Awesome But Impractical - Television Tropes & Idioms

NUNCHUKS: Cool But Useless
—The Simpsons

A skeletal steed. Impressive but impractical. I had one once, but the head fell off.
—Death, Reaper Man

So, you've been toiling through the game for many an hour. You've killed a veritable army of Mooks, solved all the puzzles, worked your way through the Bonus Dungeon, and uncovered The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. And here's your reward: The ultimate attack. The spell that scatters the enemies and razes their land, drives your foes before you and allows you to listen to the lamentations of their women. The weapon which channels the power of the gods and rends the earth (although somehow without damaging you or your teammates). The strategy that even Machiavelli couldn't work his head around. The one attack that rips victory from the jaws of defeat, bends to one knee, and hands it to you on a silver platter.

It's awesome. It's flashy. It's unstoppable.

It's also completely useless.

Yes, it seems that the designers put so much time into maxing out the ultimate-ness of the ultimate attack that they forgot to actually make it usable. Maybe it requires too many resources to use, so cheaper, less-explosive attacks are usually better. Maybe it takes too long to get or comes too late in the game, so by the time you get it, no opponent poses a credible threat to you. Maybe it requires some sort of bizarre set-up to enact, which makes it easier and more efficient to use normal attacks.

Whatever the reason, it will get used once, to see what it looks like, and then never again. Yeah, it's awesome, but you've got a game to win here.

Mind you, if you care about doing cool stuff over winning, they can be quite fun. A competitive player will never look at them twice; this is one of the good things about being a Noob.

Examples:

