Sacrificed Basic Skill For Awesome Training / Video Games

• This can be seen with min-maxed characters in many games, especially those games that receive new DLC or content patches: A character min-maxed for a specific build-type or playstyle can find itself completely out of its depth when new content comes about that changes the Meta or adds new mechanics, or patches exploits that once made specific builds unstoppable. Characters built around exploiting the current Meta end up completely out of their depth when the latest season begins, the latest DLC drops, or a patch comes in that completely changes the game, while characters built around overall versatility can typically do well (Clearing main game content, but suffering in the post-game content) no matter how much the Meta changes.
  • A good example of this can be seen in Dark Souls 3 when a fairly well-known patch came through and radically changed the Meta, removing many glitches and exploits that many players had been using to dominate player-versus-player combat. Characters built around using those glitches and exploits had to either respec or be completely abandoned. Additionally, characters built solely for PVP combat have a tendency to have difficulty clearing the game, while characters built around clearing the game tend to have issues with PVP combat.
• Asura of Asura's Wrath is an outstanding fighter, but he doesn't know how to interact with people outside of punching. He still tries hard to be a good father and husband but is always very awkward about it.
  Durga: [As Asura is scared by baby Mithra crying]. Even one of the Eight Guardian Generals is no match for his own daughter, is he?
  Asura: She's... so small...
  Durga: Do you know what I think? I believe that you wish only the best for our daughter...
• Bullet from BlazBlue was born on a battlefield, raised by soldiers and has been working as a mercenary her whole life. As a result, she's a great combatant but she has no idea how to do anything outside fighting.
• Most player characters of modern video games that are heavy on scripting, especially the Call of Duty series. For example, Soap, from Modern Warfare. Highly trained SAS operator. Can shred through dozens of baddies in a matter of minutes. Cannot open a door.
• A key strategy in Civilization is the technique of beelinining, which is where you look in the tech or civics tree to find the next thing your civilization or planned victory condition needs and to just ignore everything else on the path to it. In Civilization 6, for example, you are never required to research irrigation and can easily reach the industrial age without having learned how to make the wheel. In fact, taken to extremes, you can actually make it all the way to technologies like robotics without having ever learned what that spinny round thing is for, though the player is not super likely to take it that far.
• Dead by Daylight: The Huntress is excellent at hunting and wilderness survival, but her mother never taught her anything else before her untimely death. She's completely illiterate, has the emotional and mental maturity of a small child, and in general is more a wild animal that can stand on two legs than a person.
• Laharl from Disgaea is a respectably powerful Overlord, and is stated to train every day to surpass his father, King Krichevskoy, but this has left him unable to do more mundane tasks and provide for his own needs, like setting a VCR or making his own food. Part of his recruitment in Disgaea 2 is the promise of working with the group as long as he's fed. (Context: Etna left his employ after he ate an expensive snack she was saving up, and Flonne later joins in another optional map, leaving Laharl with nobody to cook for him. He complains of having to be on a diet of ramen, and after Flonne joins the team, he mentions being reduced to canned tuna fish.)
• Similarly to Sangaril, Zevran from Dragon Age: Origins was raised as an assassin by the Antivan crows. He alludes to not having many skills apart from this. You can suggest (at a different point) that he would make a good prostitute, which makes him laugh.
• The Elder Scrolls series has the Greybeards of High Hrothgar, a monastery atop the Throat of the World, Tamriel's tallest mountain. The Greybeards are masters of the Thu'um, the draconic Language of Magic. The Greybeards have trained their voices to such an incredible extent that even a misplaced whisper could kill a person, thus they have to live in seclusion and rarely speak (with Arngeir, their representative to the player, being an exception). They play a major part in Skyrim, where they summon the Dragonborn to High Hrothgar for training in the Thu'um. When they speak in full voice to summon the Dragonborn to High Hrothgar, all of Skyrim hears it. Even when they greet the Dragonborn with a politely whispered "Dovahkiin", the whole mountain shakes from the force of it. In fact, Arngeir is chosen to speak on behalf of the Greybeards because his voice is the weakest, as evidenced by the fact that he can hold a full conversation with non-Greybeards without making their heads explode. It should be noted that this isn't just lore fluff, the four Greybeards are some of the highest level-NPCs in the game, with Arngeir sitting pretty at level 150.
• Halo:
  • Master Chief and the other Spartan-IIs are this, especially in the Expanded Universe. Taken from their homes and normal lives, their life from early childhood has been nothing but the military. As such, they are basically incapable in normal social situations, and often have difficulty relating to anyone who isn't a Spartan. One of the side effects of their augmentation is suppression of any sort of sex drive whatsoever.
