Most worthless party members ever!
 

In RPGs it starts to be a given that lots of them tend to have at least one completely worthless party member in them. They are those characters that you just absolutely don't want to use if you don't have to. What are some of the ones you guys can't stand having in your party and why?

Personally I always hated having Gau in my party in Final Fantasy 6. Aside from the fact that alot of the rages were completely useless, you couldn't even control him anyhow when you had one that wasn't useless. This could easily lead to him using attacks that heal the enemy if you don't know the exact elements on the attacks he'll use. People can argue that Umaro is useless as well because you can't control him, but in the Fanatic Tower that's actually useful since he'll use physical attacks even though you aren't supposed to be able to.

If you think Gau was worthless, you clearly never learned how to take advantage of him properly. In the first half of the game, he's an untouchable offensive juggernaut. He can toss around spells that you don't get until well into the second half of the game. Nevermind the monstrosity that is cat scratch. Or Wind god Gau. In the second portion, he's the best defensive monster in the game, with Magic Urn? Untouchable.

He's useless in that you can't mash a button and make him hit something with a sword. Too bad for you he's arguably the most potent member of the party if played right.
As for useless party members, I've never much cared for Cait Sith, but I mean really, if you want to talk useless, you really need to expand your horizons beyond squaresoft.

It's hard to be true useless when you only have 6 people. But if you have, say, 108? Oh yes, Suikoden has many a useless character. How about a duck with a military helmet? Rubbish. Or even in Shining Force, there were plenty of people not worth their salt.

Gau? All RP cred gone instantly, sir. GONE.

Oh yeah Shining Force had mascot members, who were beyond useless. I think in the first game it was Yogurt, some kind of mole, though I never found him.

But I got Penn in Shining Force 3, who was a partly hatched Penguin. He'd start off level 1 unpromoted, at a time when your force was around level 5 promoted (10 levels to a promotion). He'd only do one damage to enemies, so if you wanted to level him up you'd have to knock enemies down to a few points with other characters, then painstakingly remove a single hp every turn using Penn until he finally dropped 'em. Took hours.

Of course, when you're doing this you're thinking 'oh, but when he IS promoted and the same level as the rest of my force he'll be AMAAAZING'. Doesn't work like that. Unless you consider taking 5 hit points from an enemy instead of the original 1 to be a roaring vindication of all the hours you spent, then you just wasted your time CHUMP.

Alright a good example for me would probably be Junpei from Persona 3. I mean, he's a fire/physical attacker. So he easily gets replaced by Koromaru and Aigis because they will probably have higher stats and besides, Aigis gets -kaja spells as well as the best physical attacks in the game. Not to mention I never really liked his personality until near the end of the game. That's why he's level 17 right now.

Another one would have to be Shana/Miranda from Legend of Dragoon. The addition system basically made their damage output obsolete. Besides, they gained SP so slowly that you'd have to either grind or use them for most of the game to get them more useful. Their only real role in the game was to use their healing skills and even then it was easier just to use items (my opinion of course).

I can't remember more so I leave with that.

Yeah, I know. I just couldn't think of any of their names off the top of my head since it's been so long since I played Shining Force II or III.

Not everyone in the world is going to have the same opinions as you. Deal with it. I kind of assumed someone was going to jump on me for using him as an example.

Heck here's another example of a useless party member. Morwen from Lord of the Rings: Third Age. How useful is gaining a fighter that will never be as good as the ones you already had?

Factually, Deni has you by the balls... so while you're entitled to an opinion or something, Gau is still (pre-Final Fantasy 6 Advance) a fucking monster that you didn't quite stumble upon. But don't feel bad, because until I read up on him, neither did I.

I personally used Junpei all the time, constantly switching him with Akihiko, and noticed that too. His magic is weak, doesn't have AOE magic either, so all he really has is slash moves, but I wouldn't call him useless, far from it. I forgot at what level he got it, but at some point he got deathbound, which was pretty damn good. Blade of Fury was nice as well.

I personally was never a big fan of Nina characters from Breath of Fire games. I'll use Breath of Fire 3 as a example. Now in essence she's not useless, since she has really strong magics, but at a severe price, she has really low health, really fucking low, next to no defense, and her normal attacks are laughable. Now if these games had savespheres like, lets say FFX where your MP was instantly restored, right as you reach the part where you fight a boss, fine, that will fix that, but the only way to restore MP is to rest in a inn/tent, so it's pretty useless. You'll always fight tons of monsters along the way, so she'll be completely empty by that point.

Wasn't a fan of Kimahri from FFX either. All the other characters had a purpose in the main game, he's the only one that didn't really have one. If you go level like crazy it won't matter, since in the end everyone is the same, but during the actual game you'll notice. Auron was good against armored mobs, Wakka against flying, etc about the only thing Kimahri was good for was Mighty Guard, and even that comes pretty late.

I'll agree, Nina was the worst character in BoFIII, if only because her magic didn't scale nearly as well as other character's attack power. Her one gimmick was hitting multiple enemies at once, but she was so limited with her low MP that it really didn't matter. I've always had more success with Nina as a healer (BoFI, BoFIV), since she's usually the best or only one you get.

I guess Ramus from Lunar: The Silver Star would be pretty worthless: no spells, one attack per round, low movement, slow, doesn't gain stats after a certain level -- but I guess that was kind of the point. He was only a temporary character, but even before you knew that his usefulness was already beginning to slip.

Oh God, 85-90% of the characters in Chrono Cross were worthless. Coincidentally, most of the entirely worthless ones were also the ones that were extremely odd-looking, such as FunGuy, and that weird flower-child thing, and even Skelly, who had that ridiculous collection side quest just to recruit him. Bastard.

But Trance is right about the Shana/Miranda combination in Legend of Dragoon. The addition system rendered her worthless, since those particular characters wielded bows and only attacked once. Although their healing spells were second-to-none, you couldn't use them unless in Dragoon Mode, and compared to the rest of the characters that felt like a waste.

Ayne, the big giant guy in Legaia: Duel Saga was pretty worthless too. By the time you get him, the old man martial arts master Kazan was already the primary offensive character, so Ayne really served no purpose. In fact, I think you use him in one dungeon to move some concrete slabs around and that's it. He's pretty non-existant throughout the rest of the game.

