There should be a push and pull of player vs npc. If the enemy they’re fighting doesn’t have an effect on how they act, it’s a bad enemy, it’s an unbalanced game.

DOOM is a franchise where the player character is considered very powerful, but really, the DOOM games are very hard especially if you’re not super into FPS games. DOOM Eternal is even harder than 2016 because every single enemy in Eternal needs a different reaction from the player, but it’s thrilling if you’re playing on the right difficulty because you are just about getting every beat right and doing that dance to rip and tear.

Meanwhile games like Warriors and later Kingdom Hearts are… boring.

Depends on the game

If it’s competitive, no.

If it’s single player, then the characters should feel overpowered, atleast end game, or have the option to be.

In Competitive games? Ideally no, but its important to remember characters can be “Overpowered” at low levels of play but useless at high levels.

I watched a video a loooong time ago where someone was looking at winrates for League of Legends champions, and interestingly, you’d see a character like Tryndamere doing GREAT at low levels, BAD at mid levels, and GREAT again at high levels. Fighting games can be very similar where one character can have a move thats REALLY hard to get around…until you learn about one of the game’s mechanics that makes it completely useless. Its very common to hear people complain about characters that are actually considered “garbage” by hardcore players because strengths like this.

Its interesting to think about and adds extra layers of “balancing” to characters to consider. Should you buff someone beginners are struggling with just cause they’re not seen in tournaments often? Should you nerf them? Its a much harder balancing act. Interestingly, even US and Japan can have completely different ideas of whose strong and whose not for the same game