Video Games

The Prophecy Spirit Bomb attack from Skies Of Arcadia. It does deal quite a lot of damage to all enemies, but it requires that all four characters be able to act and that you max out your Spirit Meter, which can take as many as five or six turns just for one use. A buffed-out Vyse attacking with Pirates' Wrath (which can be done every other turn at late levels and deals as much or more damage, albeit to only one enemy) is almost always a better strategy.
Newbies to Final Fantasy VI like to proclaim Locke as the best character in the game, as he is the only character who can hit the damage cap. With a Valiant Knife, an Atma/Ultima Weapon, a Genji Glove, and a Master's Scroll/Offering (quadruples the number of attacks), Locke can attack for 9999 damage eight times in a single turn. What the newbies ignore is that this is only possible at extremely high levels (at which point enemies have long since ceased to pose a threat), and is therefore more of a parlor trick than anything.
- Speaking of Ultima, that spell is pretty much the only worthwhile mass-damage spell in the game. Other mass-damage spells, such as Quake and Tornado, damage your party in addition to the enemy (though damage from Quake can be prevented with Float). In the most egregious example, the spell Meltdown and the Esper Crusader, both gained by defeating the eight dragons in the World of Ruin. One would think that such spells would be more powerful than anything else in the game, but the damage done to the party, plus the fact that Ultima is more powerful anyway, makes these spells completely useless. One can avoid taking damage from these spells (and turn them into a combination Fire/Curaga spell) by configuring the party's equipment to absorb Fire, but that comes at the cost of missing out on some of the game's best armor.
- Similarly, Final Fantasy IV gives you the spell Meteo, which costs 99 MP to cast... and takes several turns to perform, during which the caster can't do anything else. Since you will usually get it during the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, in which you're attacked by single (but powerful and fast) enemies at a time, it's much more efficient to use Nuke/Flare, which costs 50 MP per shot and is cast instantly.
This goes as far back as Final Fantasy I game, where the nunchucks (and later, iron nunchucks) could only be used by the Monk class, a class which has separate combat formulas that make them far more powerful when they aren't wielding a weapon (and, for that matter, when they aren't wearing any armor).
- Only past a certain level. A black belt/master's attack power is equal to twice his level, which means at level one, is 2... so what if he gets twice as many hits, the damage will usually be 1 each. "2 HITS! 2 DMG." It isn't until around level eight or so that the doubled attacks a BB/M gets will increase the damage, as iron nunchuks have an attack power of 16 plus, I believe, half the BB/M's strength (which starts at 5 at level 1 and could be 10-ish by that time). Additionally, the character's defense is independent of their weapon; when unarmored, the BB/M's physical absorb is equal to their level. Considering a Knight with the best armor in the game has an absorb of just over 60, a level 50 (the max in the NES version) BB/M has a respectable 50. (Of course grinding to this level is painful.) Either way, it doesn't quite this trope, as you can buy the wooden nunchuks in the first town, and the iron nunchuks in the second or third.
In God Hand the main character has a variety of "guard breakers", attacks that stun a blocking opponent. These range from sobats to flying kicks to haymakers to spinning backfists, but the best guard breaker throughout the entire game... is the basic, boring overhead chop.
The triangle attack in Fire Emblem gives you a guaranteed Critical Hit, which is nothing to be scoffed at. However, it requires that you raise three characters of the same class (which is not that smart — you want variety — plus said class has a common weakness) and position them in the same part of the map (which is also not that smart — if you've got units that do basically the same thing, you want them spread out). And if it doesn't kill the target, the units are wide open for counterattacks.
- Alm and Cellica in Fire Emblem Gaiden have a similar attack, but unlike every other instance of it it is actually useful, because the two are the main characters and required to be used.
The high-end superpowerful moves in Pokemon — Hyper Beam, Blast Burn, Plant Frenzy, Hydro Cannon, Rock Wrecker, Roar of Time and Giga Impact — do some of the highest base damage in the games. However, they require that you lose a turn immediately after use. It's usually more efficient to simply attack with two weaker moves twice in a row than employ them.
- And don't get us started on moves like Sky Attack, Skull Bash, or Bide, which require a turn or two of charging before they actually do damage. Skull Bash at least has the saving grace of improving your defense on the turn you charge.
- Similarly, most players also avoid the next-strongest set of attacks (Blizzard, Hydro Pump, Thunder and Fire Blast). While they still do impressive damage, they have reduced accuracy. And sometimes it can feel like any percentage to hit that isn't 100% is 0%.
- While we're on the subject of Pokemon, there are a few mons that qualify for this description as well. For example, Sharpedo. If the name alone doesn't tell you, it's a shark and a torpedo rolled into one. If that doesn't scream HOLY SHIT AWESOME, nothing does. Sadly, Sharpedo has crap stats due to having almost no defenses whatsoever, an ability that requires Sharpedo to get hit in order to do anything, and a worthless movepool, leaving Sharpedo as one of those Pokemon that you catch, stuff into your PC, and never look at a second time.
As your weapons upgrade in Secret of Mana, you can push the Charge Meter to higher and higher levels. But it takes so long to charge to the eighth and final level that, even if you charge that high without getting knocked over and connect with the attack, you would usually have gotten far better results using multiple lesser-charge attacks throughout the same period. This actually has one use — it is the only way the Girl and the Sprite can harm the Final Boss. Of course, you have Mana Magic as well...
Total Annihilation has two main examples (among many others). The Core Krogoth is a unit about three times larger than any other unit. It has insane amounts of armor, the best laser in the game in its head, arm cannons, and anti-air missiles in its back. However, in multiplayer no one will build this unit because it uses the equivalent of 200 advanced fighters' worth of metal, energy, and build time, and requires its own expensive factory that can only produce that one unit. With the 200 fighters you should have been building, your enemy could take down the Krogoth in less than 30 seconds. This leaves you with massive resources wasted on one dead unit and 200 fighters heading for your base.
- Additionally, there was a Third-Party created unit, the Be'elzebub, which took the Krogoth formula and cubed it. It took way more than an obscene amount of resources to create. If successfully built, its weapons would continue to drag and cause damage after hitting the ground (an effect used with the Commander's Disintegrator Gun), was bristling with AA missiles, and had a high-power laser cannon. Its HP was roughly four times greater than the game's previously determined maximum (held by the Krogoth). Its death explosion was nearly large enough to completely destroy one of the smaller maps. This could be used to the owner's advantage, as the volume of health it had required two separate self destructions to actually kill the unit (this was counting its own explosion). Oh, and it could walk in water, at the cost of being unable to use its primary cannons and being limited to fighting off only aircraft. It was, as noted by the creator, only balanced by the amount of time it took to field. Once it hit the field, the other team would be better off simply self destructing every unit it has on the field, as the only weapons that could out-range it couldn't hope to kill it before it reached them to destroy them.
- Another two examples are the Rapid Fire Long Range Plasma Cannons, the Vulcan and Buzzsaw. Yes, they can shoot to about 10 screenlengths at 360 rounds/minute. They also cost as much as nine single shot Long Range Plasma Cannons, which shoot about 60 rounds/minute, are more accurate, fire 40% further, and can be spread out to minimize Splash Damage.
- A similar argument could be made for the Mavor, the UEF faction's tech 4 Strategic Artillery in Supreme Commander, Total Annihilation's Spiritual Successor. Its damage is massive, the impact radius of its shells considerable, its running costs modest and it has a range of 71km, while the largest maps in the game have dimensions of 80km square. In addition, although strategic missiles can be intercepted by strategic missile defence units, there is no defence against artillery shells except for shield generators — which Mavor shells punch straight through as if they weren't there. However, the build time, along with the mass and energy costs of its construction, are so prodigious that with the hundreds of tanks or fighters you could have built, any enemy can systematically dismantle your firebases and your main base — or build several nuclear missile silos and bomb your expansion into glass.
  - Most superweapons in Supreme Commander simply can't match their weight in tech 3 units when it comes to firepower, durability, or practicality.
- Total Annihilation Kingdoms had each nation's Sacred Dragon one-off super unit, which was nowhere near as powerful as its cost, build time or "unique" status would suggest, being only slightly stronger than the standard dragons and having a "wave of death" attack that did no damage whatsoever.
A common Real Time Strategy Awesome But Impractical unit type is the "Mobile X", where X is an awesome but practical stationary defensive structure, usually a turret of some kind. For instance, the Command And Conquer series has the Mobile Gap Generator and Mobile Stealth Generator — the stationary building version is useful enough, but the mobile ones' range is so contracted that they're practically worthless. Total Annihilation examples include the Arm's Penetrator and Shooter — supposedly mobile Annihilator energy weapons, but nowhere near as powerful, and both the Arm and the Core have mobile artillery (the Luger and Pillager) which are supposedly mobile versions of the powerful Guardian/Punisher plasma turrets, but are incapable of shooting straight.
The vast majority of Soul Calibur's Unblockable attacks are unblockable and do a good chunk of damage. However, once the enemy sees what angle it attacks from and manage to hold themselves together from the "Oh Crap!" feeling when they see flames cover you and the screen behind the characters turns black... most players are able to easily sidestep or dodge them before they are performed, all too often allowing them to get a free hit on you. It can be more effective to cancel them while doing it to add in a bit of unpredictability if the character is able to.
The original Command And Conquer had the Mammoth Tank, which was the most powerful unit in the game, but cost so many resources it was a white elephant.
- On the other hand, the Brotherhood of Nod's most potent weapon, the Avatar, is actually not as useful. Sure, it's tough and has a powerful beam cannon, but it's more expensive than the Mammoth Tank, and to boost its killing ability you have to destroy close to its value in other units to scavenge their parts.
- In CNC 3 the Scrin's most powerful weapon, the Mothership, is ludicrously costly to produce and is slower than Christmas, giving the defender enough time to mass produce anti-air defenses to blow it to bits.
- China's Nuke Cannon in Command And Conquer Generals sounds awesome (it's artillery that fires shells with nuclear warheads), but long deployment time, slow firing speed, a minimum range less convenient than its maximum range, surprisingly underpowered damage, and the requirement of a General point to build makes the Nuke Cannon very impractical. What really kills it, though, is the fact that it doesn't autotarget. If you want it to hit something you have to tell it to do so every single time. You can get a few to keep shooting at a frequently-used passage, but only the CPU opponent is dumb enough to fall for that one.
- What is it with the Command And Conquer series? In the FPS Command and Conquer: Renegade, no one will use the Mammoth Tank online. Why? Besides its pathetic speed and high cost, the reason is complicated: Because the odds of actually winning a game via base destruction or nuke is unlikely, players will play for points, which are earned based on damage caused to units. The more valuable the unit harmed, the more points you get. And the mammoth tank, having the most HP and the most cost, is nothing more than a big points-based bank machine for anyone with a rifle! It's also, all things considered, not that much more powerful than a medium or light tank.
Pyramid Head's Great Knife in Silent Hill 2. It would be an awesome one-hit-kill weapon — if you could wield it effectively. As it is, equipping it slows you down to a crawl. It takes forever to bring it to the ready position. You can't move while it's in the ready position. It's so slow to move in striking that an enemy with any mobility at all will simply step out of the way. And the recovery time is so long that you're a sitting duck if when you miss. On the plus side, it's the only weapon that has any effect on Pyramid Head, its sheer bulk knocking him off balance... but even then, you're generally just better off keeping out of the way.