MOMO was kinda worthless in Xenosaga. Super-weak attacks, fairly weak Ether attacks compared to Shion, and in the first game even her AGWS was weak compared to the other ones, the one saving grace being that she could use Ether attacks while the rest couldn't.

Worthless on every conceivable level.

I'm not a fan of blue mages in the first place, but having all these conditions in the way so that getting spells becomes a chore, and making the character a fucking failurepile makes me wish for a fast forward feature in videogames.

Blue Mage is a great job, it just sucks that the only game that's done it right is Final Fantasy XI. I think Quina only being vaguely humanoid didn't help its case.

As for the topic itself, I could be lame and just pick one of the many, many useless characters in the Suikoden or Pokemon series, but that's copping out. I want to say Grey from Valkyrie Profile (his attacks stink and his Purify Weird Soul has the lowest damage output out of any character), but I still feel like it's such an obscure choice.

Well, the traditional blue mage is not that bad; you just either have to a) not die or b) remember to resurrect that character before the end of the battle to ensure that the blue mage learned a new spell from a monster when s/he got hit by that special spell. Nonetheless, the fact the Quina has to eat the monster to learn its abilities and then also the mob has to be under 20% health was pretty hard to accomplish (especially the uber monsters that you'd actually want spells from!) as I had a tendancy to just kill the darn thing before Quina can pull out her fork and knife to finish it off.

I remember Arthur from Shining Force I being pretty piss poor. He was a jack of all trades, and the worst at all of them. Since he was a centaur one would figure that he would have a decent attack power. But it was lower than Ken's. His magic wasn't anywhere near as useful as Anri's either, not to mention he didn't get as many spells.

One time I leveled him up to keep pace with the rest of my party just to see if things would change after he was promoted and had gained a few levels, but all I remember was him being a below average character on the battle field. I don't think he had much background to his character either.

A check on a character FAQ says that he becomes much better after post promotion level 20, so I guess I never bothered to get him that far since I was already bored of him taking up a slot in my team.

Out of the few RPGs I've played, there are party members I hate but most of them I don't think are worthless. However, when it comes to most worthless party members ever one game comes to mind: Chrono Cross. First problem is the amount of characters you can earn in the game...44 (I think that's the amount, but I'm not sure). Are you kidding me, 44 characters? I'm not even going to use 10 of them, why put in that many? Now while that just screams worthless to me, there will be people who will have a reason/use for at least one of these characters. My party would always be Serge, Kid, and Nikki...that's all I needed. When that other part happened, Serge, Harle, and Radius.

I guess some examples would be Sprigg and Leah. Sprigg, I had to use at one point until I got Radius...didn't like her, she was weak. Leah, I just saw her as Cross' version of Ayla. I didn't use Ayla that much in Trigger unless I had to...but Ayla was cool, this kid was not and I always saw her as weak (and I'll bet someone will prove me wrong). For most of the characters in Cross, I saw them as worthless and never gave them a chance.

Most worthless character ever for me was Sten from Breath of Fire 2. As soon as I could I dropped him out of my team and never looked back... until I was forced to use him, and only him.

Do you remember how, in most SNES-era games, characters that weren't in your party would not gain experience at all?

Slowest grindan evar.

Haha, I remember that. I was glad I was playing on an emulator because he was at or near whatever level you got him at. I had to use infinite HP because he'd basically die in a couple of hits. How much fun is that?

Jean was also pretty useless until you got the Holy shaman. Then he became the best character ever. I regretted not using them that much (Ryu, Bow, Rand, and Nina~) when I found that out. :(

Sten is mostly useless, but the fusions you could make with him in them were fairly potent, if'n I remember correctly.

THe sucky part of fusions was that if the character died, he went back to his normal state. So the only fusions I found worth my time was for my steady team of Ryu + Nina + Katt + Bleu.

Quina Quen was certainly worthless. It takes so damn long to gain the techniques due to accidental defeat or even just searching for one particular monster that I've given up hope of ever gaining all blue magics.

I never got much use out of Irvine in FFVIII, but I'm not sure if that's simply because of the system I had for junctioning GFs or if I was just annoyed that his limit break wasn't particularly good.

Was anyone in FFVIII really that good? I remember powering my way through most of the game having junctioned something like 100 death onto his sword, so I'd kill pretty much any monster in one hit since it gave such a massive bonus to damage (and there might have also been something like poison or bind on his status effect, so whatever he didn't kill was pretty much dead in a turn or two). I remember getting almost to the end of the game and having Selphie around level 10 just because of that one spot where your team had split into two and I had to use her there.

Poor Setzer. You're so cool, but nobody ever uses you because you're shit. :(

These topics are always fun. There really aren't many "worthless" characters out there though so it's usually just a case of "Person tries character out briefly; Person doesn't get how to use the character; Person gives up and deems said character shitty when in reality Person simply did not like the Character"

Really should have just made it a topic about characters people don't like instead of using the word worthless. :(

Well, okay, let me elaborate a little.

Setzer's slots ability is a thousand shades of useless. Most of the time you'll get a minute health boost from using it, and an occasional few points of damage. Let's not forget the fact that it can give you an unconditional game over from using it. Stay away.

Plus, his base stats are rather pathetic. Sure, beef him up with espers, but his equipment options and shitty abilities (I just remembered GP rain, which is also a joke) just about cripple him in comparison to every other character.

I guess the Fixed Dice could redeem him towards the end of the game... Actually, no, it's not worth it considering just how lame he is in absolutely every other regard. Worthless ability, worthless stats.

He's not worthless but he's not great either. If you play a low level game or a natural magic game fixed dice can make him worthwhile. You're right though, other than that there is nothing that makes him standout, but offering is still best used on him anyway since it lowers damage output and unless you've been extreme power-leveling you'd probably do more damage with other people just using two weapons or something. So offering+fixed dice is decent at least.

I wasn't really singling you out, I just notice a fair amount of arguing in threads like these cause a lot of people don't usually have very good reasons why characters are "worthless". Gau stuff up top is a good example of that.

