I'll repost something that I posted elsewhere about Misery, and how I feel that we really don't get the opportunity to see how strong she really is at
any point in the game.
So I’ve been thinking about Cave Story a bunch lately and one thing that’s kind of quietly crept up on me is the realization that Misery is freaking crazy powerful.
Throughout the game, we see that she’s able to perform magical feats that far exceed that of any other character we see in action (with one possible exception, but we’ll get to that), including the ability to transform Balrog into a massive frog-monster, teleporting both herself and others, and lightning that can instantly kill a mimiga that’s apparently strong enough to defeat Balrog in one hit.
Her most impressive feat by far is that she apparently was the one who forced Ballos to create the Demon Crown, an artifact that’s stated to be permeated with Ballos’s soul. So in other words, she had to have been powerful enough to magically compel Ballos to tear out his soul and place it in the Demon Crown. Ballos wasn’t even able to stop this, all he could do was place a curse on Misery afterward to prevent her from using the Demon Crown’s power.
This is no small feat, considering Ballos is himself strong enough to destroy an entire kingdom in a single night should he ever lose control of his magic. That’s almost Dragon Ball Z levels of destructive capability by itself, and when Quote actually fights Ballos in-game he’s almost certainly holding back the large majority of his power since not only do we not see him manage anything that destructive, he makes it crystal clear that he wants to be killed. He’s lost control of his own hatred and madness to the point where he can’t help but attack, but has just enough clarity of mind to hold back and give the player-character a fighting chance.
So, with that said… how powerful is Misery, exactly? Throughout the entire game, we never see her do anything that would resemble putting up an actual effort. On the contrary, Misery seems to actively avoid trying to fight Quote directly for as long as possible, either letting a monster deal with him, sending Balrog after him, or simply teleporting him to a place where escape would theoretically be impossible. And even when Quote does fight her, she doesn’t really even seem to be trying. She just hovers in the air and casually tosses spells, making it apparent in her reclining pose that she’s only putting in the minimum amount of effort possible.
Why is that, though? It could be that being enslaved by the Demon Crown for so long has left her apathetic. Or it could be that she’s afraid of what her power could do if she were to stop holding back, given what happened with Ballos. Either way, it’s obvious that had she really been trying, Misery would have easily turned Quote to scrap metal the moment he became an inconvenience to the Doctor’s interests.
Misery's refusal to kill Quote even when she has the opportunity is consistent with her behavior across the entirety of the main storyline: she
never at any point seems to be actually willing to do the dirty work herself, and when she is forced to fight she doesn't even bother putting any effort into it. I think it's clear from the way that she acts that she doesn't like being directly responsible for hurting anyone, yet at the same time has resigned herself to her servitude. She tries to find ways to serve the Doctor's interests while trying to avoid taking direct responsibility for killing his enemies, whether it be by delegating tasks or sending her foes someplace where she can put them out of her mind.