History AwesomeButImpractical / TurnBasedStrategyGames

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemEngage'' has the "great-" weapons. On the plus side, they do a lot of damage and knock the target back a space if they hit, Breaking the target (thus preventing them from counterattacking the next turn). On the minus side, they not only cannot make follow-up attacks, but they hit ''after'' the attacked unit's first and follow-up attacks.

** You could say they merely inherited this trait from their film incarnations, as mentioned above.

** Replace "nuke" with "Planet Buster," but otherwise the situation is the same in ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri.''
*** Unlike a typical Civ nuke, which reduces the city's population, kills units, and creates pollution, Planet Busters erase the targeted base from the map and creates a large crater (which can even fill with water). Better yet, since you can upgrade Planet Busters with more powerful reactors, this vastly increases their destructive range. AI tends to cluster bases together, so a single Planet Buster powered by a quantum singularity can takes out a good number of enemy bases at once. You can also equip the rockets with different warheads, including fungus and tectonic. The first one generates a large bloom of xenofungus and the appropriate native lifeforms. The second one raises a volcano. Both are fairly mild and merely annoy the enemy, also putting them in this category.

* The Fury interceptor from ''{{VideoGame/Xenonauts}}''. Blazingly fast and long ranged, it can obliterate any UFO anywhere on the planet with a 100% chance of success on autoresolve. The problem? Well, apart from its Singularity Torpedo obliterating the target so utterly there's no wreck left to get resources from, it requires an investment of at least 2 Singularity Cores (one to research, on for each Fury built). Said cores can only be gotten by shooting down a Battleship UFO and raiding the wreck. The Battleship UFO is also the strongest UFO your interceptors need to take on during the game. Essentially, you can only get the Fury once you've proven you no longer need it.

*** [[ChurchMilitant War Clerics/War Monks]], which are a healing class that can also [[MemeticMutation (famously)]] use [[AnAxeToGrind axes to attack.]] Unfortunately, most units who have access to the class have much higher Magic than Strength, and anyone with War Cleric access can also promote to a [[TheRedMage Sage or Valkyrie]], which both put that Magic stat to better use with tomes. This includes both Lissa and Maribelle, the two starting units with War Cleric access. Bolt Axes can mollify this somewhat, since they scale with Magic instead of Strength and have good base stats to start with, but they're also an example of this trope since you're just using them as a tome substitute, anyway, and tomes have much more variety in effects.

** Carriers in ''Days of Ruin'' got a big redesign, trading their ranged attack for the ability to create Seaplanes. The Seaplane is a highly versatile and powerful air unit; it can attack almost anything and tends to hit incredibly hard. The catches? They cost $15000 to build on top of the Carrier's initial cost of $28000, it takes two turns to build the Carrier and then the plane before an attack can commence, and their fuel capacity is only 40 (opposed to every other air unit having 99). Constant action and the 5 fuel that's spent at the start of each day can bring this unit crashing down in just a few turns. They only have 3 ammo -- even less than a War Tank -- and no secondary weapon. The intended use appears to be: build four Seaplanes, keep two in the Carrier at all times to be launched good-as-new next turn. This allows for a very strong offensive, especially since Carriers heal damage to housed air units. The only CO that makes great use of this is Admiral Greyfield, since his day-to-day power significantly buffs Seaplane and naval units and his CO Power replenishes the supplies, ammo, ''and materials'' of all units, allowing a single Carrier to build as many Seaplanes as you like, provided you can inflict enough damage to activate the power! Unfortunately you cannot use Greyfield during the campaign, only in skirmishes and multiplayer. In addition, such a strategy means you are left wide open in the beginning run of the game against other [=COs=]. If you are unable to protect your Carriers sufficiently, you are toast.

* Carriers in ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars]]: Days of Ruin'' got a big redesign, trading their ranged attack for the ability to create Seaplanes. The Seaplane is a highly versatile and powerful air unit; it can attack almost anything and tends to hit incredibly hard. The catches? They cost $15000 to build on top of the Carrier's initial cost of $28000, take two turns to be built and deployed before they can be used to attack, each Carrier can only build four of them before permanently running out of materials, and they start with only 40 units of fuel (opposed to every other air unit having 99). Constant action and the 5 fuel that's spent at the start of each day can bring this unit crashing down in just a few turns. They only have 3 ammo -- even less than a War Tank -- and no secondary weapon. The intended use appears to be: build four Seaplanes, keep two in the Carrier at all times to be launched good-as-new next turn. This allows for a very strong offensive, especially since Carriers heal damage to housed air units. The only CO that makes great use of this is Admiral Greyfield, since his day-to-day power significantly buffs Seaplane and naval units and his CO Power replenishes the supplies, ammo, ''and materials'' of all units, allowing a single Carrier to build as many Seaplanes as you like, provided you can inflict enough damage to activate the power! Unfortunately you cannot use Greyfield during the campaign, only in skirmishes and multiplayer. In addition, such a strategy means you are left wide open in the beginning run of the game against other [=COs=]. If you are unable to protect your Carriers sufficiently, you are toast.

* In VideoGame/{{Piratez}}, you eventually get the ability to build tanks. Not the automated track drones, or even the automated flying drones; you can build real tanks the size of troop transport, with huge cannons and anti-gravity engines. Unfortunately, being a Main/SkyPirate, you have no practical use for them, as they are horribly slow when compared to supersonic aircraft you normally hunt. Therefore their only real use is to be sold for cash.