For what it's worth, I really like Setzer but I acknowledge that he's one of the least useful characters in the game. It's a shame, but with work he's at least not worthless.

Genji glove + offering + dice + fixed dice = most ridiculously broken damage in the game because dice don't suffer from the lowered damage everything else gets from the Offering. Try again.

I think the argument is mostly that he takes a far more elaborate setup to do good damage (and it's still based on luck since fixed dice can do terrible damage too) while most other characters can be broken in that game with almost no effort at all. I don't think anyone in that game is actually worthless though except maybe Umaro, since the one thing Umaro really has going for him you could get out of Mog or Gau anyway which is the Snow Muffler I think.

Luckily Deni already said what I was going to.

Lots of characters seem shitty if you don't understand how to play the game, guys. Setzer was an unstoppable death machine.

And not everyone can do Setzer's level of damage with the offering and the genji glove, since it knocked down damage fairly significantly.

There is no weak link in FF VI. They all have their abilities. Move on.

Well, the point is a lot of the other characters don't need offering+genji glove to get broken damage chains going but yeah, I agree for the most part anyway. You have a lot of control over the characters in that game, especially their stat growth, so it's hard to single any of them out as worthless.

Even their singled out concepts. Relm has the ridiculous magic stat, Shadow has his strength, Edgar has the chainsaw (6:10:50 fuckers), Sabin has well... everything. Everyone has their thing.

Oh. Okay, fair call; reading up on it now - the Fixed Dice/Doom Darts/Glove/Offering combo was something I never actually used. It had never crossed my mind that random damage levels wouldn't be cut. :P

Besides, Psycho Cyan > *

Another note: Someone mentioned Suikoden up above. Games with a massive pile of playable characters invariably have a few useless additions; Chrono Cross is pretty notorious here. Turnip is the only one who comes immediately to mind.

'Slot' is the most broken, overlooked powerhouse of an ability that I have seen in a final fantasy game. Ever heard of the 'Joker Doom' glitch? It will kill EVERY enemy/boss in the game in one turn. It takes a bit of work to get good at it, but damn its effective...not to mention the fact that Setzer's offering + Genji + Dice breaks the game anyway. Besides his combat abilities, his airship is infinitely useful.

No, I will agree that Setzer is among the BEST characters ever, certainly not the worst.

I agree that Sten is worthless. Bastard.

Also, he's just so bloody COOL. "My life is a chip in your pile. Ante up." Fucker is like the FONZ.

There is no way anyone would argue that Setzer isn't a total badass anyway. Anyone who does should be banned from the forums because they are just poxes on civilization. :(

So using a broken combination on a shitty character making him not suck is a way to make a character non-worthless?

That's like saying Marle can be a decent physical attacker if you only save up all of your power tabs to dump into her.

To me a character is fairly worthless if you have to do a lot of work tweaking their initial stats in order to make them party-worthy. Of course, I've always been a fan of games like FF2 where you're stuck with whatever sort of character the game dumps on you with very little customization so it's more about tactical decisions during battle than figuring out a way to abuse game mechanics.

Or you could just use Vanish and Doom/X-Zone and not need a one-trick pony in your team.

That would hold up, son, if it wasn't for the fact that it's a character specific weapon that MAKES it breakable. It's an inherent aspect of Setzer that lets you do it. So it's more like saying giving Orlandu two swords is what makes him awesome in FFT. It's broken damage based on how awesome he is inherently.

It's nothing like that. You just give out a few re-dispensable pieces of equipment to make Setzer useful. You can do that in a single play through the game without any power leveling or item grinding. To do anything like that for Marle would take MASSIVE EFFORT. :)

Also doesn't help that you do the same thing in almost every game ever made. You find something people deem "broken" and you run with it. lol @ strategy and tactics. These things don't exist in 95% of RPGs on the market unless you forcibly restrict yourself.

Actually you shouldn't say any character in FF6 is worthless, because Deni basically memorized the entire battle engine and would have written the mathematical formula that determine damages if he didn't think that he would look like an aspie among aspies on Gamefaqs.

I'll bite though. How can you make Mog broken?

Moogle charm + Kefka's Tower at obscenely low levels = equipment ++.

Well, you could always give him the Imp outfit. I think that managed to make just about anyone pretty darned strong.

Forsety, the thing is, unless you gave him that set of equipment that you got really late in the game he was pretty useless. Most other characters in the game could be pretty sweet at any time through the story, but for Setzer you need that set of stuff.

Then again, I just have uncommon taste in how I like games, so I figure it's just a different in preference for how games should play that makes certain characters crappy and not if they actually are or not.

Adding another nomination for the majority of the cast of Chrono Cross. I admit the Suikodens have many useless fools you can recruit but three things set them apart from CC:

1. Every character has a motivation for joining you in Suikoden. With Chrono Cross, they just happen to join with Serge out of the blue most of the time.

2. Suikoden has 108 characters that factor into the Stars of Destiny. Chrono Cross has....uh, a bunch of slots on the status screen.

3. Suikoden allows 6 party members (no one gives a fuck about IV). Chrono Cross allows only 3. And one of those is normally occupied by Serge.

Also, CC is mostly dependent on where you assign elements...Suikoden uses more base skill sets and allows for more creative party building. It just doesn't matter that much who you use in CC. I remember I used the dancer chick and the alien, and before that, the pro wrestler and the glam metal guy...Uh yeah.

Wasn't too sure what to do with Kimahri, so I just stopped using him in FFX.

Edit: I admit I thought Setzer was useless before I discovered the internet. I know better now.

Yeah, but even then, he's basicly just a weaker male version of Katt. Sure he has more mp, but that's not really the point for using either one of them. Sten and Bow were probably my least used characters. Granted I'm not saying Bow is useless, I know he's not, I just don't like Bow.

Also nice bit of info on Setzer, I didn't know about that. I used him anyhow, but I didn't know about that. The characters I always left behind when going to Kefka's tower were always Umaro and Gau.

I'm not really surprised someone told me about the usefulness of Gau. I do the same thing all the time to people that try to say Yuffie sucks.

Hah, I forgot about Star Ocean 3. Once Maria joined the party, I stuck with Fayt, Maria, and swapped regularly between Nel and Albel. The rest of the cast = worthless.