  • The Spartan-IIIs are even worse, as they consist of war orphans from worlds destroyed by the Covenant, raised by focusing entirely on their drive for revenge and made into disposable suicide soldiers. Spartan IIs were given a reasonably well-rounded education and can at least pass as normal among enlisted personnel. IIIs are socially unskilled and Ax-Crazy. This can be seen in Halo: Reach when comparing the personality and behavior of Jorge (Noble's lone Spartan-II) with the rest of Noble Team, especially Emile.
  • Spartan-IVs avert this, as they were regular soldiers prior to being upgraded to Super-Soldier levels.
• An actual gameplay element in NieR: Automata: Since your HUD is a Diegetic Interface and all your HUD elements are added by chips, you can sacrifice bits of your HUD to make more room for chips that give combat buffs. The actual gains are quite small, but if you're good enough the HUD isn't that necessary either.
• Mitsuru in Persona 3 has spent her life learning how to fight shadows and take over the Kirijo group when the time comes. She is absolutely hopeless when it comes to day to day common activities such as normal friendships, dating, small things like fast food or considering her own goals for the future.
• Pokémon:
  • Holding a Pokémon back from evolving leaves them with lower base stats (until they evolve, at least), but they learn many attacks sooner, or may even learn moves that their evolutions can't learn at all. This is most prominent for Pokémon which evolve with evolutionary stones; though there are exceptions, either the evolved Pokémon can't learn any more moves by level-up and must rely on TMs and Move Tutors (i.e. Raichu, Ninetales, Poliwrath), or their level-up learnsets are completely different from what the unevolved Pokémon can learn (i.e. Eevee's family).
  • The title character of Detective Pikachu, much like Team Rocket's Meowth in the anime (see above), spent most of his battle skills on being able to talk with humans, leaving his electric attacks rather weak.
• Similar to tabletop RPGs, one of the earlier SmackDown vs. Raw games (back when it was still called Smackdown!) allowed your created characters to sacrifice attribute points for quirks that gave you a slight advantage in combat. On the other hand, you could also pick negative traits to give you additional attribute points. This allowed the wrestler to receive ungodly strength or endurance in exchange for being hampered by multiple crippled limbs. Happily, elective quadriplegia had almost no effect whatsoever, effectively granting you a massive power boost for free.
• Force-sensitives in Star Wars are typically trained by their Jedi/Sith masters in politics, philosophy, strategy, et cetera to be the ideal Warrior Monks and effectively serve as commissioned officers. Starkiller from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, on the other hand, was raised his whole life by Darth Vader as his personal assassin and was taught nothing other than how to effectively channel the Dark Side to survive his Training from Hell. As a result, he became a World's Best Warrior who couldn't even talk to girls let alone lead troops, as his interactions with his Love Interest Juno Eclipse show. It's a miracle that he successfully impersonated a Jedi and rallied The Emperor's enemies into The Alliance, but then again he was never even taught how to properly be a Sith.
• In Summoner 2, Sangaril was raised from a young age to be an assassin, but couldn't kill when she witnessed joy for the first time, instead becoming Maia's most trusted companion instead of her killer. Sangaril's mentor, however, sought revenge for her betrayal.
• Survival Arts, made by Scarab and published by Sammy, is a fighting game with an SNK Boss named Dantel. He can do a Spam Attack with a very long sword, has Eye Beams, can do a Blanka/Kano Rolling Attack and shoot a machine gun stream of bullets out of his finger!! All these abilities including the last one, is pure woowah skill! Whether it's bad programming or the makers wanted to give a little mercy, the guy cannot crouch. So make him eat those high attacks.
• Tales Series:
  • Leon Magnus from Tales of Destiny, raised with little contact with anyone who wasn't Hugo or Marian and trained to be a knight. He's come to believe the only people he can rely on are himself and Chaltier (his sword) and thus has a very hard time interacting with people without coming across as a major asshole. When Marian is taken hostage and Chaltier tells him to go get help from his previous teammates, he refuses. It gets him killed.
  • Luke from Tales of the Abyss comes to mind. After being found with no memories, his parents refused to let him leave the manor. While he studied swordsmanship to pass the time, he was so ignorantly unaware of how the world outside worked that he bit into an apple without paying (an excuse for the tutorial on shopping) and was branded a thief for it. As well, despite his amazing ability to use the seventh fonon to create a hyperresonnance, he is also incapable of learning healing spells, which are the basic application of the seventh fonon.
• Ashtarte in Tears to Tiara 2 is a goddess who hasn't appeared on earth for a long time. She needs to be taught what hunger is and how to eat.
• In Valkyria Chronicles, more than one Valkyria (Selvaria from VCI and Aliasse from VCII) knew no life besides being used in experiments, until chance encounters changed their lives (Selvaria's encounter with Maximilian, or Aliasse's friendship with Avan and Cosette). Aliasse in particular is still very young, and as such, is a powerful Valkyria but is also very naive and uneducated.