History VideoGame / FinalFantasyRecordKeeper

*** Pretty much every ability that is non-elemental, as the metagame has evolved to become entirely centered on elemental damage -- non-elemental attacks get lower boosts from Magicite, don't benefit from Elemental Infusions, Chain Soul Breaks, or Elemental Boosts, and can't hit the enemy's weakness to do more damage and generate more Soul Break gauge. Crushdown, Dervish, Northern Cross, Demonsblood, Neo Bahamut, Penalty Snipe, and Lifebane, are all almost entirely useless except in very specific circumstances.
*** Reraise is a White Magic ability that revives a party member upon death. Since dying means losing all your buffs, most players will try to avoid death altogether, and even if that wasn't a problem, there's still finding room for it in your party since your White Mage can only equip two abilities.
*** Quadruple Foul inflicts four hits to random targets with a separate chance each to inflict Poison, Sleep, Blind, and Silence. Those status ailments will never hit on any notable boss, meaning Quadruple Foul is just a weak non-elemental attack.

** Festival events feature the special Boundless superbosses, with special gimmicks to add to the difficulty. So far, five have been released: [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX Nemesis]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX Ozma]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Zeromus EG]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII Yiazmat]] and [[VideoGame/CrisisCore Bahamut Fury]].

* MagicKnight: The game classifies some characters as Physical/Magic Hybrids... with varying degrees of accuracy, from a gameplay perspective.
** Some characters have "Hybrid" Soul Breaks, which will deal physical or magical damage, depending on if the user's Attack or Magic is higher. Such characters include Gogo, Vincent, Reno, Rude, and Vayne. While their innate stats may slightly lean them towards physical or magical builds, they're typically just fine with going the other way if you have the equipment for them, and their ability pool is versatile enough to accommodate them both ways.
** Onion Knight is an interesting example; only his Overstrike is classified as a Hybrid attack. Otherwise he has an Ultra Soul Break to buff physical parties, an Ultra to buff magical parties, and his Burst providers lesser buffs to both at once and gives physical and magical burst commands. He also has a unique Legend Sphere where both his Legend Materia are at the end of the board; one lets him dualcast Celerity abilities, the other dualcasts Black Magic abilities. He also has a massive physical and magical ability pool. Ultimately it seems like that he's leaning more towards being a magical version of Bartz since his newer Soul Breaks lean more towards dealing magical damage in the same elements as Bartz.

*** Celes is a good example of the trope, able to use 3★ Combat abilities, 4★ Black Magic and 3★ White Magic, plus rods and staves for more magical power, on top of her innate 5★ Spellblade usage and the best Resistance stat in the game. However, all of her Soul Breaks focus on her physical attacks.

** Darkness abilities downplay this trope. There's lots of Darkness abilities in both physical and magical categories, but most characters who can use Darkness abilities are pretty clearly defined as either physical or magical based on their stats. Only a handful of characters have both the Attack and Magic to make use of both types of Darkness ability, the most prominent ones being Vincent and Vayne, naturally.

** '''Chain Soul Break:''' Applies a timed "chain" effect to offensive skills of a certain element to multiply their damage for each successive hit. These come in 2 varieties: the older ones deal damage on their own and give some sort of party-wide support effect as well as a 20% boost to all damage of that element and the ones that don't give any supporting effects, deal twice the number of initial number of hits, while newer ones trade the extra hits and damage for a strong party ATK/MAG buff, a 50% boost to all damage of that element and a higher max chain count of 150 compared to 99 of the older types of chains.

*** The trope then kicked in harder than ever with the introduction of Awakened Arcane Overstrikes, which not only grant characters infinite ability hones for certain types of abilities, automatic dualcasting of them, and raises the damage cap of them to 19,999, but also grants specific individual buffs that vary depending on the example, but are universally extremely good. In some cases, Awakened Arcanes give more or less the same benefits of the user's Ultra Soul Break, and then tack on the mentioned ability buffs.

** '''Dimensions II:''' Morrow, Aemo, Wrieg

* '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV XIV]]:''' Y'shtola Rhul, Thancred Waters, Papalymo Totolymo, Yda Hext, Minfilia Warde, Alphinaud Leveilleur, Cid nan Garlond, Haurchefant Greystone, Estinien Wyrmblood, Ysayle Dangoulain

* MoneyForNothing: While a beginning player might have Gil issues early on, it is given out in droves, especially during Orbfests and from Magic Pot dungeons, and every single thing that requires Gil also requires some other, rarer, consumable that will be the real limiter. Gil seems only to exist because it's so ubiquitous in the Final Fantasy games; after a while, you can pretty much entirely ignore your Gil total: while there are some common things that can cost a large amount of Gil to do such as converting a large amount of orbs to a higher grade or honing 5* or 6* abilities, you generally don't do either of those too often and in case you ever do run low on Gil, chances are you have a large number of weapon and armor upgrade materials lying around you can sell.