Mog + Paladin Shield + Snow Muffler = Broken.

For valid inquiries into worthless characters, I'd have to give a vote to Jangadance from Shadowrun for SNES. Jamaican guy who shoots you when you try to use the phone... that's about it. I usually just hire him just so I can blow him away, just for kicks.

Duh, Aeris. I mean, even the developers realized how terrible she was!

The spoony bard in FF2us/FF4j was absolutely worthless.

In terms of the rpgs I have ever played I would have to say the most useless character I ever had the liberty of playing is definetely Chu-Chu from Xenogears.

I just couldn't find any kind of positive use for him. I literally only found him useful in one situation and thats fighting one of the final bosses that drains fuel from you every turn. Even though there were pieces of equipment that could prevent fuel loss, I didn't think of keeping any of that equipment until my second playthrough of the game. Other than that he was practically useless from my point of view.

I didn't think Kongol from Legend of Dragoon was a very good character at all. I hardly even used him. I only used him if I was fighting bosses that were wind elemental based and even then he got killed pretty quickly before I could do any positive elemental damage.

I would like to argue the fact that I feel that miranda and shana weren't as useless as everybody made them out to be. I constantly had shana in my party all the time because I found here dragoon move gates of heaven particularly useful in boss fights until meru joined the party and she learned her rainbow rain technique which then made the white dragoon practically useless after that except a few occassions. In dragoon form you can't use items, so when fighting a tough boss, to have an all healing spell while in dragoon form was a godsend for me.

I still vividly recall using miranda against both forums of the dvine dragon, because practically gates of heaven healed more then rainbow rain and we all know the divine dragon did mass amounts of damage.

In thousand arms I found kyleen kind of a worthless character out of the entire cast. I think she had the weakest set of special moves, and I didn't use her very often as the lead character. She was still fun to date though despite being a money grubbing gold digging whore.

AGWS were horrible anyway. In no situation were they useful. Even the best AGWS that you get at the end of the game was still not worth it. I've tried, and tried again to make one that you would think was useful, in the end I just gave up.

Not really. I actually considered using him as a example as well, but didn't in the end, because I'd figured most people don't even know who he is. Grey is bad, I actually used him in one of my plays because I figured, because he's a heavy knight he's probably as good as Arngrim, turns out he wasn't, his damage output really is pathetic.

The thing about Gau is that it was easy to miss some of the monsters that make him badass. The two major hitters that you'd want for Gau were the Pterodactyl from the raft ride, and the Gold Bear from Figaro Cave during Locke's scenario. The problem is that it's pretty easy to miss both monsters if you don't know you need to fight them.

Lewellyn in Valkyrie Profile was pretty bad too. I kept him around once trying to get some use out of him, but his damage is just too low. Sure, his massively multi-hit PWS is neat, but it's hardly a trick nobody else can do. Once Lenneth has a decent sword she can act as a combo filler all by herself.

Star Ocean 2 - Ernest. You have to give up an extra main character to bring him along (as opposed to just having to choose between mutually exclusive characters), and his special attacks are complete garbage. He takes so long to wind up for anything that the enemy has already moved or kicked him in the face. He doesn't even really hit that hard, either. It seems like his sole purpose is to dispense two Battle Suits via pickpocketing, which is nice but kinda lame in and of itself.

Montblanc - FFTA
Ivan - Golden Sun: Lost Age
Final Fantasy II - Maria
Riviera - Cierra
Eliwood, (Just sucks overall, without that glitched lance he sucks.) Wil, Lucius, Nino (eh... hell no, I am not going let Nino solo the entire map while others can make use out of it) - FE "Blazing Sword"

Holy crap, I forgot about him. Edward was such a pussy...he would run and hide during battle when his HP was low, leaving the other party members to their doom. You had to drag his ass back, only for him to run away again. It's a good thing you only had to have him for a short while, the kid mages were far stronger and braver than him.

It's actually sort of funny though, he can have pretty decent stats when actually leveled up, but it takes a LONG time to see results and in a normal game you never really would. In the GBA port though, since you can re-use these characters at the end of the game you can actually see he's fairly decent. He gets great speed to the say the least but most of his levels up til 60 or so seem to just be "filler" levels and his stats boosts don't start rolling in til very late. This has always been the case too, ever since the original release but it was impossible to see without some form of cheating.

Also kind of shitty though that from about 80~99 you can LOSE stats when leveling up in that game so nobody is as good as they could technically be. Never figured out what was up with that.

One of the most useless characters I can recall was Malak from Final Fantasy Tactics. He was the brother of Rafa, and one of the Heaven/Hell Knights. The pair is forced upon your party halfway through the game though neither one is especially worth anything in battle. Their "special" ability was horrible, as it was completely random and would often inflict damage on your own team as often as the enemy.

However, Malak is inherently worse than Rafa. Rafa had a naturally low Brave level, making her very good at the "Move/Find" skill; she was able to locate rare objects better than any character in the game if you spent some time Chickening her into a stronger coward.

Malak, however, wasn't nearly as useful for anything like that. He was just an inferior fighter on pretty much all accounts.

Plus, Malak looked like a total 'mo with that stupid haircut and white Jedi robe.

I totally agree, and I even used him in one play through. I just felt it necessary since I wanted to use Opera (I think that was her name) too. Also reminds me about one of the biggest disappointments in RPG history. Recruiting Dias only to find out that he's mediocre at best. Certainly not worthless, but good lord was he overshadowed by the physical juggernauts that are Claude and Ashton.

Dias is great if you use him right. His normal attack SUCKS ASS though, but by the end of the game you wouldn't really be relying on that anyway. Problem is, you have to control him in battle if you want him to be any good because the AI has no idea how to properly use him. Same for Bowman, cept Bowman is AWESOME when you use him, not just good -- and TERRIBLE when the AI takes control of him.

Which reminds me that SO2s AI is a piece of shit and 3's isn't much better. :(

I forgot how worthless Ernest was. The only reason I usually got him was because it took alot more effort to pair Opera with someone else for the ending if you didn't get him. Opera is the achille's heel of the last boss though so she's more then worth having.

