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| 11 | [[folder:''Dragon Quest'']] |
| 12 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'': The Flame Sword is the single most expensive weapon in the game, and costs a lot of money in an area where monsters don't drop much of it (compared to other areas). By the time you're actually able to afford the Flame Sword, you'll likely be strong enough to get the Erdrick/Loto Sword, which is even better. Another issue with the Flame Sword in the remakes is its special ability when used as an item, the only piece of equipment to have this ability. It fires off a damage spell in between the strengths of the standard attack magic. The problem? Simply wielding the Flame Sword and using the regular attack will overpower this ability. |
| 13 | * The remakes of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' has Magic Burst from ''Dragon Quest VI''. It once again does massive damage to all enemies but it uses up all of the caster's magic points. That alone would make it a good contender for Awesome But Impractical, but there's more: [[spoiler:Psaro will learn it at level 60, which is a whopping 25 levels more than what Psaro starts out with when he joins your party, and by the time you can recruit Psaro, much less after you've leveled him up to learn the spell, you can breeze through most random encounters anyway]]. Magic Burst's magic-draining nature makes it really impractical to use against the TrueFinalBoss Aamon at any rate, but even without Magic Burst, Aamon is already a pushover if you've been leveling up the Chosen to around level 55...[[spoiler:unless HE's using it in his Ashtaroth's form's full power.]] |
| 14 | ** The Gospel Ring requires you to save up 250,000 casino tokens, and when equipped, it boosts that character's Luck by 50 points and completely disables random encounters. However Luck is the textbook definition of a DumpStat (it only affects your chances of avoiding status effects, and even then, not enough to be worth focusing on) and given how long amassing that many tokens takes, you've probably spent far more time in the casino than you would have just pushing through all the fights (which, tedious though they may be, at least give you levels to make later fights more manageable). Even if you do somehow get that many tokens in a reasonable amount of time, there are much more useful things to spend them on; like Liquid Metal Helmets (+50 Defense, blocks several nasty status effects), Meteorite Bracelets (double speed to anyone equipped with one) or even just a bunch of Prayer Rings, which give back MP when used and make surviving long dungeons much simpler. |
| 15 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'': |
| 16 | ** Magic Burst, first learned by Ashlynn and making its series debut, is a very powerful spell and damages all enemies severely. The catch? It uses up all her MP, limiting her options. [[spoiler:Of course, given that Mortamor has the spell himself and viewed it as a threat against him, it's unsurprising he had Gracos seal Sorceria away due to its power.]] |
| 17 | * The 3DS version of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVII'' changes Blade of Ultimate Power to this. It deals a guaranteed 400-500 damage, in a game where bosses have about only a couple thousand health, and never misses. But it's not as practical in this version for many reasons. For one, it costs 20 MP to use -- meaning spamming it on bosses will cause you to run out of MP fast. Two, it's locked to the Champion class, so you can't class change to say, a Summoner or a Hero who has a ''lot'' more MP. Three, it's not affected by Oomph or psyche up -- so you would deal 800-1000 damage with a good Knuckle Sandwich. It's only really useful for Metal Slimes -- due to the fact that it never misses.[[note]]To add insult to injury, it once wasn't effective against Metal Slimes in the Playstation 1 original[[/note]] |
| 18 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'': |
| 19 | ** Yangus's max skill for Humanity, Golden Oldies, [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments summons a group of old men to trample over every enemy on the screen]]. Hilarious? yes. Damaging? Yes. Worth the 100 points in Humanity that could be better spent getting [[BoringButPractical Parallax and Executioner]] at an earlier level? Definitely not. |
| 20 | ** One of Jessica's 100-point abilities for fisticuffs gives her the returning Magic Burst spell, once again unleashing all her magical power at once for ''massive'' damage, though the problem of having no MP left pops up again, limiting her options (though her whip skills remain usable, and if she has enough skill points in staves she can regenerate her MP), and on top of that, you've severely gimped Jessica. |
| 21 | ** The 3DS remake adds Red, whose 100-point ability in Roguery, Fire in the 'ole, deals four hits at 80% damage each. Against normal enemies, the hits are all random, but not against a single target (such as bosses, who will eat every shot). The problem is that it costs 15 MP to use, and isn't affected by tension. One of her abilities in Fans, Fan Dango, does the exact same thing as Fire in the 'ole (albeit with the chance that it'll only hit three times instead of four), can be affected by tension, and has no MP cost. But damn if Fire in the 'ole doesn't look absolutely awesome. |
| 22 | ** The Hero gets access to Gigagash if you invest 100 points in both Swords and Courage, which hits all enemies for around 300 Lightning damage. However, it doesn't do appreciably more damage than Gigaslash (which only requires maxing one skill or the other) and still eats a whopping 20 MP each time you use it. Which you probably won't anyway seeing as the Hero in VIII becomes your primary healer late in the game (only character who learns Omniheal), which is a much more important use of MP than dealing damage. Spears and Boomerangs make better weapon choices for him overall, with the latter being very efficient at mopping up random encounters and the former having useful skills for Metal Slime farming (Lightning Thrust) and dealing damage to tougher monsters (Multithrust). |
| 23 | ** The strongest sword (the Liquid Metal Sword) isn't particularly great either. Yes it has the highest attack power in the game (+120), but you have to craft it using two very rare ingredients (Slime Crown and Orichalcum) and, as mentioned, you probably won't be doing too much attacking with the Hero in the late-game/postgame anyway since he's your primary healer. To say nothing of the 3DS-exclusive Dragovian Sword (+107, earned by beating a postgame boss) and the Dragovian King Sword (+137, crafted from a LMS and the Dragovian Sword), especially since you get the Metal King Spear (also +120) on the way to said boss ''for free''... |
| 24 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'' has a few, in the form of hidden weapon abilities. Once you've maxed out a weapon skill and finish the accompanied quest, you have access to some powerful, awe-inspiring techniques...that are all flash, with no real substance. One move in particular is Gigagash, making its return from ''Dragon Quest VIII'' and destroying foes once again, but only on a single group of enemies in this entry. On top of that, it costs an INSANE amount of MP (more than any class that can reasonably use a sword would have), barely hurts boss enemies, and is generally more useful on {{Mooks}}, which aren't worth the MP spent, since Gigaslash does the EXACT same thing for half the MP and reasonable power. |
| 25 | * ''VideoGame/DragonQuestX'': Over the course of the game's update history, more skills and spells that eviscerate your enemies return/make their series debut have various degrees of powerful...and costly MP use. |
| 26 | ** In terms of sword skills, Gigagash and Blade of Ultimate Power make their return, but while Gigagash is more easier on the MP[[note]]Costing a measly 12 in this main series entry[[/note]], it has a LONG Charge Time of 60 seconds. Blade of Ultimate Power fares no better, since it has a LONGER Charge Time of 120 seconds, despite costing a measly 8 MP. The Offline remake makes them into [[LimitBreak Coups de Grace]], removing the MP cost by replacing it with Tension and making it more easier to destroy your enemies. |
| 27 | ** The 4th tier of spells get hit with this, seeing as Kafrizzle, Kacrackle, Kaswooshle, Kaboomle, Kazammle, and Kasizzle, in addition to the newly introduced Ridgeraiser and Dogantaros spells, have to be learned by investing 130 skill points into the Mage's Spellcraft skill tree for Kafrizzle and 150 skill points for Kacrackle, 130 skill points in the Luminary's Je Ne Sais Quoi skill tree for Kaswooshle, 130 skill points into the Sage's Enlightenment skill tree for Kaboomle and 150 skill points for Kazammle, 140 skill points into the Ranger's Ruggedness skill tree for Ridgeraiser, and 150 skill points into the Dragon Magician's Dragon skill tree for Dogantaros, rather than being learned at higher levels, in addition to costing obscene amounts of MP to cast.[[note]]Though the learning at higher levels is retained, such as Pirates learning Kaswooshle at level 69, and Dragon Magicians learning Ridgeraiser at level 111.[[/note]] |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:''Final Fantasy'']] |
| 31 | * Instant death attacks and spells are pointless across ''Franchise/FinalFantasy''. Any enemy worth using them on is immune or evades them so often that it might as well be immune. There's also spells that immediately incapacitate enemies but aren't technically instant death, like petrifaction or banishment, which are usually cheaper and more reliable. Also, the easiest way to get rid of enemies is still direct damage, which can almost always be done for less MP than instant-death spells. As such, instant death spells are nearly always fated to end up as a UselessUsefulSpell. |
| 32 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' broke this by making instant death moves more likely to work (and even usable on some ''bosses''), but also offered attacks like Death Claw (weakens enemies to single-digits and has a high success rate) and Iainuki (Free 80% chance of killing ''all'' enemies, with the only cost being it takes a full turn to charge). |
| 33 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' also broke the trend and made the Death spell much more useful. Although it has only a one-percent chance of actually killing something in one shot, it also does decent magical damage if it fails. It also made LevelGrinding much easier when used on the normally tough Adamantoises, who were not immune to the spell and could be quickly incapacitated for a short time, allowing you to spam Death until they died. It also made it possible to beat some mission marks far earlier than you normally would for excellent rewards. With enough patience, one could ostensibly take down stupidly hard enemies like the Neochu and earn large amounts of experience and valuable items like the Growth Egg, which doubles experience earned. |
| 34 | *** In a ShoutOut to the first ''VideoGame/{{SaGa|RPG}}'', [[spoiler:the TrueFinalBoss was actually programmed to be vulnerable to Vanille's "Death" spell]]. |
| 35 | ** Subverted in the initial SNES release of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''. On their own, Death and Banish are typical {{Useless Useful Spell}}s, but casting them on an enemy that has had Vanish cast upon them will guarantee that they work due to some GoodBadBugs. |
| 36 | ** Odin, a recurring SummonMagic who shows up in the late-game, has an instant-kill attack called the Zantetsuken. Even though he's often quite hard to get, the Zantetsuken is as much of a UselessUsefulSpell as you'd expect. |
| 37 | *** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', the Zantetsuken only works if it would kill everything on the field; otherwise, summoning Odin does nothing. |
| 38 | *** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', he taught the spell Meteor at a point in the game where Ultima was available, and boosted a character's Speed stat, which was unique in the original but something that Giant Cactuar could do even better in the remake. |
| 39 | *** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', he would randomly appear at the start of battles and murder everything, which wasn't a good thing when you were taking part in the signature tactic of "draw magic, then [[LowLevelAdvantage run away before you gain any XP.]]" |
