History ArtificialStupidity / RPG

* ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic 2'' suffers from a pretty faulty AI. One of the most JustForFun/{{egregious}} examples would be an infamous sidequest that involved leading a TooDumbToLive survivor of a droid attack, out of an abandoned military base. He can't make two steps unless he's facing you directly within a certain distance for at least a few seconds, and there's nothing between you and him.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' has a boss whose most damaging move is Quake. It realizes that it misses floating characters, and will spam another move that removes Float from all of your characters whenever it detects a floating character around. Unfortunately, it ''doesn't'' realize that the move can, in fact, be reflected, thus Float + Reflect = the boss spamming its float removal move, doing nothing to hurt you until it dies.

* ''VideoGame/RadiataStories'', the AI works rather well up until the final boss, where ArtificialStupidity kicks in very hard. The boss has a wide-range [=AoE=] attack which your party are hardly be able to dodge, thus result in large amount of healing items used in order to keep them alive. The deal is, the boss's attack is extremely predictable, and it's easier to just solo the boss and even come out unscratched.

** None of the [=NPCs=] seem to realize that traps are ''dangerous things'' to be ''avoided''. Neeskha will happily start disarming a trap, spot an enemy, and run straight over the trap to attack it.

* The AI opponents in the Flick Rush minigame of ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3D'' aren't very bright, and will frequently waste multiple cards trying to break through your guard when they could simply wait it out instead. They also don't deal with slow moving projectiles or mine-type attacks very well, wasting cards by guarding too early (Or not at all in the case of the mines), and/or charging straight into the attack when it's of too high a value for them get through.

** You can rob anybody blind if you first put a bucket on their heads because they can't ''see'' you stealing. This is especially effective on shopkeepers since they often don't move behind the counter. After putting a bucket on their head, one can usually loot every item in the store without them noticing. You can even murder other people in the store without them detecting it. (The developers actually noticed this before the release, but left it [[GoodBadBug because they thought it was funny]], and if you don't want to make use of this exploit then you can choose to not use it.)

** There is also a GoodBadBug which allows you to cast offensive spells on certain ally [=NPCs=], who don't seem to notice or care that you're attacking them and, if there are no nearby enemies, may well stand around doing nothing while you kill them.

*** He also has the annoying tenancy to cast invisibility spells on himself during combat and leave to to fend for yourself.

* In ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'' the computer is unable to predict whether it will be able to fire on one of your units with a given one of its, it will therefore spend actions moving units backwards and forwards along the same path every turn to no effect. Similarly, they also have an unusual tendency rush troops straight into certain death, possibly for want of any other move.

** Even when you know one weakness of an enemy, the AI will occasionally test other elements against that enemy, even when you could easily wipe out the encounter with the known weakness. It also picks who tests elements at random, meaning you may have the party member who could one-shot the enemies opting instead to throw out a weak spell that may up absorbed or reflected.

** In the same vein as the above enemies with a both a ranged weapon and higher dps melee weapon will often pick rushing you with the melee weapon no mater how far off and unreachable you are. Even at relatively short distances it stands to reason they would at least try to shoot you while they close the distance before pulling out a knife.

* In ''VideoGame/XMenLegends'', the AI is fairly competent. But they won't dodge, use any shields, and sometimes will just beat down the enemy (even if it's in their best interest to stand back and use their mutant powers). This is really frustrating when they walk off the edge of a bridge to their death.

[[folder: The Elder Scrolls]]

* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts''
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' gives BonusBoss Vanitas Remnant an incredibly hard pattern to learn, making him a brutal enemy to beat... Unless you take advantage of the completely pathetic running AI that [[AIBreaker breaks his scripting]]. If the player runs behind the largest boulder with the crack in the wall, not only will they be safe from virtually all of Vanitas Remnant's attacks, but their weapons can be thrown through the boulder and injure him. He just keeps running headfirst into the wall, never moving out of the way.
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'' has the Invisible, an Ogre-class monster found in the last Agrabah mission. These Heartless have an attack where they disappear, leaving their sword to chase you around the map for a while before reappearing. It's possible to lure the sword past a wall, then roll behind the wall, stand there and let the sword keep trying to fly through the wall towards you until the Invisible reappears and teleports the weapon back to him. It's possible to do this with any of the three or four similar monsters, but it's easiest with the Invisible (one is a fake boss and the other is in Twilight Town, while Invisible's room has one spot perfectly suited to trap the sword).
** The partner AI in the [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts first]] and [[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII second]] games is simply abysmal. They have a tendency to waste all of their magic and skills the moment a fight starts with anything. Donald is the worst in this department; he'll spend all of his MP in five seconds flat if he's allowed to use his attack spells. They also like to just stand there doing nothing for 2/3rds of any given fight. Their pattern is basically "attack, step back, wait two seconds, repeat", meaning they take a boatload of hits from enemies since they basically never guard, even if you tell them to. Elemental attackers just fire off random spells, often resulting in them casting spells that do no damage on enemies strong against whatever they randomly chose.
*** Some free advice: go to their special abilities and item options, and change them to "Only in emergencies". For some reason, they suddenly become a hell of a lot smarter.
** An enemy example of stupidity is present in Leon the first time you fight him in the original ''Kingdom Hearts''. Attacking him head on is risky, due to how absurdly high his attack power is for that point in the game, as well how quick his melee attacks are. However, as long you're standing at a higher elevation than him, the only thing he'll do is jump over to you, leaving himself wide open to a combo.
** Donald can be seen as Artificial Stupidity in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' when he does stuff like cast Thundaga three times in a row on Larxene (who will regain health if she's hit by electricity), or healing Sora when he's at full health. It's thanks to a random number generator picking his attacks; Donald's card description says outright the spells he casts are random. Of course, [[GuideDangIt you need to dig through several menus uninvited to find this out.]]
** The AI opponents in the Flick Rush minigame of ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3D'' aren't very bright, and will frequently waste multiple cards trying to break through your guard when they could simply wait it out instead. They also don't deal with slow moving projectiles or mine-type attacks very well, wasting cards by guarding too early (Or not at all in the case of the mines), and/or charging straight into the attack when it's of too high a value for them get through.

* ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'':
** Throughout the ''Tales Series'', the ally AI is completely incapable of recognizing elemental strengths and weaknesses, and thus will use random artes with random elemental affinity with reckless abandon, without heed for the actual strengths and weaknesses of the enemy, no matter how many times it proves ineffective. While most games give the player the option to specifically deactivate said ineffective artes and directly order them to use the effective ones, that doesn't stop characters from crying out that their attacks aren't working over and over. This is most aggravating with games like ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' and its sequel, in which the elemental strengths and weaknesses of the enemy are always known and available to the player, and thus there's no reason their AI wouldn't know what those are.
** Estelle's AI in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' is almost universally considered lackluster. Part of the reason for this is that, unlike most other healers in ''Tales'' games, Estelle has a lot of offensive artes that require her to be in melee range (in contrast to [[VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss Tear]], whose moves are universally long-range, or [[VideoGame/TalesOfGraces Cheria]], who has very few melee-ranged artes). You can and probably should have her orders set to "magic only" or "heal", but she -- like all characters -- will still attack if out of {{mana}}. She does get a few moments of ArtificialBrilliance when she brings enemies close together to make her allies' area-of-effect attacks more effective, but it's rare enough that it can't completely make up for the headaches she causes.
*** There's also the problem that Estelle refuses to use ailment curing spells like Recover and Dispel. Instead, she opts to spam First Aid on the afflicted party member.
*** If Estelle has the Item Thrower skill activated, she also has a tendency to use up all of your TP-restoring Gels on everybody else in the party when they still have a third of their TP or more remaining. While completely ignoring the fact that she herself doesn't even have enough to cast First Aid.
** In the ''[=PS1=]'' version of ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'', the AI would do [[GameBreakingBug ABSOLUTELY NOTHING unless you were standing behind them.]]
** The AI has improved in ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny2'', but the main healer, Reala, very often will run into battle instead of healing people (and will never heal herself with either spells or items), while the secondary healer with a much better offensive movepool, Harold, will very often only spam her two healing artes to compensate. [[GlassCannon Ju]][[FragileSpeedster das]] darting in and out of battle at least makes some sense... Until you realize he's doing it every time he performs a combo. He also has a tendency to do absolutely nothing if his health is too low. He could at least cast spells from a distance away like most other characters do.
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'', the casters seem to run off of an AIRoulette and their spells seem to be picked by RandomNumberGenerator. This leads to some annoying instances where Will or Norma will use a fire-aligned spell only to have it absorbed, remark "that didn't work"... and then use ''another'' fire-elemental spell. Or even worse, use the same spell ''a second time''. Grune and Shirley at ''least'' have a nice excuse for spamming the same eres attacks because for awhile, Grune doesn't really ''have'' any and Shirley learns hers throughout the character quests.
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia,'' Raine runs up to an enemy, as if to attack, and then runs away again without doing anything. Other times she just decides to cast a spell that takes a long time while standing right next to an opponent. Unfortunately, this is a common trait - Zelos, Kratos, and Colette do the same thing.
** The fighters' pattern of running away after combos is equally incomprehensible and usually just results in the enemy getting a free shot at their backs. This is most likely a holdover from the earlier Tales games, where the simpler mechanics and stupider enemy AI made it so that running away after combos actually WAS effective strategy and indeed necessary to not get killed - enemies tended to fall out of stun just after you made your escape. The semi-auto function in ''Phantasia'' and ''Eternia'' make the running back and forth action automatic. (They also do this in ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'', which is based off of Eternia's battle system.)
** Also, spellcasters in ''Symphonia'' will often fail to retreat before attempting to cast a spell. If they're too close to the enemy, they'll get their spell interrupted, and immediately try to cast it again, getting interrupted every time until they get KO'ed or the enemy is defeated by another party member.
*** Exacerbating this problem is the fact that on many strategy settings, if the spellcasters run out of TP, they'll start running up to the enemy for melee attacks. By itself, this would be reasonable as a successful melee attack restores 1 TP per combo hit, but if they restore sufficient TP, the aforementioned problem kicks in and they start trying to cast a spell standing right next to the enemy.
** Colette has the potential to be an EliteTweak GameBreaker when player-controlled, yet her AI manages to turn her into a punching bag for the enemies. The biggest downfall is that it simply doesn't place her properly when she uses Pow Hammer - nor does it know how to properly chain her artes.
** AI controlled characters will often use their [[DeflectorShield super guard]] when an enemy casts a spell, even when it would be better to move out of the way. Worse, they use it as the spell is ''cast'', so that if the spell has a long animation the effect will run out before the spell hits.
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'', Mint ''loves'' to use Pow Hammer and then Pow Pow Hammer. Honestly you can't blame her; if she's well protected enough she'll have thrown on Acid rain, buffed Cress and Suzu up, long ago so there's almost nothing to do until somebody gets hurt. Of course, this does tend to get annoying if she starts to cast Pow Pow Hammer when someone's running low on HP...and given that she does this on ''bosses'', too, who are immune to the stun effect..
*** Mint's default AI is set to heal party members when their HP gets low. What this really means is that Mint will not cast healing spells until a party member's HP is low enough that they could be knocked out before she can finish casting the spell.

** Estelle's AI in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' is almost universally considered lackluster. Part of the reason for this is that, unlike most other healers in ''Tales'' games, Estelle has a lot of offensive artes that require her to be in melee range (in contrast to [[VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss Tear]], whose moves are universally long-range, or [[VideoGame/TalesOfGraces Cheria]], who has very few melee-ranged artes). You can and probably should have her orders set to "magic only" or "heal", but she -- like all characters -- will still attack if out of {{mana}}. She does get a few moments of ArtificialBrillaince when she brings enemies close together to make her allies' area-of-effect attacks more effective, but it's rare enough that it can't completely make up for the headaches she causes.

*** Some free advice: goto their special abilities and item options, and click them to "Only in emergencies". For some reason, they suddenly become a hell of a lot smarter.