Course offensive casters were also kind of useless near the end since they didn't have multiple hit attacks to break the damage cap. I still used them anyhow though just cause I always wanted to get decent use out of all 8 of the characters I selected.

That's exactly my issue with him. There's no real point in using him when Claude can just equip Eternal Sphere and start infinite chains by himself.

*her

Also, um what. Level her up enough and boost her HP and she has 50,000+ max HP. Coupled with the fact that she can heal the other gears in battle, she's indispensable in the final stages of the game. Goddess Robe + Chuchu Idol + Ether Doubler = Best. Oh and her ether is non-elemental, so she can take out any elemental enemies (read: many) easily.

The shwartz isn't strong with this one. Behold crap incarnate.

http://www.fantasyanime.com/shiningforce/sfpro46.gif

I have to change my vote. I think the most useless party member ever is Soren.

http://www.3audio.com/images/upload/artist/636.jpg

That fucker was just useless.

I'll whaterv'd any notion that Quina is a piece of shit. I meen, I can only imagine the board meeting for designing it and the game mechanics.

I imagine Squinix lost a few good men who, out of utter frustration, jumped out of the windows to escape the rampent stupidity that was going on there.

I think Jogurt was one of RPG's first legitimately bad characters. Literally nothing more than a hamster with a helmet, but so cool at the same time. Having him actually fight and win is something of an accomplishment, though.

When a character's major contribution to the plot is chasing animals, eating people, and speaking complete nonsense, you'd *think* they'd be awesome, but Quina... well... Quina's okay. Blue Mages are inherently useful for Mighty Guard and White Wind if nothing else, plus Quina fulfills the Final Fantasy requirement of at least one zany, oddball character per game.

I always found Zell and Selphie pretty useless. The only time Selphie came in use for me was fighting the Omega Weapons, where I'd try and let her get The End to end the fights. Zell, I don't think I had much use for him.

Sampson from Beyond the Beyond (well that whole game was useless...) but when he gets cursed as soon as you get him and stays cursed throughout the entire game... yeah. Worthless piece of shit.

I dunno, I kinda like Quina from 9. Definately not as cool as Freya or Vivi, but I always enjoyed having Quina in my party when I did. (Although that Eat/Cook/Digest/whatever skill sometimes could just go diaf.)

MODERN. MODERN Final Fantasy requirement of at least one zany oddball character.

I remember the days when that shit didn't happen.

You stupid kids and your rap music.

Except that I think 50% of the FFIX roster can be safely discarded as useless and unnecessary. Quina, Freya, Amarant and Eiko were relatively pointless in the grand scheme of the game. Eiko fulfilled the role of Summoner, which is obligatory in a sense, but plotwise, she was still superfluous. But having a summoner was never a crucial element of success in FFIX.
On the same note, at no point were Amarant, Freya or Quina necessary for anything; Steiner, Vivi, Garnet and Zidane could carry you through every single scenario.

Heh, I guess you're right (unless you count Gau as oddball, which he was, but not in a Jim Henson-esque muppet sort of way). This is a trait that seemed to start with Nomura doing the designs. My guess would be his early days as a monster designer constantly come back to haunt him and he just *has* to make a weird character or two to satiate his odd creative urges. Final Fantasy XIII is going to have a talking potato with wings for feet and a Napoleon hat, If not as a playable character, then certainly as a supporter. I'm calling it already.

Quina is a pokemon chracter in a world that has no pokemon.

"Ok guys, we need to reinvent the Blue Mage class, how do we do it?"
"By not implementing a stupid pokemon system and just doing it like we always had, that being that we simply have the monster attack the player with the spell?"
"What's that? Implement a stupid pokemon system? Have the blue mage be a complete jackass? Make geting spells so arbatary that by the end of it, players will want to eat thier controllers? Brilliant! PARTY HATS FOR ALL!"

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure had a plethora of enemies you could have join your party. All of them worthless. There was no point and they where ridiculous.

Then again that game is pretty awful, so maybe that gives them an unfair disadvantage.

Kimari FFX, sure he was an important friend to Yuna and Auron, and sure in time you can get all the characters in the game to the same skill and stat level ( if you are a moron,)
but while playing through the story he's just a waste of hard earned AP, he can't hit a thing, slowest guy in Spira, crappy overdrive and when Auron enters the scene he becomes completely useless.

Carbunkle + mass casting on the whole party = dead bodies everywhere. Bouncing spells off the party effectively doubled the attack power of Vivi's magic. Once I figured this out my permanent party for the last leg of the game was Zidane, Vivi, Garnet, and Eiko.

Of course, the funny part was that it was actually Garnet filling the role of summoner. She got all the summons, while Eiko was the hardcore white mage. Naturally this doesn't make any damn sense, but nobody said FF9 was a particularly good entry in the series.

This thread is pretty much about how to competely break every game by exploiting the "useless" characters now, isn't it?

Awww... I liked it. But it was baaaaad...

And talking about useless stuff, If I remember well... when the monsters on you party were killed, they were royally erased from the game... with items included.

I think it's amazing how many games have characters that would be much less useful if not for exploits or extreme over-leveling. A bad character's best friend is an apathetic programmer.

I'm gonna add another one: Mogu from Breath of Fire. Let me preface: I love Mogu to death; best turban-wearing mole-guy in an RPG to date, but otherwise the least practical character in the game. Lowest HP stat by far, light armor, kinda slow; has pretty decent attack power, but it's out-shown by just about everyone else late game. Can't even merge with Karn. His one technique: Dig. Let's you escape from battles for no MP, but only works outdoors, so not very useful considering the game's myriad of dungeon crawls, plus Bleu learns a better version as spell.

The mole was alright. The party members on BoF is pretty balanced.

I hated the dog from BoFII :gonk: most useless party member, I started to use less and less of him... and his attaks, crowbow? ._.

I can't believe Edward the Bard wasn't mentioned until page 2.

It seems that I am the only person who feels this way but I never liked Tifa in FF7. I just never really felt she was much help in anything. Ever.

Nah, your'e right, but his overworld skill was one of the most useful. You could dig anywhere, right?