| 40 | *** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'', Odin's UselessUsefulSpell status is somewhat mitigated by giving him a second attack, Gungnir, which is not an instant-kill and is used instead of Zantetsuken if one or more enemies on the field are immune to instant-kill attacks. However, Gungnir only hits one enemy, so you're still better off using Bahamut, who doesn't cost much more MP than Odin and whose attack, Mega Flare, does comparable damage to Gungnir but hits all enemies instead of only one. It's also possible to instantly kill Twintania, a late-game boss, if you summon Odin while Twintania is charging his ultimate attack. |
| 41 | * "Bad Breath" is a recurring spell/attack which spreads multiple status ailments all at once to the targets. There are a few ways to make use of this -- Blue Magic or the Enemy Skill materia is a big one, but many games will also offer the option to control/capture the Malboro in question for a round or two. The problem here is that most enemies this would be useful against resist most, if not all, of what Bad Breath has to offer. Even if you can cast it in a way that goes through, its effects probably won't stick around long enough to matter anyways. |
| 42 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' introduced series staple Ultima. It scales in power with the number of spells known by the user and their levels, and does significantly more damage than the next strongest magic, Flare and Holy, when used by a character with many high-level spells. However, since Flare, Holy or [[BoringButPractical elemental attacks]] did more than enough damage if leveled properly, the LevelGrinding needed to deal adequate, let alone better, damage with Ultima became pointless. However, in the BonusDungeon of the remake, you can use the spell in combination with Minwu, a CrutchCharacter who has every spell you could think of at a reasonable level, meaning [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman he can now steamroll the game.]] |
| 43 | * The Onion Knight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII'' is a fairly extreme case of MagikarpPower, being useless for most of the game and then seeing its stats explode at a certain level. What level is that? 92 and up, maxing at 99. [[AbsurdlyHighLevelCap Most guides consider 60 a good level for fighting the game's final boss]]. A team of 99th-level Onion Knights can turn anything in the game into a speedbump, but so can a team of 99th-level anythings. |
| 44 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' includes the Meteo/Meteor spell, which is far and away the most powerful black magic spell in the game. It hits all enemies, ignores Reflect, is non-elemental, and is guaranteed to hit the damage cap of 9999 on every target. It even gets some GameplayAndStoryIntegration to further add to the idea that it's a wrecker of your enemies' day. But it's also the most expensive spell at 99 MP, and it takes four times longer to cast than the second-longest casting time. Only four party members can learn it; of those four, Tellah doesn't ever get enough MP to cast it [[spoiler:and only manages to cast it by performing a HeroicSacrifice]], [=FuSoYa=] joins you for [[GuestStarPartyMember only one dungeon]], Palom won't get the chance without some seriously unnecessary amounts of LevelGrinding, and Rydia can get summon magic that could do the same thing as Meteor for a smaller cost. Plus, in a game where magic points are hard to come by, wasting 99 MP on a random encounter isn't worth it, and the few battles where it might be useful in the final dungeon usually have other weaknesses or gimmicks to exploit instead. By the time you get a character that both knows the spell and has enough MP to cast it, chances are you'd be better off using something else. |
| 45 | ** The GBA remakes gives the twins the ability to cast Double Meteor... which is just as stymied by the damage cap and requires both of them using their turns when you could just have Rydia spamming Bahamut. |
| 46 | ** The Twincast augment gives any pair of characters the same twincasting ability that the twins Palom and Porom have; with even ''more'' powerful moves available for use. By combining Cecil and Rosa, you get Ultima; strongest attack spell in the game bar ''none'', which can even break the damage cap, hitting for around 25,000 damage. The problem is that it takes time to cast, and the team is deprived of their strongest physical fighter and both of their users of WhiteMagic until it's done. Plus Rosa's a SquishyWizard, and if she goes down, the casting stops instantly. |
| 47 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' lets you get stat bonuses from mastered classes on your 'Freelancer' job. (Or Mimic.) For each of the four stats, e.g. Strength, Stamina, Agility and Magic, it'll use the highest ranked one from the character's mastered jobs. Not a bad choice on paper: invest in mastering the right jobs (Monk, Thief, Summoner/Oracle) and you'll have the highest stats possible. ''However'', those three jobs alone take an agonizing 2,085 ABP to master, and without a few of the other class skills to round the resultant characters out, there's not much point. An average player will either be halfway through the second act at the ''earliest'' before they get through all that, or they'll have spent a lot of time killing a ''lot'' of [[MetalSlime squirrels.]] And that's without the fact that the Monk's counterattack ability can be a [[{{Metaphorgotten}} double-edged fist]]: a counter at the wrong time can lead to a world of pain. |
| 48 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'': |
| 49 | ** The level-specific spells, like Level 3 Confuse, Level 4 Flare, and Level 5 Death. These spells, respectively, cause unblockable Confusion status, non-elemental magic damage, and instant death, but only if the target's level is a multiple of 3, 4, or 5. And most bosses are still immune to them, anyways. Plus, unlike ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'', there's no way to lower an enemy's level like with the "Old" spell, so it's rarely worth the trouble. |
| 50 | *** By far the most impractical is Level ? Holy. Like the others, it's unblockable Holy damage, but the level requirement relies on the last digit of your GP. And if that number is a 0, it will automatically miss everything. Considering how quickly this number can change, and how late in the game it's possible to learn it, Level ? Holy looks neat, but that's about all it's good for. |
| 51 | ** Cyan's more powerful Bushido skills tend to be rather impractical. They have useful effects like multiple-hits and {{One Hit KO}}s; however, they require long periods of charging-up, during which time you can't give commands to your other characters, leaving your party completely defenseless against enemy attacks. (Using a Quick spell on Cyan beforehand will remove this drawback, causing the only time that Cyan wastes charging to be the player's.) The [=iOS=] version completely changes how his Bushido techniques work, allowing you to choose his technique and then charging up afterwards while the battle progresses, making him far more practical. |
| 52 | ** The high-level multi-target spells like Quake, Tornado and Meltdown tend to fall into this, as they damage all targets on the field, including your own party. Abusing ElementalRockPaperScissors can make them all the more useful, even if it was an enemy who cast it -- with the proper gear, you can absorb fire or earth damage, and damaging the enemy while simultaneously healing your whole party with one spell is certainly nice. Although by the time you're able to do so, you've probably got [[LastDiscMagic Ultima]], which hits the entire enemy party, does non-elemental damage and leaves your party alone, and you'd need a lot of high-level gear just to make a single spell viable, so it's still extremely situational. |
| 53 | ** Setzer's Gil Toss (aka GP Rain) deals lots of [[FixedDamageAttack defense-ignoring damage]], and is acquired fairly early in the game, not long after he joins you in fact. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin As its name implies]], [[CastFromMoney using this attack costs money]]. Specifically, it costs the user's level times 30 Gil. As it so happens, this is one of the few ''Final Fantasy'' games where [[MoneyForNothing money isn't useless]], at least up until you get the second airship much later in the game. By the time you can sink all your savings into Gil Toss, other spells and attacks will do just as much damage for much fewer resources. |
| 54 | ** The final boss has the "Forsaken" attack. A SuperMovePortraitAttack that blasts all your party members for non-elemental damage, and is [[ThisIsGonnaSuck preceeded by a few lines of dialogue]]. Thing is, though, that while the move has a higher spell power than ''Ultima'', it's affected by split-damage and magic defense. With all that factored in, it doesn't do nearly as much damage as the game seems to think it should. |
| 55 | ** The Crusader esper, obtained by defeating the Eight Dragons, two of which are found in the ''final dungeon''. Meltdown, one of the spells it teaches, hits both the enemy and the party for massive fire-elemental damage. Furthermore, Meltdown is taught at a x1 rate, so chances are that you will reach the final boss before you learn it. For the final nail in the coffin, the Crusader summon is essentially a more powerful, non-elemental Meltdown spell, and therefore is ''very'' likely to kill off the entire party. |
| 56 | ** The Magicite Shard item summons a random esper. Some of them -- Bahamut, Maduin, Seraphim, Golem, and Lakshmi for example -- are very useful. Most of them... aren't, either doing very little damage or having a non-damaging effect, like adding a status effect to the entire enemy party. And then you have Crusader, which, especially when you first get the Magicite Shard item, ''will'' cause a total party wipe. It's almost never worth it, since the RandomNumberGod is rarely ever on your side. |
| 57 | * "Great Gospel" in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' is Aerith's final LimitBreak. It fully restores your party's health, revives any KO'd party members, removes all negative status effects, and makes your party invincible for a few turns. This sounds like the mother of all {{Game Breaker}}s -- the problem is, getting the move is a massive GuideDangIt, requiring at least an hour of grinding even if you know exactly what you're doing. By the time you actually are able to get it, which is after you have obtained the Tiny Bronco, you have no bosses left to take on aside from the Demon Wall; since the move only works on Disc 1, and there's no getting around this restriction since Aerith has an infamous PlotlineDeath. Plus, she can only learn the move if she already knows every other Limit Break she learns naturally; Great Gospel just does what all of her other Limits do all at once. Unless you're going for OneHundredPercentCompletion, it's not worth the trouble. The only reasons to get this limit are to grab Achievements and Trophies related to it, and to breeze through the Demon Wall boss battle. |
| 58 | ** Yuffie's final LimitBreak, by the time you get it, will easily hit near the damage cap. However, Doom of the Living, her penultimate Limit Break, will rack up more damage since it will hit multiple times and those can exceed 9999 late in the game. |
| 59 | *** Really, any limit break that only deals one hit is always outclassed by multiple hit limits due to the damage cap. Even the 2x-Cut and 4x-Cut materia can outdamage a single-hit Limit. |
| 60 | ** Several weapons or armors have high stats but have a drawback that makes then very unappealing: no materia slots, no paired materia slots, or no materia growth being the most common. |
| 61 | * The "Apocalypse" spell in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''. There's only one place you can find it -- it can be Drawn from the final boss. Though hackers have found its stats far exceed any other spells when Junctioned, there's no NewGamePlus so you never ''get'' to Junction it. Plus, using it as a magic attack yields lower damage than doing other things (attacks, Limit Breaks, summons, etc). |
| 62 | ** Zell and Irvine's Limit Breaks let you choose flash against damage. You could memorize the right move combinations for Zell to get the super cool finisher, or you can input the same two basic combos roughly 5 times or more a second and accumulate well over 50 hits. Irvine has a few shots that are nice (such as ignoring defense or guaranteeing 9999 damage), but the Fast Ammo is easy to restock (shops sell it late in the game, or you can refine it for pitiful amounts of resources) and at max attack it can do well into the 1000s of damage per hit. |