** '''VideoGame/FinalFantasyBraveExvius:''' ''Rain'', ''Lasswell'' ''Fina''

* '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV XV]]:''' Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia, Iris Amicitia, Prompto Argentum, Aranea Highwind, Ignis Scientia, Cor Leonis, ''Lunafreya Nox Fleuret''

** [[SphereOfDestruction Ultima]], the recurring top-tier black magic spell and a major plot point in ''FFII'', is pretty useless here, and got upgraded to "entirely useless" after the November 2017 update. It hits all enemies for three hits of non-elemental damage, but has low power compared to other top-tier spells and has no element in a metagame defined and balanced around elemental abilities. Chain Magics have higher power and more hits (and are elemental) against single enemies, while against groups of enemies Meteor is almost as powerful and also hits three times. And both of these are 5★ spells while Ultima is 6★, so materials to hone them are much easier to come by.

*** Pretty much every ability that is non-elemental, as the metagame has evolved to become entirely centered on elemental damage -- non-elemental attacks get lower boosts from Magicite, don't benefit from Elemental Infusions, Chain Soul Breaks, or Elemental Boosts, and can't hit the enemy's weakness to do more damage and generate more Soul Break gauge. Ultima, Crushdown, Dervish, Northern Cross, Demonsblood, Neo Bahamut, Penalty Snipe, and Lifebane, are all almost entirely useless except in very specific circumstances.

** Most Legend Materia Relics feel innately less useful than Soul Breaks by default, especially if you have no [=SBs=] for that character to begin with, and only some specific types of them are desired after, mostly the ones that let the character start the battle with Elemental Infusion or give them a chance to dualcast their most used ability school or element, but by far the worst Legend Materia Relic in the game so far belongs to Fran. It gives her a 30% chance to interrupt enemies with her Support abilities if she has a bow equipped, which is ridiculously underpowered for a number of reasons: it requires a specific weapon type, a specific ability school, the chance for it to trigger is far too low to be useful, anything it might be useful on is invariably immune to its effect, all damaging Support-type abilities are Breaks, which have been phased out in exchange for more effective Dance abilities that don't last as long and spamming said Breaks every turn generally isn't what you want to be doing with your Support characters nowadays anyway as they're generally used more as way to generate SB gauge for other characters.

** Some of the Soul Breaks could be considered this, mainly those of the Core characters. Both of the Knight's Soul Breaks, for instance, buff ''his own'' defense. Some are also only useful against multiple enemies and therefore fall into this against most bosses. Particularly, Josef's exclusive Soul Break involves boosting his allies' Attack, but [=KOing=] himself in the process, which is ill-advised for any fight that involves not taking [=KOs=]. Some of them found their niche with the Roaming Warrior feature, which can be used by any character and bypasses charging the Soul Gauge, but there's still a lot of competition on that front.
** White/Black Magic that inflicts {{Status Effect}}s, as well as their particular remedies, tend to be this outside of very specific situations since each character can only equip two Abilities, and many can't equip the right ones at all. For example, it's quite pointless to equip Stona in a dungeon that doesn't involve Petrify, although it may be highly necessary for any dungeon that does. And even then, those remedial White Magics are generally outmoded by Esuna, which cures practically every status except for Doom.
** Early 6-star abilities tend to be this. These include;
*** Ultima, which is outclassed by spells like Meteor and Dark Zone, both of which are 5-star skills.
*** Crushdown is even ''more'' useless, if not outright [[CoolButInefficient inefficient]], as it's outclassed by various other 5* abilities for DPS.
*** The most glaring example, however, is Reraise - a useless status effect that revives your party member without buffs and at low magic, and is outclassed anyway.
** Overstrikes fall under this category to some degree. Straight DPS, without any utility or hone extension connected, does not hold up well by itself, and Overstrikes will probably need some sort of Elemental Infusion SB to hit 99999 on high-powered enemies.
*** Nevertheless, they can be very useful to end the fight quickly -- many bosses get much nastier when they get to critical HP. Building several SB gauges on a character with Overstrike and finishing the boss with two or three casts is a valid strategy. They're also one of the most straightforward methods of defeating Magicite bosses due to the combination of their high damage multipliers and the Magicites' massive defenses that can't be lowered in any reasonable manner outside of elemental imperils. On 5* Magicites, however, its importance increases, as it becomes one of the most reliable ways to take the Magicite off of its [[SuperMode Savage Mode]]. They were further RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap when their SB cost was halved to just a single bar.

** '''[[VideoGame/CrisisCore Crisis Core]]:''' Zack Fair, Angeal Hewley, ''Genesis Rhapsodos''

** Josef's Giant Gloves, for their Noble Sacrifice Soul Break; Josef KO's himself to buff the party's Attack. A buff that ''many'' other Soul Breaks can give ''without'' killing the user, including two more that Josef himself can learn. It's useful as a Fist weapon, but even then there's dozens of Fists stronger than them (including three more from ''II'', so Realm Synergy won't solve much).