Only on certain ground (the brown, cracked earth tiles). Sometimes you'd get small items like Herbs, or a Life1 if you were lucky. I guess "worthless" isn't the best term for him: he did have some story use late game. You needed him to find an ingredient to cure Nina's amnesia, and to get into the final dungeon. He could also dig under those dragon footprints you'd find every so often to snag some rare items. Still, his use in battle was limited. He's kinda like Gobi, weak in a fight but his special skill kinda makes up for it.

I'll have to second the Spoony Bard. I mean, yeah the charm thing could be useful and the using potions on the whole party, but seriously, any other party member at low level through out the entire game is more useful then the prince that couldn't.

Though Cid in FFIV came awful close. That whole cave without metal weapons/armor was not very cool, particularly because you had Cid taking up space. Yes, figuring out enemy weaknesses is cool, but only in the first level of the cave, and then it's completely useless.

The Bard is pretty much useless. But Cid? I don't know, dude's pretty much vital to much of the plot of that game. Especially early on. And come on. Airship.

Also, you are STILL the worst name change I've ever seen. TheR.

Pretty much disagree with all of this. Montblanc has a naturally high magic stat so he makes the perfect magic user. Cierra's slow as fuck, but her Over Skills kick ass (hit all enemies) and her magic stat is through the roof. Wil has the potential to be a ridiculous powerhouse as a Sniper, same as Rebecca. Lucius is extemely powerful and has one of the highest Res scores in the game. Sure, his defense sucks but you shouldn't be putting him into that kind of danger, anyway.. Nino's also really powerful but since she comes so late in the game she's kind of a pain to level. As for Eliwood, eh. He's not really that bad. He just sort of pales in comparison to Hector and Lyn. He still has high accuracy and criticals fairly often. He's solid.

Assuming you're talking about Soren from Path of Radiance, I'll have to disagree there as well. Again, he's got low defense (a problem he shares with every other magic user), but his magic stat usually turns out great. His major problem is his strength, but there are ways to get around that. Certainly not useless at all. I'll admit I'm not a big fan of mages, though. Regardless, he and Ilyana are my mages of choice in PoR.

Also, one last note.. Cid kicks ass in the GBA port of FFIV. I put him in my final party. He does ridiculous damage with that hammer you get from the Mt. Ordeals dungeon.

Vital to the plot of the game yes. Good to have in your party, or should I say, an effective member of the party? No.

As for the name change, I'm not gonna fight you over your opinion. I can see why you would think so... :p

I'm going to have to defend Edward a small bit. I get good damage with him if I level him up a bit (9 or 10) and he's good for the short time you have him for. Worst thing about him is the auto-hide, especially during the castle siege.

Cid is a beast for the short time you have him (notice a trend with FFIV?). Lots of damage and I don't think all his hammers are affected by the cave, IIRC. And yeah, airship. So he'd have an alibi even if he sucked.

I think that had more to do with the large gap of time you didn't have him in your party.

Pretty much 4/5s of the cast in Chrono Cross.

No man would have the balls to say Cid IV sucked. The man threw himself from an airship, over an enormous rent in the earth, with explosives strapped to his body, and lived.

Hell you find him shortly after and he's all 'what up gangstas'

He is the direct ancestor of TG Cid.

Agreed with all the 4/5s of Chrono Cross statements. In fact the only characters worth using in that game are any characters with a Serge/Lynx type element grid such as Pip (his angel version of Sooth is a requirement later in the game), Nikki, Radius, Irenes, Harle, Kid (at least for the first half of the game), and select others like Karsh, Guile, Grobyc (for the express purpose of using black summons) and some others.

Lucca and Robo got pretty useless late in the Chrono Trigger game. Ayla and Marle were semi useful, but i only ever used them for the twin charm attack late in the game. Once you have a leveled up Crono Frog and Magus team there's no need to use anyone else.

Reading this thread has only reminded me of how few RPGs i've really played, and how many are sitting on my shelf unplayed.

From a strictly game perspective, story thrown out the window, he's not much to write home about. But you never saw Edward jumping with explosives strapped to himself into anything of worth. That's how you get paid the big bucks, apparently.

Um... Magus was really only good because he started with much higher magic then other characters. If you max out everyone's magic Lucca's Flare and Robo's Shock does more damage then Dark Matter. Not saying he sucked, but I really only used Magus more then them because of his coolness factor.

The annoying thing about Magus is that he doesn't have any double techs, and no triple techs involving Crono.

Yeah, my CT party was consistently Crono, Lucca and Frog for their double tech. <3 frogflare

See, my CT party was always Crono, Ayla, and Magus. Crono for his Life spell, Ayla for Triple Kick, and Magus for all magic types, since magic weaknesses played a fairly significant role in the game.

Robo and Lucca were always the weakest in my opinion. Flare's a good spell, but her Wondershot caused her to do random, unreliable damage and other than Flare her spells were weak. Lucca's only redeeming quality were the three Antipode spells with Marle.

Frog was...weak after a certain point in the game. He was really really good for a while, but Frog Squash is stupid and his magic is fairly weak, and Crono's swordplay outmatched Frog's. Confuse for teh win.

Robo didn't play a big role in my games either. Laser Spin is a great spell early on because it's the first attack-all spell with little MP cost, but other than that, no good. Not to mention I hate weapons like Crisis Arm. Sure it'd be fine if you could swap weapons during battle, but to have to have that thing equipped 24-7 is retarded.

Ayla was good if only for Triple Kick. The only other attack beside Confuse that hit multiple times and thus able to break the 9999 damage cap. She couldn't use any magic, which was only really a problem when you fought Spekkio and had to rely on double-techs instead.

And since noone said it yet, I guess I'll have to:
http://images.wikia.com/es.pokemon/i...1/Magikarp.png - 'Karp!

And let's not forget his ugly half-brother Feebas.
http://content.answers.com/main/cont.../25/Feebas.png - Snuh?

Here they are, the bottom of the poké-barrel. They don't even get an attack until level 15, and by then they're so outclassed it's not even an issue. When they evolve it's an entirely different story, but leave them like they are...

There are several other Pokémon that don't quite make the grade, either. Balance was never a true priority for Nintendo when making the games, even if they are supposed to be played competitively.