| 63 | ** Selphie's 'The End' limit break. It will instantly win almost any fight [[note]]it doesn't have any effect on undead enemies, and in boss fights that have multiple phases (including the final boss) it will merely skip straight to the next phase unless used on the final phase[[/note]] in a beautiful and whimsical fashion, including major boss fights and even the superpowerful [[{{Superboss}} Omega Weapon]]. But you could go three entire playthroughs of the game, and never get the chance to use it or even know it's there because of how rare it is. To use it, you have to use Selphie's LimitBreak and cycle repeatedly through multiple spells, which are selected at random and can hit anywhere from one to three times. Naturally, "The End" is the hardest spell to land on. |
| 64 | ** The Eden summon qualifies. Sure, it does a lot of damage, even going past the damage cap to around 25,000 HP maxed out... But, you have to wait for a [[OverlyLongFightingAnimation minute and a half]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Nqt0B3MHQ&t=0m9s every time it's used]]. It's much, much faster to use normal attacks then to use this summon. Even worse, [=GFs=] are useless on the final bosses anyway. |
| 65 | *** Summoning in general becomes this after a certain point, much for the same reasons listed above. However, Eden at least breaks the normal damage cap so you get something out of the overly long animation, whereas all but one other GF is restricted by the cap (Jumbo Cactuar *can* break the damage cap... by one point), and thanks to things like high level spells and the Elemental Attack Junction ability even their elemental damage bonuses cease to be relevant. Hilariously, the GF you'll find yourself using most in the endgame will likely be Cerberus, as its ability (casts double and triple on the whole party) is something you can't easily replicate otherwise. |
| 66 | * Ark in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' is an example. He does a lot of damage, but in the time that his 2 minute summoning animation takes to finish you could have defeated every enemy on screen with lesser spells and taken a short nap. Although if your party is outfitted with auto HP regen, it's actually useful as a way to stop the enemies from attacking without actually pausing the game. Typically you'll regenerate to full HP with just one summon sequence. Adding another nail into Ark's coffin is that enemies weak to Shadow Magic by the time you get him are painfully rare, if not non-existent, and there are more reliable max damage attacks at that point. One of them is [[{{Superboss}} Ozma]], but getting Ark before beating Ozma requires you to sacrifice the only two Pumice Pieces in the game for his equip's synthesis.[[note]]There is a third, but you have to steal it from Ozma, meaning you can't use the third one against it anyway.[[/note]] Individually, the Pumice Pieces absorb Shadow, which is practically necessary to survive Ozma's Doomsday, so getting Ark before Ozma actually makes the battle much harder, but if you get it from the Pumice Ozma drops, the only practical thing left to use it on are the notorious Yans. |
| 67 | ** Similarly, Vivi's ultimate spell, Doomsday, is the strongest spell in the entire game and deals Shadow damage. Only problem is that the spell also hits your entire party, making it easy to cause a TotalPartyWipe if you're not careful. Even if you set up your party where they can nullify or absorb Shadow damage, you'll find much better armor that give better defense by the time you can learn Doomsday and the only times that the Shadow nullifying/absorbing gear does get some mileage is fighting Hades and Ozma, two {{Superboss}}es that use Doomsday on you. It's also weaker than Flare, which is single target, but most bosses are against single enemies anyway. |
| 68 | ** Steiner's sword magic (which requires Vivi to be in the party alongside him) is in theory very practical, even allowing a version of Doomsday that is more damaging than the solo Vivi cast as well as only hitting the opponent. The problem is that Steiner eventually learns Shock, a technique that is the game's easiest and most reliable way of hitting 9999 damage, and he doesn't need any help to use it. Furthermore, having Vivi in the party means that the player loses out on other teammates that also can achieve their own guaranteed 9999 damage hits, such as Freya and Quina. Steiner also learns an attack called "Charge" that makes all low HP allies do normal attacks at the same time, which doesn't synergize well with Vivi due to his low attack, and works much better with Zidane and the other physical attackers who can do 9999 reliably with their skill attacks. |
| 69 | ** Meteor is highly dangerous when used against the player, as it has a chance to kill the whole party due to it's random damage nature. The problem is that the version the player gets has a chance to miss, and by the time Vivi learns it he has spells that are much more reliable and on average will do more damage over time even if Meteor doesn't miss. To make matters worse, the infamous [[{{Superboss}} Ozma]] version cost 2 MP less for him to use and will always hit. |
| 70 | ** Return Magic is an ability that allows either Vivi or Amarant to literally use the very same spell that they were hit with against the opponent without a cost, as an added bonus it also both uses the better modified enemy version such as using Ozma's meteor right back at him that doesn't miss and even some spells that neither Vivi or Amarant can learn nor can anyone else in the player's disposal such as Waterga (the player only gets Water and Aqua Breath). The problem here is that many enemies use the attribute they are associated with anyways including Kraken who is the only user of said Waterga meaning many times the user of Return Magic will literally heal his opponent after taking damage. |
| 71 | ** Attacks that drain the opponent's MP either through absorption or MP damage seem like a good idea since many bosses use attacks the player can access such as spells like Thundaga, Flare and Holy that cost such MP. The issue here is thst many bosses, aside from draining their MP taking a long time, come equipped with powerful attacks [[ThatOneAttack you would not want them to use]] that also cost no MP and are arguably more powerful than the ones that cost MP such as Kuja using the no cost Flare Star even in his first boss battle and Ozma using both Flare Star and Curse instead of Meteor and Flare. |
| 72 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' gives us the wonder of Yojimbo's Awesome, But Impractical Zanmato attack. The awesome: It is a one shot kill against absolutely anything in the game, even giving the middle finger to ContractualBossImmunity. The impractical: The odds of Yojimbo actually using Zanmato in a fight depends on a needlessly complex equation where the two biggest factors are a random number and how much money you pay him. You can't do anything about the random number, that leaves paying him ridiculous amounts of money (we are talking millions here). Even if you outright pay him a billion gil, and everything else is absolutely perfect, you can still fail because of the random number in the equation. How much Yojimbo likes you (based on how often you bring him out and how much you pay him) is also a factor -- if he likes you enough, [[GameBreaker you can get Zanmato almost every time for ridiculously cheap]] -- but getting him to that point will still be very expensive. |
| 73 | ** There's also Spare Change, in which one flings a handful of cash at the enemy. Let's just say that if you ''are'' throwing spare change, you will not be doing very much damage, so a better name might be "Your College Fund" or "CrackIsCheaper". |
| 74 | ** For all of one battle, you get Seymour as a GuestStarPartyMember, and he packs his own Overdrive, Requiem, which does a pretty impressive amount of damage. Unfortunately, he has the default Stoic mode for his Overdrive gauge (gauge charges up when taking damage) and it charges up so slow that the boss will be dead from other attacks before the gauge is even halfway full. |
| 75 | ** When it comes to the Magus sisters Cindy is individually stronger than even Anima and she fights alongside her sisters Sandy and Mindy making more actions available before the enemy gets to attack. Furthermore their collective Overdrive "Delta Attack" is also stronger than Anima's Oblivion. The problem is that the player can't really control their actions and more suggest what kind of actions they take such as help each other or attack the enemy. Furthermore their actions are each different with little direct support meaning they will actually die rather quickly and might have little to no effect in an actual battle despite their higher power than the other individual summons. |
| 76 | ** In the late game, Aeons in general can become this. Sure, they might look impressive and have pretty beefy stats, but once you're reliably reaching the damage cap (even the boosted 99,999 one) their overdrives cease being the heavy hitters they used to be and any abilities they have aren't any more impressive than a normal party member. At this point, multi-hit combos are your main source of damage, and only 2 Aeons (Anima and the Magus Sisters) are even capable of this. The former can only do it with its overdrive while the latter is subject to a lot of RNG and requires a lot more minmaxing to get to work. And to make matters worse, Anima doesn't even have a multi-hit overdrive in the original release, this was added later in the international/remastered versions. |
| 77 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2'': |
| 78 | ** Special Dresspheres. Each comes with main part represented by dressphere's girl and two auxilliary parts that replace other party members. The Good: they all have powerful skills and auto-abilities (notably Cap-lifting breaks), many of which you won't get other way. The Bad: said breaks require you to obtain hidden key items, which are only available late into the game. Each dressphere can be activated only when the girl in question used each dressphere on currently equipped Garment Grid at least once. There is a grid with only two slots for this purpose, but it still means at least two spherechanges (between nodes, then to special dressphere), which slows you down. The special dresspheres themselves [[MightyGlacier are powerful but slow as molasses]], contributing with mentioned slow and sluggish start to difficulty with unlocking new abilities, because you can't be bothered to change to special dressphere each battle just to get some AP. In the end, this will be something that you'll use at most against some of storyline bosses, if ever, because a {{Superboss}} will wipe it out before it can even get started. |
| 79 | ** Ultimate spells like Auto-Life or Ultima cannot be learned permanently and need to be unlocked by spherechanging and passing corresponding gates on associated Garment Grid each battle. And while powerful, they are costly, so they'll rarely see any use. ''International'' and ''HD Remaster'' versions introduced Creatures that can learn them permanently, so in their case they may be actually useful, especially at hands/claws/geometric shape of a fiend that has One MP Cost learned, such as [[ElementalEmbodiment Elements]]. |
| 80 | ** L-sized monsters in ''International'' and ''HD Remaster'' versions. Many of them have powerful attacks, overpowered abilities (notably Total Limit Break, which raises both Damage and HP caps) and their stats (especially Agility) are usually cranked up, but they must fight alone, and plenty of late-game enemies have PercentDamageAttack or even HPToOne attacks, which means without [[AutoRevive Auto-Life]] they will possibly go down in two hits. |
| 81 | * In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', the Dark Knight Two-Hour ability is Blood Weapon, which drains an enemy's HP by the amount of damage a physical swing does. Problem is, Dark Knights traditionally use two-handed weapons, which have a high delay in attack speed, the drain effect doesn't deal additional damage, [[LimitBreak Weaponskills]] aren't affected by this at all, and the effect lasts ''30 seconds''. That's about four, five swings of a two-handed weapon. |
| 82 | ** Under the right circumstances, though, it's been turned into a Gamebreaker. Dark Knights also get the [[CastFromHitPoints Souleater]] ability, which dumps 10% of their current HP into every swing of their weapon for 30 seconds. Blood Weapon cancels this HP loss. Combined with the weak-but-hits-8-times-in-a-row Kraken Club and high HP, the amount of damage this can create is DEVASTATING. I've seen a galka Dark Knight with this set-up deal more damage to a super-challenging boss than the other 50 damage-dealers in the alliance PUT TOGETHER. The amount of hate this generates on the boss means that if it's not dead by the time he's done, the DRK will be. |