** Throughout the ''VideoGame/TalesSeries'', the ally AI is completely incapable of recognizing elemental strengths and weaknesses, and thus will use random Artes with random elemental affinity with reckless abandon without heed for the actual strengths and weaknesses of the enemy even if they are known no matter how many times it proves ineffective unless the player specifically deactivates said ineffective artes and directly orders them to use the effective ones, all while crying out that their attacks aren't working over and over. This is most aggravating with games like ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' and it's sequel, in which the elemental strengths and weaknesses of the enemy are ALWAYS known and available to the player and thus there's no reason their AI wouldn't know what those are.
** Estelle's AI in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' is almost universally considered lackluster.
** Part of the reason for this is that, unlike most other healers in VideoGame/TalesSeries games, Estelle has a lot of offensive artes that require her to be in melee range (In contrast to say, [[VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss Tear]], whose artes are all ranged and her basic attack is ranged, too, so she stays out of the way, or [[VideoGame/TalesOfGraces Cheria]], who has very few melee-ranged artes). Of course you can and probably should have her orders set to "magic only" or "heal", but she -- like all characters -- will still attack if out of {{Mana}}.

*** If she has the Item Thrower skill activated, she also has a tendency to use up all of your TP-restoring Gels on everybody else in the party when they still have a third of their TP or more. While completely ignoring the fact that she herself doesn't even have enough to cast First Aid.
** This also becomes ironic though, when Estelle's first instinct with Rita casting some artes that affect an area to bring the enemies into said area.

** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'', the casters seem to run off of an AIRoulette and their spells seem to be picked by RandomNumberGenerator. This leads to some annoying instances where Will or Norma will use a fire-aligned spell only to have it absorbed, then after saying "Oh that didn't work", use ''another'' one or even worse, use it ''a second time''. Grune and Shirley at ''least'' have a nice excuse for spamming the same eres attacks because for awhile, Grune doesn't really ''have'' any and Shirley learns hers throughout the character quests.
** Grune however gets rather stupid - during the character quests, for a very long time, she only has one spell: Bloody Howling. It might be the first Dark Eres you have, and given that a lot of enemies in the later parts of the game are weak to it, it's not bad. However, sometime around the last or second-to-last dungeon, she also learns Aqua Laser...which inflicts Sea damage. (Essentially, the equivalent of Holy Damage in this game.) During the Character Quests, you'll have to pretty much turn off all your eres that inflict Curse damage against the curse-aligned bosses because a lot of her spells are sea and curse aligned. (Although plenty of stuff like Absolute and eruption)
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia,'' Raine runs up to an enemy, as if to attack, and then runs away again. Other times she just decides to cast a spell that takes a long time while standing right next to it. "Don't get in my way!" Unfortunately, this is a common trait - Zelos, Kratos, and Colette do the same.
** The fighters' pattern of running away after combos is equally incomprehensible and usually just results in the enemy getting a free shot at their backs.
*** This is most likely a holdover from the earlier Tales games, where the simpler mechanics and stupider enemy AI made it so that running away after combos actually WAS effective strategy and indeed necessary to not get killed - enemies tended to fall out of stun just after you made your escape. The semi-auto function in Phantasia and Eternia make the running back and forth action automatic. (They also do this in ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'', which is based off of Eternia's battle system)
** Also, spellcasters in [=ToS=] will often fail to retreat before attempting to cast a spell. If they're too close to the enemy, they'll get their spell interrupted, and immediately try to cast it again, getting interrupted every time until they get KO'ed or the enemy is defeated by another party member.
*** Exacerbating this problem is the fact that on many strategy settings, if the spellcasters run out of TP, they'll start running up to the enemy for melee attacks. By itself, this would be reasonable as a successful melee attack restores 1 TP per combo hit, but if they restore sufficient TP, the aforementioned problem kicks in and they start trying to cast a spell standing right next to the enemy. However; plenty of more recent games let the party members use TP-restoring items as needed so that they don't have to run in.

** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' gives us Vanitas Remnant an incredibly hard enemy to beat... Unless you take advantage of the completely pathetic running AI. If the player runs behind the largest boulder with the crack in the wall not only will they be safe from virtually all of his attacks but their weapons can be thrown through the boulder and injure him. Somebody should really give him a clue though. He just keeps running headfirst into the wall, ready and raring to be hit by everything you throw at him.
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'' gives us the Invisible, an Ogre-class monster found in the last Agrabah mission. These Heartless have an attack where they disappear, leaving their sword to chase you around the map for a while before reappearing. It's possible to lure the sword past a wall, then roll behind the wall, stand there and let the sword keep trying to fly through the wall towards you until the Invisible reappears and teleports the weapon back to him. It's possible to do this with any of the three or four similar monsters, but it's easiest with the Invisible (one is a fake boss and the other is in Twilight Town, while Invisible's room has one spot perfectly suited to trap the sword).
** The partner AI in the [[VideoGame/KingdomHearts first]] and [[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII second]] games is simply abysmal. On top of their tendency to waste all of their magic and skills instantly the moment a fight starts with anything (Donald is the worst in this department; he'll spend all of his MP in 5 seconds flat if you don't disable his attack spells), they also like to just stand there doing nothing for 2/3rds of any given fight. Their pattern is basically "attack, step back, wait 2 seconds, repeat", meaning they take a boatload of hits from enemies since they basically never guard even if you tell them to. Elemental attackers just fire off random spells, often resulting in them casting spells that do no damage on enemies strong against whatever they randomly chose.
*** Some free advice: Go into their menus. Go up to their special abilities and item options and click them to "Only in emergencies". Suddenly, they become a '''''hell''''' of a lot smarter.
** An enemy example of stupidity is present in Leon/Squall the first time you fight him in the original ''Kingdom Hearts''. Attacking him head on is risky due to how absurdly high his attack power is for that point in the game, as well how quick his melee attacks are. However, as long you're standing at a higher elevation than him, the only thing he'll do is jump over to you, leaving himself wide open to a combo.
** Donald can be seen as ArtificialStupidity in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' when he does stuff like cast Thundaga three times in a row on Larxene (who will regain health if you or Donald cast Thunder on her) or healing Sora when he's at full health, it's more comparable to a random number generator doing it.
*** It ''is'' a random number generator doing it. Donald's card description says outright the spells he casts are random. Of course, [[GuideDangIt you need to dig through several menus uninvited to find this out.]]

* In ''VideoGame/XMenLegends'', the AI is fairly competent.
** But they won't dodge, use any shields, and sometimes will just beat down the enemy (even if it's in their best interest to stand back and use their mutant powers). This is really frustrating when they walk off the edge of a bridge to their death.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'' gives us the Invisible, an Ogre-class monster found in the last Agrabah mission. These Heartless have an attack where they disappear, leaving their sword to chase you around the map for a while before reappearing. It's possible to lure the sword past a wall, then roll behind the wall, stand there and let the sword keep trying to fly through the wall towards you until the Invisible reappears and teleports the weapon back to him. It's possible to do this with any of the three or four similar monsters, but it's easiest with the Invisible (one is a fake boss and the other is in Twilight Town, while Invisible's room has one spot perfectly suited to trap the sword).
* The partner AI in the first and second ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' games is simply abysmal. On top of their tendency to waste all of their magic and skills instantly the moment a fight starts with anything (Donald is the worst in this department; he'll spend all of his MP in 5 seconds flat if you don't disable his attack spells), they also like to just stand there doing nothing for 2/3rds of any given fight. Their pattern is basically "attack, step back, wait 2 seconds, repeat", meaning they take a boatload of hits from enemies since they basically never guard even if you tell them to. Elemental attackers just fire off random spells, often resulting in them casting spells that do no damage on enemies strong against whatever they randomly chose.
** Of course, it is very important to mention that your main character pretty much does most (if not all) of the work anyways. Despite some allies (Aladdin, Ariel, Peter Pan) having some nice attack abilities that take out a notable chunk of most enemys' HP, you can pretty much wreck their HP in half that time or the boss has so much defense and/or doesn't hold still long enough it's not that useful. (They work best when they make heartless/nobodies stagger and take additional damage from the next hits in the attack; bosses are harder to stagger). They work ''far'' more efficiently in short-battles against a lot of Trash Mobs.