*** Crushdown is even ''more'' useless, if not outright [[CoolButInefficent inefficient]], as it's outclassed by various other 5* abilities for DPS.

** Josef's Giant Gloves, for their Noble Sacrifice Soul Break; Josef KO's himself to buff the party's Attack. A buff that ''many'' other Soul Breaks can give ''without'' killing the user, including two more that Josef himself can learn. It does have some use as a Fist weapon, but even then there's dozens of Fists stronger than them (including three more from ''II'', so Realm Synergy won't solve much).
** Yuna's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 Tiny Bee]] is universally considered '''''THE''''' worst Burst Soul Break relic in the game. Its SB, [[MoreDakka Trigger Happy]], has no usage on her; its initial damage and its first Burst command are weak non-elemental magic hits, and its second Burst command is a weak group heal[[note]]While group heal burst commands are very common for Bursts, Tiny Bee's is ''much'' weaker than usual[[/note]]. As just a weapon on its own, its stats plain suck; Yuna has access to Rods and Staves that afford her much better stat boosts, and any Mage you may want to have high Magic or Mind for can find better boosts on better guns.

** Josef's Giant Gloves, for their Noble Sacrifice Soul Break; Josef KO's himself to buff the party's Attack. A buff that ''many'' other Soul Breaks can give ''without'' killing the user, including two more that Josef himself can learn. It does have some use just as a Fist weapon, but even then there's dozens of Fists stronger than them (including three more from ''II'', so Realm Synergy won't solve much).

** Yuna's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 Tiny Bee]] is universally considered the worst Burst Soul Break relic in the game. Its SB, [[MoreDakka Trigger Happy]], has no usage on her; its initial damage and its first Burst command are weak non-elemental magic hits, and its second Burst command is a weak group heal[[note]]While group heal burst commands are very common for Bursts, Tiny Bee's is ''much'' weaker than usual[[/note]]. As just a weapon on its own, its stats plain suck; Yuna has access to Rods and Staves that afford her much better stat boosts, and any Mage you may want to have high Magic or Mind for can find better boosts on better guns.

** Early 6-star abilities tend to be this. Ultima is outclassed by Dark Zone, a 5-star Darkness skill, and Crushdown is outclassed by various other 5* abilities for DPS. The most glaring example is Reraise - a useless status effect that revives your party member without buffs and at low magic, and is outclassed anyway.

** Daggers, particularly the Artifact ones. They're the most basic weapon type, tend to have stats lesser than other weapons, and most characters want other weapons because of Record Spheres that afford them small bonuses when equipping weapons of a specific type. But the thing about Daggers is that ''every'' character can equip them, and several of them, and depending on the specific Dagger, it may boost Magic or Mind as its primary stat, which makes them viable in niche party configurations. Most physical-leaning characters can't equip Rods and Staves if you need them to run a magical skillset, and most mages can't equip Swords, Guns, Spears, etc., if you need them to be a physical attacker, but either can equip a Dagger to give them the stat boost they need.

* '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI XI]]:''' Shantotto, Ayame, Curilla V Mecru, Prishe, Lion, Aphmau, Zeid, Lilisette, ''Naja Salaheem''

** '''VideoGame/WorldOfFinalFantasy:''' Reynn, Lann, Tama, Enna Kros, ''Seraphie''

*** Nevertheless, they can be very useful to end the fight quickly -- many bosses get much nastier when they get to critical HP. Building several SB gauges on a character with Overstrike and finishing the boss with two or three casts is a valid strategy. They're also one of the most straightforward methods of defeating Magicite bosses due to the combination of their high damage multipliers and the Magicites' massive defenses that can't be lowered in any reasonable manner outside of elemental imperils. On 5* Magicites, however, its importance increases, as it becomes one of the most reliable ways to take the Magicite off of its [[SuperMode Savage Mode]].

* LimitBreak: Known in this game as Soul Breaks, every character, including the "Core" characters, has access to at least one. Most Soul Breaks consume two bars of the Soul Gauge, which can be built up by dealing or receiving damage. All Soul Breaks, except Shared ones, are tied to equipment until they're "mastered", at which point they become permanently tied to the character and (except for Uniques) provide a permanent stat boost. There are ten types of Soul Breaks:

* LostInTranslation: Special event dungeons, particularly the quarterly Festivals, often have a fight that gives a strangely specific amount of gil as reward. This is usually because the written amount of gil in Japanese formed a wordplay pun, often decoding to read some sort of congratulatory phrase. Since there's no real way to properly preserve this sort of pun in English, there is no attempt to, so the award comes off as an unusually specific, yet arbitrary amount of money.

* AbsurdlyLowLevelCap: The standard level cap is only 50 and you can reach it fairly easily, at which point you can use Memory Crystals to raise the cap to 65, 80, and finally 99. Even free-to-play players have an excess of time and resources to reach this cap, and the game still has plenty of content at that point that will still pose a challenge.

* BoringButPractical: Several abilities meet this description.