| 83 | ** A better example of this is probably the Ninja two-hour, Mijin Gakure, which kills the user, without the usual EXP loss, to cause damage to an enemy. The damage from it is so minimal, though, that the only reason to use it is for a quick trip to your home point. |
| 84 | *** As a 2 hour for solo play, Mijin Gakure is probably the best one in the game. The other two hours might be enough to allow you to escape or win the fight, but this is not a guarantee. Mijin Gakure forces you to lose the fight, but take no EXP loss. Given how EXP loss is based on a percentage of the EXP needed to reach the next level and higher level players require massive amounts of EXP, Mijin Gakure can save you hours and hours of grinding it back (plus the cost of ninja tools you would need for grinding it back). It does have a practical application, just not the one it was specifically designed for (which is the case for the Ninja class). |
| 85 | ** To a lesser extent, the White Mage 2 hour Benediction could fall in this category against mobs with [=AoE=] damage. While it is a very useful ability, it sometimes ended up healing generally not very threatening amounts of damage to the rest of the party and could end up generating so much hate that tanks simply could not get hate until the White Mage was killed. |
| 86 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' Zeromus's LimitBreak, Big Bang is ''brutal'' (excess of 64000; the highest possible damage ''in the game''), but he needs to have very, very few HP left in order to get it to do it (damage is equal to 5 times the difference between his max and current HP), and it triggers when he has only 10 seconds of his summon time left. |
| 87 | ** The Wyrmhero Blade. To get it, you have to kill [[MarathonBoss Yiazmat]] and [[ThatOneSidequest Omega Mk XII]], and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking complete a fishing mini-game]]. To be fair, it is a pretty good sword, providing substantial buffs. Now if only there was something worth ''using'' it on. To put this into perspective for those who haven't played the game. Yiazmat boasts '''''50,112,254 HP'''''. This is the highest total in the entire series, and you can only do up to 9999 damage per hit unlike in VideoGame/FinalFantasyX and VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII which are the only other games in the series with 8-digit enemy HP counts. Its other key weakness, apart from the effort in getting it, is that it has ''the longest'' charge time of any weapon in the entire game. |
| 88 | ** Guns seem awesome at first and they're quite handy at the early parts of the game, but they fall completely short of other weapons early on due to several factors; all guns have a low attack stat in exchange for ignoring enemy defense. Other weapons scale up in strength as you progress and obtain better gear while your party naturally grows stronger as they level up, which makes the guns look very weak in comparison. Granted, you can load a gun with elemental bullets to exploit a target's weakness, but guns are also extremely slow to fire whereas all other weapons can strike enemies much faster. |
| 89 | ** However, Guns are incredibly handy in a 122333 challenge or in Weak Mode. Their primary weakness -- being unable to scale to the user's strength -- is essential in these challenges as levels are fixed. A good gun can carry a team through a significant chunk of game, and the ultimate gun, the Fomalhaut, can be obtained much earlier than most other ultimate weapons. Guns don't eliminate the challenge in these game modes, but they really help deal appreciable damage. |
| 90 | ** ''Zodiac Age'' resolves most of these problems, as Wyrmhero Blade can be obtained by stealing it from Famfrit at Stage 50 of Trial Mode, and the presence of jobs and no need for license to use it as well as removal of damage cap makes it much more useful, especially in the hands of your mages. You can also fire summon's ultimate attacks as you like in this version. Some of those attacks, such as Zodiark's, were buffed as well. |
| 91 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'': Cloud. He was a total badass in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', so he should be the same here, right? Wrong. You get him in Chapter IV, after undertaking a sidequest that grants you three (technically four) other characters. He comes with the best non-heavy armor in the game. The catch? He's level 1. No joke. Most of your characters by this point are somewhere in their 30's or 40's, and now you have a level 1 guy. If he levels up quick, so no harm, no foul, right? Wrong again. In order to use his unique skill set (named Limit, appropriately enough) you need to find his weapon, the Materia Blade. To find it, you need to have someone with the Move-Find Item ability equipped (named Treasure Hunt in the PSP remake), and get them to the top of Bervenia Volcano. Still, easy enough, so what's the problem? The problem is, even when he's decent level and has the sword, he's next to useless. The Materia Blade is pathetic compared to the best sword in stores (the Rune Blade), and his Limit skills are not much better. His most powerful skill, Cherry Blossom (a case of AdaptationExpansion, perhaps, as he didn't have it in VII), has a charge of 2. For those who haven't played the game, there is an invisible counter keeping track of everyone's turns. The counter will have someone's turn come around when the counter reaches 100. This means that Cherry Blossom requires 50 ticks of the counter before it will trigger. Compare this to Holy (the most powerful White Magic) which has a charge of 10. That takes 10 ticks of the counter. Oh, and the kicker? Cloud's skills ONLY target tiles. Meaning, your target can just walk out of the area of effect, and Cloud will have wasted all that time. The ONLY way to prevent this is to have someone capable of keeping the target in place. Holy can target a unit, and remain locked on even when said unit moves. |
| 92 | ** Cloud's real value is his "Finishing Touch" move that will KO, Stone, or Stop anything it hits, and has a short enough charge time that it'll probably hit its targets. That alone makes him powerful crowd control. He can also wear ribbons. There's still the fact that you have to spend a lot of time beefing him up to the level of your other characters, though. |
| 93 | ** It's possible to set up a "Quickening Loop", which allows your party to have an infinite number of concurrent turns. However, it requires so much setup and so many high-level powers that there's absolutely no use for it. |
| 94 | ** The Samurai's "Draw Out" skillset, natch. The skillset has a wide range of spells that grant [[StatusBuff buffs]], deal damage, and heal, while possessing the valuable abilities of lacking charge time and discerning friend and foe. However, each skill requires its corresponding katana in stock to cast, and every casting has a chance to break a stocked katana. Some of the best katanas are amongst the most expensive items in the game, and you must have several if you wish to use the skills reliably. The case is even worse for Masamune and Chirijiraden, the ultimate support and offensive spells of the Samurai respectively, as the above weapons are one of a kind, unless you abuse either the cloning glitch, cheat devices, or catching thrown weapons from extremely high level Ninja. |
| 95 | *** Add the fact that the skill also relies on magic power rather than physical power makes it completely useless on Samurais themselves and is best used as a secondary command skill by mages. |
| 96 | ** [[spoiler:Meliadoul Tengille]]. She possesses excellent offensive stats and a skillset that deals great damage and breaks equipment in one fell swoop. She also comes with the rare Save the Queen knight sword. However, her skills can't hurt things that don't have equipment, including all monsters, though this issue is fixed in the PSP version. She also joins the team only a few battles after you obtain [[GameBreaker Cid]], who has better stats, better equipment options, a better weapon (Excalibur), and every single one of her skills plus more. And by the time you get her, most non-{{mook}} enemies you fight won't have equipment to break. |
| 97 | *** Fortunately she [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap received some much needed help]] in the remakes -- which let her use her abilities on monsters. |
| 98 | ** Rafa's unique skillset performs elemental magic attacks independent of the Faith stat, and can inflict ridiculous amounts of damage if you boost her Magic Attack. However, it hits a random number of times in random spaces, giving it a very good chance of doing absolutely nothing. The remakes did make it more useful, in that it tends to land more hits and has a very high chance of striking the center of the aiming area at least once. |
| 99 | *** Even in the base version of the game, Rafa does at least have a niche use stemming from her unusually low Brave - hunting for rare items in the Deep Dungeon (which are rolled from the finder's Brave stat; the lower the better) becomes much easier with her in your group. |
| 100 | ** At high enough speed, casting magic (except via the GameBreaker that is Math Skill) becomes increasingly impractical, since charge times are independent of character speed and many big damage spells take too long to cast before the enemy moves into a position that makes casting the spell hurt more of your allies than the enemies, or just plain kills the caster. |
| 101 | * In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'', the difference between -ara and -aga fusion spells is about an extra second delay between the two casters. If all four players want to create one huge -aga spell, they have to coordinate their timing such that it'll take several seconds to actually cast the spell, during which the enemy might just attack them, interrupting the whole thing. Similarly, the single player mode -aga spells also have a much longer charge-up time than the lower levels. Best used for an opening move. |
| 102 | ** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesEchoesOfTime'', Haste and Slow. Both require you to rapidly combine multiple target rings during a hectic battle, since they're combo spells. Haste's duration is measured in ''seconds'', and Slow [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules doesn't cripple an opponent's spellcasting like it does yours]]. In the end, you usually end up hitting the enemy with Ice and/or Lightning to stop them from acting briefly, then wail on them with your Clavat's sword. |
| 103 | * ''[[VideoGame/CrisisCore Final Fantasy: Crisis Core]]'' had the Ultima materia. While one of the rarest materia you would obtain or fuse, casting the spell takes a ridiculously long time. Unless you have endure status, the smallest of enemies can walk up, attack and interrupt whole process. Plus it doesn't work with Dual Cast. |
| 104 | ** Most physical attack materia is pretty useless too, for the same reason - take even the slightest nick while the animation is playing out and the attack gets interrupted and your AP is wasted. Jump materia is pretty good though - it has a fast startup, lots of invincibility frames and a pretty wide area of effect. Aerial Drain (same but heals an equal amount to whatever damage you dish out) is even better. |
| 105 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight'': it's rarely necessary to bring second or third tier black magic spells, since their buffed damage isn't really worth the additional action point expenditure, especially when in the hands of a black mage (who gain a 1AP discount that allows them to use basic spells every round for, if you have min-maxed for Intelligence and magic attack, really a lot of damage). There are also more than a few cool but not particularly useful options available from fully upgraded crowns. |
| 106 | * In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', it's possible through synthesis groups to make a character completely immune to either physical or magical damage. Sounds cool, right? Except: |
| 107 | ** a.) it requires five equips of their respective synthesis group (which means 4x Kaiser Knuckles or 4x Magistral Crests, both of which can only be obtained through upgrading); |
| 108 | ** b.) because it requires a weapon of the same synthesis group, only three characters can take advantage of these abilities (Hope can get physical immunity, Snow can get magical, Fang can get either); |
| 109 | ** c.) either setup requires heavily nerfing the opposing stat (Strength vs. Magic), and while the weapons and accessories do give a massive boost to the stat they provide immunity to, Snow still has a poor spell selection and Hope is still terrible with physical attacks; |