** An enemy example of stupidity is present in Leon/Squall the first time you fight him in the first game. Attacking him head on is risky due to how absurdly high his attack power is for that point in the game, as well how quick his melee attacks are. However, as long you're standing at a higher elevation than him, the only thing he'll do is jump over to you, leaving himself wide open to a combo.
* Donald can be seen as ArtificialStupidity in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' when he does stuff like cast Thundaga three times in a row on Larxene (who will regain health if you or Donald cast Thunder on her) or healing Sora when he's at full health, it's more comparable to a random number generator doing it.
** It ''is'' a random number generator doing it. Donald's card description says outright the spells he casts are random. Of course, [[GuideDangIt you need to dig through several menus uninvited to find this out.]]
** In the manga, Larxene tricks Donald into doing this.
* The AI opponents in the Flick Rush minigame of ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3D'' aren't very bright, and will frequently waste multiple cards trying to break through your guard when they could simply wait it out instead. They also don't deal with slow moving projectiles or mine-type attacks very well, wasting cards by guarding too early (Or not at all in the case of the mines), and/or charging straight into the attack when it's of too high a value for them get through.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' gives us Vanitas Remnant an incredibly hard enemy to beat... Unless you take advantage of the completely pathetic running AI. If the player runs behind the largest boulder with the crack in the wall not only will they be safe from virtually all of his attacks but their weapons can be thrown through the boulder and injure him. Somebody should really give him a clue though. He just keeps running headfirst into the wall, ready and raring to be hit by everything you throw at him. You're Welcome.

** ''Persona 3'' is rife with ArtificialStupidity, to the point where the best strategy for beating one boss is to go solo -- while this would normally be suicide, equipping the player character correctly and fighting alone is the only way to keep the boss fight from turning into a murder-suicide pact. On the other hand, they can be absolutely invaluable if you can stay alive long enough to decode the options in the tactics system. Setting Akihiko to "heal/support" for the first turn will nudge him into decreasing the boss's evasion rate, but ''you have to nudge him to that option.''

** Some immersion Failure AI bugs include animals grazing on stone, people trying to plow rocks, extreme rubber necking and others.

** For some reason, guards and townspeople will intervene should you start hacking down innocents, but should a series of Hired Thugs show up and start slicing you (and your companions) up, they won't lift a finger. Worse, they may interpret your self-defence as ''you attacking them, and intervene to help the heavily-armoured thugs''.

*** The chocobo thing is sometimes used in the original FFT to farm EXP- two allied characters drive a regular chocobo into a corner, and attack it enough to lower its HP without ever killing it. The chocobo keeps using Choco Cure to heal itself, thus healing the allied characters from any damage it may have caused them, allowing this system to potentially go on forever, upping the EXP of the characters with every attack.

** Of course, there are some 'positive' examples. A good example is the Loss Strategy used by people attempting [[ChallengeRun solo challenges]]. You see, many of the later (and thus harder) bosses have the ability to confuse a single party member with 100% success rate, baring equipment granting immunity. Hitting that character will break the confusion, so the computer is programmed to not to attack the character unless they can kill them quickly enough. As such, if you only have one character in a battle, letting them get confused will prevent the boss from attacking them, whereas your character will act randomly, which will result in your character slowly killing the boss, as hitting the boss is the only productive thing they can do.

** The AI spamming Recover could be this. Spamming Recover is unlikely to change the outcome of the battle and will instead just prolong it until the AI runs out of PP or you critical hit/vary your strategy. However by spamming Recover as a stall tactic the AI could be trying to force you into Struggle which could be seen as ArtificialBrilliance.
** In Red, Blue and Yellow, this is because the Zeroth Law of the AI is to always use super-effective attacks, no matter what. This is most noticeable if you send out Venusaur (or really, any Grass/Poison Pokémon) against Erika or the trainers in her Gym. They will proceed to spam [=PoisonPowder=] (because Poison is super effective against Grass), but since Venusaur is part Poison itself, it cannot ever be poisoned, and you can proceed to [[CurbStompBattle curbstomp the entire Gym this way]].

*** This is also where TheComputerIsACheatingBastard actually plays against it - in Red, Blue and Yellow, the AI's moves had infinite PP - meaning that they could use them as many times as they wanted. If they had a usage limit, they would actually have to stop this stupid strategy at some point simply because they couldn't carry on.

