Unskilled But Strong / Video Games

Examples of characters who are Unskilled, but Strong in video games.

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• Angry Birds: Terence is one of the only birds to lack a special ability, but his giant size and brute strength are nonetheless an effective weapon against the pigs.
• Macho pitchers, the ones with the fastest pitches, are usually unskilled in Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D. They don't take advantage of the strike zone's borders as much as pitchers with other body builds. And then there's an aversion with Tall pitchers from Team Crystal and the Arc Stars ^note Noel is considered a Tall character for pitching and batting purposes, who have fast pitches and use them to great effect to get strikes by pitching right on the border of the strike zone.
• In Artifact, most Hero Unit cards have some kind of special innate ability. However, some of them, such as Axe and Keefe, lack an innate but make up for it with high base stats.
• Astra Hunter Zosma: Zosma has higher stats than his companion and he's the only unit in the game with access to the chain system. However, he is unable to land critical hits, since the lore states that he's too clumsy to do so.
• Asura's Wrath:
  • Asura himself is not a very subtle or tactical fighter. He frequently charges headlong into things and smashes them with insane, brute force, relying on his Unstoppable Rage to fuel him. And more often than not, this works against even much more skilled opponents. His traditional rival and friend Yasha is the only one capable of beating him with skill over brute force. Later on, Asura has to become more skilled and less reliant on brute force when he meets an enemy he can't beat with screaming and punching as hard as he can. namely, Chakravartin, who is effectively God. Which kind of says something about how far rage and strength takes him when he only really needs to adapt and fight skillfully against God Himself.
  • Chakravartin himself counts, what with him being God. Judging from his wording, he's never fought a battle he's legitimately had to take seriously until Asura comes at him for the finale with his 11th-Hour Superpower, and yet his sheer power is such that it doesn't matter, forcing Asura to fight with more restraint and skill to overcome him.
• Bayonetta 2 has Rodin when playable in Tag Climax. In contrast to Bayonetta and Jeanne, who are Dance Battlers with graceful movements, Rodin's fighting style has far less finesse and mainly consists of wild hook punches, haymakers, uppercuts, and a Shockwave Stomp. But his sheer brute strength makes this a relatively moot point.
• Beneath Oresa: The hordes of Oresa have been empowered by their insanity-inducing diseases; at their strongest, bosses can literally deal over a hundred points in damage in one attack, while even the weakest mooks can overturn the adventurers with high-damage fast-fire attacks. However, their formations are constantly in chaos; warriors will charge into obvious traps in pursuit of your character, while gunners frequently fire on impulse and can accidentally shoot their own allies.
• BlazBlue:
  • Makoto Nanaya, being a beastkin, has monstrous strength and durability, being able to knock her target across the room, make one huge impact crater on the go, and she can just lift her friend just fine on a dead sprint^note Ironically, the series's resident Weak, but Skilled characters Jin Kisaragi and Bang Shishigami have 11,500 health compared to Makoto's 11,000 (with her Impact tonfas magnifying her already extreme strength), but her fighting style involves nothing but punching, with some Energy Ball dropping to go and some Doppelgänger Spin. In-story, her Ars Magus aptitude is average, meaning that Utility Ars and aforementioned Energy Ball are her everyday techniques.
  • The protagonist, Ragna the Bloodedge. He's a partial example in that he has received formal training, but only in the basics of Ars Magus. Beyond that, he just really muscles his way through the opposition and uses the eponymous BlazBlue should the going get really tough. With the power of the BlazBlue, he has become the most wanted man in the world by the government and very few individuals in the series come close to his power. However, Ragna tends to get overwhelmed when he doesn't have access to his powers, which a lot of characters can negate. This also extends to gameplay as he's a Glass Cannon, which means attacking and doing as much as possible is pretty much the best way to play him.
    
    In Chronophantasma, Ragna loses the ability to use the Azure and by extension, the use of his right arm and eye, helping him realize that he should fight using his own strength and skills without relying on the Azure. While he does spend most of the game tossed around by characters who are either better skilled and/or stronger than him such as Kagura, Jin, and Azrael due the handicap, he becomes a much more efficient fighter when he regains the use of his limbs and sight, and even defeats Nu in the True Ending without using the Azure, something he was never able to do prior.
  • Taokaka, compared to all of the characters, has zero fighting style compared to the rest of the cast, instead relying on her inborn instincts. Although she is still able to utilize seithr according to Kokonoe and Litchi, it's natural and without formal education as to how. This also extends to gameplay as she's a Fragile Speedster, which means Hit-and-Run Tactics are pretty much the best way to play her.
  • Azrael is a subversion of the trope. At first glance, he seems to fit the mold, with his fighting style consisting of wild hook punches, haymakers, and an occasional kick. Kagura even notes that he mainly just throws his power around. But he is actually more skilled than he lets on as one of his Distortion Drives, Scud Punishment, has him doing what looks to be targeting an enemy's pressure point. He also serves in one of the tutorials and teaches the player how to confuse opponents with mind games. In Central Fiction, it turns out that this is played straight, as in his final bout with Kagura, he's derided for having no technique and relying on strength alone. Azrael even outright calls reliance on skill and finesse as nothing but fantasies that could never hope to win against him. Kagura then proceeds to prove him wrong.