| 110 | ** d.) after all of that, another effect is that ''the character cannot be healed with magic'', meaning you'll either have to use dozens of Potions (which are nigh-useless long before you've reached the point you can actually have either passive set up) or summoning Eidolons (which is limited by TP) for the character to heal. |
| 111 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'': |
| 112 | ** The InfinityPlusOneSword, the Odinblade and Odinbolt. They get more powerful the more Fragments you have, but they don't have any useful passive abilities compared to some of the weaker weapons. |
| 113 | ** Twilight Odin, a corrupted shadow of Lightning's Eidolon, can be obtained as a monster crystal. While he does get monstrous stats and the full 6 ATB segments, he's a [[MagikarpPower Late Bloomer]] who starts at ''Grade 5'' and thus requires the rarest and most expensive materials to level up in the slightest, his attack speed is so slow that any additional ATB segments past 4 are wasted on him since he'd never be able to use them up before the gauge refills, and his magic stat is unimpressive. You're better off with a [[KillerRabbit Chichu]], a [[JackOfAllStats Tonberry]], or one of the DLC Commandos. |
| 114 | ** Any monster with a recruitment chance less than 10%. Yes, that Metal Gigantuar might be an amazing Sentinel, and Miquitzli is one of the best Synergists in the game, but chances are, in the time it takes to get one, you could have gotten something a little more common ''and'' ground enough RareCandy to power it up significantly. |
| 115 | * The "ultimate" elemental spells (Flare, Freeze, Surge, Tornado, and Elementaga), along with Ultima itself in ''VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII''. They cost a huge amount of ATB gauge to use, have a lengthy animation that leaves Lightning completely vulnerable until they finish, and base their damage off of how low Lightning's HP is. At the point where you can wipe out an entire horde of enemies with a single cast, they're just as likely to finish ''you'' off with a single hit. |
| 116 | * The Regalia Type-F, the final upgrade of your car, is this in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV''. The first upgrade of the Regalia, the Regalia Type-D, allows the player to go off-road, making almost the entire world traversable by car. The Regalia Type-F upgrade turns the Regalia into a TransformingVehicle that can change from fancy car to a small futuristic plane. While this sounds awesome on paper, the Type-F isn't able to go off-road and landing is a tricky and dangerous affair. One false move and you crash fatally into the ground, resulting in a NonStandardGameOver. The only real benefit the Type-F has over the Type-D, is that it is able to reach a BonusLevel that's only reachable through air. |
| 117 | [[/folder]] |
| 118 | |
| 119 | [[folder:''Kingdom Hearts'']] |
| 120 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'': |
| 121 | ** The Drive Forms, a series of {{Super Mode}}s for Sora that either enhance his physical attacks, his magic, or both, and all but one (two with Final Mix) turn Sora into a [[DualWielding two-Keyblade-wielding badass]] that can take out dozens of the game's average mooks in seconds while restoring Sora's health and magic. The impractical parts? [[LongList *Deep Breath*]] All the Drive Forms require the removal of one or both party members when activated, depriving the player of their help (while the party never does that much damage compared to Sora, they're extremely useful for healing). When the party members are absent for story reasons, all Drive Forms except the Final Mix-exclusive Limit are unusable, which includes the FinalBoss and almost every {{Superboss}}. Most tournament battles lock the Drive Meter. The Drive Forms CAN be leveled up to increase in power, but they all have very specific conditions in order to be able to gain experience, making them ''very'' tedious to level up, especially the Final Form. All but one form lacks a dodge ability, and that same form is the only Drive that can block. In a game series that emphasizes blocking and dodging attacks, and waiting for the right moment to attack over [[AttackAttackAttack blindly charging forward]], this is a bad thing. Lastly, the forms remove every movement ability except the one it provides and several of standard Sora's abilities for as long as they are active. The addition of Limit Form in the UpdatedRerelease mitigates all of this somewhat, as it gives you a powerful option that doesn't need party members to use and still allows you to block and dodge roll. However, conversely Limit Form is not really much more effective than Sora's standard form is while also locking out useful abilities like Glide and Reflect as every other Drive Form does at the same time. Lastly, when transforming into all Drive Forms but the Final Form, Sora will randomly transform into [[CursedWithAwesome Anti-Form]]. This form is a GlassCannon of the first order; Anti-Form Sora moves much faster, jumps higher, and can shred a single target with [[DeathOfAThousandCuts a swarm of individually weak-but-fast attacks]]. However, Anti-Form makes all other party members vanish while it's active, takes twice as much damage as normal, disables healing, prevents gaining experience, and can't be leveled up. The worst aspect of all, though, is that it can't be manually deactivated; Anti-Form automatically ends when the battle is over, the Drive gauge runs out, or you die. This means a lot of running away if you're at low health. Never mind the fact that you can't use Anti-Form on purpose even if you wanted to[[note]]Well, technically, you ''can'' in ''Final Mix'' by equipping the Two Become One Keyblade, as its Light and Darkness ability essentially means that activating any Drive Form except Final Form in combat with two party members active will instantly revert to Anti-Form[[/note]], and the chance of changing into it goes up every time you use a Drive Form except Final Form, which reduces the chances. The rate also shoots up tremendously against an Organization XIII member, which is usually the time you'll want to use the Drive Forms. |
| 122 | ** Winner's Proof, a Keyblade exclusive to ''Final Mix'', is merely a BraggingRightsReward. To obtain it, Sora needs to satisfy the first twelve members of Mushroom XIII (which can only be done after beating the final boss), then meet the thirteenth at Hollow Bastion's Great Maw. It has decent strength and the best magic stat of any Keyblade in the game, but its No Experience ability makes it so that the party can't gain any experience. And in a game which boasts some of the franchise's most powerful superbosses, you're gonna need every last big of experience you can get. Also, in Critical Mode, No Experience also exists as an ability that can be activated at will, so might as well use other Keyblades like the Fenrir, Ultima Weapon, Decisive Pumpkin and so which are much better anyway. |
| 123 | ** Fatal Crest, which boasts the highest magic stat in the base game (second-best in ''Final Mix'') and boasts the Berserk Charge ability, which allows for endless combos during MP Charge at the cost of removing combo finishers. It's essential for some Mushroom XIII challenges but not so much against bosses, which ''must'' be finished off with a combo finisher. Luckily, the Upper Slash and Horizontal Slash combo modifiers, done by pressing the block/dodge button mid-combo, count as finishers too, but still. |
| 124 | ** The Gull Wing has the Experience Boost ability which doubles the experience the party gains while Sora is at low health. This makes battles quite risky and it won't really take that long to achieve level 99. Even most experienced players would rather level up at their own pace while they enjoy what the game has to offer. |
| 125 | ** The Hidden Dragon. Its ability is MP Rage. Sora's MP can be restored bit by bit each time Sora gets hit. Useful at the earlier stages but in the long run, Sora can just equip his MP Rage abilities (at level 41 when the Dream Shield is chosen and also from Wisdom Form) so it is better to just use other Keyblades. The Kingdom Key will usually see the most use until the good ones like the Rumbling Rose or Decisive Pumpkin come into play. |
| 126 | ** The Oathkeeper and Oblivion. They are good Keyblades, the Oathkeeper enhances magic and the Oblivion provides good strength but their abilities shine best when using Drive Forms. Oathkeeper is obtained after unlocking the Gateway at Twilight Town and Oblivion is obtained very late in the game when the party reunites with Riku in The World That Never Was. |
| 127 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'': |
| 128 | ** The Firaga spell has a decently sized explosion radius, but it also has an awkward trajectory that forces it to travel in an arch. This limits its range while also making it difficult to actually hit moving targets. |
| 129 | ** The Curaga spell creates a small field of energy that will quickly restore the HP the user or any ally that stands in it. Its use in combat is limited since it forces one to stay put in the small area to receive the healing, making dodging boss attacks difficult to impossible. |
| 130 | * ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'': |
| 131 | ** Transcendence. While it can be synthesized by melding a random chance Rare command with an -aga level spell, which is pretty impractical to begin with, in Final Mix it can be found in a chest in the Secret Chapter. It creates and impenetrable bubble area and shoots all enemies around inside it. The one battle it would seem to be incredibly useful where the game is constantly spawning enemies. Since they can become invincible for a short period and escape the initial gravity effect, they can kill you since the spell locks you down until it completes, like most other dual-slot spells/commands. |
| 132 | ** A few moves are just better for taking out mooks than they are for bosses. Most of them don't hold still long enough for you to use Salvation or Glacier. |
| 133 | ** Speaking of Salvation (Ven only), it's not useful considering that you still do take damage when you charge for it (meaning that it's possible to be killed) and it can get interrupted... although it's still good for clearing out trash mobs. It's still useful; just not on the enemies you'd ''like'' to use it on. (However, it is possible to use it to recover HP on Vanitas Remnant) |
| 134 | ** Reversal and Teleport. They allow you to get behind the enemy by pressing Square when it's about to attack, but most of the times you'll want to block instead. Many attacks, such as the Bruiser's shockwaves, can be blocked but are not avoided by teleporting behind him, so they're kinda useless. |
| 135 | ** As for Command Styles, Sky Climber falls victim to this. Just being in it lets you move freely in the air, with even better control and speed than Ventus's Superglide, making it the only Command Style to change your movement. It also has strong combos involving somersaults and launching foes, similar to Final Form's, and its finisher is both cool-looking and powerful. At the same time, though, it prevents you from blocking and replaces your spammable dodge roll with an air slide that functions like [[HighTierScrappy Terra's]]. It also makes your character drop to the ground before using any commands, making you entirely helpless for up to a second, a death sentence if you're just trying to heal yourself. It doesn't help that it requires strange commands to activate in the first place, none of which are very useful against bosses. |
| 136 | * The Dual Link attacks and both kinds of link styles in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3DDreamDropDistance''. The former generally does significantly less damage then performing two solo Link Attacks separately, while the latter powers up your Keyblade combos, but at the expense of making your attack animations so lengthy it's extremely unlikely you'll be able to get off a full combo against any enemy or boss that's ImmuneToFlinching (of which there are a ''lot''), and when considering that the bulk of the damage comes from your combo finisher... |
| 137 | * Many Formchanges in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' can be this due to their very slow combos. The combos of Hyper Hammer (and by extension, Boom Hammer), Nano Arms, and Mirage Staff in particular are so laggy that against single targets, they have a high chance of [[EpicFail whiffing the combo entirely]], and with the lack of cancel frames on their attacks they can easily leave you open to powerful enemy attacks. Mirage Staff also compromises your defense and while its Avatar Barrage, Aero Boost, and Aeroza abilities makes it quite useful in the base game, the low damage output of the Avatars and Aero spells make them fall flat against the {{Superboss}}es, and its more damaging standard combos are hampered by their aforementioned slowness. |
