History UselessUsefulSpell / VideoGames

** In ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'' the entire shock element is useless as it's only useful for removing shields that only appear on a select number of human enemies and are easily dealt with without shock weapons. Furthermore the Hunter class gets a late game ability to bypass shields all together. Their only real use is against a few enemies that spawn is a very specific location and the hardest boss in the game.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout4'': Maxing out your Melee perk tree allows you to hit everyone in front of you at once. Which doesn't help because battles usually involve good guys helping your character out. Or at least guys you don't ''want'' to kill... at the moment. The only weapons that really benefit from this are weapons that swing in big slow arcs... so only the sledgehammer, Super Sledge, and the baseball bat and even then only the Super Sledge in the base game as the other two are quickly rendered useless. The sledgehammer and baseball bat can be upgraded to be the best weapons in-game but only if you shell out the cash for ''Nuka-World'' and then grid for the perk requirements to get the best upgrades.

* The ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]'' [=RPGs=] has these examples as well:

** Entry Hazards are things created by certain moves which cause various negative effects to the opponent's Pokémon on switching in such as damage, inflicting poison status, or a reduction in speed. These moves are almost useless during normal play, since AI trainers pretty much never switch out their Pokémon and they typically don't have additional effects other than making entry hazards. However, in multiplayer these types of moves are extremely powerful, to the point where entire mons are made or broken competitively by how they interact with them. Stealth Rock in particular is notorious for being a GameBreaker, with otherwise perfectly viable mons like Charizard and Articuno being relegated to being low-tier trash purely because of their Stealth Rock weakness.

*** Skitty and Delcatty can have the ability Normalize, which turns all of their moves into Normal-type ones. While this means they get same-type attack bonus on everything, it also means they can't hit anything for super-effective damage, are completely useless against Ghost Pokémon, and also easily walled by Rock and Steel Pokémon. It pales in comparison to its Generation VI counterparts Refrigerate, Aerilate and Pixilate which not only turns Normal-type moves to Ice, Flying and Fairy respectively, but also gives a 30% boost in damage too and still allows the user to use attacks of other typing too. While Generation VII gave Normalize an additional effect of a 20% increase in all attacking moves strength, its main use is still paralyzing Ground-types with Thunder Wave.

*** During Gen V, Genesect's SecretArt Techno Blast was largely useless since Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt were more powerful, had more PP, could easily be replaced on the field thanks to infinite-use [=TMs=] and didn't require Genesect to hold an item to use a Fire/Ice/Electric attack. Genesect couldn't even get STAB for it, as the Drives don't change Genesect's own type. Gen VI buffed its power to 120, making it an always accurate Hydro Pump/Blizzard/Thunder/Fire Blast,[[labelnote:*]]Which were all nerfed in power to 110, making it even stronger than them.[[/labelnote]] but using the different types still takes up Genesect's valuable item slot with an otherwise useless item.

*** The ability Run Away allows guaranteed escape from wild battles, but is completely useless in trainer battles, having no effect on moves and abilities that prevent switching out. Even foregoing that, the success rate of fleeing battle is based on speed, and most Pokémon that have the ability are already bound to be faster than the opponent if they're around the same level. In Generation VI onwards, all Ghost-type Pokémon are guaranteed to escape from wild battles ''and'' are immune to trainers' trapping moves and abilities while having a more versatile ability. Gimmighoul's Roaming Form is the biggest offender of this ability, both having Run Away ''and'' being a Ghost-type, making the ability redundant unless it gets its type or ability changed by an opponent.

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* The pocket watch in the ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' games is largely a Useless Useful Item. Paying 5 hearts to stop time for 5 seconds sounds like a good deal -- until you realize that almost all the bosses, ''and even some of the stronger normal enemies'', are still able to move during the watch's use. The watch is occasionally useful in some of the game's more NintendoHard segments (such as some difficult platforming sections with flying enemies around), and does quite well against Medusa, the second level boss in the first game (one of the few bosses in the entire series who is vulnerable to its effect), but it's largely useless, and hardly ever more useful than any other weapon you can carry. Its only real use is to be able to catch certain superfast enemies (such as the {{Tsuchinoko}} in Aria) so you can get their rare drops.