  • Terumi is this to the point where he makes a pre-Character Development Ragna and Azrael seem like master-level fighters by comparison. He fights with ruthless barbarity compared to Hazama's dance-like grace and is hell-bent on making his enemies suffer as much as possible. Despite this, he's so ludicrously powerful that you'd need to be on the same level as Hakumen and Jubei to take him on, or find a way to nullify his power source like Kokonoe did.
    
    In Central Fiction, his true self as Susano'o is an even greater example of this. He completely forgoes weaponry in favor of pure, unrelenting brutality with much of his movements being unrefined brawling. Despite this, he's so unbelievably powerful that he can easily overpower Ragna, Jubei, Izayoi, Jin, and Noel at the same time. In Cross Tag Battle, he even outright dismisses skill and technique as "children of human weakness" and doesn't bother with such things out of arrogance.
  • Naoto Kurogane is this straight. He's an Ordinary High-School Student given many of the same abilities as Ragna and also the ability to manipulate his own blood and shape it into weapons, plus he's nigh-impossible to kill due to his Healing Factor born from his life connection to Raquel Alucard. His game-plan is effectively "heal through the enemy's strikes and pulverize them, and I'll win eventually".
• In Bonfire, Hildie has the lowest starting Special of all heroes, but the highest Attack. She hits hard, but don't expect her to get much use out of items. This can be downplayed with her "Hidden Potential" skill, which gives her additional Special points on motivation ups.
• Bug Fables has Hoaxe, the Wasp King. While he can get creative with his attacks when he's forced to, as shown in the first phase of his boss fight, and has considerable skill with his axe, it's implied that he heavily relies on his overwhelming fire magic to coast him through most fights. If his fire magic is ever weakened or negated, then he's left as a simple, but still fairly dangerous, axe wielding bug that Maki can easily tag when the opportunity arises, and even Team Snakemouth are able to make quick work of him in the first phase of his boss fight with help from the Flame Brooch.
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow has Julius Belmont. He can't use magic (even though he should be able to, considering some of his ancestors, but whatever), which is necessary to break through sealed and permanently destroy boss enemies (if you don't, they will regenerate). He gets through the castle through equal parts his Ancestral Weapon and pure awesome. This winds up Gameplay and Story Segregation though, as one bonus mode places the player in control of Julius, the game is much harder (Normal Soma mode can be beaten mostly through brute force and healing items, but Julius can't pause the game and thus can't open the inventory), and while the seal doesn't need to be drawn, the game shows the sealing animation (though with the expected sequence, Julius is joined by a mage early on).
• The AI in the Civilization series is both notoriously faulty and prone to unfairness. The result is that they essentially work like this, especially on higher difficulties, where their resources are limitless, their people are perpetually smiling, and they can pull new technology from the aether... and they will use those advantages to build a pile of troops and bumble them in your general direction before getting sidetracked by a passing butterfly.
  • Continuing the point, giving the AI unfair advantages to make up for the lack of technical knowledge and skill a human player can accrue with enough time and effort is common practice in many strategy games. In Mordheim: City of the Damned, for instance, a player's warband with troops that have had their skills and equipment carefully planned and optimized will chew through an AI warband filled with lackluster troops loaded with random weapons and skills, but crucially the AI doesn't have to worry about casualties because they generate a new warband each game so it will do whatever it can to screw the player over in the long run, like Zerg Rushing the leader and stealing all his equipment off his body, or manipulating the dice rolls in combat to give themselves an edge.
• Early bosses in Dark Souls games, such as the Last Giant or Vordt of the Boreal Valley, tend to be big and hit fairly hard, but have little in the way of finesse and are generally slow. Later bosses, when you have more of a handle on the game, tend to have much more skill and speed without forfeiting killing power.
• Devil May Cry:
  • DmC: Devil May Cry: This version of Dante has a fighting style focused on heavy swings and haymaker punches, essentially a combination of Good Old Fisticuffs and weapons. This contrasts with classic Dante who was an Instant Expert with weapons he just acquired. Vergil also contrasts (though without falling into Weak, but Skilled as he's still a formidable foe, just one who doesn't have the raw power of Dante) as he relies more on demonic power than being a good fighter, preferring his weapon strikes be quick and efficient instead of brutal and wild. Vergil from the original continuity stands above all of them, being both Strong and Skilled (he favors demonic power like DmC's Vergil but even without that, during the first tussle with Dante in 3, he easily demonstrates his raw fighting prowess by beating Dante in a straight half-demon to half-demon fight).
  • Devil May Cry 4
    • Nero is this compared to Dante; he only has one style and a much smaller arsenal than Dante's. His Red Queen sword can increase in power and range and his charged gunshots are single shot, explode at higher levels and have a recoil that forces him at a dead stop to use. Nero relies on the power of his Devil Bringer while Dante cycles between completely different styles.
    • Angelo Agnus falls into this. In his demonic form, he is incredibly strong, able to effortlessly Neck Lift his opponents and take off huge chunks of health with his attacks. Unfortunately, his swordsmanship is very sloppy, being reliant on a single two hit combo that can be easily evaded. Not too surprising as he is more of a scientist than a fighter.
  • Devil May Cry 5: Urizen, Vergil's demonic half, has an incredible amount of demonic power, enough to curb-stomp all the heroes when they first encounter him. However, he lacks any finesse in his attacks as they are rather predictable and easily telegraphed. The moment that he meets someone with an equal or greater power than him such as Dante's Sin Devil Trigger, he gets easily clobbered. This contrasts with V, who has all of Vergil's fighting skills but none of his physical might or Vergil himself, who has both the power and the skills needed to fight Dante to a standstill.