* The Indoraptors in ''VideoGame/JurassicWorldTheGame''. All the hybrids cost quite a bit of food and DNA to create, along with first having to level and combine the base species, but both ''Indoraptor'' versions take it UpToEleven. They’re the most powerful creatures in the game and nothing can defeat a squad of three of them in battle. But the cost is high to create them. Both eat a ton and The gen 2 ''Indoraptor'' can deplete even the maxed out stores of hacker players by the time it’s level 40. The heal time is also days long unless you spend dino bucks.

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars:'': No thanks to [[GameBreaker Black Bombs]], and the simple nature that having a lot of cheaper units is better than a few good ones (re: [[GameBreaker Colin]]), the following units are this:

** Cruisers are this even when compared to the other examples on this list. They can ''annihilate'' any aircraft that dares draw near and can host planes themselves, they basically give you full air superiority over everything within range, and parking one within range of an enemy's airport cripples them. However, they are ''so'' expensive and so vulnerable to submarines that you'd be better off building a megatank, battleship, or stealth fighter, or really anything else rather than one of these behemoths.
* The Seaplane in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]'' is arguably one of the most versatile and powerful unit, being an airplane with high firepower that can attack any other kind of unit. The catches? They cost $15000 to build, require a Carrier ($28000 more for a ship that can only shoot subs and air units and build 4 of them maximum), take two turns to be built and deployed before they can be used to attack, and start with only 40 units of fuel (opposed to every other air unit having 99). The constant consumption of fuel can bring it down crashing in few turns. They only have 3 ammo -- even less than a War Tank -- and no secondary weapon. The intended use appears to be: build four Seaplanes, keep two in the Carrier at all times to be launched good-as-new next turn. This allows for a very strong offensive, especially since Carriers heal damage to housed air units. The only CO that makes great use of this is Admiral Greyfield, since his CO significantly increases seaplane and naval units and his CO Power replenishes supplies, ammo, ''and materials'' of all units, allowing a single carrier to build as many seaplanes as you like, provided you can inflict enough damage to activate the power! Unfortunately you cannot use Greyfield during the campaign, only in skirmishes and multiplayer. In addition, such strategy means you are left wide open in the beginning run of the game against other [=COs=]. If you are unable to protect your Carriers sufficiently, you are toast.

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars:'': No thanks to [[GameBreaker Black Bombs]], the following units are this:

** Megatanks are the strongest land-based units in the game and able to [[OneHitKill one-punch]] most other land units. However their supplies are a minuscule 50 fuel and three shots, they can only move 4 spaces per turn, and have only 1 square of vision in fog of war. Since they practically require an APC to follow them constantly and take so long to get anywhere, and are so ludicrously expensive, most players opt to never buy them and choose a fleet of smaller units instead.

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars: Dual Strike'': No thanks to [[GameBreaker Black Bombs]], the following units are this:
** Megatanks are the strongest land-based units in the game and able to [[OneHitKill one-punch]] most other land units. However their supplies are a miniscule 50 fuel and three shots, they can only move 4 spaces per turn, and have only 1 square of vision in fog of war. Since they practically require an APC to follow them constantly and take so long to get anywhere, most players use them strictly for defense.

*** While the Trainees in most ''Fire Emblem'' games tend to [[DownplayedTrope narrowly avert]] the impractical side so much as be CoolButInefficient (while it can apply to just about any character in the game, the presence of grinding helps avert the impracticality by and large, with it merely becoming a matter of resources needed), in the case of promoting [[PluckyGirl Amelia]] into a General, it qualifies. She has a stat distribution of a Myrmidon, so she's very likely to cap Speed and just demolish the enemy at max level on average... despite being locked in the class with the ''worst'' movement of any promoted class in [=FE=], when the more BoringButPractical Paladin Amelia gets there far quicker for less investment. However, weirdly, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this is a case where the Awesome factor helps make it popular than the impractical part turning off potential fans]], given it's practically memetic among the fandom to turn Amelia into a General due to the sheer coolness factor that comes with it. This eventually culminated in Amelia's debut in ''Fire Emblem Heroes'' being based on her General sprite, [[ActuallyPrettyFunny with even veteran fans admitting the class choice is endearingly hilarious]].

*** While the Trainees in most ''Fire Emblem'' games tend to [[DownplayedTrope narrowly avert]] the impractical side so much as be CoolButInefficient (while it can apply to just about any character in the game, the presence of grinding helps avert the impracticality by and large, with it merely becoming a matter of resources needed), in the case of promoting [[PluckyGirl Amelia]] into a General, it qualifies. She has a stat distribution of a Myrmidon, so she's very likely to cap Speed and just demolish the enemy at max level on average... despite being locked in the class with the ''worst'' movement of any promoted class in [=FE=], when the more BoringButPractical Paladin Amelia gets there far quicker for less investment. However, weirdly, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this is a case where the Awesome factor helps level it out than the impractical part levelling out among fans]], given it's practically memetic among the fandom to turn Amelia into a General due to the sheer coolness factor that comes with it. This eventually culminated in Amelia's debut in ''Fire Emblem Heroes'' being based on her General sprite, [[ActuallyPrettyFunny with even veteran fans admitting the class choice is endearingly hilarious]].

