5 Video Game Characters Who Are Way More Powerful Than They Look
Randy Rhodes' first gaming memory is Kirby's Adventure on the NES, and his love for gaming only rose from there. Playing games eventually wasn't enough for him. He began following the industry closely. In 2024, he finally started putting that to use by launching the Project Untitled Gaming Podcast and later the Dual-Wield Gaming Podcast. Covering the news week to week turned out to be something he loved, but a weekly show only has so much room in it, and writing was already something he wanted to do more of.
Randy has written for Lords of Gaming since March 2025 and already has over 200 articles published to show for it. His coverage centers on Nintendo, Xbox, and indies, and runs across news, reviews, previews, and editorial. He enjoys writing about and critiquing the games that he's played, but analyzing the industry brings just as much enjoyment for him. He tends to write editorials that try to dig deeper into the news instead of just restating it.
Randy reviews and previews games broadly across all genres. He has a soft spot for co-op games, 3D platformers, and the majority of Nintendo's first-party output, but he also adores cozy and niche titles that don't always get a serious look: visual novels, farming sims, life sims, etc. He's always looking for up-and-coming indie games worth writing about.
Outside of games, Randy is into DnD, cooking, music and music production, which inspired one of his favorite pieces to write: 50 Songs Leveled Up By Video Game Samples. He also cares about Black representation in games and in the industry behind them, and he's always looking for opportunities to cover it.
Some video game characters have the looks to match their power level: giant swords, muscles and scars, hulking armor. But the most dangerous characters are the ones nobody sees coming. Doom Slayer from DOOM and Master Chief from Halo look every inch the part, but on the power scale, they probably couldn't stack up to this unassuming cast.
Everyone loves a cool-looking character design, from Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII to Kratos in God of War, but there's something even cooler about a character that can beat both of them at the same time and still sell cute merch at Miniso. Lowering the player's expectations with a harmless silhouette makes the reveal of their true power hit even harder when it finally surfaces. From a feeble-looking old man who reeks of garlic to the cute spawn of a primordial chaos god, here are five of the most deceptively powerful video game characters of all time, ranked by the distance between first impression and actual feats.
5. Poe Ratcho (Vampire Survivors)
Poe Ratcho is a frail old man and one of the playable characters from Vampire Survivors, poncle's genre-spawning indie roguelite that released in 2022. Not only does he not look like much of a survivor, but his stat sheet reads like a joke. He starts every run with less Max Health than the baseline, and he's equipped with nothing but a single bulb of garlic. His name is even a play on "poraccio," Roman slang for a poor or unfortunate person. Compared to the rest of the roster, he seemed destined to die first.
That's exactly what poncle wanted you to believe. You can unlock Poe Ratcho in an abnormal way by entering a secret code in the Forbidden Scrolls of Morbane: "strongestcharacter," an easter egg that tells you exactly what the Vampire Survivor dev thinks of him. Garlic seems like a gag weapon at first, but its aura shreds early swarms on contact and makes enemies easier to knock back and freeze. Paired with Poe's Magnet bonus to vacuum up experience quicker, his power increases at a faster rate than most.
Poe Ratcho becomes a force to be reckoned with when he evolves his Garlic into Soul Eater. This top-tier weapon creates a bigger, deadlier field that also heals Poe as it chews through hundreds of enemies at a time. Throw in 5 other weapons of your choice that can harmonize with Soul Eater and the most pitiful man in Vampire Survivors becomes an invulnerable death machine, feeding on the life force of anything that steps too close.
4. Ness (EarthBound)
Ness, the hero of EarthBound, looks like your average suburban kid. Shigesato Itoi's cult classic Super Nintendo RPG features the character in regular street clothes and arms him with a baseball bat. Not to mention Ness can come down with homesickness in the middle of a fight, and the cure is a phone call to his mom. He doesn't even seem like he'd be the strongest kid in school.
However, behind this innocent exterior, Ness is a psychic powerhouse who would give Mob from Mob Psycho 100 his first defeat. His signature PSI abilities are extensive, ranging from devastating attacks to life-saving heals. In EarthBound, Ness absorbs the energy of eight Your Sanctuary locations before defeating his own dark side in Magicant, a dreamscape built from his mind, to awaken his full strength.
His powers then reach their peak Omega form, and he becomes unstoppable. PSI Rockin devastates full screens of enemies, PSI Flash can instantly obliterate almost any foe, and PSI Shield completely absorbs incoming damage and reflects half of it back at the opponent. In the endgame, Ness binds his soul to a mechanical body, travels back in time, and defeats Giygas, the omnipresent, universal cosmic destroyer. I don't think anyone booted up Earthbound expecting Ness to become a universal force himself.