Likewise, the secret chainsaw weapon in Silent Hill 2 is certainly awesome (it's a goddamn chainsaw!), but James has to start the saw each time he readies it, holds it off to the side so enemies can't walk into it, and swings it so slowly that there's almost no chance of ever hitting an enemy before they can hit him.

The mace in Silent Hill 3 is like a lighter, slightly more usable version of the PH Great Knife.
Silent Hill 4 takes this to another level. You can gather a whole arsenal of melee weapons, ranging from golf parafernalia to demonic pickaxes. Though the golf apparel breaking easily and the pickaxe being hard to deal with, you have no choice but using Ye Olde Rusty Axe.

The Wild Arms series of games typically rewards you for beating the game's strongest optional super-boss, Ragu O Ragula, with the ultimate accessory, Sheriff's Star. It skyrockets all your stats, it makes you immune to Standard Status Effects, it boosts your damage... and you've already beaten the toughest boss in the game, so what are you supposed to do with it, exactly?
- In most recent Wild Arms titles, there's a New Game Plus feature, which doesn't carry your levels over, but does carry over your Sheriff Stars. Essentially, it's a fun and amusing way to see how much of a badass your characters are when kitted out with Sheriff Stars from the beginning.
The "Fallout 2 Hint Book" at (well, after) the end of Fallout 2 works much the same.
The Suikoden series contains a large number of 'Team Attacks' that fit this trope — they look flashy, but have so many special restrictions that most of the time you'd be better off just having each individual character attack separately.
Phantasy Star IV has the Destruction combo; it requires four of your five party members, it requires them to act in exact order with no interrupting actions on either side, three of them are using their most powerful attacks possible, two of those were obtained through semi-hidden sidequests... and in the end, it does much less damage than the three attacks in question used independently (thanks mostly to the fact that the engine caps damage at 999 HP.)
In Final Fantasy Tactics, Optional Party Member Cloud has a large arsenal of special abilities that are extremely powerful... but also take a few turns to charge. By the time you immobilize your enemy (to stop them from simply walking away) and wait long enough for the attack to execute, Cloud could have executed multiple quicker attacks for more potent effect in the same time frame.
- Hell, Cloud himself is arguably this. He starts off at Level 1 when you get him, and has to have a specific weapon (which you will have stronger weapons than by that time) equipped to even use his special abilities. On the other hand, you get three very useful characters while undergoing the sidequest to get him.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a similar problem. Many special characters can be unlocked, but only after you have finished the plotline and won the hardest battles. There's still completing all 300 quests, but that shouldn't be a problem at this point. What's more is that you can even get the Master Judge, Cid, on your team, who is incredibly powerful, but only after you have completed all 300 quests, so there is literally nothing left to do with him.
- There are also the four growing items, which each have the potential to raise their respective stat by 255 but start weak and add an extra stat point every time you recomplete the mission that granted them. Given that you'll have to wait for the mission to show up again after completing it, even raising them above the ability of the best items you could find otherwise is ridiculously impractical.
The last of the Star Power abilities in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Supernova, is very powerful... but on closer inspection, it's only a couple of points more powerful than the earlier-attained, and much cheaper, Earth Tremor. Against bosses you're better off with that or Art Attack (or saving the Star Power for healing and just smacking them), and against regular enemies you can wipe them all out instantly with Showstopper.
Most sacrifice creatures in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. You can spend an enormous amount of resources on it and lose the whole thing to a simple Trap Hole. Better idea: Special Summon creatures (which Trap Hole and its cousins are meaningless against).
- Or a man-eater bug or an Acid Trap Hole. But newer cards allows you summon some of the high sacrifice creatures without fear of retribution mostly
The motorcycle in the much-maligned Shadow the Hedgehog. Although the other vehicles legitimately provided benefits Shadow couldn't get on foot, the motorcycle's sole purpose was looking cool — it was difficult to steer, and, unsurprisingly, using it actually slowed Shadow.
Though some of the Program Advances (sets of three or more chips which, if they all show up on one turn and are selected in order, are replaced with a single really powerful chip) in the Mega Man Battle Network series are quite useful/balanced, and worth including in an appropriate deck, others are nearly impossible to use, requiring that three or four chips each of which can only show up once in a 30 chip deck all come up on the same turn. Plus, including even more than one or two of the useful Program Advances in a deck tends to stretch it far too thin to be effective.
Counter Strike has a wide variety of weapons to choose from, some of these include the dual Elites, the famed Kevlar-piercing Five-seveN; the assault rifle with a scope; Steyr AUG; and a machine gun with a 100-round belt. All of them suck. "Duelies" are unreliable, take long to load, and cost more than a simple SMG, Five-Seven has been nerfed for balance, Steyr AUG is overpriced, and the machine gun is heavy and inaccurate. Few players really venture outside the tested and approved Colt/AK line.
- The FN P90 is a submachine gun that fires quickly, is rather accurate and deals a decent amount of damage — in fact it was so awesome it became a Game Breaker during the early betas. The recoil was Nerfed, and became Awesome But Impractical due to the pricing: the MP5 is much cheaper, and the AK47 and M4A1 much more powerful but not much more expensive.
  - The FN P90, along with the Five-seveN, take a special type of 5.7mm ammunition, specifically designed to pierce body armor. The small size increases magazine capacity; the Five-seveN holds 20 rounds, unique (as far as this Troper knows) among pistols, barring extended magazines. Of course, the 5.7mm round won't do much to a SAPI.
- The M249 machine gun actually received a good boost in Counter-Strike Source, with its accuracy and firing rate upgraded. That makes it much more useful, but still impractical compared to the much cheaper AK47s and M4A1s.
Soldier of Fortune 2 has the OICW; a scoped assault rifle with a 20mm grenade launcher. The player is given a long tutorial on the advanced fire control system for the grenade launcher — it uses a laser to measure distance to target and shows you on the scope how high you need to point the gun to fire the grenades on target (they have a high, arcing trajectory). The main problem is that you have to use the laser system to check the range before firing a grenade, which simply takes far too long in a firefight. If you have time to sit and muck about with the scope, it's easier to just use the rifle component to snipe them in the head. The huge size (it takes up a ridiculous amount of screen real estate when equipped) and lack of ammo (being an experimental weapon, your enemies don't carry it, so you can't scavenge ammo from corpses) don't help either.