*** While the Trainees in most ''Fire Emblem'' games tend to narrowly avert the impractical side so much as be CoolButInefficient (while it can apply to just about any character in the game, the presence of grinding helps avert the impracticality by and large, with it merely becoming a matter of resources needed), in the case of promoting [[PluckyGirl Amelia]] into a General, it qualifies. She has a stat distribution of a Myrmidon, so she's very likely to cap Speed and just demolish the enemy at max level on average... despite being locked in the class with the ''worst'' movement of any promoted class in [=FE=], when the more BoringButPractical Paladin Amelia gets there far quicker for less investment. However, weirdly, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this is a case where the Awesome factor helps level it out than the impractical part levelling out among fans]], given it's practically memetic among the fandom to turn Amelia into a General due to the sheer coolness factor that comes with it. This eventually culminated in Amelia's debut in ''Fire Emblem Heroes'' being based on her General sprite, [[ActuallyPrettyFunny with even veteran fans admitting the class choice is endearingly hilarious]].

*** While the Trainees in most ''Fire Emblem'' games tend to avert the impractical side so much as inefficient (while it can apply to just about any character in the game, the presence of grinding helps avert the impracticality by and large), in the case of promoting [[PluckyGirl Amelia]] into a General, it qualifies. She has a stat distribution of a Myrmidon, so she's very likely to cap Speed and just demolish the enemy at max level on average... despite being locked in the class with the ''worst'' movement of any promoted class in [=FE=], when the more BoringButPractical Paladin Amelia gets there far quicker for less investment. However, weirdly, [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools this is a case where the Awesome factor helps level it out than the impractical part levelling out among fans]], given it's practically memetic among the fandom to turn Amelia into a General due to the sheer coolness factor that comes with it. This eventually culminated in Amelia's debut in ''Fire Emblem Heroes'' being based on her General sprite, [[ActuallyPrettyFunny with even veteran fans admitting the class choice is endearingly hilarious]].

*** The Armor Knight triangle attack stands out for almost never seeing use. This is due to the game as a whole being a low point for the Armor Knight class, thanks to its giant maps, so you don't really want to deploy ''any'' of the three available ones, especially when one is considered the game's worst unit. And even if you are deploying all three Armors, the distinguishing trait of an Armor Knight is its low mobility, which means getting them into position to use it is at best irritating.

* ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'' has the Terror Stars, clear {{Expy}}s of the [[StarWars Death Star]], which can be used to obliterate the enemy star system. Drawbacks? Let's see, it takes an extremely-high level of technology, as each stage of construction needs a prerequisite tech. It takes a long time to build and uses many resources (on top of building constructors). When it ''is'' built, it takes ten turns to bring its only weapon system online. Then, once you have it, it can only move one "square" per turn, making it useless unless you build it right on top of the enemy. In the first game, at least, any station could be turned into a Terror Star, meaning they had other purposes, so the Terror Star could also support fleets or spread influence. In the sequel, it's a different type of station. Also, habitable worlds can be quite rare depending on galaxy settings, so it may not be beneficial to destroy the enemy star instead of simply taking the planets. And as if that wasn't enough, it also has no weapons, so it needs to be babysat a great deal.

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsRebellion'', a TurnBasedStrategy game set in the ''StarWars'' ExpandedUniverse, the Empire could actually build Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers, but the cost in resources made them impractical. Anything they do can 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.

*** Unlike most games in the series, Corrin and Kana's Dragon forms via Dragonstones are this. The Dragonstones all give major buffs to most of your stats except Speed and Skill, and early on in the game you'll find yourself able to one-shot a major amount of enemies with how strong your Dragon form is, while also being your main source of magic damage in the game. However, it's also hit by a significant handicap: it cannot double, at all. This means that while Dragonstones peak in the earlygame, the lategame has it much more unreliable for tanking and taking down the opponent with one blow, especially against tankier units, due to the sheer disadvantage being unable to double effectively means. This often leads to most players outright skipping using Dragonstones and instead use the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Yato]], which both [[InfinityMinusOneSword gradually]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword upgrades]] over the course of the route you're on, which only further serves to obsolete Dragonstones as the damage you do with your Yato eventually completely outstrips what even the ''more'' AwesomeButImpractical Dragonstone+ can do, while also giving +4 Stat bonuses to two (and on the ''Revelation'' route, ''four'') stats dependent on the route, and has no downsides outside of being locked at close-range. The [[BlackKnight Nohr Noble]]'s class ability to equip tomes only serves as the final nail in the coffin, as you can forge yourself a forged Thunder tome that has 1-2 range and ''none'' of the downsides the Dragonstone has.
*** The Bifrost Staff revives a fallen character, a major rarity for the series. Unfortunately, it only has one use, you only get it 2 chapters before the end of the game, you need an S rank in staves to use it (which only Maids and Butlers can reach, so if you haven't been training any you're out of luck) and unlike earlier revival staves in the series it's a lot more restricted: it can only bring back someone who died ''in the current battle'' and you don't get to choose if there are multiple, it'll just revive whoever most recently died.

*** You can zoom the camera all the way in on your units so that you control them like you would in a regular, third person, adventure game. This allows full 360 degree freedom within the character's movement range and lets you see their battalions moving along with them. While a neat and visually appealing feature, it offers almost no tactical benefit whatsoever since it significantly reduces your field of vision with the zoomed in camera. A mini map is displayed to help alleviate this but it is still much less useful than sticking to the traditional, zoomed out camera angle of the grid.

