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| - This is a Video Game trope where it seems like you are being set up for an incredibly difficult, confusing, or frustrating mission or situation, only for the game to subvert that expectation and have this part turn out to be far easier than you would have thought. These generally come in two varieties, the first being where you are forced to play as an NPC, or a situation where the hero is incapacitated, and it seems like it will be difficult situation, only to be quickly resolved. 1) The side character/NPC quest: A unique type of Power Seep where the game designers and programmers decided to take it easy on you. Since they made your life complicated by forcing you to play as an NPC for a segment of the game, they compensate by either suddenly switching over to weaker enemies, or weakening the AI, or making the NPC much stronger than reasonably expected. (And probably more so than the NPC has ever shown themselves to be if you've ever seen them fight). Of course, when you switch back to the hero, the difficulty jumps right back up to where it was before. Compare Lowered Monster Difficulty (although that is generally used for a Big Bad, in this case it applies to mooks and minibosses), the NPC Taking A Level In Badass. 2) Incapacitated hero: As with the above example, the hero is placed in what seems to be a tough situation, but like above, the game compensates for it by otherwise making things easier for the player. Either the difficulty gets turned down, the hero will get an Eleventh-Hour Superpower to help him out, or it will turns out that the plot was on rails and the player will only need to do some simple things in order to get themselves back up to speed. Alternatively, if the player was thrown into jail, it will turn out to be a Cardboard Prison, and almost ridiculously easy for someone as powerful as the hero to escape. Examples of Type 1
* The Onimusha game series is a major offender here. It's somewhat averted in the first game Ninja girl Sidekick Kaede can't harm the demons with her normal weapon, and it's only when she gets a powered Oni weapon that she can do damage instead of just dodging. Fair enough, although her little demon knife packs a hell of a wallop. The rest of the series though...
* In the second game there are four side characters, and you'll play as at least one of them at one point. Depending on the Relationship Values you have with them, you could wind up playing a section as each of the four. All four take out the Mooks with tremendous ease, often needing fewer hits to kill enemies with their normal, non magical weapons, than Jubei does with his charged up demon weapons of doom.
* The Gunslinger Magoichi has a particularly easy time of it, since his weapons include, for all intents and purposes, a machine gun and a primitive flame thrower in medieval Japan, with practically no enemies who can attack from long range. Can you say slaughter?
* The third game also has a character with a gun. Although it doesn't have unlimited range, it's easier than hacking at the monsters with a sword.
* Oh so very much in Suikoden III. Compared to your level 20 main cast, there's a side chapter starring your fortresses' castellan starts who starts at level 1. It's meant to showcase how not everyone in the world is a great warrior (and it does it pretty well - the boss fight of this chapter is a common boar), but it's a tad noticeable how all random encounters are scaled down to make it possible for you to survive.
* There's also a subversion, of sorts, where you take a couple of kids along for a side quest mainly involving them. They're a way beneath your main characters in levels, and the random monsters haven't been downgraded at all. Until they gain a few levels, they risk sudden death in every single random battle.
* Resident Evil 2, when you control Sherri, she can't hurt anyone, but she seems to run faster than the other characters, and therefore dodge faster.
* Also, when playing as Sherry, the zombies can't actually grab you, because her smaller animation model would have required a new animation. Their attacks are limited to vomiting bile at you. Therefore it's much easier to avoid them altogether.
* Trying to avoid the dogs, on the other hand, is an unmitigated bitch thanks to their speed and aggression.
* Ashley in Resident Evil 4 is similar. She can't attack, but she can duck under things, and the enemies either have no weapons or are slow. Not to mention that the enemies who just moments ago could withstand shotgun blasts at point blank range can now be killed by throwing portable lamps at them.
* Although it takes three lamps, which is about how many incendiary grenades it takes with Leon.
* Plus, with creative use of a glitch in the Game Cube version, Ashley can suplex the hell out of enemies.
* Fire Emblem 10 (Radiant Dawn), in which the player controls a few different armies, averts this trope severely. The start of the game featuring a rag-tag group of rebels is easily one of the hardest parts of the game, whereas battles featuring Ike's powerful army aren't too bad, although they do face larger armies.
* Played straight later on, when you switch from Ike's band of worldslaying badasses back to said rag-tag bunch of rebels, for a mission where the goal is to hold a line against Ike's band of worldslaying badasses.
* In later games of the Ace Attorney series, Phoenix can find out the secrets of people via the Magatama. Phoenix needs to present correct evidence to the person he's trying to crack or he will lose some energy in his Life Meter. In the 3rd case of Trials and Tribulations, Detective Dick Gumshoe tries to hide something from Phoenix. Only one lock shows up, meaning it's very easy to crack him. What makes this even easier is it's extremely simple to figure out what Gumshoe was doing before you caught him. His secret? He was listening to the radio to see if he won the lottery. Once you break his lock, even Phoenix is surprised at how easy it was! This can be a huge life saver if you had wasted most of your energy getting things wrong during the trial before, so it's almost a free health refill here.
* Later on in case 5, Sister Bikini is depicted as having a whopping five Psyche-Locks when questioned about the victim's true identity. But after revealing only two pieces of evidence (and thus proving the identity), all five break simultaneously.
* In the last case of Justice For All, Wendy Oldbag has four Psyche-Locks that you can break just by bribing her with an autograph of the victim, of whom she was a huge fan.
* Hilariously subverted with Edgeworth and Larry Butz. During questioning, 5 locks show up with Larry. Edgeworth's response? "Screw this, I'll see you in court!"
* Made funnier because Edgeworth had just broken 3 locks in the exact same conversation with Larry.
* Final Fantasy Tactics a 2 has this when Mayhew asks you to accompany her to see if there are burglars in her storage room. Turns out that there are, but they are all extremely low leveled (around levels 1-20) and they are characters you have seen earlier in the game who were all either wacky or a Butt Monkey.
* A variation is done in Final Fantasy XIII where any time the split party focusses on the team without your heavy hitters, the enemies become noticeably weaker. It's especially bizarre during one segment where you're all on the same airship, but your heavy hitter team is fighting elite troops and massive robot enemies, and your support team is fighting... Janitor flans.
* Mischief Makers. The heroine receives a superpowerful beam that leaves her incapacitated, and for two levels the control is switched to a previously encountered NPC. In a different way to play this, though, you've seen this particular NPC can morph into a big mecha, but for some reason cannot for the levels you play him.
* He needed to be shaken hard to do it. Maria's incapacitated, so she can't shake him, ergo, he's on his own.
* In The Longest Journey, all April has to do to obtain the third piece of the Stone Disc from by the Dark People is to tell them of her previous accomplishments. By comparison, getting the first two pieces involved defeating a local equivalent of a troll in hand-to-hand combat, surviving a magical storm, and fulfilling not one but two ancient prophesies.
* Somewhat earlier, she had to kill a shark armed with nothing but a single spear she'd had no practice with. This occurred simply and without incident.
* Most of the special missions in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky can be pretty daunting for the most part, but Igglybuff the Prodigy is very easy, thanks in part to Igglybuff already maintaining the Badass status he carries as Guildmaster Wigglytuff. He already has pretty high stats to begin with, and on top of that, being below Level 20, he levels pretty quickly, and each level boosts his stats by ludicrous amounts as well. There are also practically no bosses to speak of in any of the dungeons he explores, either.
* In SW: Knights of the Old Republic II, on Peraga you play as T3-M4 for a period. He starts at level 3 or so, and has a powerful shock arm with unlimited uses, making the fighting almost trivially easy.
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