- Partially Truth In Television (or in this case, in videogames); the OICW's failure to make it to mass production came from, among other things, its users considering it way too complicated for the task.
- The OICW used standard 5.56mm rounds, the same as M16s/M4s/M249s. Yet another case of Did Not Do The Research.
  - The "kinetic energy" portion of the OICW was supposedly based on a short-barreled version of the G36 assault rifle without a buttstock, with the grenade launcher part (and the fire control system) on top of it.
In Civilization 3 and 4 you can eventually build nuclear weapons. These seem very cool and look cool when used. But, they are expensive, take a long time to build, and cannot be built until very late in most games. Furthermore, each weapon can only be used once and despite being fairly powerful, they still follow the standard rule that no enemy can be knocked down below a certain health threshold by air power. As a result, building a fleet of reusable aircraft is usually a better strategic use of your resources. In addition, Civilization 4 has the SDI, which shoots down nukes at a great frequency. Any decent player or AI will render your nukes pretty useless with this.
- Every use of a nuclear weapon (successful or not) causes a negative impact to diplomatic relations with every other civilization and a double penalty for successfully hit civilizations (the relation penalty being listed as "YOU NUKED US!"). This can very quickly lead you to a war against the rest of the planet.
- Each nuclear explosion is a serious hit on the global warming scale, and even light use of nukes could easily cause the world to deteriorate into mostly swamp and desert areas within a short amount of time.
The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has a spell, Fingers of the Mountain that is purportedly the epitome of Shock magic. A radial lightning blast, it is one of the few levelled spells in the game that has its power set to when you acquired it. However, if you complete the sidequest when your levels are in the mid-twenties, it would cost more magicka to cast than a character could possibly have.
- That, and it'd be cheaper to cast if you make it yourself.
Instant Kills in the Guilty Gear games do exactly what the name suggests: finish the round in favor of whoever connects one. Most of them look pretty cool, too. Unfortunately, to keep them from being gamebreakers, they can only be used once, they're extraordinarily difficult to hit with unless your opponent isn't paying attention (you have to switch into a "sudden death" stance, complete with a glowing outline, making these better suited for Mind Games and last-chance desperation attacks), and if you attempt one and miss, you can't use any more special moves for the remainder of the round. Luckily for you, they can be used on SNK Boss I-No. Sweet! Except in Accent Core. Damn it!
Golden Sun: The Lost Age's best Djinn Summon can only be acquired after confronting the strongest Bonus Boss in the game, and that can only happen after you get halfway through the final dungeon. And using the summon costs a full complement of Mars Djinni and half of your Mercury Djinni — a hefty cost that, depending on your class setup, can deprive you of your best healing for a few critical rounds. Also, the only boss you haven't beaten yet by the time you get it is strong against fire. Guess what element the Iris summon is...
Neverwinter Nights 2 had you spend a major chunk of the mid game collecting a series of powers designed to kill the Big Bad; it turns out they weren't necessary at launch. Additionally, late in the game you get your hands on an Infinity Plus One Sword, that's also often superseded by gear a player already has access to.
Triple techs in Chrono Trigger are almost never worth it. All of the straight damage ones have lower multipliers than the double techs that use the same moves, and they're harder to set up. The ones that don't just do damage aren't much more useful, since killing your enemies as fast as possible is usually the best strategy.
Chrono Cross, for its part, has Summon Elements. Necessary for the most high-end equipment, but requiring an elaborate setup every time one is used. Also, you can only cast one for every boss you've beaten so far; fortunately, the counter resets every time you beat a new one or visit an inn. With so many restrictions, they tend to get used on only the final few battles, and sometimes not even then.
The Graviton Gun in Syndicate Wars meant death to anyone on the wrong end of it, recharged quickly and also emitted tendrils of energy that disintegrated eight other people when you fired it. So, unless you cared about collateral casualties, it was great. Except that it cost three times as much as the Satellite Rain and by the time you developed it, you were probably on the last levels, where you couldn't resupply your agents (or you cheated like a bastard).
The triple nuke in World In Conflict: first, you need a whopping 240 Tactical Aid points at once to summon them (that's an amount a very active and skilled player MAY amass in an entire 20 minutes game if he doesn't spend anything), and second, even one nuke is usually Over Nine Thousand destruction-wise, which makes the other two mostly just hit the dirt.
- Unit-wise, US and Nato Heavy Artillery units certainly apply. They fire an extremely flashy and lethal barrage of rockets... but any alert player can see them coming from afar and avoid the attack entirely. Plus the barrage can be seen on the minimap and will give away the position of the artillery, which is just a sitting duck at close range. Medium artillery is much cheaper, it's shots can't be seen and it's just as effective against anything short of tanks. It even has Napalm against infantry in the forest.
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare lets you unlock two additional scopes for most guns, the red dot sight and the ACOG scope. However, the ACOG scope, which provides 4x zoom, is unlockable even for weapons on which it does more bad than good; putting an ACOG scope on the SVD Dragunov sniper rifle not only reduces its accuracy (the default scope is easier to aim with), but it also makes aiming at nearby targets harder, and you can't hold your breath when using it, so there is always breathing sway. In addition, the 4x zoom is largely wasted as most maps do not have open spaces big enough to make it useful.
- The ACOG scope could be useful to sniper rifle in closer combat since you don't need to steady to pull off a shot, but the golden gun camoflauges are very much Awesome But Impractical in most of the criteria for the trope - most of them require you kill 175 enemies with headshots to equip it, which is out of the reach of players who wish to use Prestige mode, which causes you to wipe your levels and challenges (which also means progress towards the golden camoflauges is wiped) to get a new icon, and this can be done ten times. As you might of guessed, the gold camoflauges also make it easier to see you, being gold and all.