* Magikarp are useless even with Tackle, which they learn at level 15. However, Level 16 Magikarp in game continue to choose Splash. A minor bit of damage is surely better than a move that does absolutely ''nothing''? Even worse, in-game Gyarados can do it too.
** However, with the addition of Z-Moves in gen 7, some trainers in the Battle Tree will use Z-Splash, which finally gets a function by raising the pokemon's attack stat by three ticks.

* Similarly, every Plusle and Minun seems obsessed with using Helping Hand, even if they're not in a Double Battle (so the move has no effect whatsoever). Sometimes in double battles they will ''both'' use Helping Hand.
* Some [=NPCs=] who think that using Explosion or Selfdestruct with their last Pokemon is a great idea. Granted, if you are also down to one, the AI will faint but win (before Gen V), but otherwise...

* In [=HeartGold=] and [=SoulSilver=], the Champion of the Pokémon League (the second most powerful trainer in the game) will regularly get down to his last Pokemon and use [[SuicideAttack Perish Song, which KOs both Pokémon in the battle 3 turns after the attack is used unless they switch out]]. This would be run of the mill SpitefulAI, except for the fact it will still do this even if you have more than 3 Pokémon remaining, making it impossible for the AI player to win.
* Trainers in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'' are utterly bewildered by Zorua and Zoroark's ability, Illusion, which makes them appear as the last Pokémon in your party. If the Pokémon they appear to be is weak against Psychic attacks, the opponent will keep using them ''despite them being nullified by Zorua/Zoroark's Dark type''. Combine this with the fact that Illusion is only broken when the Pokémon affected by it is hit and you can potentially destroy an entire team without your Pokémon's cover getting blown at all.

* In VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2's Mix Tournament, which involves your opponent and you trading one Pokemon to each other for the battle, the AI will sometimes make staggeringly idiotic decisions, such as the Gym Leaders that are competing taking the one Pokemon on your team weak against their main type in trade for a Pokemon that can one-shot it.

** Also, the A.I. doesn't seem to grasp the concept of abilities that grant immunities to certain types other than Levitate. This can lead to, for example, using Thunder Wave (an Electric type move that causes paralysis) against a Pokemon with Lightning Rod (cancels out Electric type moves and makes them raise your Special Attack stat). Repeatedly. This even applies to '''Cynthia''', a powerful BonusBoss.
** The above becomes specifically remarkable with regards to Primal Reversion Groudon. It has double weakness to water, but its ability, Desolate Land, summons Harsh Sunlight that evaporates all water based attacks. Naturally AI will ignore the Desolate Land part and will keep spamming water attack with zero effect.

* When teaming with Hau in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', he'll start off with an Electric/Psychic Alolan Raichu. Hau unfortunately seems to have a poor grasp on concept of type advantages, as despite the enemies in the area using plenty of Water and Poison types, he'll frequently pass up on hitting for super effective damage and instead choose to use less effective moves or target the wrong Pokemon. For instance, one of the teams you and he face will use a Pelipper. Despite the fact that Raichu's Electric STAB will almost certainly take Pelipper down in one hit, he will frequently hit it with its Psychic moves instead.
** Another bit of Hau-related strangeness only occurs if you pick Rowlet, causing him to have a Primarina in a Double Battle at one stage. Primarina's signature move deals damage but also cures burns. The "cures burns" part will sometimes cause Hau's AI to use that move on ''your'' Pokemon. Even if your Pokemon is weak to that move's type. He's been known to OHKO his own allies.

* In the ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' series, Gummis increase your Pokemon's IQ, which allows you to enable skills that reduce their ArtificialStupidity. For example, Trap Avoider prevents them from stepping onto already-revealed traps. Granted, you might ''need'' to step on a trap, but you can turn off the IQ skill in that case. In addition, you can also disallow the use of certain moves, such as Harden (which they'd otherwise do ''every single step'', and then continue trying to do it once they run out of PP).