* The Seaplane in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]'' is arguably one of the most versatile and powerful unit, being an airplane with high firepower that can attack any other kind of unit. The catches? They cost $15000 to build, require a Carrier ($28000 more for a ship that can only shoot subs and air units and build 4 of them maximum), take two turns to be built and deployed before they can be used to attack, and start with only 40 units of fuel (opposed to every other air unit having 99). The constant consumption of fuel can bring it down crashing in few turns. They only have 3 ammo -- even less than a War Tank -- and no secondary weapon. The intended use appears to be: build four Seaplanes, keep two in the Carrier at all times to be launched good-as-new next turn. This allows for a very strong offensive, especially since Carriers heal damage to housed air units. The only CO that makes great use of this is Admiral Greyfield, since his CO significantly increases seaplane and naval units and his CO Power replenishes supplies, ammo, ''and materials'' of all units, allowing a single carrier to build as many seaplanes as you like, provided you can inflict enough damage to activate the power! Unfortunately you cannot use Greyfield during the campaign, only in skirmishes and multiplayer. In addition, such strategy means you are left wide open in the beginning run of the game against other COs. If you are unable to protect your Carriers sufficiently, you are toast.

* The Seaplane in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]'' is arguably one of the most versatile and powerful unit, being an airplane with high firepower that can attack any other kind of unit. The catches? They cost $15000 to build, require a Carrier ($28000 more for a ship that can only shoot subs and air units and build 4 of them maximum), take two turns to be built and deployed before they can be used to attack, and start with only 40 units of fuel (opposed to every other air unit having 99). The constant consumption of fuel can bring it down crashing in few turns. They only have 3 ammo - even less than a War Tank - and no secondary weapon. The intended use appears to be: build four Seaplanes, keep two in the Carrier at all times to be launched good-as-new next turn. This allows for a very strong offensive, especially since Carriers heal damage to housed air units. The only CO that makes great use of this is Admiral Greyfield, since his CO significantly increases seaplane and naval units and his CO Power replenishes supplies, ammo, ''and materials'' of all units, allowing a single carrier to build as many seaplanes as you like, provided you can inflict enough damage to activate the power! Unfortunately you cannot use Greyfield during the campaign, only in skirmishes and multiplayer. In addition, such strategy means you are left wide open in the beginning run of the game against other COs. If you are unable to protect your Carriers sufficiently, you are toast.

* A few of the highest-level cards in ''VideoGame/LostKingdoms 2'' were like this. It was rare that you ever actually had 8 levels in any element which would mean that the various high-level cards would cause you to ''CastFromHitPoints'', and by the time you got them a lot of them were simply ineffective. Great Turtle is an incredibly durable independant monster with a volcano on its back - who tended to miss almost constantly, and Ice Skeleton had similar problems as it was really slow. The Emperor, who can only be gotten from the final dungeon either by capture or a 1 in 6 chance, can either randomly kill all monsters of one elemental type (and the hardest opponents are typically Neutral, which is unaffected), or act as a glorified Capture Card. Yes, you could get most monsters easily this way, but enjoy having to go back through an hour-long ''BonusDungeon'' to get another one.
* The [[{{CombinationAttack}} Final-Typenic Special]] in ''VideoGame/BattleMoonWars'' has the highest base damage in the game, with a thousand point advantage over the second-highest. To use it though, you need to (1) deploy three specific units (one of which is obsolete by the endgame); (2) have those units be adjacent to each other (one unit being a long-ranged fighter unlike the other two); and (3) have those units reach 140 will and have 65 energy to spare (which is a lot).

* The [[WaveMotionGun Stellar Converter]] in ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion II'' is normally a very powerful, very useful weapon, particularly for planetary defense. However, its function to obliterate an enemy planet instead of bombing it, conquering it, or (if you're telepathic) mind-controling the population. This normally serves no purpose whatsoever, as the goal of the game is to expand (it's one of the [=Xs=] in 4X). Having no planet means you can't expand, save for a tiny outpost that doesn't help you much.

** Two-handed weapons look awesome and hit ''hard'', but they're tiring to use (subsequent attacks after the first become weaker and more costly) and just carrying one hurts the character's dodge and initiative ratings immensely. Attacks performed with two-handers also increase the opponent's chance to dodge them by 10%, so odds are good you won't even do ''any'' damage at all. Somewhat less the case with Halberds, which ''don't'' come with the 10% to enemy dodge malus and are the only two-handed weapons which allow the user to Parry - with a high weapon skill, a halberdier can be formidable on offence ''and'' defence.

** The Skaven's Impressive unit, the Rat Ogre, is a poster child for this. The Rat Ogre has the potential to become just as strong and tough as the Ogre fielded by the Human Mercenaries, its attacks cannot be parried - unlike those of an Ogre - and [[LightningBruiser it's only slightly slower than your average Skaven warrior (not to mention that it can also achieve a decent Dodge rating and has a pretty high Initiative)]]. The problem? [[DumbMuscle It's Stupid and its maximum Intelligence - the stat on which Stupidity rolls are based - is ten (for reference, that's nearly as low as it gets)]]. This drawback can be compensated by having another warrior use the Guidance skill on the Rat Ogre, skipping the Stupidity test entirely... but that means someone else in your warband has to invest skill points on Guidance, that you have to spend the money to train it, that said warrior will have to spend 3 Strategy Points per turn just to keep the Rat Ogre operational, and that you'll have to keep the Guidance unit away from any melee, since the skill cannot be used if said unit is engaged. Oh, and this unit better have a high enough Initiative to act before the Rat Ogre, otherwise everything will go to waste.

** It's even worse in ''VideoGame/SpaceEmpires V'' - unlike in IV, the spheres take up almost half the system map, rather than just one sector in the middle... and any planets existing inside the sphere will be destroyed when the sphere is constructed! Hope you didn't have a colony there...

** Plus if you actually ''use'' its planet-destroying capabilities of the Death Star - the main reason why you'd build the thing to begin with - the resulting outrage will probably cause most of your planets to secede from the Empire, and neutral planets to align themselves with the Rebellion. It would also deprive you of a useful planet that could generate resources or use construction platforms.