In Final Fantasy XI, the Dark Knight Two-Hour ability is Blood Weapon, which drains an enemy's HP by the amount of damage a physical swing does. Problem is, Dark Knights traditionally use two-handed weapons, which have a high delay in attack speed, the drain effect doesn't deal additional damage, Weaponskills aren't affected by this at all, and the effect lasts 30 seconds. That's about four, five swings of a two-handed weapon. While the Souleater ability can make it somewhat more effective, it's generally not as useful as other Two-Hours... unless you get the Kraken Club, which attacks multiple times in one attack round, which actually turns Blood Weapon into a Game Breaker, and even then, it requires a hefty Haste build, with Bards and Mages buffing them to kingdom come.
- A better example of this is probably the Ninja two-hour, Mijin Gakure, which kills the user, without the usual EXP loss, to cause damage to an enemy. The damage from it is so minimal, though, that the only reason to use it is for a quick trip to your home point.
In Star Wars: Rebellion, a Turn Based Strategy game set in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the Empire could actually build Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers, but the cost in resources made them impractical. Anything they do can't be done more cheaply with regular ships. The Death Star is especially impractical since it is vulnerable to fighters, the cheapest space units in the game.
On the subject of Star Wars, one of this troper's pet hates is the Double Ended Lightsaber. Less useful in every possible way than wielding two lightsabers (apart from being kinda cool), it does in fact give a wielder many more ways to be killed by their own weapon, given how much less freedom they have to block and parry without cutting their own legs off.
In the GBA versions of Harvest Moon (Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends...), you can assemble the three Gems: when equipped, the Kappa Gem automatically restores Strength, Goddess Gem restores Stamina, and the Truth Gem displays both stats on screen. Handy, but at the time when you can actually get them (at least five in-game years in), most players will know the limits at which they can safely work their character, negating the need for the Truth Gem. Not to mention scarfing down some Elli Leaves or drinking a Bodigizer XL and a Turbojolt XL restore your health much faster than the Kappa and Goddess Gems would. All this still ignores the amount of effort needed to find all twenty-seven pieces of all three gems.
The unblockable moves in various incarnations of the Soul Series. In fact, elaborate, flashy combos are a waste of time in almost every 3-D platform fighting game; they're basically an attempt to carry on the legacy of the Dragon Punch, except with sidestepping.
Zone Of The Enders: The Second Runner has the Vector Cannon. When fired, this weapon will absolutely, positively, obliterate whatever is in front of it, no questions asked. Mooks, smaller bosses, what have you, they're incinerated in the power of this cannon. The problem? The weapon takes almost twenty seconds to charge, including latching it to the ground, bringing up an external aiming/charging system, charging the cannon... charging the cannon more... and look, because I stood still for this long, now I'm dead. The only time it works right is in a mission where you have to use it to blow the engines off of battleships, because the game is built to let you use it there.
Several of the Final Smash attacks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl qualify for this trope.
- A character's Final Smash is part of their balance. For example, Meta Knight, who can get off attacks frighteningly quickly and has decent smashes, gets a fairly weak Final Smash, which is clumsy, hard to hit with, and can hit at most two characters. On the other hand, Captain Olimar, who can't do nearly as much damage, gets one of the cheesiest Final Smashes in the game, due to its being unavoidable (the first part anyway). Mario and Samus, who fall somewhere in the middle, get fairly decent Final Smashes, which are powerful and easy to hit with, but also easy to avoid. This is why some tournaments turn on Smash Balls, even though they usually also turn off all other items.
In Sonic Adventure 2, both Sonic and Shadow can, with the right upgrade, use an attack that destroys multiple enemies almost simultaneously, and while attacking they move too fast to even be seen, let alone hit. Of course, it requires a few seconds of charging, which means that it's completely useless against enemies that can fight back.
In the original Kingdom Hearts, completing the Hades Cup netted you Trinity Limit, supposedly an Ultimate Attack. Except that it took 5 AP to equip (a rather painfully large amount), required Donald and Goofy, and used your entire mana bar up. This was especially bad since the attack often replaced other, less costly, more useful attacks such as Ragnarok. Note that the same attack is far more useful in both sequels.
Some of the Buster attacks from Devil May Cry 4 are dangerous enough in crowds that using standard attacks is safer and more effective.
Secret Of Evermore has the Reflect spell, which as its name implies, reflects alchemy spells back at the caster. This would have been a great spell, since no enemy absorbs alchemy spells and bosses frequently use very powerful alchemy (especially That One Boss, Verminator). Unfortunately, you don't get this spell until the beginning of Omnitopia. At that point, the only enemy left that uses alchemy is the Bonus Boss, the Faces (aka "Your Cleanliness").
Certain games from Ultima have the Armageddon spell ("Imbalance" in Ultima VII Part II — Serpent Isle). The spell kills all enemies on screen as well as all enemies not on screen. It also kills your entire party, all bystanders - and everyone and everything in the world except for you and Lord British (and Batlin in Ultima VII)! Naturally, the game becomes Unwinnable at this point, so there is absolutely no reason to use this other than to see Lord British's reaction (and to find out why Batlin sided with the Guardian).
In the same vein as the above, Sierra's Quest for Glory series has the Thermonuclear Blast spell, which, when cast, essentially causes a nuclear explosion that destroys everything in a mile's radius — centered on, and including, the caster. The spell first turned up as a fake spell listed in the manual of one of the early games, as if the spell existed in the game (it didn't). The final game in the series revisits the joke by actually making the spell available to the player, though of course casting it is highly unwise.
In Ultima 9: Ascension, the fourth level two-handed sword technique is an elaborate figure-8 slash that your trainer Duncan describes as this amazing shot that he could never master. To learn it, you have to sail (or make a bridge of objects) to a deep ocean dock off the coast of Yew, then risk drowning as you dive to an underwater crypt containing the book with the technique. Unfortunately the move does a piddling amount of damage, is very hard to aim, hits only at the very end of the swing, and takes time to execute in which you could have done several quicker slashes for far more damage.