Calling certain pokemon useless isn't that difficult. In fact, a majority of pokemon are useless unless you specifically raise them and go through the breeding and battling nonsense. The total of good Pokemon without any adulteration is pretty low.

Actually, Ayla's spin attack that makes that Tornado counts as magic. Easily the strongest one hit attack in the game if you actually raise her magic. The only problem is she has to be below them on the screen and you can't control positioning very well.

I found Ayla to be pretty good later on in Chrono Trigger once you levelled her up high enough to get the various fists. I think my final party is usually Crono, Ayla, and either Marle or Frog.

Also, when you get captured onto Daulton's flying fortress Ayla is the best thing ever, since she doesn't use weapons. If you're a high enough level she can take on battles by herself and you don't have to bother with any of that sneaking junk.

Calling party members useless in Chrono Trigger is moot, given how easy it is to break the game early on. Tech grinding makes the game a cake walk.

Plus, I think CT was one of the more balanced RPG's around (one of the benefits of only working with 7 characters as compared to 40+). My A-team was always Crono, Marle and Frog...Loads of combined healing and Arc Impulse. Last time, I used Robo and Ayla with Crono and it wasn't pretty for the other side.

He's right up there with Chisato. Her attacks were ridiculous and didn't do as much damage as you thought they should.

Really? Chisato was a beast on my team...Claude, Ashton, Chisato (and Rena) = win!

I'd still call the Magikarp line useless though. Basically, if Gyarados goes up against ANYTHING with an electric attack, he's royally fucked due to the 4x weakness he possesses against them.

Otherwise, I'd call Spinda pretty useless. Doesn't evolve, horrible moveset, even worse base stats.

Chisato can be pretty good really. I think the least useful people are probably just the raw spellcasters by the end of the game and Ernest. Everyone else is good setup the right way, even if Dias and Bowman require manual control to be good.

I still think Bowman is the best character in the game when you control him, but a lot of people really dislike him. :(

Lenny from Fallout 2, whose weak constitution is only matched by his choice of weaponry. Technically his first aid ability is a redeeming factor, but in practice stims are plentiful and he's just a waste of a character spot. I'd much rather have Cassidy or Sulik by my side any day.

Also, Cait Sith is terrible.

Somehow grown men arguing about the weaknesses of pokemon is even more sad than a bunch of grown men arguing about Chrono Trigger.

I'd call Flonne (at least in the original Disgaea) pretty useless. Really, in almost all recent Nippon Ichi games any story character can be dwarfed in power by any max-rank generic character.

Chisato is FAST. That's why she's awesome.

The party I always end up with is Claude, Dias (i kno lolz), Ashton (Pretty good if you want close range, otherwise Opera) and Chisato. Sometimes Bowman.

But if Ernest is worthless, then sir, Noel is absolutely worthless.

Not sure I'd say that... Noel is the only reasonable healer substitute if you don't want Rena in your party. Now from a gameplay standpoint you can say "Why the hell wouldn't you want to use Rena?". Because it's much harder to keep her and Claude from getting together in the ending if you actually use them together in battle.

lol

You covered what I was going to say. Noel isn't terrible, but he isn't necessary either. If you don't care about what ending Claude gets there is NO reason not to use Rena because she's better and you get her right off the bat.

Ernest, Leon and Celine are just outright terrible on higher difficulties far into the game -- EVERYONE ELSE can at least be decent, even Noel, though I'd rather use that character slot for someone else.

Chisato was FAST for you? She seemed slow to me....Maybe I need to replay the game.

My verdict's still out on Noel...

Claude, Ashton and Opera were my mainstays. The fourth slot was a rotation of magic users/Bowman. I like to mix my short-range and long-range fighters.

(And you CAN screw with the Claude/Rena pairings. I had Rena with Opera...LOL)

That's impossible. You can't have both Ashton and Opera.

I wanted to like Opera more, but she always ran out of MP too fast. Far from useless, but I think my party ended up being Claude/Dias/Chisato/Rena when I did the Ashton skip/Rena playthrough.

(anyone else think the topic of SO2 parties is worthy of its' own thread?)

That topic would probably be more engaging. Though picking characters on the lower end of the effective scale in Star Ocean 2 is like pulling teeth in some instances. A Pokémon topic would too... but that's because it's played competitively. I'm not sure I find enjoyment in breaking a static game like Final Fantasy. Yes, Gau is a beast... too bad Final Fantasy 6 isn't that fucking hard to begin with.

The sure fire thing here is that Edward sucks. Really. He does. Can anyone confirm that Gryz sucks from Phantasy Star 4? I'm willing to throw down in that direction.

Final Indalencio would have most, if not all spellcasters redundant, even if their motormouth skill is at 10. That's why I either use the swordfag team (Claude, Ashton, Dias and another one) or the party has Bowman/Chisato on it.

But yes, aside from SO2, Legendia's Shirley Fennes was absolutely shit, from personality to fighting stance. Not to mention her voice acting. Another has been said before: Grey from VP; no matter how you even the quips with say, Arngrim, he ALWAYS ends up weaker. And his Finishing Strike was just :ugh:. In Thousand Arms, I found Kyleen also to be :weaksauce:, even Nelsha was a tad bit more tolerable. Or Sushi.

I understand that he gets a really bitching axe somewhere towards the end which gives him great attack power. The thing is, he's redundant next to Chaz, and using him at the end means he's occupying a slot that could be held by someone with much more utility.

What's-her-name the nurse robot (it's been a while since I played, so sue me) struck me as being of questionable value as well. She's lacking in offensive output, and her "heal everyone" ability doesn't work on herself, so you have to choose who gets HP back that turn. I was kind of glad when she left the party the first time.

Good old Phantasy Star 4, where you can have a swordsman, an alien, a mutant, a robot, and a wizard all in the same party and somehow have it make sense.

I still break out StarOcean 2 from time to time. As the years progress, I find myself liking the spellcasters less and less. Even though I've got pretty much all the awesome gear and all my abilities maxed to 10, the spellcasters just don't have the raw force and staying power that the combat-oriented characters do.

Unfortunately, I didn't use any FAQs or guides when I played through, so I missed out on several characters. I didn't recruit Opera, Ernest and Ashton. I also chose Claude off the bat, denying myself the opportunity to recruit Dias. I feel foolish now, but I worked pretty hard to get all the powerful weapons and I don't have the heart to begin anew.