• Dragon Ball Heroes has a Universe 6 counterpart of Hercule Satan, who is actually stronger than Xeno Goku and Vegeta and next in line to be the God of Destruction of his universe. He still needs a jetpack to fly. Humorously, even with all of that power, he never learned how to use ki based flight.
• Elden Ring has Godrick the Grafted, a minor demigod who's turned to fusing other people's limbs onto his own body for power in order to make up the difference between Marika's direct children. It didn't really work; while he's strong enough to create shockwaves and shatter stone, he's also a malformed, lopsided monster who can barely keep his balance, while the other demigods are that strong and skilled warriors besides.
• Fallout:
  • The Heavy Handed Trait gives you more unarmed damage, but lower critical hit damage. Worth noting is that the Fallout universe correlates critical hits with finesse.
  • The Gifted Trait increases all of your primary stats while reducing both your skill levels and the rate that they improve.
• Final Fantasy XIII: Snow Villiers' fighting style qualifies for this trope. Unlike other Bare Fisted Monks in the series like Tifa or Sabin, he doesn't have any finesse in his animations or a variety of martial arts techniques; he just punches (and occassionally kicks) his enemies. He's also, as Serah puts it, "tough as a behemoth", with his towering frame being more than enough to make every hit count; his "weapon", rather than the series-typical knuckles, is an AMP-powered Badass Longcoat which (lore-wise) does more to keep him alive than strengthen his blows.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Fighter and Warrior classes are the embodiment of this trope, with loads of raw strength and HP but poor speed and skill. This is further perpetuated in their battle animations, where half of the time they're practically stumbling over themselves. The fighter's axe and warrior's bow criticals, for example, consist of nothing more than the unit flailing his weapon around uselessly before attacking.
  • Brigands, Pirates, and Berserkers tend to count as this as well, generally having high strength and decent speed, but atrocious skill stats. Berserkers take it even further by having an innately high critical rate on top of that. They may only hit half the time, but when they do, it'll hurt.
  • A more specific example would be Delthea from Fire Emblem Gaiden and its remake. Most mages are either a Jack of All Stats or a Squishy Wizard who still has a decent hit rate. Delthea, meanwhile, has a ludicrous magic growth, but an abysmal skill score (incidentally contrasting her Weak, but Skilled brother Luthier).
  • Hector from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade is another example. He's got a great Strength growth and an average Skill growth, and Lyn comments that he fights by just kind of swinging his axe around when she first meets him.
  • Both Wolf and Sedgar from Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon are unconventional examples. They have absurdly huge growths (for context, that's even more than Est's) to compensate for their prepromoted status, but they have almost no weapon ranks and switching classes to make up for the Horseman's terrible start will result in them continuously juggling around low weapon ranks, meaning that it's common to see a well-trained Wolf hitting massive damage with an iron axe.
  • Sylvain from Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an unconventional example. His Strength is average, but he has access to the Lance of Ruin as early as Chapter 6 if the player has him in their house upon clearing Chapter 5. The lance allows Sylvain to use Ruined Sky, effectively the strongest single-hit attack available in the earlygame. However, the lance also has a base Hit of just 65%, not helped by Sylvain's low Dexterity base and growth, as well as his bow weakness. ^Why?The Archer class grants Hit Rate +20 upon mastery, but requires a C in bows to guarantee passing. Sylvain's bow weakness means he has a harder time getting into the class compared to other characters.
• In Ghost Trick, Missile lacks the ability to directly manipulate objects like Sissel can, but he has much longer reach, and can Swap Teleport any two items of the same shape, regardless of size difference or weight. This means that, while he can't freely move objects, he can handle objects far too heavy for Sissel to do anything with.
• God of War (PS4) gives us Magni and Modi, the Sons of Thor. As Aesir, their might and magic is nothing to scoff at... if you're a mere mortal. Being used to rolling over anyone foolish enough to challenge them, they finally meet their match in Kratos and Atreus, who not only work better as a team than the bickering siblings, but also use precise, focused attacks while Magni and Modi repeatedly lose their balance by putting too much force into their attacks, perform too many wasteful movements and rely mostly on gimmicks to overpower their foes.
  • The sequel, God of War Ragnarök, gives us Heimdall, the herald of Ragnarok and bearer of Gjallarhorn. Being the God of Foresight, Heimdall can see every attack that people make at him before they even do it, which, theoretically, would make him a highly powerful fighter... Except for the fact that he relies purely on this ability alone to win his fights and never actually learned how to fight an opponent who could bypass his Foresight or prepare himself in the event he couldn't rely on his Foresight. During his fight with Kratos, he doesn't take the fight seriously and is more focused on toying with Kratos and making their duel a spectacle instead of killing him, being slow to strike and retreating to the back of the arena, which eventually bites him when Kratos uses the Draupnir Spear to overwhelm his senses and eventually strike him for the first time. Afterwards, things spiral for Heimdall as Kratos quickly overpowers him because his skills in a fight are basic at best. In the second phase, Heimdall becomes enraged after losing his arm and fights wildly because he can't comprehend that Kratos beat him and is ashamed that he tried to spare him, allowing the much better-trained and more disciplined Kratos to slug him to the ground and strangle him to death.