The Zodiac from Ratchet And Clank 2 definitely qualifies for this. Costs a ridiculous 2.5 million bolts, with ammo costing a further 10 thousand bolts a shot. The weapon itself takes several seconds to charge, before vaporising all (non boss) enemies on screen. However the weapon can only hold four shots, and ammo has to be brought. Much more effective is to let rip with your 100 round, rapid fire R.Y.N.O. 2, for just a mere one million bolt purchase, and a hundred bolts a shot. Considering the amount of enemies ever on screen, the R.Y.N.O. 2 can take out what the Zodiac can in almost the same amount of time.
Any of the open vehicles in the Metal Slug series, such as the Camel Slug in the second game. What can be more awesome than riding a camel with a machine gun strapped to its back? Quite a few things, given that vehicles in Metal Slug are primarily there to give your One Hit Point Wonder some extra hit points. The Camel Slug and its ilk don't — you die if a bullet hits you. And they raise you into the enemy line of fire and prevent you from being able to duck! You're better off trusting your ability to dodge than riding those things. In several cases (like the first stage of Metal Slug 2), however, their purpose is to give you a huge end-of-round point bonus. If you can make it there alive, that is.
- Then there's the Iron Lizard. It's a gun that shoots out mechanical lizards, which drive across the ground and explode on contact with the enemies. Looks friggin' sweet (mechanical lizards!), utterly worthless. Reread that: "across the ground". In a game where every fifth enemy can fly, a weapon that can't fire aerially is unacceptable.
Baldur's Gate II would give you the Imprisonment spell, which traps the victim in suspended animation in a hollow sphere deep underground permanently — without a saving throw! Downside: A level 9 spell won't be used on everyday foes, and the player will want the big foes' loot which they take with them to their new plane of existence if imprisoned. It was made useful in the Expansion Pack Throne Of Bhaal, since loot stops being such a big issue.
- Most of the more important enemies are immune to the spell, anyway. But the game also has another ability for warriors with at least 3M XP. (Greater) Deathblow which allows you to instantly kill any opponent of 10th (12th) or lesser level. It's like giving Batman the ability to kill rabbits.
- It can be used to remove a tough opponent from battle until you have killed everything else. Then, you can cast Freedom to release the imprisoned one who is now a cakewalk because his friends are dead.
The monofilament whip in Shadowrun is a cyberpunk vorpal sword: A filament made of a single long chain of molecules with a handle at one end and a little weighted ball at the other. Presumably it is so sharp that it will instantly sever a limb, but you need mad skills to use it; if you miss your target, the whip is likely to come back and take off your head.
Diablo has the über-spell Apocalypse, which is a variant of the main attack wielded by Diablo himself. Looks flashy; causes every monster on screen to erupt in a mushroom cloud of fire. Unfortunately, the player's version of the spell can never be learned, only cast from staves with ridiculously few charges, and the damage is pathetic. In the Hellfire expansion it can be learned, but the mana cost is so high as to make it worthless.
Maxwell in Tales Of Symphonia — he's the most powerful Summon Magic bar none and casts a higher-power meteor storm that blankets most the battle, but he can only be cast while Sheena is in Over Limit mode, which happens more or less randomly, and he appears only once you've unlocked the last stage of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. Odds are you'll never actually get to summon him once; nevermind summon him in a battle where he'd actually be useful. Summoning at a whole is pretty much a good example of this, since all summons (except Corrine) can only be cast in Over Limit mode and cost 100 TP to cast.
- Lloyd's Falcon's Crest. This attack is even more ridiculous to use. You have to have access to the The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, have flashy Material Blades equipped — even though there's much better weapons to be found, be at critically low HP, have no spells on the field what-so-ever, and then you hold Guard, Attack and Tech. This is never mentioned in the game.
- Furthermore: Presea's Hien Messhoujin in the Japanese-Only PS2 version. It requires her to be at 10% of her HP or less, everyone else must be dead, she must be in Overlimit, you must have used her "Beast" tech 200 times, and you have to use a special skill with all those requirements met before using Beast to start the attack, but with a x75.20 multiplier on it it, it's way more awesome than Lloyd's Falcon's Crest.
- Colette, upon breaking all four of the seals, learns an Angel Skill called "Sacrifice". If its absurd TP Cost of 150 isn't enough of a deterrent to using the spell, its made even more impractical: When cast, Colette dies. While its effects are nothing to scoff at (the highest blast of Light-elemental damage in the entire game — in an auto-staggering, never missing blast of light that hits ever enemy on the screen, in addition to Healing all Party Members (besides herself — she's in the process of dying) by 30%, even if they were dead), this spell has no use.
In The World Ends With You, most of the Gatito pins don't have any workarounds for their problems and are in fact quite Awesome But Impractical.
- Also, the elemental deck. The pins float around the screen, and touching one causes a ball of energy to move from one pin to another, damaging whatever Noise get in the way. It looks cool, but not exactly a deck to play seriously with.
About 90% of the available Plasma Blade combos and almost all of the Boosters in the 3-D Castlevania-styled action game Nanobreaker serve no real purpose other than to put on a (somewhat nifty) laser light show for your opponents. For that matter, if it doesn't hit all around you or deliver a quick instant kill, it was essentially useless against the game's swarming Orgamechs.
The Almighty spells in the Shin Megami Tensei games. On the surface it sounds like a dream come true: A type that no demon is resistant to in a game where elemental resistances are your main obstacle to victory. However, the inflated MP cost and lacklustre damage compared to your normal elemental spells means that they just aren't worth it. Making things worse, no demon is weak against the Almighty type and by the time you gain access to the Almighty spells you'll already have figured out that it's far more profitable to aim for a demon's weakness to earn more actions.
- They're not half bad for dealing with enemies with no weaknesses in the first place...
Many fighting games have super moves that do insane amounts of damage and are awesome to watch, but often require button combinations that only Mr. Fantastic can pull off. One example is Ivy from Soul Calibur, whose telekinetic attack Summon Suffering is absolutely amazing, but the human players who can pull it off can probably be counted on one hand.
- There is actually an Achivement for pulling this off in Soul Calibur 4.