3. Maxwell (Scribblenauts series)
Maxwell is the star of the Scribblenauts series, 5th Cell's vocabulary-driven puzzle game from Warner Bros. Interactive that debuted on the Nintendo DS in 2009, and he is another small child who is thrown into dangerous situations. Unlike Ness, Maxwell has no special powers of his own, and no physical abilities. At least Ness has a baseball bat for protection; the only thing Maxwell equips himself with is a notebook.
Well, that notebook is what changes everything. Maxwell can use this magic notebook to spawn anything he writes into existence, with a few meager restrictions. Whether it's people, animals, vehicles, weapons, mythical creatures, or even God himself, Maxwell can summon anything and everything to solve whatever problem he faces. Who needs to fight their own battles when you can summon 5 fire-breathing dragons to fight for you?
Maxwell's power scaling is off the charts. In later Scribblenauts games, he can add adjectives to the entities that he summons from the magic notebook. This allows Maxwell to craft invulnerable armor that protects him from any damage, wield powerful weapons that can fell any enemy in a single hit, and summon a squad of immortal creatures who can fight without fear of death. Throw in that Scribblenauts Unmasked gave him the power to also summon heroes, villains, and objects from the DC Universe, including Superman, Clayface, and Green Lantern, and Maxwell is easily one of the most overpowered video game characters of all time.
2. Kirby (Kirby series)
Kirby, the pink puffball created by Masahiro Sakurai and who debuted in 1992's Kirby's Dream Land, stars in a beginner-friendly platformer series developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. This cute and cheerful creature is normally docile and gets along well with almost everyone on his home planet of Popstar. Kirby only desires two things: food and sleep. As long as nothing gets in the way of those, he's just an adorable mascot character.
But for whatever reason, many dangerous entities are drawn to Popstar and love ruining Kirby's sleep or snack time. This usually turns him into the cutest cosmic terror that's ever existed. Kirby's powers include the ability to inhale almost anything and steal the properties of the object or creature, using them as his own power. This means that no matter how powerful an enemy is, Kirby will take that power and Uno reverse it right back at them. His powers started off pretty tame in early games, but as the series continued, his inhale evolved to such a cataclysmic level that it can be compared to a black hole.
Kirby's abilities and feats are hard to match. Although his inhale and Copy abilities are overpowered, his strength, speed, and versatility in battle are nearly unmatched as well. Sakurai solidified Kirby's standing as the strongest Nintendo character by making him the lone survivor of the World of Light opening in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Kirby's Warp Star completely defied physics and outpaced the speed of light, allowing him to escape a blast that engulfed the entire galaxy. He also defeated Void Termina, a primordial being billed as the Destroyer of Worlds, cracked the planet Popstar in half with a single punch, and broke through the 4th dimension by inhaling the UI elements off the screen along with a powerful boss.
1. Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Team Salvato's Doki Doki Literature Club! is dressed as a cheerful, lighthearted dating sim and visual novel featuring four girls in a high school literature club. Monika is the president of said club and plays the perfect anime upperclassman: she's popular, confident, talented, and kind to the main character who joins the club. You would think she'd easily be the main heroine of this romcom written by Dan Salvato, but she actually isn't one of the romance options and plays support.
You're probably wondering how powerful a high school girl from a dating sim could possibly be and, on paper, not very. She has average strength, average intelligence, average speed, and no special powers. What makes Monika possibly the most powerful and dangerous video game character of all time is that she's aware. She realizes that she's in a video game and edits her clubmates' character files to amplify their worst traits hoping the player won't choose to romance them. Eventually, she pushes it to such an extreme that the story cracks into psychological horror. Unlike every other entry on this list, Monika's power reaches past the characters on screen and into the game files sitting on the player's own computer.
Monika demonstrates the peak of her power in Act 3 of Doki Doki Literature Club!. She breaches your privacy by finding out your real name or username that's listed on your PC profile, and completely deletes the character files for the three love interests. Then, she rebuilds the game into a single classroom where the player sits alone with her for the rest of their life. Just Monika. What clinches her at the top of the list is that no matter how powerful a video game character is, she's the only one who's aware that she is one and has the power to manipulate or delete them outright. In the video game world, Monika is ultimately unstoppable.
Every character on this list hides their power behind a design that's built to disarm. Ness's ordinary childhood, Poe Ratcho's frail frame, Maxwell's unassuming notebook, Kirby's adorable pink silhouette, and Monika's beaming smile are all deliberate misdirection from the strength hidden within. Kratos may win a battle of pure strength, but none of these five fight fair, and that is exactly what makes them the most dangerous.
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