Power-Up Letdown - TV Tropes

Super spin makes Superman stand still while spinning, letting enemies pummel him.
Heat vision sends out a laser with the range and power of an ordinary punch.
Super breath 1 looks like an ice crystal, and does absolutely nothing.

• Bleach: Shinji views his Bankai as this, as befitting his sword's general theme of inversion. His Bankai, which inverts perception of friend and foe, is highly-effective against masses of weak foot soldiers, but is completely useless in a one-on-one fight against a powerful opponent. His Shikai is the superior option for that situation, despite nominally being the weaker ability.
• During the Cell Saga of Dragon Ball Z, Trunks assumes a higher form of Super Saiyan which greatly increases his strength by bulking his muscles up to a huge degree. However, while he is dominating the battle at first Cell soon turns the tides and begins beating Trunks down. A Cell himself explains, the form drains energy very quickly and is too cumbersome for speed — since all Cell had to do to win was dodge Trunks sluggish movements until the Saiyan tired out, it was far less effective than the "weaker" forms of Super Saiyan.
  • Cell himself makes a similar mistake: after Gohan becomes Super Saiyan 2, Cell swells up in fury to counter his attacks... and gets beaten up due to making his new form also becoming much slower and inefficient. Trunks takes a moment to rub the wound by stating Cell has truly lost it.
• Naruto: Naruto masters his Rasenshuriken by applying wind style to the incomplete Rasengan, thus making it a formidable weapon. But... due to its nature by attacking every cell in the body, it also risks damaging Naruto's hand, thus making Tsunade ban the Jutsu. Later, during Pain's invasion, Naruto uses Nature Energy in Sage Mode to negate this weakness and making the Jutsu function as intended in the first place.

• In Peter Chimaera's DIGIMON 2: RETURN OF DIGIMON, the titular character creates a Robot Body to better fight against evil forces. However, the only time he uses it, his opponent, Evil Digimon, managed to survive the battle. When Digimon fights against Evil Digimon without the Robot Body, he utterly defeats him. This implies the Robot Body features no real advantages over fighting without it.

• The Mini Mushroom's status as one is acknowledged in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, with Mario getting beat up horribly by DK after mistaking it for a Super Mushroom. This trope is also exploited in the climax, where the heroes forcibly feed Bowser one in order to easily imprison him.

• Cradle Series: A "Goldsign" is a Mark of the Supernatural that someone acquires when they advance to the Gold stage, which is considered the first step of a real sacred artist. Many goldsigns are purely cosmetic, but the better ones have some side benefit that preferably synergizes with their Path. Yerin's sword arms mean she is never unarmed (which is important because her Path absolutely requires a weapon to be at all useful), while Jai Long's Nightmare Face is theoretically a powerful weapon but is so horrific he keeps his face wrapped in bandages at all times. In Reaper, Lindon's sister Kelsa becomes the first person on the Path of the White Fox to gain a goldsign in centuries: A cute little fox tail made out of foxfire. It's theoretically a useful weapon (as the fire inflicts spiritual damage), but it would be awkward to use in combat.

  Kelsa: I still hate it.
  Jai Long: It could be worse.
  Kelsa: It's not practical, even if it can burn people. Snowfoxes have claws and teeth. I could have gotten those.

• So I'm a Spider, So What?: After absorbing the energy of a Fantastic Nuke, Kumoko ascends to godhood... and becomes much weaker as a result. While mortals in this setting can grow to great strength by gaining levels and powers in an RPG-like manner, all of these abilities are provided by "The System" that the gods placed on top of the world's magic to prevent it from being depleted. After becoming a god herself, Kumoko no longer has The System's assistance and is limited to the same abilities as a real-life human until she manages to learn real sorcery from scratch. Zigzagged in that this will eventually make her stronger than she was previously.