* In ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos Origins'', you can get a variety of artifact magnus that do things such as ward damage off, display enemy health, or slow the opposing party down. However, most of those are too limited to be of any real use, and given how the battle system in this game works, it's much smarter to just pack weapons and armor.

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' has this actually averted in most of its games. Nearly every spell has something going for it and inflicting status ailments on enemies is much more viable (it certainly helps that most bosses don't have immunities to debuffs like in other role-playing games). Nevertheless even in a franchise with so much useful magic there are still a few stinkers.

*** ''Spite'': Drain 5-20 points of Personality from the target. The only Personality stat that matters during conversation is your own, and casting it on your conversation partner counts as assault. The other Drain Attribute effects are equally dubious; it is neat that you can drain 5-20 points of [[LuckStat Luck]] from the target and reduce their chance to hit by up to 2.5%, but you probably have better things to do with your time. Then there's a series of Damage Attribute spells that do the same thing but, ''permanently''.

* Completely averted with ''Videogame/EpicBattleFantasy''. Most of bosses are not immune to all status effects, and if they are they are certainly not immune to all stat debuffs. This also includes Bonus Bosses. In fact, most of them require a strategy to use those status effects efficiently -- for example, in the fifth game one TimeLimitBoss cannot be beaten in time on higher difficulties but by stacking Poison/Virus on it, and one constantly regenerating {{superboss}} must have its defense weakened by curse to outdamage the healing.

* ''Videogame/FableI'':

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout New Vegas}}'' has no shortage of these perks. In Shining Armor, according to the description, reduces the damage you take from energy weapons if you're wearing metal armour. In reality, it's glitched and does nothing at all due to the parameter that checks weapons skill types is set to "Energy" instead of "[=EnergyWeapons=]". Certified Tech says it gives you an extra 25% critical hit chance against robots, but it's also glitched and instead gives 0.25% chance... which is automatically rounded down to 0% and therefore has no benefit[[note]]The only thing it actually does is give you a 85% chance that a robot will have more mechanical parts, not like it's hard to find them[[/note]]. The list goes on.

*** It and its [[{{VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2}} sequel]] have a few status effects that work on almost anything, including anything that inflicts [[OneHitKill Eject]] and -strike skills on weapons, including Stonestrike, which could be acquired early and caused instant petrification and shattering if Stonestrike activated, which it did so at a surprisingly high rate for an OHKO skill.

*** The first game's Tempest Lizard, especially. An optional boss that could be fought repeatedly, gives out loads of EXP, always dropped a potion when it was beaten, and could easily be effected by the Curse Psyenergy, which would make it go down after attacking a certain number of times? And it attacks twice per turn, speeding it up that much? Sign me up!

** In a less combat-oriented sense, Insight Psynergy in ''Dark Dawn''. In theory, it's supposed to be an at-will hint-dropper for the game's myriad puzzles. In practice, all it does is [[AnnoyingVideoGameHelper make you want to yell at Amiti]], with relatively minor exceptions (Djinn in hard-to-reach places sometimes have to be knocked down with Fireball or Slap, and [[ThatOnePuzzle the goat puzzle]] can be solved by using Insight to map out a path for each goat).

** In general: the success rate for non-damage spells is a function of both the relevant resistance and the victim's Level, so the deeper you get into the game the less effective spells like [[Main/TakenForGranite Turn to Stone]] from the Sixth game become.