| 138 | [[/folder]] |
| 139 | |
| 140 | [[folder:''Pokémon'']] |
| 141 | * Generally speaking, any move with more than 100 power will have some sort of drawback. These include, but are not limited to: [[PowerfulButInaccurate shaky accuracy]], reducing the user's stats, [[CastFromHitPoints damaging the user]], requiring more than one turn to execute, or only being usable under specific conditions. |
| 142 | ** Solar Beam also falls into this category for Grass-types -- while without harsh sunlight in effect it requires a one-turn charging, when the sunlight shines, it's an instant attack. Too bad harsh sunlight also powers up Fire moves, one of Grass's many weaknesses. |
| 143 | ** While Hyper Beam and its variants (Giga Impact, Hydro Cannon, Blast Burn, Frenzy Plant, Rock Wrecker, Roar of Time and Meteor Assault) are very powerful moves with 150 base power and their animations look the part, the user cannot move on the next turn unless it misses. Leaving the Pokémon vulnerable to everything that the foe has to offer. Necrozma's Prismatic Laser and Eternatus's Eternabeam have 160 base power and suffer from the same problem. In Hyper Beam’s case, the move actually had a programming quirk in the Gen 1 handheld games[[note]]As opposed to Pokemon Stadium on the N64[[/note]] that downplayed the trope; if it KO’d its target, the recharge turn was skipped. |
| 144 | ** Wonder why Thunderbolt (90 Power) is considered a better move than Thunder (110 Power)? Well, Thunderbolt has 100% accuracy and Thunder only has 70% (unless you're in the rain, that is -- if a 'Mon uses Rain Dance or Drizzle, Thunder pierces Protect moves 30% of the time in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Diamond and Pearl]]'', and hits without performing an accuracy check at all other times in all other games). |
| 145 | ** Head Smash borders on this with Rampardos, the GlassCannon fossil dinosaur. Its power is on par with Rock Wrecker (150), it gets STAB (Rock-type, too; Rock is a great offensive type), and it's coming from one of the most powerful physical attackers in the game (with a whooping 165 Attack). The catch? It has horrific recoil... ''half'' of the damage you do is bounced back as recoil. And since Rampardos can't take a hit to save its life, the only Pokémon that use it are the ones with the Rock Head ability (negates recoil) that learn it, Sudowoodo (from Generation 7 onwards), Relicanth, Aggron, and Tyrantrum (weaker, but they also get STAB). |
| 146 | ** Focus Blast is a Fighting-type special move with 120 power, but it has a paltry 70% accuracy and very few PP. Most Pokémon who would benefit from STAB with Focus Blast are also primarily physical attackers, and the few special-based Fighting-types get more practical special Fighting moves. The only reason it still sees use is on non-Fighting Special attackers who drastically need a Fighting-type attack that isn't Hidden Power. |
| 147 | ** Some moves like Overheat and Psycho Boost are very powerful, but each use harshly drops a stat (often the one that the move itself uses), thus making each use weaker. [[DeathOrGloryAttack As such, they're only really useful as a last resort or a finisher]] as opposed to a consistent means of inflicting damage... Unless it has Contrary as an ability, which ''boosts'' the stat as opposed to dropping it. |
| 148 | ** Dynamic Punch and similar moves Inferno and Zap Cannon deal high damage and will ''always'' inflict a status condition, at the cost of having only ''50%'' accuracy… |
| 149 | ** Multi-Attack, the SecretArt of Silvally, is a 120 BP move that's 100% accurate, has zero inherent drawbacks and will always be whatever type Silvally is. However, for it to be any Type other than Normal (which is not super effective against anything), Silvally must be holding a specific Memory, which provides no extra utility besides changing Silvally's Type. Furthermore, Silvally itself is a MasterOfNone, not having the stats to take advantage of Multi-Attack's high BP. |
| 150 | ** Zig-zagged with Boomburst. This 140 power sound-based Normal-type move has the highest base power of all moves with no negative effects on the user. It's only slightly weaker than Hyper Beam, but has twice as much PP, 100% accuracy ''and'' doesn't need to recharge. In single battles, its main downsides are that Pokémon that happen to have the Soundproof ability are immune to it, that Pokémon with Punk Rock resist it, that it doesn't hit anything super effectively and that few Pokémon can even learn it. Still, it can do some serious damage if used by an Exploud[[note]]which has a decent Special Attack and gets STAB on it, effectively giving it a ''210'' base power attack. Oh, and an Exploud with the Scrappy ability can hit Ghost-types with it[[/note]], a Chatot[[note]]again: decent Special Attack and STAB[[/note]] or a Toxtricity with Punk Rock[[note]]no STAB this time, but Punk Rock gives it a 30% power boost, giving it a pretty respectable 182 base power. Oh, and Toxtricity's Special Attack is better than those of Exploud and Chatot.[[/note]]. Outside of single battles, it does have the downside of hitting allied Pokémon, but it also hits all adjacent enemy Pokémon. |
| 151 | ** Last Resort has 140 power and 100% accuracy, but there's an impractical requirement to use it: the move will fail unless the user has used all of its other moves at least once while on the field (without switching out). So if you're in a situation where you want to use Last Resort because you don't have anything better to use against the opposing Pokémon, you probably have to waste at least one turn on an ineffective (or worse, pointless or harmful) move before you're even allowed to use Last Resort. You're better off just giving your Pokémon a coverage move.[[note]]Last Resort will also fail if it's the only move the user knows, so you can't get around the requirement by having a Pokémon with Last Resort and nothing else. Giving the Pokémon a moveset with 1 or 2 moves + Last Resort should work, but that means seriously weakening your Pokémon's moveset for an attack that isn't worth it.[[/note]] |
| 152 | ** Synchronoise is a 100% accurate, 120 base power Psychic-type attack. Unfortunately, it can only hit Pokémon that share at least one type with the user, which makes it too situational to be useful. It doesn't help that Psychic-type Pokémon resist Psychic-type attacks, which makes Synchronoise less useful for the Psychic-type Pokémon that at least get STAB on it. Hilariously, Umbreon can learn the move, and since Dark-types are automatically immune to Psychic attacks, this leaves Umbreon with a move that is no better than Splash. |
| 153 | ** Both Mind Blown and Steel Beam are very powerful moves, with 150 power in the former and 140 in the latter, and both get STAB due to the former being Blacephalon's SecretArt and the latter being only learnable by Steel-types. The catch is that both moves use up half the user's Maximum HP rounded ''up'', meaning that it can only be used a maximum of once without any healing or else the user will faint. |
| 154 | ** The move Fling has a base power of 130 if the user is holding an Iron Ball. There are two major problems: The first is that this consumes the item (even if the target protected itself, wasting the item), so ItOnlyWorksOnce. The second is that you have to forgo a more useful item to use Iron Ball, whose main effect (grounding the user and halving its Speed) is usually detrimental. |
| 155 | ** The charge-up moves -- Sky Attack, Skull Bash, Bide, the aforementioned Solar Beam, etc, which require a turn or two of charging ''before'' they actually do damage and give the opponent plenty of time to play around the move with switching, Protect, etc. Many of them are also surprisingly underpowered when considering this drawback. For example, using ''Tackle'' twice will deal more damage in two turns than Razor Wind ever will, plus being more flexible. Later games introduce the held item Power Herb, which allows a Pokémon to bypass the charging turn and attack right away... [[ItOnlyWorksOnce once]]. Z-Crystals also give some use to the moves, powering them up and allowing them to be used in one turn...also once. However, the latter was enough for [[NotCompletelyUseless some of these moves to be found on competitive movesets]] in Gen VII. |
| 156 | ** Related to the above, this is the reason physical Ghost-types tend to have it pretty rough when it comes to their STAB options. Phantom Force is a 90 base power move that requires a turn before it does damage and has no other beneficial effect, but it tends to see use anyway simply because most physically-oriented Ghost-types really have no better STAB options.[[note]]The next strongest physical Ghost-type move after it is Shadow Claw with a base power of 70. There are several other physical Ghost-type moves that deal more than 70, but these are all the SecretArt of one species or another[[/note]] The ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' DLC at least gave them another option in Poltergeist, a physical Ghost-type move that deals 110 damage, but it doesn't work at all unless the target is holding an item. This move, however, can be a GameBreaker in competitive battling, due to Pokémon that hold items being much more widespread there than in the main story. |
| 157 | ** OneHitKO moves. They KO the opponent in one hit... if it is slower than you (in the first generation), or, following the second, if you aren't in a lower level than the opponent. And, in case those conditions are met, the accuracy is 30%, and unaffected by normal modifiers (however, it increases by 1% for each level you advantage the enemy, meaning it'll always hit if you have a 70 level advantage[[note]] At this point, though, most attacks will knock out an opponent of such a large level disadvantage in one hit, even ones that have a type advantage, not counting immunities[[/note]]). Articuno learns both one of those attacks and Mind Reader, which always causes any move to always hit next turn, but that still remains as this. |
| 158 | ** Lock-On and Mind Reader, they guarantee the next attack will hit, including all those mentioned here with subpar accuracy and the OHKO ones. However, it only works for the next turn (meaning that, if you want to do another surefire hit, you have to use this again), and, if the opponent switches out, it is negated, so the net result is a lost turn and an attack with an unreliable move, giving the opponent a 70% chance of having 2 free turns if you are pairing this move with an OHKO. |
| 159 | ** Genesect's SecretArt, Techno Blast, is a powerful attack that can change its type, is ten points stronger than Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, Thunder and Blizzard, has 100% accuracy, and is Genesect's best option for dealing with [[AchillesHeel Fire-types]]. However, you'll never see it on competitive Genesect for several reasons -- one, Genesect doesn't get STAB or any power boost from it, unlike Arceus or Silvally. Secondly, it has no chance of inflicting status conditions. Three, the Drives that change Techno Blast's type (aside from giving away what type it's using) do nothing ''but'' that, and other items like a Choice Scarf ultimately benefit Genesect more. Still, at least it's better than it was in Gen V, where [[UselessUsefulSpell it was weaker than Thunderbolt and its type shifts and thus completely worthless]]. |
| 160 | ** Dark Void, the SecretArt of Darkrai, became this in Gen VII onwards. [[StatusEffects It inflicts sleep on both targets at once in Double Battles]], and Darkrai's Bad Dreams Ability drains away a sleeping Pokémon's HP. However, after some players [[NotTheIntendedUse took this normally-banned move to official tournaments by having]] [[LethalJokeCharacter Smeargle]] [[NotTheIntendedUse learn it]], it received an accuracy drop from 80% to a coin-toss of 50%. |
| 161 | ** Pikachu's [[SecretArt unique Z-Move Catastropika]] deals massive damage but can only be used once per battle and prevents it from using a different item, rendering Pikachu dead weight after the Z-Move is used up. By contrast, Light Ball doubles both of Pikachu's offensive stats, making it far more useful in every scenario. |
| 162 | *** Pikachu's other SecretArt, Volt Tackle, is also considered this for the same reasons as the other recoil moves, but it's an even worse case since Pikachu is a GlassCannon with a terrible HP stat. While holding a Light Ball, Pikachu's STAB Volt Tackle is one of the strongest moves you can use, but it will deal such immense recoil that you really only get to use the move once or twice, as any other uses will finish the user off with its recoil alone. |