• Kamen Rider:
  • Played with in Kamen Rider Kuuga. When Godai first transforms into his Dragon form, he appears to be weaker than his default transformation, feeling like this trope. However, he initially doesn't realize his Rider powers run on Multiform Balance and that Dragon Form is a Fragile Speedster as opposed to his Jack of All Stats default form. Once he realises the strenghts and weaknesses of his new form, it's no longer a letdown.
  • Played for Laughs in Kamen Rider Decade. The titular character is able to turn into all Kamen Riders from past shows, with the caveat that he has to unlock them first. After unlocking Kamen Rider Den-O, he tries to use it against Kamen Rider TheBee and Gattack, but discovers the form only spouts its associated catchphrase, rather than actually being useful in combat.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim sees Micchy get his hands on the Yomotsuheguri Lockseed near the end of the show, which is advertised by its creator as a Deadly Upgrade which will let Micchy finally defeat Kouta. Said creator opts not to mention that deadly also means painful, and the Lockseed proves so agonizing to use that Micchy does more writhing on the ground with it than actually attacking, making it by far his weakest form.
  • Kamen Rider Ghost gets the Grateful form halfway through the show, which looks like a Next Tier Power-Up and has an impressive array of abilities that should make it one. However, the opponents introduced in the same episode have the ability to strike Ghost with paralysis from anywhere in the world if he tries to use it, making it worthless.
  • Kamen Rider Build has a villainous example with the Washio brothers, who normally form a Bash Brothers pair using the Gear Engine and Gear Remocon powers, but can give both powers to one brother to form Hell Bros. While it's allegedly much more powerful, being reduced to a single combatant takes away the teamwork and skill at covering one another's openings that made the brothers dangerous in the first place, while the power increase isn't nearly enough to keep pace with the growth of the heroes. Hell Bros only wins its first fight through an underhanded ploy to make their opponent stop fighting back, and then never wins a fight again.
  • In Kamen Rider Zi-O, Woz Power Copies a future Rider named Kamen Rider Quiz, who has the special ability to ask true-or-false questions and attack enemies when answered correctly, but get penalized himself when wrong. Unfortunately, such an ability is Difficult, but Awesome; Quiz can use the power effectively but Woz doesn't always ask the right questions. "I'm going to defeat you. [buzzer] What do you mean, 'Wrong'?!"
  • In a DVD spinoff for Kamen Rider Zero-One, Kamen Riders Vulcan and Valkyrie receive new Super Modes that are powerful, but unstable and painful if not actively harmful. While Vulcan is bullheaded and reckless enough to make sure his enemy gets wrecked as badly as he does when he uses his, Valkyrie is more cautious and she gets thrashed because the pain keeps her from fighting effectively.
  • Kamen Rider Revice has every user of the Demons Driver quickly reckon with how its Power at a Price is light on the power and heavy on the price. George is smart enough to only use it on very rare occasion, while the users that try using it more often are never effective in battle and quickly end up hospitalized at best. People only keep using the Demons Driver despite its obvious worthlessness because it's also one of the only ways for a normal human to gain powers.
• Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: Played with when the Lightspeed Solarzord debuts. Its component zord, the Max Solarzord, had previously shown it could beat Diabolico's most dangerous monsters on its own, so combined with the Megazord it should be strong enough to handle Diabolico himself, right? However, nothing the new formation has does anything to hurt Diabolico. Just make him angry. Then it subverts the trope hard when the solar panels absorbs his attack and sends it right back at him in the form of an Alpha Strike.

• Hotels in Monopoly. Upgrading to a hotel on a property increases what your opponent must pay if they land on it, but landing on four houses is already a debilitating blow and the cost to upgrade to hotels really only pushes that slightly higher and likely won't even cover the cost of upgrading in the first place. There are also only thirty-two houses in the game — enough for around three monopolies — and you can't upgrade to a hotel until you have four houses on a property: it is far better to keep four houses on as many properties as possible to lock your opponent out of having them than it is to "upgrade" to hotels and make all those houses available for purchase, unless you are upgrading to hotels in order to make houses available for more of your properties... in which case you're already clearly so far ahead and likely to win already that all you're really doing is flexing on your poor opponents.

• Homestuck: It's possible, through care and training, to get a Fiduspawn to mature into a stronger form, such as a Horseaponi becoming a Horsaroni. However, these advanced forms only change a little in size and appearance, don't become much stronger, and really only need to eat more.

• Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series: "Monster Rally" sees the Ducks utilise their new vehicle, the Mega-Migrator X2, after the original Migrator is damaged in battle. However, while the Mega-Migrator is larger, when the Ducks tries to use it in battle the weapons either miss their target or fail to deploy at all, the vehicle ultimately exploding when the original engine is stolen for their enemy's current vehicle and they try to improvise with the enemy's original engine. After the original Migator is repaired, Tanya (the Ducks' Gadgeteer Genius) shows the other Ducks the plans for the Hyper-Migrator X3, but their cold reaction prompts Tanya to conclude that the original Migrator is fine as it is.
• Steven Universe: Alexandrite, the powerful fusion of Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, can come off as ultimately impractical. In spite of having incredible strength and access to all the weapons of lesser fusions, they need a great deal of focus to maintain stability, or they’ll easily unfuse. As such, they do not bode well for casual situations like dinner, where the components’ conflicting personalities cause issues in socialization. However, their biggest issue is their subpar luck/success rate in battle; their size makes them an easy target, and they’re easily overpowered by stronger giant characters like Malachite and Steven in his monster form, or attacks from Aquamarine and Blue Diamond.