Also in fighting games, any attack that requires you to Charge (hold a specific button for a few seconds), leaving you wide open for attacks. Especially frustrating when the AI doesn't have to do this.
- Fortunately, some games, like the Street Fighter series will be generous in acknowledging a player's charge motion, i.e. holding down-and-back will allow charge moves that go back to forward or down to up. Unfortunately, this is also known as "turtling", and is decried as a very n00b-ish tactic.
  - Combining both in Bleach: Shattered Blade is Byakuya Kuchiki's Hakuteiken. The pros? If you manage to activate it, it will hit your opponent no matter what, and for 80% of their health. The con? You activate it by charging it up for 4 WHOLE SECONDS. Good luck using that on a non-computer opponent. And then there's the characters that have their Ultimates in the form of traps. They can't just hit you with an attack to start their ultimate, they place a small glowing circle in the area in front of them, and have to hope that the opponent has the lack of common sense to stand inside this area for about one second. Byakuya Kuchiki's Senkei (Yes, he does have two ultimate attacks instead of just one) makes this work somewhat, just because his trap covers a very large area in front of him, and slightly to the sides of him, which will catch characters trying to counter-attack.
In Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, the two final weapons are perhaps the most useless. The Fusion Cannon and Chronosceptor (whose pieces the game revolves around finding) are extremely powerful, but also slow to fire. You're a sitting duck taking damage as guns charge up, and if the enemy isn't stationary, it'll probably get out of the weapon's blast radius. Furthermore, the Cannon only holds two Fusion Charges without a Backpack, and they're extremely hard to find. The Chronosceptor holds three shots and can't be reloaded at all. When fighting the Campaigner, you're better off just using the Plasma Rifle.
Super Robot Wars lives on this trope. Many attacks sure look cool and are stronger than others, but the overall cost is usually greater. Case in point: Cybuster's Cosmo Nova only has a single shot, and requires a very high Willpower rating. It's the machine's best move, but you'll usually end up using the weaker Akashic Buster more often, simply because you can squeeze off many more attacks with it and sooner as well.
The Supernova weapon in Jak 3 kills all the enemies on screen. It also uses up all your violet ammo — the most powerful ammo in the game. This also applies to the violet ammo itself, which can also be used to reverse gravity for all your enemies except for you. Cool? Yes. Practical? No so much.
- Of course, the entire line of violet ammo weapons are Awesome But Impractical, and overshadowed by the much more utilitarian Red, Yellow and Blue ammo weapons. As a result, Violet weapons, especially including the Supernova, are pretty much all either specific to certain situations, or just designed for total devastation of enemies, moving them from Awesome But Impractical to Awesome But Limited Ammo.
The Roguelike Ancient Domains of Mystery has a learnable spell called Wish (or, for divine casters, Divine Intervention) which does Exactly What It Says On The Tin: you get a wish. Unfortunately, the spell is extremely difficult to learn even for high level wizards, attempts take so long that you will usually be forced to abort by hunger or risk starving to death, and if you have teleportitis it will interrupt your reading. Even if you do manage to learn it, it costs 3000 PP to cast (enough to put it out of range for many characters even with casting from hit points; one of this game's Self Imposed Challenges is to craft a character who can) and takes 10 points off of one of your stats. It's much easier to simply use Potions of Exchange to polymorph a large pile of worthless rings until you get Rings of Djinni Summoning, which can give you a wish, and then use those to get more Potions of Exchange until you have infinite wishes.
Planescape Torment has level 9 ultimate spells with intensely cool cutscenes, which is rare in a Western RPG. Unfortunately, barring some serious Level Grinding, by the time you're able to use these you only have one enemy left worth using them on, and even that's a Skippable Boss.
The final unlockable car in Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero is an extremely powerful Nissan Fairlady Z...but it's extremely uncontrollable.
The Field Shutter in Zanac, which is a shield that protects your ship from frontal attacks. Sounds good until you discover that it pisses off the AI and makes it throw more enemies at you.
In Breath Of Fire III, Garr can obtain a weapon called the Beast Spear. At 150 attack points, it's far and away his strongest weapon (the second strongest weapon, the Dragon Spear, only has 110 Attack Power), and is even obtained about halfway through the game (provided you know where to look, and don't miss it), instead of at the end like most of the other strongest weapons. However, the Beast Spear also weighs a whopping 15 points (making it heavier than any other item in the game and practically ensuring that Garr will have a Speed of 0) and will drain 10% of Garr's max HP every single round. These drawbacks will naturally turn most players away from it (though if you're willing to work with them, Garr can become one hell of a damage dealer, thanks to his already high Attack power).
PK Love Omega. The most powerful attack in Mother 3, period. However, only Lucas can use it, and it costs 50 PP. The most powerful healing PSI in the game, Life Up Omega, costs half of that. And Lucas is also the only one who knows Life Up Omega too. The simple problem with this entire situation is that, most of the time in situations where PK Love Omega would be useful and needed, Lucas is likely already having to devote most of his time to healing and buffing as it is. So PK Love gets little love.
- And from its predecessor, Earthbound: the Casey Bat, which is Ness's most powerful weapon at +125 Offense... and it misses 75% of the time it's used in combat.
The entire city/facility of Junon in Final Fantasy VII, immortalized by the tiny little peashooter Sister Ray◊. Three guesses why this installation is pointless, and the first two don't count. The entire installation is useless against anything that isn't seaborne and headed straight for the city, and the only location that the Sister Ray can even be aimed at is a sleepy resort town across the ocean.
The Volaticus glyph in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. It's not a super jump like the Griffin Wing or Gravity Boots from Ecclesia 's predecessors; rather, it allows Shanoa to freely fly around. But you get it so late in the game, in the Final Approach area of Dracula's Castle, and to add insult to injury, the only two areas that cannot be reached without it are a shortcut back to the Library and Dracula's quarters (which requires this glyph due to the stairs being broken).
Many of the Gnomish Engineering devices in World Of Warcraft fall under this trope, especially the cloaking device and the mind-control cap, which seem really cool in theory but have such a short duration that they are essentially worthless.