• Golf Story has Max Yards. He regularly hits 300+ yards in his matches, but he's lousy at hitting cleanly or accurately. You can make the player character one depending on how you level him up; it's even enforced to an extent, as apportioning points to drive distance will lower your other stats slightly.
• In Iji, Iosa the Invincible has Deflector Shields that are immune to all weapons and fast, powerful attacks... that are widely telegraphed, allowing a quick dodge and retaliation.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Sora himself. Having never served under a Keyblade master, Sora has had no formal training in wielding the Keyblade up until Dream Drop Distance and his fighting style is a mostly self-taught fighting style that stems from his play sword fighting days with Riku, but he makes up for it with tremendous willpower and strength of heart. It also helps that he has Donald and Goofy by his side to aid him.
  • Roxas zig-zags this trope. He wields two Keyblades, which requires a lot of finesse and nobody barring Sora himself has ever displayed the ability to do so. His overall fighting style is not only powerful, but swift and graceful as well. However, his knowledge of the Keyblade amounts to it being a really powerful sword. The best example of this is his fight with Sora. At first, Roxas overwhelms him, but Sora, being an experienced and self-taught Keyblade wielder, calls his weapon back to his hand, with Roxas completely caught off-guard by this. This is a rather basic ability the Keyblade possesses, and Roxas is completely shocked by someone doing it.
  • Kairi has the enormous natural strength of heart and light powers that come with being a Princess of Heart, and a talent for using the Keyblade's aforementioned recall ability in inventive ways, but lacks the experience as a swordfighter that Sora possesses by the time she joins the fight eleven games into the series.
  • Julius as he appears in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] uses only punches, body slams, and charges for his attacks. However, the fact that he's a Superboss in a Kingdom Hearts game should give you a good idea about how tough he is.
  • Hercules breathes this trope, especially in comparison to the protagonists. He shows no real fighting technique or strategy in matches with him, coasting by on his Super-Strength punches and nigh invulnerability. He does have a sword, but only uses it in an awkward spinning attack.
• The eponymous protagonist of the Knack series has this problem. His fighting style in the first game is relatively simplistic, consisting mainly of a basic three-hit combo. His only ranged attack is a blast that targets all on-screen enemies and his only defensive maneuver is a whirlwind of relics that surround his body. That said, his sheer strength allows him to tear through armies of Goblins and robots, especially in his giant form. This is downplayed in the sequel, where he gets a more versatile moveset that makes clever use of his shapeshifting abilities, but he still relies more on raw power than actual skill and some of the moves he gets in the game (The Hook Shot, Heavy Punch, and Boomerang) have to first be taught to him by Ava. This trait is best shown in Chapter 3-1 during the Monk's gauntlet run. While Knack can easily overpower the human monks, he is hopelessly outclassed by Xander's relic creations, who possess all of his abilities but are far more skilled in their use. Ava bluntly spells it out for him.
  Ava: Hard to believe you saved the world. All you know are three punches and a kick!
• Knights of Ambrose: Morgoth is good at healing magic, but when it comes to offensive magic, he can't control the output, leading to more destruction than he wants. This keeps him from fighting alongside the party, even before his Face–Heel Turn.
• Sett of League of Legends isn't a great fighter from a technical standpoint. Relying on basic haymakers and the like when he gets into a rumble. Sett however doesn't need much skill, as being built like a brick shithouse, along with his half-Vastayan blood makes him virtually invincible.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zant from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a clear example of this trope. Upon meeting Ganondorf, Zant gains tremendous magical power, bordering on Reality Warper level. However, as his boss fight shows, he has absolutely zero technique in using it in combat. His fighting style is the magical equivalent of brute force and main fighting strategy is to basically fire energy bolts at things or grow to tremendous size and stomp on it. His sword skills, if anything, are even worse and basically boils down to a crude, haphazard mix of Teleport Spam and wild flailing. And the fact that he gets winded easily during battle suggest that he's not really used to fighting.
    
    However, thanks to the Adaptational Badass treatment he receives in Hyrule Warriors (in part to the Dynasty Warriors style gameplay), he seems to have improved significantly, his sword skills being more fluid, focused, and precise. He's also learned to better mesh his magic with his physical skills to make him more unpredictable than before such as using a Portal Network to summon various objects or finishing off a boss by using a Spin Attack to launch himself into the air and growing giant to deliver a Finishing Stomp. However, it's still far from flawless as shown when he either trips over himself or gets dizzy after Overheating certain combos.
  • From Hyrule Warriors, we have Ganondorf and his Great Swords moveset. While he's not unskilled per se, his swordsmanship is far more bestial and unrestrained compared to Link, Zelda, and Impa. His fighting style basically consists of him savagely swinging his swords and combining his physical attacks with his powerful dark magic. That said, given the sheer raw power behind each swing, it's all he needs. This is subverted when he gets his Trident weapon in Hyrule Warriors Legends, where his fighting style is more focused and precise.
  • Daruk from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is implied to be one. On top of being a big Goron warrior, portrayed in previous games as relying more on brute strength than finesse, his magical ability, Daruk's Protection, requires simply activating the barrier at the right time and place. The backstory also depicts him as being the one Champion who struggled to pilot his Divine Beast.
• While not superpowered, dancers and yoga instructors in Liberal Crime Squad have the highest physical stats of all professions, even surpassing soldiers and agents. They tend to not have any combat skill.