** In ''Videogame/SuperMarioRPG'':

* The Morph Ovum from ''VideoGame/{{Heretic}}'' [[ForcedTransformation changes creatures into harmless chickens with a handful of HP for a short time.]], while the Porkelator from ''VideoGame/{{Hexen}}'' is basically the same but pigs instead of chickens. Unfortunately, they aren't nearly as good as they seem, mainly due to ContractualBossImmunity being in full effect (and applying even to DegradedBoss monsters), and most of the {{Mooks}} having low enough hp that [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim shooting them is usually faster and easier any way.]] The only time they are really that great is when a bunch of fairly powerful {{Mooks}} (such as ophidians from Heretic or Slaughtaurs from Hexen) are gathered in an enclosed area (as the items shoot a total of five projectiles, but the spread is so great it's hard to hit more than one or two unless they are bunched up.) Curiously, in Hexen II the Seal Of The Ovinomancer (which turned enemies into sheep) was a lot more useful, due to their being no [[DegradedBoss Degraded Bosses]] and several of the normal mooks [[DemonicSpiders being quite nasty]], with Shadow Wizards and Fallen Angel Lords being the best targets.
* The Scrambler perk in ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare2''. In theory, it lets you jam enemy radars, so that they won't know where you and your teammates are. In practice, it tells them exactly how close you are, because the scrambling effect is dependent on how far away you are from your opponent; the closer you are, the greater the effect. An enemy can still read their radar perfectly fine until you're practically breathing down their neck. There's a killstreak reward called the Counter-UAV, which does it much better and with no drawbacks.
* Shotguns in ''VideoGame/RainbowSixVegas'' have a fair chance of [[OneHitKill instantly killing enemies and (at higher difficulties) players with one shot]] at shorter ranges. A second or so of sustained automatic weapons fire is sure too. The net result is that enemies with shotguns are unholy terrors as they can kill you before you can drop them with automatic fire. But using shotguns yourself is Russian roulette, because the enemy might survive and kill you before your pump-action shotgun gets a second shot. Your chances of a OneHitKill are probably higher than the enemy's, but that doesn't matter since the {{Mook}}s are expendable, while they only need to get lucky once to send you back to the last checkpoint.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Culdcept}}'', the spell Haunt is an extremely annoying example. It puts the target under the control of an AI for two rounds, which will almost invariably do something [[ArtificialStupidity infuratingly stupid]] if it is used on you, but if used on an opponent it just puts them under the control of the same AI that was controlling them before.

* ''[[VideoGame/LegacyOfKain Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver]]'' has glyph spells. They're only attainable by completing increasingly complicated side-levels (some of which would be nigh-impossible without a strategy guide). Since the bosses are all puzzle-fights (figure out their one weakness, which always involves environmental weapons), the glyphs are useless against them. In addition, the "magic points" necessary to use them are limited and hidden. On top of that, only two of the 6 glyphs could consistently kill normal enemies. The only reasons to actually use them are laziness (they restrain/kill enemies in a large area), gratification for completing the ridiculous puzzles necessary to find them, and because they look cool.

*** Farore's Wind. Pretty easy to find some time before the TimeSkip occurs, and its purpose is something of a save point in dungeons that let you teleport to almost any room you set it up in (almost like Ooccoo in ''Twilight Princess'' about 8 or 9 years later), but it eats up a decent amount of magic, and it isn't very helpful in contrast to sheer patience or soft resetting. Worse, every single dungeon in ''Ocarina of Time'' is designed so that the boss's lair is near the entrance; only the Shadow Temple has any real resistance in between once you've solved all the puzzles. Thus, it largely fails to even save much time if you're trying to restock just before a boss.
*** Farore's Wind [[NotCompletelyUseless can be useful]] in cases where you need to get to a specific room quickly (like the room with the switch controlling the twisted corridor in the Forest Temple), or where you're prone to falling long distances or getting caught by a [[MookBouncer Wallmaster]]. It [[NotTheIntendedUse can also function]] as a puzzle ResetButton if cast twice in succesion. Sure, it's not useful in its most obvious purpose, but there are ways to put it to work.

*** As for the Magic Arrows, the Ice Arrows are an optional item from the Gerudo Training Grounds BonusDungeon near the very end of the game, as such nothing in the game requires them. While sure, there are some tricks you can do with them (like freezing Bongo Bongo's hands in the Shadow Temple, although you'll usually have beat him ''before'' getting them) you obtain them so late on a natural gameplay that they are usually never used. This was one of the reason they were given a major utility upgrade in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask Majora's Mask]]''.

