[General Discussion] 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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Denicalis

Or even in Shining Force, there were plenty of people not worth their salt.

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.

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

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?

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Trance Machina

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.

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.

FELIPE NO

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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.

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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Originally Posted by Skexis

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.

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.

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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.

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by GRUN-3

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.

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

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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.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

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

I was speaking idiomatically.

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.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

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