* The Fury interceptor from ''{{VideoGame/Xenonauts}}''. Blazingly fast and long ranged, it can obliterate any UFO anywhere on the planet with a 100% chance of succes on autoresolve. The problem? Well, apart from its Singularity Torpedo obliterating the target so utterly there's no wreck left to get resources from, it requires an investment of at least 2 Singularity Cores (one to research, on for each Fury built). Said cores can only be gotten by shooting down a Battleship UFO and raiding the wreck. The Battleship UFO is also the strongest UFO your interceptors need to take on during the game. Essentially, you can only get the Fury once you've proven you no longer need it.
** The other use for Singularity Cores is the Singularity Cannon, a highly accurate infantry that does massive damage in a huge radius. Unfortunately, you need the [[MiniMecha Predator armor]] just to be able to fire it, and even then it weighs the soldier down to about 2/3rds of his regular action points. And that's if the soldier carries nothing but the Cannon, with no spare ammo. Every other shot slows the soldier down further. And it costs nearly all action points of a turn to fire the damn thing. Still, it's the more useful option, especially if you have a second Predator-equiped soldier carry the reloads for the Cannon. Realistically, you can't get a shot off more than once every 3 turns, but on the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon it can still be a godsent to wipe out whole rooms at once.
* The GBA version of ''VideoGame/YggdraUnion'' has the Fanelia. It's an item that instantly kills enemies if you use one of the 5 elemental based skills. However, by the time you can equip it, the only enemy you encounter is immune to those skills. Too bad.
* Golems in ''VideoGame/{{Brigandine}}'' do a lot of damage, have high armour with good health, are immune to negative status effects, can throw boulders when they evolve and are the only unit that with a fourth evolution, the Talos. However, they are very slow and extremely inaccurate at attacking (evolving to a Talos improves their accuracy), so even at high levels they'll often whiff their attacks. Additionally their Talos evolution only happens when they reach Level 20, the maximum level. This means the improvement to Talos won't significantly improve their accuracy and good luck keeping a golem alive long enough to reach Level 20. However, in Brigandine Grand Edition there's a magic item that can be found which can evolve a golem much earlier. If your golem becomes a Talos at low levels, it becomes a devastating powerhouse capable of punishing speedsters like pixies and ninjas.
* In VideoGame/{{Piratez}}, you eventually get the ability to build tanks. Not the automated track drones, or even the automated flying drones; you can build real tanks the size of troop transport, with huge cannons and anti-gravity engines. Unfortunately, being a Main/SkyPirate, you have no practical use for them, as they are horribly slow when compared to supersonic aircraft you normally hunt. Therefore their only real use is to be sold for cash.
* Catapults in ''VideoGame/AncientEmpires''. They have the longest attack range of any unit and the second most powerful attack. However, they also have numerous disadvantages. Their damage is much more randomised than any other unit, making them slightly unreliable. They are the slowest unit in the game, compounded by their inability to attack and move in the same turn. And they can't attack units next to them, so any other unit can attack them with impunity by moving close. Trying to use catapults as they were used in real life - to attack enemy bases - requires you to wait a while for your catapults to actually ''reach'' said base and they'll get destroyed quickly if not protected. Leaving them at your base to defend it makes their slow movement irrelevant, but they still can only attack one unit at a time and still can't do anything about fast units that rush in to melee range. To top it all off, [[BoringButPractical you can buy multiple Archers for the same cost as one catapult]], and these archers will be much more versatile.

* In ''VideoGame/SDGundamGGeneration Cross Rays'', there's the Gundam Sisquiede, both the pre-order Titans version and the freebie AEUG versions. It is one of the first Gundams you can obtain right off the bat outside of the Phoenix Gundam lineage that you start with, has the powerful I-Field Launcher that can pierce defenses and has the powerful Offensive Mode 1 and 2. However, it has too many downsides. First of all, the I-Field Launcher is the ''only'' range attack until you gain access to Offensive Mode 2, it has a prohibitive energy usage of 25 EN per shot -- meaning that it only because useful as part of a Raid Group and with a lot of its level up bonuses focusing on its EN amount -- and it only being a beam weapon means that its useless in water stages or against ''Iron-Blooded Orphans'' units. As well, it's the first unit to ''not'' evolve into other units and while the DLC units do the same in not evolving into other units, they all have much more useful weaponry.
* The Indoraptors in ''VideoGame/JurassicWorldTheGame''. All the hybrids cost quite a bit of food and DNA to create, along with first having to level and combine the base species, but both Indoraptor versions take it UpToEleven. They’re the most powerful creatures in the game and nothing can defeat a squad of three of them in battle. But the cost is high to create them. Both eat a ton and The gen 2 Indoraptor can deplete even the maxed out stores of hacker players by the time it’s level 40. The heal time is also days long unless you spend dino bucks.

*** Heavy weapons tend to be Awesome, But Impractical. If your unit is fast enough, he/she can double attack. Heavy weapons slow him/her down, and while they tend to add some extra damage, they also can stop units from doubling, dealing less damage overall and making it harder to dodge attacks.

*** Apocalypse is the ultimate dark tome and has insane might further boosted by a bonus to the user's Magic. It's also one of the heaviest weapons in the game -- it drops the caster's Speed stat by seven to nine points. Not good. It does have a surprising use, though: its +5 to Magic significantly increases the power of staves, and you pick up Niime, a Druid who needs only a little grinding to wield Apocalypse and has A-rank in staves to start with. Because of this, it's not uncommon to see players give Niime the tome and then have her spam powerful staves like Warp, Berserk, Physic, or Rescue for the rest of the game, never bothering to use its high damage.