• This trope can be seen in varying ways throughout the Like a Dragon series in many different ways.
  • While Kazuma Kiryu is primarily Strong and Skilled, when it comes down to it he's ultimately just a street brawler with an amazing natural talent for violence. In particular, when using his "Beast" style he focuses everything on raw power as he fights by just throwing his weight around and slamming anything not nailed to the ground on enemies.
  • Taiga Saejima fights with far less finesse compared to other playable character but stands out as one of the greatest examples of Charles Atlas Superpower in a setting filled with this since he's strong enough to not only to rip street signs out of the ground as weapons but with sufficient upgrades becomes not only Immune to Flinching but capable of grappling bigger enemies that other characters can't do as easily.
  • One can consider Ichiban Kasuga's primary "Hero" and "Freelancer" classes of Yakuza: Like a Dragon to be this. While within the broader scope of the series he's closer to Weak, but Skilled solely on the basis that he isn't a One-Man Army his fighting style mostly consists of incredibly simplistic street brawling coupled with wrestling moves as well as just swinging a bat really hard without any finesse whatsoever.
  • All of the Mr. Shakedown enemies in Yakuza 0 are insanely powerful, to the point of taking out Kiryu or Majima in only 1 or 2 hits at low levels, and are mostly Immune to Flinching, but are balanced out by their slow, clumsy and very telegraphed attacks. However, once the player starts being able to defeat them, they slowly increase in both max health and skill, eventually being able to sidestep attacks and counter-attack, string together simple combos and using a powerful tackle maneuver at low health.
  • Ryuji Goda of Yakuza 2 is even more unskilled than Kiryu because his entire fighting style is just being a sloppy street fighter and relying on Good Old Fisticuffs. When picking up a Katana, he doesn't two hand it and instead swings it wildly around while using a few kicks. However, he's incredibly strong; the Essence of Crushing: Elbow doesn't work on him as it typically should, making him probably the only character to not break their fist on Kiryu's downwards elbow.
• In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny, this is Levi the Slasher's main problem. As the Material of Power, she's ridiculously strong, but since she's a Boisterous Bruiser Dumb Muscle who generally goes Attack! Attack! Attack!, she tends to get trounced by Weak, but Skilled characters like Chrono.
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance gives us Senator Armstrong after activating his nanomachines. Strong enough to make Metal Gears explode with his bare hands, and tough enough to shrug off anything you can throw at him. The first two phases of his boss fight reflect this quite well, like Raiden, who at this point is a nigh-unstoppable Lightning Bruiser, can only do scratch damage at best. Yet for all his overwhelming power he boasts none of the hand-to-hand fighting skill his time in the Navy could have given him, and once Raiden obtains the Murasama, his superior skill, speed, and reflexes win over Armstrong's physical might.
• Mordheim: City of the Damned: Basically what the Undead warband are in relation to everyone else. Their units have obscenely high physical stats; for example, the Vampire has a physical statline of 18/15/15 to the Chaos Magister's 10/12/14 and the Mercenary Captain's 14/13/10. Their mental stats also tend to be quite good, and they have a list of immunities and resistances to nasty things like poison, critical hits and psychology checks. Where they suffer is that only their heroes can use consumables or wear armour, and their martial stats tend to be subpar.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: While fighting Kano, Deathstroke tells him that, while he's not that bad of a fighter, he "lacks discipline."
  • Two Guest Fighters in Mortal Kombat X:
    • Jason. He doesn't have the colorful martial arts and magical power of the other kombatants. Just simply incredible amounts of raw power and endurance. With a temporary special, he's even able to march through the attacks of gods and demons.
    • Leatherface. He is seven feet tall, freakishly strong, and can swing a chainsaw around like it's nothing. And that's pretty much what he does; few combos, just hard-hitting, wild, brutal attacks.
• Orcs in Mutant Football League generally have low Intelligence, or "Football IQ", meaning they struggle to adapt as the play unfolds, have poor reaction time and evasive skills, and are prone to boneheaded mistakes like fumbling the handoff or stumbling onto field hazards. This makes them largely inept at playing the skill positions on offense, or the secondary on defense. However: they hit the hardest and have the most health. They're perfect for the defensive line, and there are many capable-to-great Orc tight ends, guards. and linebackers. The all-Orc (except for one guy) Orcs of Hazzard team has a brutalizing defense that takes opposing offenses apart piece by piece, but can struggle to move the ball due to having only one offensive weapon (guess who). Compare Aliens and the all-alien team, the Galaxy Chaos, who have all of the exact opposite strengths and weaknesses.
• The Ninja Warriors (1994): Raiden's a ninja but he sure fights like he's in a barroom brawl. Relying on Good Old Fisticuffs and brute strength throws (his signature throws are grabbing a pair of foes and mashing their faces into each other or grabbing an enemy and igniting his rocket thruster into the enemy's face), he lacks the technical pro-wrestling moves and high-skilled nunchuk techniques of fellow Big Guy powerhouse, Ninja. That said Raiden's a 32 ton assault mech and he hits like it.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • Flak and Jugger from Advance Wars. As this is a strategy game, this translates into a higher range of variance: it's possible for their units' attacks to hit much harder than other COs', but it's equally possible for them to be much weaker.
  • Kanbei is implicitly this with a 20% boost on offence and defence. Strategy and skill are implicitly synonymous in Advance Wars, so he is, particularly in the first game, contrasted with his statistically weaker but significantly brainier daughter.