Real Life

The Taser Shotgun Shell.
- Err... how is that impractical? They work better than beanbags.
Howard Hughes's Spruce Goose. He spends several million dollars of his own money to prove it would work and he took so long building it that World War II was over by the time he finished it. Due to questions over the money spent by the government on its development, to prove it really would work, he does a small test flight. The plane was too big and so overengineered it was impractical to actually use, so after its single flight, it is mothballed for decades until it becomes a public museum exhibit.
The M-16, when first used in Vietnam, was suppose to represent the pinnacle of the modern assault rifle. It was made of lightweight polymers which reduced the rifle’s weight tremendously while still giving the user the option of automatic or single shot fire, decent penetration for it's weight, and a number of other features. To most civilians and politicians, this rifle looked really badass. However, it was expensive and prone to clogging, corrosion and jamming in the jungle environment of South East Asia (unlike the mass produced AK-47s or the earlier M-1 which were still in use), and felt like a toy to soldiers who were forced to use it. To be fair, the AR-15 really did work for civilian and Air Force uses in the U.S., but in the field it wasn’t the ‘general purpose military rifle’ until its revision as the M-16A1.
- It's still a lemon. The M855 67 grain .223 NATO round is a varmint round. The M16A2 took away the full automatic setting, changed the twist in the barrel, changed the handguards, and added a brass deflector. The M16A4 didn't make any significant changes to the A2 besides rail mounts on the handguards and carrying handle.
  - This was actually an important change. Sure, there is such a thing as overaccessoring (especially with the M4A1), but the most common item this troper sees on a M16 or M4 type? An optic, which makes quite the difference compared to (open) iron sights and nowadays averts the trope by being durable enough for combat. (As opposed to, say, the fire control system on the OICW.)
The alternate cursors in Windows.
The Nock Volley Gun. This thing was designed for use in naval warfare. It has seven barrels. Unfortunately, it turned out most men weren't big or built enough to fire it without a) being thrown violently backwards by the recoil, b) falling off whatever high place they were firing it from, c) having their shoulder shattered. Shame.
The Dallas Cowboys are selling the Endzone of their stadium. For the low, low price of $500,000, you can get all 530 square feet of it put in your own back yard. Of course you'll still have to cut and repaint it every day, and give it the 5 star lawn care it would require to keep it from turning into plain old regular grass.
The rubber band gatling gun. The ultimate rubber band gun, it can fire off over a hundred bands in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately it costs a small fortune, takes around half an hour to load, has a tendency to jam if not loaded very carefully, and is horribly inaccurate.
Two Words: Electric Knife. One urban legend states that it was never meant to be used; it was designed, in fact, to be something for kids who don't know any better to buy their parents for birthdays. (Though a number of TV chefs, Rachel Ray in particular, actually use electric knives.)
Double Barrel Tanks are the mecha of Tanks, seen as cool but yet as impractical.

Webcomics

Riff uses one of these in this Sluggy Freelance strip. At first a gatling gun that fires 100 stakes per second sounds like a great anti-vampire weapon. But when you realize that it can only hold one hundred stakes at a time and takes two days to load ... well, you can stake one vampire really, really good. The other dozen or so will tear you to pieces.
- He eventually makes it better by adding a beltloader, similar to a mini-gun.

Television

One of Ben Tennyson's alien forms in Ben 10: Alien Force is the awesome Alien X, capable of reshaping the very fabric of the universe at whim. But there's a catch: Alien X has three separate personalities, Serena, the voice of love and compassion; Bellicus, the voice of rage and aggression; and Ben, the voice of reason. In order to perform any action at all, up to and including speech and physical movement, two of those three personalities must agree to do so. Considering the other two personalities have been arguing for an eternity before Ben's arrival, this doesn't happen very often.
On a recent episode of Mythbusters testing the myth of a "water stun gun", Jamie Hyneman sat in a Tesla coil and fired million-volt lightning bolts at Buster with a squirt gun — For Science! It was basically the coolest thing ever.
The Excalibur from Crusade had the ability to fire a supercharged shot that could kill pretty much any ship it faced. Downside? It almost drained the ship, leaving it vulnerable for a minute. A minute in which the destroyed enemy ship's buddies could use to wail on it.

Tabletop Games

Several years ago in the Magic: the Gathering tournament scene, the idea popped up that any card costing more than four mana had to basically win you the game single-handedly or it wasn't good enough. This has changed somewhat in recent years (and, perhaps ironically, the originator of the meme has since disavowed it himself) with Wizards of the Coast's attempts to make the flashy-but-expensive cards more viable and tone down the power level of small creatures and cheap effects; nonetheless, high-cost cards are still seen as mainly the purview of social gamers who play for fun rather than that of pro tournament players. (A good embodiment of the trope would be the Ultimatum cycle from the recent Shards of Alara set, five rare sorceries with impressive effects each...if you can only get seven points of colored mana in just the right combination together.)
- This concept is demonstrated in this strip of the webcomic UG Madness.

Antidote Effect

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