Still, I can attest to Chisato being pretty fucking awesome. She is fast, fast, fast. Her Killer Moves are particularly harsh. Flamethrower is beastly; Rising Dragon is even nastier; Preparation is downright lethal as tons of bombs drop from the sky. Her normal attacks aren't the strongest but she moves around the battlefield like a bolt. If anyone is going to get to the enemy first, it's Chisato.

Right now, my party consists of: Claude/Bowman/Chisato/Celine. I missed out on Ashton, else he'd replace Celine. Bowman's Explosion Pills are ungodly destructive. I've always wanted to try Precis but you can't have Bowman if you take her, and who wouldn't want Bowman? Celine is the last party member because she's got the best assortment of combat spells. Her destructive power isn't quite as strong as Leon's but she's far more versatile.

I didn't think that Noel sucked as much as he didn't seem to fill a particularly useful niche. His combat skills are okay but he requires knuckle weapons and is prone to heavy hits. His Killer Moves didn't impress me that much. His non-combat abilities also didn't seem to be of much use. He's an animal wrangler, so I suppose his "Come On Bunny" ability is well-honed but who needs that once you can fly?

Honestly, I found Lena to be the least useful. Healing is nice but I get by without it during most combats.

Sorry, I didn't mean it the way I worded it. It was late when I wrote it. I meant they were ALWAYS in my party when I had them. (That still doesn't sound right, but I hope you know what I mean).

But, there's always been one instance in Suikoden that bothers me. They MADE a character useless. When Kuromimi joins in the battle in the Kobold Village, he's always in the back. He's a short-range fighter and should be in the front. But, no, he's in the back--where he can't do a damn thing. After that, he's fine....

There's no denying that. Ed's a lover, not a fighter. Probably more at home back at his castle trying on robes than whackin' monsters with his harp, but FFIV Advance really helped him. He's still not great, but Cheer is a much better skill than his songs were, and the "Invincible Edward" glitch can be sorta useful. Kinda sad that his legacy is his "Hide" skill, though. The Bard class in FFV gets it as a normal ability and it's pretty funny to see someone scamper off the battlefield for no real reason only to do nothing until you tell them to come back.

Speaking of FFV, if job classes are allowed, I'm going to throw in Geomancers. They were a pretty good all-around class in Tactics, but in FFV they're a bunch of bell-ringing clowns (literally!) with very low attack, low health, light armor, and nothing of great virtue to offer any other class except the ability to walk on damage tiles without getting hurt, which is only useful in Exdeath's castle in World 2. Beastmasters weren't that good either, but their outfits were awesome.

In the beginning, that ability can resurrect dead party members. So Demi is actually useful in the beginning if you want to try your hand at killing a Sand Worm or two when you get access to the Land... Rover... thing. She serves a decent purpose given that she's dispensable and can help your other characters power level early on.

On Edward/Gilbert. I get his purpose, it's intrinsic to the story of FFIV. Wish that moment where he wakes your party was the only time he remotely saw combat.

All the girls in FF VIII were useless, their limit breaks were pathetic (at least compared to the guys).

Quistis. Degenerator. Red Dragons.

The most useless characters I can think of:

Llewywen from Valkyrie Profile. There are a lot characters that aren't so great in VP, but Llew takes the cake.

Edward from Final Fantasy 4. Not much needs to be said that you guys haven't posted already.

Rafa and Malak from FFT. At least Rafa was usable to find items, but their Truth and Untruth skills were totally useless.


Anyway, I pretty much agree with you, Crash. Spellcasters in SO2 just can't keep up with some of the better melee characters. Chisato is definitely one of the best and I really love using her. I think the best party is Claude, Chisato, Bowman, and Opera.

When I was younger I never bothered to get Opera because I liked Ashton a lot, but I do think she's better than him in the long run. Precis really isn't bad and I also used her a lot when I was younger. If you want to try something different you outta try her out in a different play through someday.

I didn't think Rena was totally useless since her healing helped out a lot, but she's definitely replaceable later on. I think the most useless character in SO2 is probably Ernest. He's just not a very strong fighter and his skills suck.

How could there be a worthless character thread without mention of Pokey from Earthbound? (Unless I missed it). Dude was the DEFINITION of worthless. Sure, you only had him for ten minutes tops, but I don't care. WORTHLESS.


"Pokey hides in a corner!"

Worthless bastard.

After getting a lot farther into Breath of Fire 3 recently, I have to give Nina the boot. It doesn't help that spells are nowhere near as effective as Garr's physical power, Ryu's Dragon damage, Momo's assist/healing/elemental weapons, or Rei's insane speed/Weretiger + Influence. Even Peco can become a freakin powerhouse with proper usage of the master system.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

Meg

Why? Well, even the Prima guide and various posters say that she's weak, dispite her wearing an armor. And dude, if you really want to use her. The only time would be to only deliver the finishing blow.

Winged class fighters. They would succumb to the enemy's pincer attacks and the mages Elfire, Elwind and various other magic attacks.

Micaiah. Even in my gameplay Illayana was a more powerful magetress than her. Dispite that Illayana receiving the same ammount of attacks.

Aeris, she was seriously useless.

Not only was she weak, she really didn't have a huge role in FVII, or had a role that was some how important to the storyline.

Okay. You've either never played through FFVII, or you're trying to be a snarky troll and failing miserably. Everybody in this thread knows that neither of those statements are even close to being true. It's not even opinion; it's intrinsic fact.

If your goal is to rankle the fanboys, knock it off. You're not doing it nearly cleverly enough and all you'll get it the Square-pegs incessantly repeating their chants of "NO U RONG NU-UH GOD U SO RONG!"

Yep, I totally agree with you on those points. Nina really is the weakest character in that game. Magic really isn't super strong in that game to begin with and her HP/DEF is terrible. The BoF Nina's are always getting the shaft. =( Anyway, I always used Rei and Momo simply because I like them a lot.


I do agree that she wasn't very good in battle, but however small her role seemed, it was important to the plot. I was never a big fan of Aeris, but I'm not gonna totally hate on her either.