| 163 | ** That said, the Light Ball itself could still be considered an example of this. While the doubling of its Attack and Special Attack is quite impressive, it [[GlassCannon does nothing to help with Pikachu's average-at-best Defense and Speed stats, meaning anything capable with outspeeding it and/or withstanding its raw power will have little trouble taking it out of the battle once given a chance to retaliate]]. The fact that it only works on Pikachu, and not its evolution Raichu, is another point against it. |
| 164 | ** Glaive Rush, the signature move of Baxcalibur, has a whopping 120 base power and 100% accuracy. Pair that with Baxcalibur's 145 base Attack stat, and it's going to hit ''hard.'' The downside to this is that any move from the opponent on the next turn will be a guaranteed hit with ''double'' the power, and Baxcalibur has pretty average defenses on the best of days. |
| 165 | * ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' had the held item "Berserk Gene". Upon entering battle, the item is consumed and permanently raises the user's attack by two stages while also confusing them. Amazing, right? Wrong. Rather than the usual 2-5 turns of confusion, Berserk Gene confuses the user for ''256 turns''. And prior to Gen VII, confusion gave you a 50% chance of hurting yourself, rather than a 33% chance. There was no reason to risk using the item when you could just use a turn to do one of the many available attack-boosting moves in the game that had little-to-no drawbacks, and it never returned in later generations, meaning Pokémon with Own Tempo (an ability which prevents confusion) can't make use of it either. |
| 166 | * ''VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire'' gave us Aggron, which is a giant Dinosaur made out of solid metal boasting a monstrous defense stat of 180. However, its abysmal typing of Steel/Rock means that its ability to shrug off physical attacks is not as great as one would think, since it takes 4x damage from two of the most common physical attacking types: Fighting and Ground. |
| 167 | * ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' gave Shuckle, a Pokémon well known for [[StoneWall having defensive stats that would make even legendary Pokémon drool]], Power Trick, a then-new move that swaps its Attack and Defense stats; this gives it an impossibly large Attack stat. The only problem is... now it has the lowest Defense, HP, and Speed stats in the game, so unless a teammate set up Trick Room beforehand (which reverses move priority to allow slower Mon to move first), it'll be [=KOed=] before it can even do anything. |
| 168 | * Lucario is a fan-favorite Pokemon, and for good reason. It's got a cool design, a pretty solid Steel/Fighting typing, is generally an offensive powerhouse that can run both Special and Physical move sets with more or less equal proficiency, and as the cherry on top it can control its own life energy and shoot it at things. However, as far as its usability in in-game playthroughs go it's more usable in every game it appears in EXCEPT [[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl the ones it debut in]]. First, its otherwise solid Steel/Fighting typing is more BlessedWithSuck in Gen IV, because it shares at least one of those types with two of the starters, meaning unless you chose Turtwig it's actively competing with your starter from a typing standpoint. Second, it can only be obtained by evolving the Riolu that hatches from the egg you receive on Iron Island. Iron Island can only be reached from the town the 6th gym is in, right at the end of the mid-game. And on top of the headache of hatching the Riolu from an egg and getting it up to par with the rest of your team so late in the game, it also evolves through [[ScrappyMechanic friendship evolution]] but ONLY in the day. |
| 169 | * Slaking (final form of Slakoth) has some of the best stats in the game, even beating out some of the OlympusMons of the games, and can learn some very strong moves to boot. Problem is that due to its Truant Ability, it can only attack every other turn, preventing it from being usable at the tournament level (clearly, this handicap was added ''because'' of its incredible stats). Worse yet, the BoringButPractical move Protect will shield its user from almost all damage, has higher priority than any move, is available to all but a handful of Pokémon, and works nearly all the time if used every other turn. Unless nobody on the other team knows Protect, Protect will render Slaking literally useless. |
| 170 | * Regigigas is an {{Olympus Mon|s}} that has amazing power (670 in base stats, [[LightningBruiser including an astounding 160 Attack and very good 100 Speed]]), but it also has [[BlessedWithSuck Slow Start]], undoubtedly the worst ability in the entire series: it halves both Attack and Speed for the first ''five'' turns of a battle. Five turns is way too much and hardly considered a "start" as so much damage can be inflicted in this mark. Even worse is that switching out resets the timer, and it lacks most recovery or Protect-type moves (outside of the situational Wide Guard in Gen V onwards) to help it stall foes until Slow Start wears off. One may as well use a StatusBuff like Dragon Dance on another Pokémon to get the same effect quicker. It took until [[VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield Gen VIII]], ''four'' generations after its [[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl debut]], for Regigigas to ''finally'' get Protect and Rest, which still isn't enough for it to get past [[MedalOfDishonor Untiered]]. |
| 171 | * Archeops is a [[FragileSpeedster rather quick Pokémon]] capable of [[GlassCannon hitting hard with either physical or special attacks]]. Unfortunately, its ability is [[DoomedDefeatist Defeatist]], which causes both attack stats to be cut in half if its health ever goes below the halfway point. Being vulnerable to [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome Stealth Rock]] and [[ActionInitiative priority moves]] tend to cause that to happen rather quickly, diminishing Archeops's usefulness. |
| 172 | * Any of the Pokémon that evolve particularly late may count, as depending on which version you're playing, you're unlikely to have them in their final forms by the time you reach the Elite Four (i.e., the end of the main game). Of particular note are [[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Volcarona and Hydreigon]], who aren't obtainable until levels ''59 and 64'', respectively; most other Pokémon, by comparison, reach their final evolution in the 30s and 40s. |
| 173 | * A Darmanitan with Zen Mode can go from a Fire-Type to a Fire/Psychic-Type and gains a boost to its Sp. Attack, Sp. Defense and physical Defense. The catch? It can only do this after its HP goes below half, plus its Speed takes a dive too, making those boosted defenses a bit moot. It doesn't help if your Zen Mode Darmanitan mostly knows ''physical'' moves and it suddenly becomes a ''special'' attacker, or if you build it as a special attacker for Zen Mode only for it to go down in one hit while in regular mode after doing nothing. |
| 174 | ** Galarian Zen Mode Darmanitan can be seen as an inversion, going from an Ice-Type with the same stats as its standard counterpart to an Ice/Fire-Type GlassCannon with insane Speed and physical Attack, meaning it can cause quite a bit of damage before going down. |
| 175 | * The highest difficulty of [[MiniGame Tile Puzzle]] in [[VideoGame/PokemonXAndY Gen VI's]] Pokémon-Amie earns better Poképuffs (used to increase your Pokémon's affection) than the lower difficulties. However, the difference is rather minor and while a puzzle on [[BoringButPractical hard difficulty takes less than a minute to solve]], a round of unlimited difficulty can easily last fifteen minutes. |
| 176 | * Shedinja's special ability, Wonder Guard, makes it impossible to take damage from direct attacks which aren't super effective against it. Sounds awesome, since it essentially has the most type immunities of any Pokémon (13 out of 18). However, its unique Bug/Ghost typing means it also has 5 weaknesses. Okay, that doesn't sound so bad. Oh, except that [[OneHitPointWonder it only has 1 HP]], so all 5 of those weak spots are an instant KO. [[KryptoniteIsEverywhere What's more, it's still affected by non-damaging moves, special abilities, weather conditions and entry hazards]], so it can still faint by things like poisoning and hail, or by just switching into spikes. Furthermore, the 5 Types it is weak to (Fire, Ghost, Flying, Dark and Rock) are all strong offensively, making it likely that every team will have at least one Pokémon that can easily KO it. |
| 177 | * The [[GoodBadBugs arbitrary code execution]] glitch found within the first two generations of Pokémon games allows you to trick the game into running code you yourself had programmed, including (but not limited to) giving yourself new Pokémon, creating some games using the UsefulNotes/GameBoy hardware, etc. In order to do this, you need to rearrange your items, Pokémon, their names, etc. in such a way that they just happen to form legitimate code within the game data (sometimes even requiring the use of glitch data such as [=MissingNo=]), then trick the game into running them via the use of glitches. As one can imagine, this is only useful for novelty purposes, but if one plays the Virtual Console release of the Gen I games, this glitch is key to changing the OT and ID number of a Mew obtained via the Mew glitch so that ''Pokémon Bank'' will recognise it and allow it to be transferred (as it only accepts a specific one; that of an event Mew [[NoExportForYou only released in Japan]]).[[invoked]] |
| 178 | * Hyper Training in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' would be an excellent way to bypass the nonsense involved with breeding [=IVs=] needed to create a competitive monster... if it didn't have so many issues. First of all, only [[AbsurdlyHighLevelCap level 100]] Pokémon are eligible for it, meaning that it's useless until the post game, and due to AntiGrinding mechanics in the game it will take a while to scrape past the final few levels you need. Secondly, the currency required are Bottle Caps. [[CommonplaceRare These aren't found on bottles though, and they're kind of hard to actually come by]]. There are a few methods to obtain them, but all of them require a lot of patience and/or a lot of luck. Thirdly, Hyper Training doesn't actually change the [=IVs=] of a Pokémon but flags the stat so it behaves like the highest IV stat. Thus you can't Hyper Train a Ditto in all of its stats and have the perfect breeding Pokémon. So what sounds like a GameBreaker on paper really isn't and Hyper Training should only be reserved for Pokémon that cannot be bred ([[OlympusMons Legendaries]] and other Pokémon in the Undiscovered Egg Group), or other Pokémon that you really really want to use in competitve battling (Such as [[BraggingRightsReward shinies]] or Pokémon you have a great attachment to). |
| 179 | * [[VideoGame/PokemonXAndY The Goomy line's]] [[SecretArt Hidden Ability]], Gooey, lowers the Speed of attacking Pokémon if they make direct contact with it. While that sounds good on paper, their physical Defense isn't the best, and Goodra is better at tanking special attacks anyway, so a Goodra with Sap Sipper or Hydration would be a better option. |
| 180 | * Silvally's RKS System Ability allows it to become any type just like Arceus, which synergises well with its SecretArt, Multi Attack (which also changes types). Unlike Arceus, however, the Memory items that it uses to do so don't provide a boost to moves of that type, using up a valuable item slot with an item that otherwise does nothing. Also unlike Arceus, Z-Crystals don't change Silvally's type, which doesn't help mitigate [[MasterOfNone its rather mediocre stats]]. ''Sword and Shield'' buffed Multi-Attack from 90 to a whopping 120 without drawbacks, at least letting Silvally hit a little harder, but its other problems remain. |
| 181 | * Smeargle is the textbook example of WeakButSkilled - by using Sketch, it can copy nearly any move, including powerful signature moves of Legendary Pokémon, as well as otherwise-impossible move combinations and the most useful stat boosting moves, but good luck making any use out of all that with attacking stats that are ''worse than Kakuna's.'' It can be surprisingly hard to Sketch these moves, as Sketching a move like Aeroblast requires it to be used against Smeargle first, and its defenses aren't much better than its attack. In fact, Smeargle's only decent stat is Speed, so its only practical movesets are SupportPartyMember sets that allow stronger teammates to fight more easily instead. |