*** The Luna tome. It's an ArmorPiercingAttack with 0 MT, meaning it essentially deals the wielder's Magic in damage. Thing is, enemies also tend to have miserable Resistance to begin with, and Luna weighs a ton, so most of the time, you'd do more damage off a doubled Flux. This pretty much limits Luna solely to killing bosses, who usually aren't that big a threat anyway. Canas also doesn't really have the Magic to put Luna to work; Athos does, but he doesn't join until the last chapter anyway.

*** The S-level Ivaldi tome, but for a weird reason. This becomes even more important when deciding to equip your Bishop with either. The light tomes will have doubled might stat when used against a monster, but in the hands of a Bishop, the Slayer ability will ''triple'' the might stat. A-level Aura has 12 might whereas S-level Ivaldi has 17. Under normal circumstances, a Bishop will triple its might when equipped with this. However, the S-Level Ivaldi does not benefit from Slayer. Despite being a Sacred Weapon, its might is ''doubled'' instead of tripled (Sacred Weapons will have double might by default against monsters). So, under a Bishop, the base might of Aura is 36, while the base might of Ivaldi is 24. Also, Ivaldi is also the heaviest tome. Now try to fight a whole floor of draco zombies. Guess which one you'd prefer to use? Fortunately, sticking an Aura tome on a Bishop while the Ivaldi is given to a Sage or a Valkyrie is a perfectly valid strategy.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragon'', there's [[GoodBadBugs the Dragonstone glitch.]] Using a promotion item on Bantu or Tiki causes them to gain a massive amount of defense, to the point of breaking the game's cap. This makes them effectively invincible... which causes enemies to now ignore them completely. And since they can no longer have enemies attack them, this means they can't counterattack them, turning them into a nonfactor on enemy phase. They still have some tactical use, like blocking off certain zones, but the inability for them to fight off multiple enemies becomes painful quickly.
** The triangle attack gives you a guaranteed CriticalHit, which is nothing to be scoffed at. However, it tends to be restricted to a trio of Pegasus Knight units, and it requires you to position all three around a single enemy. The signature trait of Pegasi is their extreme mobility, allowing them to strike out alone and reach hard-to-find places, so even if you are fielding three or more fliers, bunching them together so they can kill one enemy at a time is probably the worst use of them. And in any case, if you surround an enemy with three different units, you'd be better off just attacking them with three units, which will bring down most anything that isn't a boss (and if you are having trouble with a boss, the low strength of Pegasus Knights means that they still don't do that much damage).
*** One of the two possible triangle attacks in the [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTellius Tellius duology]] is with the three brothers [[NiceGuy Oscar]], [[BoisterousBruiser Boyd]] and [[AdorablyPrecociousChild Rolf]], whom unlike every other triangle attack in the series is limited to bows than a class type, meaning that if you seek to divvied up your party equally among classes, it becomes ''slightly'' more practical to use... which even then, if you're playing for keeps, it's ''still'' impractical; Rolf is regarded tier-wise as a resource sink that doesn't have enough pay-off to warrants the cost of investing into him, and while Oscar and Boyd are both solid units in both games, bows are regarded as the worst weapon-type in both games due to a lack of enemy combat phase when equipped with them. Combine this with the [[GuideDangIt overwhelmingly arcane method]] of acquiring the triange attack of the three brothers, and this also means that there's only really ''one'' instance in ''both games'' the attack would be useful[[note]]using it to hit the highly-evasive and borderline-unstoppable Naesala for a OneHitKill in Chapter 19, which is exclusively as a BraggingRightsReward that has you lose a valuable item if you chose that over having Reyson talk to him instead to make him leave[[/note]], and that's it.
*** Even among triangle attacks, though, the Armor Knight triangle attack in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade'' stands out for almost never seeing use. This is due to the game as a whole being a low point for the Armor Knight class, thanks to its giant maps, so you don't really want to deploy ''any'' of the three available ones, especially when one is considered the game's worst unit. And even if you are deploying all three Armors, the distinguishing trait of an Armor Knight is its low mobility, which means getting them into position to use it is at best irritating.
** ''Sacred Stones'' turned the Luna dark magic tome into this. Granted, it was a GameBreaker in ''Blazing Blade'', but they nerfed it too much, decreasing the accuracy to just 50% while also decreasing the critical hit ratio from 20% to 10%.
*** Luna in ''Blazing Blade'' also tended to be a lot less impressive in ''Blazing Blade'' than most would make you think. It's an ArmorPiercingAttack with 0 MT, meaning it essentially deals the wielder's Magic in damage. Thing is, enemies also tend to have miserable Resistance to begin with, and Luna weighs a ton, so most of the time, you'd do more damage off a doubled Flux. This pretty much limits Luna solely to killing bosses, who usually aren't that big a threat anyway. Canas also doesn't really have the Magic to put Luna to work; Athos does, but he doesn't join until the last chapter anyway.
** The ultimate Dark Magic tomes suffer from this. They are usually the most powerful weapon in the game (Apocalypse in [=FE6=], Gespenst and Ereshkigal in [=FE7=], Gleipnir and Naglfar in [=FE8=]). They also have among the highest weights of any weapon in the game. Apocalypse drops the caster's Speed stat by at least ''seven'' points, and Gleipnir and Gespenst result in you losing ''twelve'' Speed. Not good. Apocalypse does have a surprising use, though: its +5 to Magic significantly increases the power of staves, and you pick up Niime, a Druid who needs only a little grinding to wield Apocalypse and has A-rank in staves to start with. Because of this, it's not uncommon to see players give Niime the tome and then have her spam powerful staves like Warp, Berserk, Physic, or Rescue for the rest of the game, never bothering to use its high damage.
*** High level tomes in general tend to suffer from this.