** Mind's Eye prevents your weapon from bouncing off an enemy regardless of sharpness. It may be useful earlier on if you don't have access to higher sharpness weapons or sharpness increasing skills, eventually it'd be better to just increase the weapon's sharpness level as there are very few monsters, and of these monsters only a few certain body parts that deflect weapons regardless of sharpness. You're gonna sharpen your weapon once it decreases anyway due to the lower damage output as well as the fact that a deflected weapon strike does not actually decrease the damage you do with the attack, only preventing you from comboing (unless you're using a hammer in which case it actually lets you combo faster than if your attack went through completely) and leaving you more open than a non-deflected attack (which is less of a problem once you learn a monster's patterns). The only real problem that results from deflected attacks is that the cause weapon sharpness to decrease faster, but giving your weapon another level of sharpness means you can let the weapon drop more levels before sharpening, which in the end means you'll end up sharpening your weapon LESS than if you didn't deal any deflected attacks at all. Plus, the required sharpness to attack a body part without the attack deflecting decreases to the point that you probably won't worry about deflected attacks once that part is broken, which will happen if you're attacking the deflecting body part enough to worry about your attacks being deflected.

* It could be argued that all Magirock spells in ''VideoGame/{{Terranigma}}'' falls under this category -- most of the standard enemies are relatively easy to dispatch through conventional means, and Magirock is not usable in nearly all boss battles.
** The key word there is ''"nearly".'' You are notably allowed to use magic against at least one boss -- ThatOneBoss. Bloody Mary.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGenealogyOfTheHolyWar'' has the "Berserk Sword" -- a sword with a chance to inflict the [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Berserk Status]] upon foes. Seems useful, right? Well, it's only got a range of 1. Which means: Either the enemy is still going to attack you on their turn or, have already used it. So it's kinda pointless. However, the Staff has a 100% chance to hit if the enemy's MDEF is lower than the caster's MAG stat... which is an aversion. HilarityEnsues when that hits the right target, like say, ThatOneBoss, when she's next to the FinalBoss or in the final chapter, an EliteMook with an HpToOne weapon while he's next to the FinalBoss.

* The Cash Machine from ''2'' originally seemed like a solution to a vital problem: guests running out of money every time you charge for rides or as soon as you charge a substantial entrance fee. While it is true that the Cash Machine can keep guests in the park longer by allowing them to access money, there's two major problems. With most ride ticket scenarios, the Cash Machine comes in almost too late to really make it effective considering the more difficult starting conditions and you'll already have tons of money without it. In entrance fee scenarios, it's actually more effective to let the guests run out of money, leave to reset the soft guest cap, and cycle in new guests to pilfer their cash from the entry. It's also not retroactively applied to scenarios once you get [=OpenRCT2=], so you can't use it on prior scenarios where it may have been effective without cheating it in.

** Bombchu in the Platform/GameBoyColor ''Zelda'' games. In the N64 games they could ''sometimes'' be useful to hit far-off bomb sites that a normal bomb can't reach, and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'' made their use essential, but ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames''? You'll never need them. Ever. They're completely pointless. Worse, you can only get them by completing ALL of one game and at least a significant portion of the other. By the time you get them, you don't need them.
** ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'':
*** Several spells are either too situational to use effectively or are generally worthless. The Thunder spell can instantly kill all enemies on screen, but the cost is so expensive that most player won't ever use it and save it for the Thunderhead boss where it's invincible until you cast Thunder on it. The "Spell" spell can turn most enemies into the blob monsters, but it also reduces the EXP gained from them plus most enemies and bosses are immune to it anyway. The only use for the spell is to reveal a hidden location.
** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'':
*** The Bomblings are equally useless...What they work best for (hitting far away or otherwise hard to reach targets) could be handled much more easily and quickly by just combining regular bombs with arrows for exploding arrows.
*** The Dominion Rod is the most useless of the dungeon items. It is only used in the Temple of Time and is used for exactly one more thing afterwards (after going through a long quest to get the thing working outside the Temple of Time). However, when it is used, it can pack some serious damage to enemies thanks to the living Armos, but it only really works inside the Temple of Time because the statues outside of it cannot attack.