• Pillars of Eternity: The axe-wielding mercenary, Ewan, has high base attack, but terrible accuracy. His hiring description acknowledges that he's likely to miss his targets.
• Pokémon:
  • Many moves deal a lot of damage and have an accuracy rate of 70% or lower.
  • Many wild Pokémon, particularly the legendaries embody this. Later on wild Pokémon can have higher levels and stats than Pokémon from trainers in the same area, but lack attacks outside their type and don't benefit from effort values. Legendaries can sweep an entire team if approached carelessly but often times only have one or two attacks despite high level.
  • The Dragon type as a whole. They're primarily Lightning Bruisers with very high offence, defence, speed and have multiple resistances. However, most Dragon-type moves don't have secondary effects, but hit extremely hard (especially off of the Dragon-types' high stats) and are resisted by only 2 types to compensate for their lack of super effective coverage.
  • Sheer Force is this in the form of ability. Pokemon with this ability can't use any additional effects their moves might have but such moves get an increase in power to compensate.
  • Hustle is also this in ability form. Pokémon with the ability deal 50% more damage with physical attacks, but all physical attacks' accuracy is cut to 80% of what they'd normally be.
• Prayer of the Faithless: Downplayed. Aeyr has very high Power growth, but low Skill growth, meaning his strong attacks have a higher chance to graze the enemy instead of dealing full damage. He makes up for his low Skill growth slightly by having drives that buff this stat. Once he becomes a Revenant, he's powerful enough to defeat a Hellspawn by himself while still having enough steam to defeat Amalie in a duel.
• Project Zomboid: One of the most powerful character builds in the game is to play as a meathead or a cardio bunny. Don't pick a starting occupation and unload all those points into strength and stamina, and pick Baseball Player or Runner as a hobby. You'll have to learn every other skill from scratch of course (and that might take some time), but you can outrun a horde of runner zombies and club dozens of heads with a bat or other long implement without tiring out, so making it out of the first two weeks (where most characters tend to die) should be a breeze. For comparison, playing as a Weak, but Skilled character with negative traits in strength and fitness is a big gamble for surviving the first two weeks, even if you know what you're doing; but it's the only way to eventually gain powerful knowledge and survival traits and eventually become a multi-talented Genius Bruiser.
• Re:Kuroi: Kaito is a total novice at combat magic, but his attack growth is high and he has the strongest AOE spell. He doesn't know how to creatively apply his magic outside of battle, and thus isn't that useful outside of fighting monsters.
• RealityMinds:
  • Astrake is stuck in Silvana's body, which has a lot of magic power. While he can learn all her offensive spells gameplay-wise, he can't use certain spells that she created in the story, such as the spell to exorcise Kvena.
  • Story-wise, Silvana is stuck in Astrake's well-trained body, but doesn't have the experience to wield a sword properly. Gameplay-wise, she's still capable of using any sword skill from Astrake's skill tree.
• In Sinjid, you can find a kabuki mask hidden in the White Forest. Wearing it increases your Strength and Intellect, furthering your damage potential, but cuts your Focus meter in half, limiting the number of moves you can use.
• Soaring Machinariae: Maria worries that she falls into this trope, due to being a mediocre Automaton handler who is partnered with Iris, a top-class Machinariae. She doesn't allow Iris to use her Energy Burst at first because she's afraid her potentially flawed maintenance of Iris could cause the technique to backfire.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic depending on the game. Outside of the occasional wind based attack, all Sonic really has to go on is running really fast, rolling around really fast and breakdancing. Compared to a lot of his other cast members, his powerset is pretty basic and linear. but that doesn't exactly mean he can't get a bit creative to fill the gaps.
  • Sonic Mania Plus does this with Mighty the Armadillo: he can reach Sonic's speed, Ground Pound to break columns of blocks and enemies around, and his shell gives him a natural resistance against spikes and projectiles, whether when running or rolling. However, like Sonic, his aerial movements are limited, as he can only jump and hope to fall on the ground.
  • Chaos Zero is this whenever he shows up in a playable capacity. Lacking the advanced skills he gains after absorbing the emeralds, all he can really do is amble around slughishly and punch things. He's still able to make good progress in some cases because of how hard and how far he can punch.
  • Storm the Albatross from Sonic Riders. He's a big and clumsey thug, quite possibly one of the least coordinated characters in the games as a whole and his fighting skills are limited to tossing out haymakers and slapping things really hard. Given that he's strong enough to crush boulders with a punch and slap entire semi-trucks out of his path if need-be, that's is all he really needs to get by.
  • Infinite in Sonic Forces is a Superpower Lottery winner. He can fly, has Super-Strength, Super-Speed (even greater than Sonic), incredible durability and powerful energy blasts. But that's nothing compared to the powers of the Phantom Ruby, which can create intricate illusions so realistic that anything that happens to the victim happens to them in reality, which makes Infinite practically a Reality Warper. He can also use the Ruby to create construct copies of any character with all their powers, personality and memories of the original, and also alter them to make them much stronger and more dangerous. He can even use the Phantom Ruby to create inescapable black holes. However, the Phantom Ruby does all the work: all his fights are him basically floating around, using the Phantom Ruby and his blasts, and his only physical attack is a rather weak and easily avoidable forward dash attack. It is implied that he considers "real" fighting to be beneath him now, and whenever his powers are weakened or neutralised, he quickly finds himself in trouble. In addition, even with the Phantom Ruby, Eggman shows a lot more proficiency with its use than he does.
