[General Discussion] Most worthless party members ever!

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

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.

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?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Rotorblade

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.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.