** Gates To Infinity thankfully alleviated most of the artificial stupidity from the get-go by making the majority of the "common sense" IQ skills a basic part of the AI, and also made them smart enough to avoid trying to apply status ailments to targets that are already afflicted by one. Unfortunately, there now isn't any way to get your Pokemon to consistently use super effective attacks or avoid ineffective ones.
* Trainers with Protect or Detect will spam the move until the cows come home. These moves can be useful for avoiding a move that takes multiple turns to execute (Fly, Solarbeam, Hyper Beam, etc.) but endlessly using the move the majority of the time just delays the battle and wastes your PP. Especially noticeable in Gen V, where Tranquill and Unfezant trainers absolutely love to use it.

** [[ActionBomb Explosion]] users are ''far'' worse, though. They'll always use it if they get a chance, even if you aren't immune to it. Of course, they'll prioritize it over nearly every other move. The only time you'll see them using something ''other than'' Explosion is if it's super-effective against the opponent. Maddeningly, the AI will choose Explosion even if they're the only friendly Pokémon left, an action '''''which will cause you to lose.''''' At least it's banned in Stadium and counts as a loss.

** Gonzap in ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' loves to spam Earthquake with Pinsir, Crawdaunt and Hariyama, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he's knocking out whoever is his second Pokemon at the time in two turns or so each. And if you evolve Vibrava into Flygon and use it against him, he doesn't seem to realize that it has Levitate and is immune to Ground moves.

* In ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', trainers show a remarkable disregard of the target Pokemon's ability or forme if that makes it immune to certain moves. It does not matter if it's the only ability that Pokemon can have, or if the ability had been revealed before, they will keep using the move the target is already proven to be immune to. Even in the Battle Tree, you'll see instances of opposing Pokemon using Water-type moves on Pokemon with Water Absorb, or status moves on a Shield Forme Minior. They are even willing to use damaging Z-Moves on a Mimikyu whose Disguise was not broken, [[EpicFail dealing no damage at all as a result]].

** Wandering [=NPCs=] have the extremely annoying habit of literally walking right into the middle of your battles, where you can turn them hostile and receive a bounty if you hit them by accident, even though it was ''their'' fault for getting your way to begin with.

** If you jump or use levitation magic to reach an area [=NPCs=] cannot get to and attack them with ranged attacks, they won't run away or pick up the bow from that archer you just killed. No, the only rational option is to get as close as possible and run back and forth a bit while taking fireball after fireball in the face. (WordOfGod cites this specifically as one of the reasons why levitation magic was removed from the series after ''Morrowind''.)

** AI failure can go from annoying to down right disturbing. Annoying when your AI allies keep dying by falling off things and disturbing when an entire army killed each other (While screaming Murder!, Murder!) because they'd hit each other in combat three times. It gets even worse when you bring them back to life and they do it again...
** Allied [=NPCs=] can often be notoriously suicidal. Several quests require you to take [=NPCs=] through the hazard-filled planes of Oblivion, and it's rare you'll manage to escape back through the Gate with everyone you brought in. Allies (and enemies) will fling themselves off of cliffs into lava or off balconies seventy feet in the air in an attempt to get at an enemy they've spotted on the other side of the chasm. Even at minimal health, [=NPCs=] will happily fling themselves into combat, occasionally moving in front of the player character and stopping them from helping them out, only to be cut down within seconds. Escort quests (of which there are thankfully few) are immensely frustrating.

* Also in ''Sun and Moon'', there are the wild Bewear in the postgame section of Poni Island that know Pain Split, which adds the user and target's remaining HP together and distributes an even 50% of the total to each of them. These wild Bewear will use it on Pokemon that have less HP than they do, meaning it accomplishes nothing but hurting itself and, if your Pokemon's HP is lower because it's taken damage, healing you.
** It's not at all unheard of for the Exeggcute living earlier on Poni Island to use Sleep Powder to put your Pokemon to sleep, then on the very next turn use Worry Seed, a move that changes your Pokemon's ability to the sleep-preventing Insomnia, which will also wake your Pokemon up if they were already asleep.

* ''KnightsOfTheOldRepublic 2'' suffers from a pretty faulty AI. One of the most {{egregious}} examples would be an infamous sidequest that involved leading a TooDumbToLive survivor of a droid attack, out of an abandoned military base. He can't make two steps unless he's facing you directly within a certain distance for at least a few seconds, and there's nothing between you and him.