  • The Fan Game Sonic Robo Blast 2 has the blue hedgehog fitting this trope again, but also Amy Rose. She naturally jumps higher than others, her hammer allows her to jump even higher when she hits springs before jumping, she can knock out most of the enemies with it, destroy spikes (something only Metal Sonic can do while at full speed), and she can destroy some walls and floors with it. However, she runs slower than others, she can't spin, fly, float or bounce like other characters, and she can only attack when close to an enemy, making her the default Hard Mode for the game.
  • The game-racing spin-off Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart has characters with high top speed and weight: they are nearly unstoppable when they reach their top speed, and they can knock out opponents at ease; however, if they touch the grass, they have trouble taking their top speed again, and they need more preparation before taking sharp turns.
• Soul Series: Cassandra Alexandria is a Greek baker's daughter following in the footsteps of her heroic older sister Sophitia. She has practically no experience with swordsmanship, but she's a brave and tenacious scrapper and is implied to be much stronger physically than her sister; in her ending in III, she wrecks her own sword by accident, and in her IV ending she breaks Soul Calibur with her bare hands. Easily. In Soulcalibur VI, she acquires Sophitia's Owl Shield and Omega Sword, which are holy weapons blessed by the god Haephestus. She can summon wind, lightning and fire to augment her blows, and her bio suggests she has actually surpassed her sister in sheer power. Lampshaded if she wins with a Critical Edge:
  Cassandra: Am I even using these right?... [cheerfully] Well, I won!
• Spider-Man (PS4): The members of the Sinister Six are immensely powerful, but have little actual fighting skill.
  • Martin Li, alias Mr. Negative. Li is a skilled swordsman and has enough martial arts prowess and superhuman strength to fight Spider-Man on relatively equal footing, but it's clear from the way he fights that he's never used his powers in a straight up fight before as he tends to waste energy using large and impractical dark energy blasts that tire him out quickly and are heavily telegraphed. The consequences of this trope are demonstrated in his first fight with Spider-Man, who has spent the last eight years fighting superhumans, which is also Li's first fight with another superhuman. Unlike other bosses, Spidey doesn't have to do much beyond dodging his attacks and attacking while he recovers. And Li barely manages to inflict any lasting damage on Spidey. ^note By contrast, Kingpin, despite having no superpowers, manages to at least inflict minor Clothing Damage.
  • Rhino's "fighting style" mainly consists of him ramming into things like the animal he's based on. But when you're in a suit of armor that grants immense strength and makes him invulnerable to damage, you don't need much in the way of actual skill.
  • Electro is described like this in his character bio (which is written by Spider-Man himself). Spidey notes that he only won their first fight because Electro was still getting used to his powers and shorted himself out. Spidey fears that if he ever taps into his true potential, not even the Avengers would be able to stop him.
  • The Big Bad, Dr. Octopus isn't a particularly talented fighter, but his tentacles require Spidey to create a special suit to counter them. He's also a talented planner criminally to the point that Vulture praises him.
• All of the King Salmonids of Splatoon 3's Salmon Run mode have simple attack patterns but hit like an 18-wheeler:
  • Cohozuna can roll forward to squash any players before it, and can leap high into the air to flatten anyone they land on. Both of these attacks can be easily dodged if you're quick enough, but they're both a One-Hit Splat if they connect.
  • Horrorboros forms a gigantic bomb in its mouth and throws it towards a player, while perpetually circling the stage. However, this bomb can swallow up a large section of the stage, and its health bar is even larger than a Cohozuna's.
  • Megalodontia's only attack is to submerge into the ink, and then shoot up to the surface to devour anyone standing above it. However, it takes up a really big area of the stage, and whose health bar would be insurmountable if not for the giant throbbing weak point on the back of its neck — and even that is hard to reach with all of the other Salmonids standing between you and it.
• Street Fighter:
  • Compared to the rest of the cast from his game, Q in Street Fighter III flails wildly and throws very telegraphed punches... But when he does hit, it hurts. This is exacerbated especially by a special mechanic where his defense increases if he taunts up to three times; at that point, the player, much like Q, can simply give up on technique and rely on his raw durability to tank everything the opponent throws at them and wear them down through the lucky hits that do make it through their defenses.
  • Birdie from Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha. No training, no technique, and no championship titles to his name. Just raw power and a lot of experience in the rough parts of England.
  • Street Fighter V:
    • Necalli is a wild and crazed warrior, with an animalistic and wild fighting style to match. But just because he lacks finesse doesn't make him less deadly of a fighter.
    • A later patch added penultimate Final Fight boss Abigail, who has absolutely no training whatsoever in martial arts or combat styles. What he does have is the biggest size of the entire cast and, according to Ryu, more raw physical strength than Akuma or Oro.
  • Street Fighter 6: Lily is a youthful Pintsized Powerhouse noted to have a lot of power in her, to the point that Dhalsim senses what might be the Satsui no Hado in her. However, she's also noted to not have the same level of skill as other characters with one of Honda's win quotes against Lily being to tell her that the power he senses in her is out of control. Additionally, her Critical Art, which does more damage than her level 3 Super Art, features her flubbing the level 3 Super and landing on top of her opponent entirely by accident.