*** The Eclipse tome in ''Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade'' reduces the target's health to 1 every time, but its accuracy is absolutely horrendous, making it not uncommon to see an enemy wielding it who has a 0% chance to hit most of your units. However, it is very useful for breaking walls, as those are impossible to miss. The prequel improves its accuracy somewhat, but also made it so that it halves HP instead, meaning it goes from a funny gimmick to worse than pretty much worse than any other long-range tome.
*** ''Sacred Stones'', again, for the S-level Ivaldi, but for a weird reason. This becomes even more important when deciding to equip your Bishop with either. The light tomes will have doubled might stat when used against a monster, but in the hands of a Bishop, the Slayer ability will ''triple'' the might stat. A-level Aura has 12 might whereas S-level Ivaldi has 17. Under normal circumstances, a Bishop will triple its might when equipped with this. However, the S-Level Ivaldi does not benefit from Slayer. Despite being a Sacred Weapon, its might is ''doubled'' instead of tripled (Sacred Weapons will have double might by default against monsters). So, under a Bishop, the base might of Aura is 36, while the base might of Ivaldi is 24. Also, Ivaldi is also the heaviest tome. Now try to fight a whole floor of draco zombies. Guess which one you'd prefer to use? Fortunately, sticking an Aura tome on a Bishop while the Ivaldi is given to a Sage or a Valkyrie is a perfectly valid strategy.
** Generally speaking, heavy weapons in general tend to be Awesome, But Impractical. If your unit is fast enough, he/she can double attack. Heavy weapons slow him/her down, and while they tend to add some extra damage, they also can stop units from doubling, dealing less damage overall and making it harder to dodge attacks.
*** Weight becomes a particular problem with ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'''s [[InfinityPlusOneSword legendary weapons]], which are all absurdly heavy to compensate for their power. [[MightyGlacier Hector]] is strong as a bull, so he has no problem with this, but [[JackOfAllStats Eliwood]] and [[FragileSpeedster Lyn]] will almost never have enough constitution to wield their respective weapons without a massive speed penalty. If it weren't for their effective damage bonus against the final boss, you'd be much better off giving them lighter, generic weapons that let them continue to double-attack. And even then, Lyn ''really'' shouldn't be fighting said boss, as even with an effective weapon, she still struggles to damage the big guy.
*** The big exception to the weight issue is in ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance Path of Radiance]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn Radiant Dawn]]'', where your Strength stat has the added benefit of offsetting the speed loss from weight. Which practically means weight in those games is a non-issue, as even mediocre physical fighters tend to have enough Strength to avoid being weighed down by anything. [[SquishyWizard Magic users, however, aren't so lucky...]]
*** The Nosferatu tome also suffers from this in ''Blazing Blade'' and ''Sacred Stones''. In theory, a LifeDrain tome sounds awesome, and it definitely is in other games... but when your Druids are struggling to wield boring ol' Flux, Nosferatu risks putting them in doubling range. This means a lot of encounters with enemies involve the enemy smacking the Druid, the Druid using Nosferatu to heal up, and then the enemy smacking them again and undoing all the healing Nosferatu just managed.
** The "Est" RecurringElement is a character that is [[LateCharacterSyndrome obtained very late]] and underleveled, but possesses very high growths. Put in the work to get them fully leveled, and they will be incredibly powerful and cap stats left and right... but at that stage in the game, most characters are already capping stats left and right. Their extreme reliance on growths and lack of time to build up Supports or Weapon Ranks also tends to result in them being outperformed by your longtime party members. Though they will usually add up to being stronger in sheer stats, their sheer power is rarely more than overkill, and when playing for ranks, doesn't much compensate for the maps where they're still being built up and a liability.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThracia776'' has Mareeta. She has one of the most offensively-loaded kits in the franchise; after going through various events and promoting, she has Luna (reduces enemy defense to 0), Astra (attacks five times), and Adept (attacks an additional time), along with the Nihil skill (shuts down any enemy skills and negates crits) provided by her personal sword, which is a brave weapon (''always'' attacks twice as if Adept were active) with very high might and increased crit rate. She also has 5 FCM, so she basically always crits, and her offensive growths are very high. So what's the problem with her? Well, first, being able to one-round almost any enemy in ''Thracia'' is not a hard task, with many enemies being weak and many of your units being able to access easy crits or use ludicrously strong weapons. And second, Mareeta happens to have 3 base Strength and Defense, and while her Strength growth is high, [[GlassCannon her Defense isn't.]] This makes it rather difficult to find a place for her in an army, as she tends to be either too weak (her initial performance) or ludicrous overkill that very little warrants (her performance when invested in). And the few times that you do encounter an enemy that Mareeta might have a fair fight with, the game generally hands you an equally good or better method, such as paralyzing them with status.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' has [[ChurchMilitant War Clerics/War Monks]], which are a healing class that can also [[MemeticMutation (famously)]] use [[AnAxeToGrind axes to attack.]] Unfortunately, most units who have access to the class have much higher Magic than Strength, and anyone with War Cleric access can also promote to a [[TheRedMage Sage or Valkyrie]], which both put that Magic stat to better use with tomes. This includes both Lissa and Maribelle, the two starting units with War Cleric access. Bolt Axes can mollify this somewhat, since they scale with Magic instead of Strength and have good base stats to start with, but they're also an example of this trope since you're just using them as a tome substitute, anyway, and tomes have much more variety in effects.
** ''Awakening'' has glass weapons. They do as much damage as the top tier Silver weapons and can be used by anyone who can use the weapon type. They also last [[RealityEnsues roughly as long as you expect weapons made out of glass to last]] (in fact, 3 hits may be giving glass too much credit).

