assure you, I'm as sane as you are Captain." As the tone of voice, not to mention the previous several hours of the game, suggests, this is not intended as a reassurance. Not long after, you find that Konrad was Dead All Along, and Captain Walker was talking to a figment of his imagination so he could deny that "The only villain here is you, Walker." "Konrad" was indeed as sane as Captain Walker.
- The demo for The Stanley Parable features a "compliments room", where pushing the button will earn you a shallow compliment from the narrator. He's only able to praise the player's ability to eat uranium, then place them in the top 5000 of people playing the demo at this exact moment, before running out of nice things to say.
- Tales of Xillia has a moment of Alvin and Milla discussing her getting some training in her swordsmanship in, though she is less than adequate at fighting at this point. Cue Alvin giving her faint praise.Alvin: If nothing else, you know how to swing the pointy end.
- Played for laughs in World of Warcraft regarding the engineering profession which at high levels allows characters to "make fantastic devices and explosives that very often work as intended."