• A recurring trend in Suikoden powerhouse characters is that they will have high strength, as expected, but it will be balanced out by absolutely pathetic skill/accuracy stats, giving enemies ample chance to dodge or even counter their attacks.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Compared to Mario, Bowser is this: while he's almost invincible, extremely strong and is even shown to run faster and jump higher than his archnemesis, his attacks are often telegraphed and he tends to act before thinking. A good example is the Super Mario Galaxy fights, where he has a lot of powerful moves, but always resorts on ground pounding Mario even when he stands right on the window of a star reactor: this leads the Koopa King to scream in pain as his tail is burning, leaving him vulnerable (but hard to reach, as he blindly runs) for some seconds.
    • Bowser is also this in the Mario & Luigi RPGs, where he's playable. The only attacks he knows is punching things really hard, breathing fire, and punching things even harder. He's good at directing his minions, though.
  • Mario Golf has the characters vary between this and Weak, but Skilled: these characters can throw the ball at a better distance, but have less control over it. People who fall into this category include Mario (who would usually fall into Jack of All Stats in other titles), Daisy (GC), Donkey Kong, Bowser, Harry (N64), Shadow Mario (GC), Metal Mario (N64), and Petey Piranha (GC).
  • When the Bros. move differ a bit in 2D games, Luigi will often be this compared to Mario: in this case, he can jump higher and run as fast, but has trouble to stop running while his brother stops almost instantly.
    • This duality is also present in Super Smash Bros., as Luigi has more offensive abilities, but less control over them: compared to Mario, who makes small but multiple exact damages with this special move, Luigi's Super Jump Punch is a Death or Glory Attack, as he can knock out an opponent with it or do minimal damage; in both cases, Luigi falls on his head and is paralyzed for a few seconds after.
• Milla Maxwell of Tales of Xillia. At the beginning of the game, she has no real skills with magic or weapons, but thanks to her connection with the Four Great Spirits, she's probably way stronger than most people in the world. After being Brought Down to Normal after the first dungeon, she takes up swordsmanship lessons from Alvin, proving to be an Instant Expert with the sword, as well as instinctively learning all of her Spirit Artes.
• Tekken:
  • Miguel Caballero Rojo, a Spaniard who enters a world fighting tournament with nothing but the ability to swing his legs around and throw haymaker punches as his only training. No one should dare underestimate him (dude can take his opponent out with a single punch if you let him).
  • Tekken 7 newcomer Gigas has his fighting style listed as "Destructive Impulse", which is reflected in his powerful-but-reckless attacks comprised primarily of wild punches and smashes.
• Touhou Project:
  • Marisa Kirisame is perplexingly both Unskilled But Strong and Weak, but Skilled. She lacks any inherent abilities and can only fight as well as she does by studying magic really hard, but 90% of that study goes purely towards making bigger explosions, lacking the finesse and control of other Magicians (most notably Patchouli) and relying on Master Sparking her opponents into oblivion.
  • A straighter example would be Utsuho "Okuu" Reiuji. Not really brought up in the text, but very apparent in the fight (while Marisa fights more or less the same way as everyone else). Subterranean Animism consists almost entirely of gimmick patterns. Except for Utsuho. Her patterns are quite straightforward, making up for that by way of having the largest bullets in the series, and spamming them. Furthermore, while most stage 6 bosses are all about variety, Utsuho sticks with what she does best, not even changing up her nonspells.
• Hilda from Under Night In-Birth is an utterly incompetent, borderline Stupid Evil Brainless Beauty but her wealth of EXS abilities including teleportation, the ability to conjure up a kind of "hard darkness" and incredible resilience, make her extremely dangerous even though she doesn't rely on any tactical thought at all. She scares the crap out of Hyde when she first reveals her power and Gordeau (a very powerful In-Birth) notes that not even he stands much chance against her.
• Howitzer-armed tanks in World of Tanks are this trope. Howitzers are pretty inaccurate (most have a shot dispersion rating above .5, well above the ~.38 that tends to be the standard for 'accurate' in this game) and their shells are Painfully Slow Projectiles. They also have pitifully low armor penetration for their tiers. However, they make up for this by doing a horrific amount of raw damage, and often dealing at least some damage even on a non-penetrating hit. This means that howitzer tanks tend to just batter their opponents to pieces with brute force from repeated explosive hits instead of anything requiring finesse, such as targeting weak points.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Endgame opponents in the pet battle system fall into this. They use Epic- and even Legendary-quality pets, while the player (currently, at least) only has access to Superior-quality pets at best, meaning these NPC have pets with stat totals much higher than anything players can get ahold of. However, these opponents also attack in set patterns, meaning savvy players with the right pets and timing can walk all over them with minimal fuss. For example, Courageous Yon can be real trouble for unprepared players, but a player who knows the fight can send in an Anubisath Idol, solo the entire fight with it, and have it walk away with more health than it started with.
  • Other opponents have pets that heal themselves, but at specific points, whether or not they've actually taken any damage, thus wasting their cooldown. Others use a Damage Over Time spell with no cooldown on one turn, then skip the next couple turns for their other abilities to become available, even if the player had blocked said Damage Over Time ability and they're perfectly capable of trying it again.
  • The Underking of the Drogbar in Highmountain is explicitly stated as being far less dangerous than he could be, simply because the Hammer of Khaz'goroth that he wields is a tool of creation rather than an Infinity +1 Sword he's treating it as.

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