*** In the same game, Nayru's Love. The spell makes Link invincible for a good solid minute, but it eats up a huge chunk of your magic meter. While the barrier is active, you can't use any item that requires magic such as the elemental arrows, the Lens of Truth, and other magic spells. Even Link's spin attack won't get the shockwave effect while the barrier is up. Since you get Nayru's Love near the Spirit Temple (which is the second to last dungeon in the game), you'll have very few, if any, uses for it and you can easily save magic power by simply farming for hearts or drinking potions to recover from damage, both which are loads cheaper compared to the expensive spell. The only times it's potentially useful are against Iron Knuckles, which do three hearts of damage per attack, and in the escape sequence from the CollapsingLair after beating Ganondorf, when you've got flaming rocks raining down on your head nonstop.
*** To complete the trinity, Din's Fire from the same game! Murder on your magic meter, check. Half the enemies in the game are immune to it, check. The [[GoddamnedBats Keese]] catch fire and [[InfernalRetaliation aren't harmed, and can now roast you]]? Check. It's an awesome giant explosion of flame... that you'll never, ever bother wasting time and magic power to use. (Okay, there's this ''one'' place where [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman you need it to light all the torches at once]]...)
*** As for the Magic Arrows, the Ice Arrows are an optional item from the Gerudo Training Grounds BonusDungeon near the very end of the game, as such nothing in the game requires them. While sure, there are some tricks you can do with them (like freezing Bongo Bongo's hands in the Shadow Temple, although you'll usually have beat him ''before'' getting them) you obtain them so late on a natural gameplay that they are usually never used. This was one of the reason they were given a major utility upgrade in ''Majora's Mask''.

* In ''VideoGame/CropRotation'', there's a random chance for crops to have a mutation, or a secondary powerup at the cost of extra water needed to plant them. However, there's a small chance that the mutation is exactly the same as the crop's basic powerup, making it redundant and only adding more to the crop's water cost.

** Depresso's Partner Skill is Caffeine Innoculation, which makes it go into hyperspeed movement for a while. This ''does not'' decrease its attack cooldowns, so all you get is a fast-moving Depresso who still attacks at the normal rate.

** In general, spells that mass duplicate cards are very weak. Cards like Ectomancy[[note]]summons copies of all demons you control[[/note]], Hunting Party[[note]]doubles all Beasts in your hand[[/note]], Echo of Medivh[[note]]adds a copy of all friendly minions to your hand[[/note]], and Sudden Genesis[[note]]summons copies of your damaged minions[[/note]] have all failed to see play. Even though you can potentially put a huge amount of stats on the board, you need to have very specific board/hand setups, which usually requires cheating to get into that position. If you've done the cheating to get there, playing a card like that is only possible while ahead and often overkill.

** Very few bosses are in fact totally immune (as opposed to having ludicrous magic resistance or good saves) to every kind of status effect or instant-death attack. The trick is almost always to use the ''right'' one. It got even more ludicrous in Throne of Bhaal: One of the bosses' magic resistance can only be breached by a level 8 spell, but he ALSO casts a spell which protects against that particular kind of magic, so you need to use a separate level 7 spell to breach that one...
** Most boss fights in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate2'' and ''VideoGame/ThroneOfBhaal'' are almost puzzle-like in nature, in that you need to figure out precisely what protections the boss is using, combined with innate abilities, in order to neutralize them. When you add the fact that many bosses have hidden immunities, that some of them bend or outright ignore the game rules, and that none of this is explained in the manual or anywhere in the game, it all adds up to a massive headache. In the end, it's usually easier to rely on the universal "dispel magic" spell (or even better, Inquisitor ability), summon creatures, and just whack everything with a big sword until it dies, rather than try to figure out the spell-counterspell tangle. Thankfully, in later games the whole system was somewhat simplified.

** The game lets you capture humans in the Pal Spheres. Aside from laughs, there's really no reason to do so given that they only have one attack (a simple punch), even if they were armed before capture; poor stats; can't be taught additional attacks via skill fruits; lack Pal abilities; and have only the handiwork skill (at level 1).