*** Unlike most games in the series, Corrin and Kana's Dragon forms via Dragonstones are this. The Dragonstones all give major buffs to most of your stats except Speed and Skill, and early on in the game you'll find yourself able to one-shot a major amount of enemies with how strong your Dragon form is, while also being your main source of magic damage in the game. However, it's also hit by a significant handicap: it cannot double, at all. This means that while Dragonstones peak in the earlygame, the lategame has it much more unreliable for tanking and taking down the opponent with one blow, especially against tankier units, due to the sheer disadvantage being unable to double effectively means. This often leads to most players outright skipping using Dragonstones and instead use the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Yato]], which both [[InfinityMinusOneSword gradually]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword upgrades]] over the course of the route you're on, which only further serves to obsolete Dragonstones as the damage you do with your Yato eventually completely outstrips what even the ''more'' AwesomeButImpractical Dragonstone+ can do, while also giving +4 Stat bonuses to two (and in one route, ''four'') stats dependant on the route, and has no downsides outside of being locked at close-range. The [[BlackKnight Nohr Noble]]'s class ability to equip tomes only serves as the final nail in the coffin, as you can forge yourself a forged Thunder tome that has 1-2 range and ''none'' of the downsides the Dragonstone has.
*** The Bifrost Staff in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' revives a fallen character, a major rarity for the series. Unfortunately, it only has one use, you only get it 2 chapters before the end of the game, you need an S rank in staves to use it (which only Maids and Butlers can reach, so if you haven't been training any you're out of luck) and unlike earlier revival staves in the series it's a lot more restricted: it can only bring back someone who died ''in the current battle'' and you don't get to choose if there are multiple, it'll just revive whoever most recently died.
*** ''Fates'' also did away with BreakableWeapons, instead giving each weapon above D rank drawbacks to compensate for their otherwise freely abusable power. This had the consequence of making them quite often a worse choice than the D rank weapon. For example, a B rank weapon will usually reduce your relevant offensive stat (Strength or Magic) and your skill (determines chance to hit) by 2 after every combat the weapon was used in, which recovers by 1 at the start of each of your turns. If you use this too liberally you'll be hitting like a wet tissue even with the powerful B rank weapon (if you hit at all), so you're going to need to at least have another weapon handy.

*** Astra, the combat art gained by mastering the Swordmaster class. While it hits five times, each hit is very weak, which generally doesn't justify spending the extra durability to use it. By comparison, the ''Fates'' version of Astra was only reduced to half damage, randomly triggered, and each hit had a chance to crit(which, at triple damage, made it one and a half times as strong as a normal hit), making it especially devastating in Ryoma's hands, and in the Jugdral games, the attacks did ''full'' damage, making it a de facto OneHitKill when triggered (albeit almost always overkill).

*** The Eclipse tome in Fire Emblem: Binding Blade reduces the target's health to 1 every time, but its accuracy is absolutely horrendous, making it not uncommon to see an enemy wielding it who has a 0% chance to hit most of your units. However, it is very useful for breaking walls, as those are impossible to miss. The prequel improves its accuracy somewhat, but also made it so that it halves HP instead, meaning it goes from a funny gimmick to worse than pretty much worse than any other long-range tome.

*** The Eclipse tome in Fire Emblem: Binding Blade reduces the target's health to 1 every time, but its accuracy is absolutely horrendous, making it not uncommon to see an enemy wielding it who has a 0% chance to hit most of your units. However, it is very useful for breaking walls, as those are impossible to miss. The prequel balanced it out by improving its accuracy, but making it so it only halves HP, so it's less awesome but more useful overall.

*** Astra, the combat art gained by mastering the Swordmaster class. While it hits five times, each hit is very weak, which generally doesn't justify spending the extra durability to use it. By comparison, the ''Fates'' version of Astra was only reduced to half damage, randomly triggered, and each hit had a chance to crit(which, at triple damage, made it one and a half times as strong as a normal hit), making it especially devastating in Ryoma's hands.

*** Unlike most games in the series, Corrin and Kana's Dragon forms via Dragonstones are this. The Dragonstones all give major buffs to most of your stats except Speed and Skill, and early on in the game you'll find yourself able to one-shot a major amount of enemies with how strong your Dragon form is, while also being your main source of magic damage in the game. However, it's also hit by a significant handicap: it cannot double, at all. This means that while Dragonstones peak in the earlygame, the lategame has it much more unreliable for tanking and taking down the opponent with one blow, especially against tankier units, due to the sheer disadvantage being unable to double effectively means. This often leads to most players outright skipping using Dragonstones and instead use the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Yato]], which both [[InfinityMinusOneSword gradually]] [[InfinityPlusOneSword upgrades]] over the course of the route you're on, which only further serves to obsolete Dragonstones as the damage you do with your Yato eventually completely outstrips what even the ''more'' AwesomeButImpractical Dragonstone+ can do, while also giving +4 Stat bonuses to two (and in one route, ''four'') stats dependant on the route, and being unbreakable with no downsides outside of being locked at close-range. The [[BlackKnight Nohr Noble]]'s class ability to equip tomes only serves as the final nail in the coffin, as you can forge yourself a forged Thunder tome that has 1-2 range and ''none'' of the downsides the Dragonstone has.