The Shrine

In almost all games your hero is someone who is really weak. Even when you get to control a legendary figure from the get go, they're obviously not so powerful that they can just bulldoze the entire game (usually there's some bogus reason why this is true). So, why shouldn't you be allowed overkill from the get go? In TIE Fighter, invulnerability and unlimited ammo is just an option that you can select to be on. You take a scoring hit but you don't have to do anything special to unlock that. I started the game with invulnerabilty and as I get better at it I ended up playing the game without, but when you're in a tough mission it's always easier to start with god mode on to see where you're supposed to go and what targets to take out first to meet the objectives. When I started playing the game I had problem getting past the first few missions, and then beat the game with invulnerability and eventually learned how to play without, since even with god mode you have to learn how to manuever to hit a T/A or you'll never kill them.

If you ever played a game like FF10 and went back and make sure everyone hit for 99999, that's pretty much god mode anyway. So why not allow you the option to start with that? Especially if you're supposed to be legendary heroes without a bogus reason why you suck. There should be a setting that tunes down your awesomeness, which would be essentially a difficulty selector. Now of course the question is why would you want to play the game in any other mode if you can just wrack everything from the start? Well I'd argue if having god mode makes you not want to play the game in any other mode, then the game itself is flawed and you should be glad at least this mode is available, because clearly nobody wanted to play in any other mode.

I can confidently say that i would not use god mode in the method you described. To play a level while invincible only to learn how to actually to play the level is a concept that i would never utilize. I know myself well enough that i wouldnt go back after beating the level. In fact, a god mode system like you describe sounds almost like cheating. Why not just use a FAQ to beat it, i feel like thats cheating to a lesser degree.

I still like the classic try-try-try-again method until you figure it out. It makes the ending to the level so much sweeter. If you already saw the story progress while in god mode, the satisfaction from beating the level legit still isnt good enough.

Part of the fun of a game is that you might fail. Without that, it's not really a "game" anymore.

If you were Superman, would it be fun to play basketball against normal people? Once the novelty wore off, it wouldn't be.

A lot of game has something you do at the end that makes you god mode like anyway.

You can definitely lose in TIE Fighter with god mode, because the condition for winning is not just you don't die.

Let's say you play a Megaman game. Most of the recent ones have health upgrades you can buy and stuff. If you buy enough of them you'll come pretty close to unkillable, and most people do buy them if it doesn't incur a scoring penalty (MMZ series). In a RPG you go around doing side quests so you can be more powerful than you're supposed to need to beat the game.

In Lufia 1, you're pretty much unkillable as Maxim. In fact he's a lot stronger than your character will ever be in almost all likelihood. In Lufia 2 once you get the Dual Blade Maxim can pretty much beat the game by himself. And both I thought makes a lot of sense since he is THE legendary hero using THE legendary sword. Orlandu in Tactics is pretty much godmode too, and I'd wager a lot more people use him than those who do not, and he's a story character. I don't see why overkill takes away the fun of the game, if it makes sense. If you got T.G. Cid on your side, you probably should bulldoze your opposition.