History AwesomeButImpractical / VideoGames

* In ''VideoGame/{{Banished}}'', farming in the early game. Gatherer Huts provide so much more food than a farm what with the very wild and overgrown terrain you start out having to deal with. Farms can only produce one type of crop, and there's strict time windows involved -- you sow in spring, and you harvest in autumn. Farms are also far more labour-intensive than Gatherer Huts and Hunting Cabins, which isn't good when your population is low. Farming does become vastly more useful once you have a larger population, as farms produce much more food in much smaller space, and farmers with nearby homes, markets and storage barns can make massive harvests, and in ''Colonial Charter'', farming is essential for getting hold of higher-end items -- you need farms to create ropes, cloth, silk, tobacco and alcohol, for instance, and you'll only get the raw materials through farming or very hit-n-miss trading.

* Any Arms Fortress in ''VideoGame/ArmoredCore: For Answer'', but three stick out:
** "The Spirit of Motherwill" [[RuleOfCool is a giant walking aircraft carrier and battleship,]] able to rip you apart in seconds. But it blows up when you destroy all of its missile batteries and cannons. [[WhatWereYouThinking Well done, BFF.]]
** "Cabracan" is a heavily armored tank that carries hundreds of drones. But the skirt is ''hinged'', exposing its treads when it runs into a mine.
** "Stigro" is a speedboat the size of a city block, and [[MultiTrackDrifting can move incredibly fast with its hydrofoil]]... but only in water. Also, it's PointDefenseless, so if you can land on it while it's charging around, you can take it out with just a hit or two from your [[LaserBlade energy blade]] with no resistance.
** The Kiku weapon, a melee-range pile bunker that can one-shot almost anything... ''If'' you can hit with it, and that's a big if. Fast enemies will zip right past you, and most others can be taken out with ease using mundane weaponry.
*** Utilizing it as a countermeasure against lightweight blade-based enemies yields far more [[FlawlessVictory favorable]] results.

** The [[VideoGame/ResidentEvil4Remake 2023 Remake]] adds a new weapon, the CQBR. It's a ''fully-automatic'', American-style assault carbine. It shreds basically anything unfortunate enough to be on the business end of sustained fire, ideal for targeting boss weak points. But it still takes rifle ammo intended for single-shot weapons and is parceled out according, leaving you with only 4 or 5 rounds per pickup. Which means once the initial magazine is used up, you'll hardly ever have the ammo spare to be using it in full-auto anyway.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

* ''VideoGame/StardewValley''?

* In ''VideoGame/{{Moonwalker}}'' on the UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis, you can perform a special move that makes everyone on screen dance themselves to death. Unfortunately, it costs half your life.

** Among the [[IncrediblyLamePun bumper crop]] of new plants introduced in [[VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies2ItsAboutTime the sequel]], we have the Bowling Bulbs, introduced in Big Wave Beach. Three onion bulbs roll down the lane and rebound off any zombies they hit, causing them to potentially do a lot of damage. The problem? When all three bulbs have gone and there are still zombies on a row, only the smallest and weakest bulb will ever roll down. The other two considerably stronger bulbs won't ever recharge unless there are no zombies on the row. Although they have one of the best [[LimitBreak Plant Food abilities]] in the game, the bulbs are otherwise situational at best and are vastly outclassed by a number of the other plants that the game offers. This, however, only applies to a Bowling Bulb below level 3 -- [[TookALevelInBadass at level 3, it will regenerate and roll the medium bulb]], and at Level 7, it will roll the largest bulbs.

*** This also carries over to ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsoftheKingdom Tears of the Kingdom]]'', especially since you can now construct vehicles for transportation. They tried to make them more useful by allowing you to attach a towing harness, which can be handy for carting stuff around before you've built up your resources, but odds are you still won't use horses much outside of missions they're required for.

*** This also carries over to ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsoftheKingdom Tears of the Kingdom]]'', especially since you can now construct vehicles for transportation. They tried to make them more useful by allowing you to attach a towing harness, which can be handy for carting stuff around before you've built up your battery power reserves, but odds are you still won't use horses much outside of missions they're required for.

** This also carries over to ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsoftheKingdom Tears of the Kingdom]]'', especially since you can now construct vehicles for travel. They tried to make them more useful by allowing you to attach a towing harness, which can be handy before you've built up your battery power reserves, but odds are you still won't use horses much outside of missions they're required for.

* In ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'', the Stressful Event memory is a powerful card, which is worth 8 points, but it gives you 10 Stress.