• Seanbaby pointed out several of these on his Useless Power-Ups page - though the Feather is more of a particularly nonsensical Plot Coupon, others include a defensive spell for countering an attack nearly no enemies use, an invisibility power that makes it impossible for you to see where you're going but doesn't impede the enemies, and an attack that requires you to touch the enemies in a game with Collision Damage.
• Software updates for programs, mobile phones, and the like can sometimes be this. It is not at all uncommon to receive an upgrade, only to find said software or device is now slower, less compatible, has no recognizable improvements other than a few cosmetic changes, or even lacks features that a previous version had. This can even push into Poison Mushroom territory if the upgrade was intended to stop homebrew apps from running, of if a glitch in it causes it to not work at all.
  • Likely the most extreme case of this was the "Other OS" feature on early PS3s. It originally allowed people to install a Linux operating system on their PS3 for bonus functionality, and PS3s had even started to be used in computing clusters due to their low price-point for their high power. But then a hack was found using it, so Sony patched it out, and anyone who didn't upgrade lost access to the Playstation Network, which handles essentially all of the online functionality of the native OS. A class action lawsuit was actually filed about this (by the military of the USA no less), though it ended up getting dismissed.
  • Youtube's updates are also this for anyone with a below par internet connection, as each update seems to be an arms race between Youtube trying to limit buffering and force quality reductions, and viewers who want higher quality videos and would rather pause and wait for it to buffer rather than watch a 144p mess of pixels that's vaguely in the shape of their favorite Lets Player^note .
  • To most users who rely on third-party add-ons, Firefox Quantum was this, owing to the countless add-ons no longer being compatible with it and how genuinely difficult it is to downgrade to Firefox 56.0 and keep it that way^note . Of course Quantum actually had countless valuable new features and bug fixes, but many users didn't feel this justified the loss of add-ons they liked or relied on.
  • A fairly infamous case of this in gaming was a netcode update for Street Fighter V. According to the developers, it was meant to fix the poor netcode of the PC release. What it mostly did was shut down a widely-used mod that improved the netcode, dropping the game's online back down to near-unplayable territory.
• In the magical world of cellular phones:
  • One unlucky user had his iPhone X outright explode after being upgraded to iOS 12.1. It was theorized to have either been a defective battery or charger, but the possibility that a glitch in the update caused the phone to exceed its safe limits was noted to have theoretically been possible. Either way, in the words of Comic Book Guy, "Worst update ever."
  • And of course there's the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 that had two separate defects, a design flaw that could short the battery terminals and a welding defect that pressed too much on the battery. Anyone unfortunate enough to have upgraded to the first release of these phones were at real risk of having the thing spontaneously blow up in their pocket. Numerous injuries, a worldwide ban on air crafts, and an investigation likely to cost Samsung billions later, this was one hell of a letdown for users and the company alike. Humorously, one Grand Theft Auto V modder took advantage of this by swapping out sticky bombs with Note 7s.
• Fast Startup in Windows 10. It is actually, in effect, a form of hibernation where ram is dumped to a file and stored, and then loaded up in order to start the computer faster than normal as the machine can just refresh itself with the stored ram rather than reloading the kernel, drivers, and system state individually. The issue is this causes tons of small bugs due to incompatibilities from drivers and devices designed for a proper cold boot (just to name a few, this is a common cause of the "90b system fan error" in HP laptops, mounting issues when using disk encryption, and USB driver errors when using an externally powered USB Hub), can cause no end of issues with software updates that expect a proper boot, and will even prevent the hard drive from dual-booting if multiple operating systems are installed. The amount of time it saves, around 30 seconds on a regular hard drive and only about 5 on an SSD, is rarely worth the problems it can cause. If you still need a form of fast startup — even with it disabled — then the hibernate function works just fine and as an added bonus, also lets you pick up where you left off with whatever programs were open.