* In ''VideoGame/TheBattleCats'' beating [[BonusBoss Filibuster Obstructa]] will make him join your army as Filibuster Cat X. For a unit you can get for free he has long range, enough to outrange most mid-ranged enemies, and has the ability to always freeze traitless enemies upon attacking which, when considering that non-[[OlympusMons Uber cats]] that specialise in dealing with traitless enemies are very rare, makes him sound like a great unit. The problem is that the time it takes for him to charge up his attack takes a while, long enough that any enemy that’s in his range can get knocked back out of it whether due to doing enough damage (as is most often the case) or through the Knockback ability, and even if it the attack hits, the freeze lasts for only 4 seconds, out of a nearly ''20 second gap'' between each attack. Even worse, the other free anti-traitless cats (Glass Cat and Lone Cat & Kitten) are usually more impactful to the fight and can be obtained much earlier than him meaning that, by the time you get him, you use him much less than you expect.

* Alucard in ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse''. He can only wield a pocketwatch as a subweapon, he attacks with small projectile orbs that does abysmal damage and when upgraded, it shoots 3 projectiles, but each projectile deals the same abysmal damage so unless you're close enough, he won't dish out much damage. His specialty is to turn into bat and float, unable to attack, which would've been good if this was a Metroidvania, not a Classicvania. Lastly? He has a huge hitbox, making him easier to hit or drop into the BottomlessPit.

* In rail-shooter ''VideoGame/LeftToSurvive'' from My.Games, all the Special Weapons except perhaps the miniguns suffer this. While powerful, they all share the same disadvantage of needing to charge up by killing enemies first unlike your normal weapons. Additionally they have only a miniscule amount of shots, with the [[GatlingGood exception of the minigun weapons]] which have a ton of shots. Especially disadvantageous is the automatic pistol ''The Jolly Roger''. It's very stylish looking being a double-barrelled revolver with two spinning chambers - one within the other and it's [[MoreDakka rate of fire matches a minigun]]. Unfortunately it only has 6 shots so most of the time, it's used to dump its shots on a tough target and then automatically revert back to your normal guns.

*** Farore's Wind might be the most worthless of them all. You use it as a WarpWhistle inside of a dungeon. You need to have been where you want to warp already, it fades upon warping meaning you must cast it ''again'' if you want to keep the warp point, and you need to get through an overly complex dialog for what it does every time you cast it. Enough progress to justify its use would imply one has already opened a DoorToBefore or acquired the dungeon's resident item which usually serves the same purpose. It's also pointless as an EscapeRope, since saving and resetting the game will do just that, for free.

** Bombers and strike aircraft / attackers are often this during air battles, as the gameplay make them sitting ducks, with only a few exceptions (despite significant, such as the Ju-288, the Wyvern, the A-10 and the Su-25 being lethally undertiered). You might be happy to have unlocked the iconic B-29 Superfortress, only to see jets swarming to you, screaming "mine! mine! mine!".

* The Excalibur sword in ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow]]''. Sure it's pretty strong, and you get to hit enemies with the sword ''[[RuleOfCool and the rock it's embedded in stuck on the end]]''. Unfortunately, it's so slow to swing that it's nigh useless against difficult enemies.

** Another more situational example is Aghanim's Scepter, a costly item that gives an ability upgrade to most heroes (usually their ultimate ability) but grants mediocre stat bonuses for its cost. These upgrades range from almost necessary [[note]][[DifficultButAwesome Meepo]] gets a fifth clone of himself to use and Mirana gets free casts of her main damaging ability, turning her into a WalkingWasteland[[/note]], to good, if you can afford it [[note]][[SquishyWizard Pugna's]] Life Drain ability can be upgraded to not have a cooldown, turning a squishy support into a pseudo-tank, but Pugna has other priorities to deal with[[/note]], to only good in certain situations[[note]] Doom's ultimate, [[NamesTheSame Doom,]] can be upgraded to disable passive abilities, so it's only good if the enemy has a Hero that benefits from one of those[[/note]], to being not at all worth the cost[[note]] Harbinger's ultimate, Sanity's Eclipse, is upgraded to cast [[LockedOutOfTheFight Astral Imprisonment]] on all enemies hit, which deals a piddling amount of damage and prevents him and his teammates from attacking them; it's almost always counterproductive since Harbinger is an item-dependent hero that does most of his damage through attacks[[/note]]. It's also frequently passed up by heroes focusing on attack damage, since the upgrade from the Scepter generally isn't enough to justify giving up gold and an item slot that could potentially be used on an item to boost their damage or survivability.

* The final unlockable car in ''VideoGame/TokyoXtremeRacerZero'' is an extremely powerful Nissan Fairlady Z... but just like its inspiration, the Devil Z from the ''VideoGame/WanganMidnight'' series, it's a challenge to drive.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Raiden}}'' series has the purple "toothpaste" laser, which can twist around to continuously hit enemies that it touches, often damaging enemies that get in its way. However, it doesn't just bend -- it turns and loops, potentially several times, causing ludicrous figure-eight lightshows which are a pretty distracting sight when you're trying to dodge enemy fire. It also deals less damage than the spread shot at point blank or the blue laser.