| 182 | * Grafaiai averts this trope. Like Smeargle, it has a signature move, Doodle, that lets it copy something belonging to the opponent. However, unlike Sketch which copies moves, Doodle copies abilities. While the downside is that it can't copy unique abilities like Komala's Comatose or Eiscue's Ice Face, it can also apply the effect to ally Pokémon, meaning you could give your opponent's Azumarill's Huge Power to your Slaking. Helps that Grafaiai is more useable than Smeargle as well. |
| 183 | * ''[[VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite Black and White]]'' and its [[VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2 sequel]] has the phenomenon mechanic where there is a chance to encounter an evolved version of the Pokemon that appear by ordinary encounters. This is extremely useful for finding certain Pokemon such as Tyranitar, Metagross, Crobat and Gliscor without the need to spend time levelling up, increasing friendship or using an item. However, the "Impractical" part of the trope comes in when encountering stone-induced evolution Pokemon such as Musharna, Lilligant, Whimsicott and Cinccino. Their stats may be higher but stone-induced evolution Pokemon learn almost no new moves by levelling up, making them an issue when caught in the early game over their unevolved counterparts where they will be stuck with relatively weak moves until the player obtains more TMs. |
| 184 | [[/folder]] |
| 185 | |
| 186 | [[folder:''Shin Megami Tensei/Persona'']] |
| 187 | * The Almighty spells in a lot of the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games. On the surface it sounds like a dream come true: A type that ''no demon'' is resistant to in a game where elemental resistances are your main obstacle to victory. However, the inflated MP cost and lackluster damage compared to your normal elemental spells means that they just aren't worth it. Making things worse, no demon is weak against the Almighty type and by the time you gain access to the Almighty spells you'll already have figured out that it's far more profitable to aim for a demon's weakness to earn more actions, or use a neutral elemental attack backed up by their respective Boosts or Amps. Some enemies even break the rules by possessing Almighty resistance! |
| 188 | * Fourth-tier elemental spells (described as inflicting "severe" damage instead of "heavy") tend to be this. They're not much more powerful than the third-tier "-dyne" spells, and they're inefficient -- for instance, the fire-elemental single-target Ragnarok spell in ''VideoGame/Persona3'' costs 30 SP, which is even more than Maragidyne (third-tier, hits all enemies, and costs 24 SP)...and ''only does about 30-40% more damage than Agidyne ''(third-tier, one enemy, 12 SP)''!'' |
| 189 | ** Even worse are the series of spells in ''Strange Journey'' that hit every enemy and inflict some sort of status ailment. They cost a whopping 65 MP to use (vs. the 20-30 MP for Ma-dyne spells), don't always cause the corresponding ailment, and worst of all, the damage ranges from on par with -dyne spells at best (Cold World) to ''as much as first-tier spells'' at worst (Charming Bolt). |
| 190 | ** ''VideoGame/Persona5'' adds group-hitting variants of severe-strength elemental attacks, and also makes most severe-strength skills inheritable in fusion. However, their steep costs still stand, with single-hitting versions costing 4 times that of a -dyne equivalent and area-hitting versions over twice their Ma-dyne equivalent. Unless fully optimized with Boost and Amp skills and/or augmented with Spell Master, it's more efficient to stick to -dyne spells. This is reinforced with Ann and Makoto, the only party members who can learn these skills, but can't get Spell Master to be able to spam them without experiencing significant SP drain. This was fixed in ''[[UpdatedRerelease Royal]]'' which introduced Persona Traits, passive bonuses that did not take up space in a Persona's movepool, and a number of them can cut down on SP cost of magic skills. ''Royal'' also introduced the Jazz Jin, which allowed for party members to learn moves they couldn't have otherwise, such as the aformentioned Spell Master. |
| 191 | * Speaking of ''Strange Journey'', its take on the repelling "-karn" spells. A spell that repels attacks aimed at you and your demons! Cool! Except the effect only lasts on the current turn so there's no point in a demon casting it if they aren't fast enough to move first. And each casting costs 45 MP. You're better off using Attack and Magic Mirrors, especially since using an item grants you maximum turn priority. |
| 192 | * ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' has two demons that fit this: |
| 193 | ** Mother Harlot, the strongest member of the infamous Fiend clan of {{Superboss}}es, is exactly as powerful as that descriptor implies, and comes with the her unique move, Babylon Goblet, that deals a stupid amount of damage and inflicts [[HatePlague Panic]] besides. Thing is, her fusion chain requires each of the lesser Fiends at some point or other, and getting ''them'' requires an [[ThatOneSidequest absurdly aggravating and tedious sidequest]], plus a quest to unlock the Mother herself. By the time you get all the lesser Fiends, fuse them, do the Mother's quest, and fuse ''her'', you'll probably have several demons of similar power to her but significantly easier to get (such as Mara, Shiva, Lucifuge, or Yamato-Takeru), meaning the Mother basically exists to be [[HundredPercentCompletion Compendium-filler]]. |
| 194 | ** Then there's Masakado's Shadow, the single most overpowered demon in the game. He ''begins'' with an attack that always hits as a weakness, no matter what the opponent's weakness is, and with leveling up can learn to NoSell all the elements and finally he can learn '''Dragon Eye''' -- yes, that same skill that bosses in ''Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne'' [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard use and abuse without giving you or your demons a chance to learn it]]. Only, to unlock Masakado's Shadow, you have to beat the single cheapest boss in the game, which is... Masakado's Shadow. What use is a demon that powerful if you can already beat the hardest boss in the game without it? And with regards to Dragon Eye, it costs 255 freaking MP to cast, ensuring that even if you pass it on to a demon with an acceptable MP capacity, they won't be able to cast it more than three times without needing an MP refill, and refilling MP is not cheap in ''Megami Tensei''. |
| 195 | * ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', ''Apocalypse'' and ''V'' have some skills that are [[PowerfulButInaccurate more powerful than usual and/or are guaranteed critical hits, but have lower accuracy to compensate for that]]. Since missing in Shin Megami Tensei not only does no damage but costs you two Press Turn icons, and a critical hit only grants you half a Press Turn icon, these moves are generally not worth the tradeoff. Even when accounting for the Smirk mechanic from ''IV'' it's more practical to use skills of equivalent strength with no additional effects. |
| 196 | * ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'' |
| 197 | ** In ''VideoGame/Persona1'', [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness rather than having a full team and swapping out members, you could only choose one additional person to join your initial party]]. Many consider Reiji Kido to be the best option, however recruiting him is not only a ''massive'' GuideDangIt but his nature as a SixthRanger also requires you to go through the opening portions of the game without a full party. |
| 198 | ** Most of the modern ''Persona'' games expect you to finish them at level 75-80, which means that you won't be accessing the extremely high-level Personas unless you go out of your way to grind. Fusing those Personas also tend to be very costly (especially if they need a special fusion recipe using more than three Personas) and unless you're aiming for their SecretArt, you'll be able to create someting comparable for less. |
| 199 | *** In both ''3'' and ''4'', it's possible to give Metatron immunity to every element via skill inheritance, making you immune to all damage except Almighty. It helps that Metatron inherently learns three immunity skills, so you just need to cover the rest of the elements through fusion. The problem is doing this in ''3'' uses up all his skill slots, so all you're capable of doing while he's equipped is regular attacks. At least, in ''4'', you still have two free slots for usable skills. |
| 200 | *** Abaddon in ''3'' innately learns immunity passives to all three physical attributes, and has enough innate immunities that you can cover the rest to make it NighInvulnerable. This still leaves you with just ''one'' slot for usable skills, but it's marginally better than Metatron. |
| 201 | *** ''VideoGame/Persona4'' has the ultimate Persona Izanagi-no-Okami. He resists all four elements and Physical attacks, and has extremely high stats across the board. He starts with four high end powers including the valued Victory Cry, and learns all four elemental -dynes and their corresponding Amp passives by level-up. Unfortunately he's level 91 (which means you have to be level 91 to fuse him), he requires twelve Personas for fusion, cannot be retrieved from the Compendium, and has no resistance to Light or Dark. And worst of all, he doesn't inherit any skills, and receives no bonus Social Link EXP since there's no World Social Link. ''Golden'' only slightly remedies this by letting him inherit skills from his components. |
| 202 | *** Lucifer in ''VideoGame/Persona5'' is the ultimate Persona of the Star Arcana. He's also at a whopping level 93, meaning the player needs a lot of grinding (or a lot of cash, if they maxed the Strength Confidant) to fuse him. On top of that, he requires six different Personas to fuse, three of which require their own special fusion. Out of these, Metatron comes with its own set of requirements -- maxed Justice Confidant[[note]]The good news is that it progresses with the storyline. The bad news is that to complete the Confidant, you have to get up to just before the Treasure Room of the seventh palace, which opens up near the end of November[[/note]] to even access the fusion, maxed Moon Confidant to be able to fuse Sandalphon which is one of its required ingredients, and the use of Michael, which requires the fusion of ''another'' set of three high-level Personas. And for all this effort, you get a Persona that learns several powerful skills befitting its high level... but also has no resistances and one weakness. For all his might, it's unlikely you'll use him in battle, since you can easily obtain other Personas that sport multiple immunities, and the only justification for fusing him is that he's a required ingredient for [[InfinityPlusOneSword Satanael]]. In ''[[UpdatedRerelease Royal]]'', he's made substantially more useful, gaining a slew of resistances and immunities while keeping a weakness to Bless, on top of the [[RequiredSecondaryPowers Persona Trait]] "Allure of Wisdom", reducing magic skill cost by 75%. This means his Morning Star skill can cost as little as ''14 SP''. |
| 203 | ** Behold the Thanatos persona in ''VideoGame/Persona3'', your reward for tolerating the creepy child that keeps appearing in your room at midnight. The Persona that embodies the theme of the whole game, the one that's on the cover art. And then come down from that high as you realize the consequences of fusing the ultimate Death Persona from the other six Death personas in the game. Mudo spells up the wazoo, they'll fill the slots constantly on every setup, and will completely shunt out any more useful spells you could fill them with. Even in spite of this, he comes with a set of very generous skills, but has stats too low to make good use of them the way higher personas will later. |
| 204 | ** ''Persona 4 Golden'' features your party members being able to upgrade to a third-tier Persona that grants them one new unique skill on top of better resistances. The unique skill tends to be not worth picking up for most of them. |
| 205 | *** Chie and Naoto learn Dragon Hustle and Shield of Justice. The former applies all three -kaja buffs to the whole party, while the latter makes them immune to one attack, including Almighty attacks. Both skills are also extremely costly, with Dragon Hustle costing 150 SP and Shield of Justice costing 160. Chie and Naoto don't have SP pools big enough to use them multiple times without taking a turn to use an SP restorative. |
| 206 | *** Teddie's Kamui Miracle is a RandomEffectSpell that can hurt or heal either side. It's far better to use his regular support skills. |
| 207 | *** Kanji learns The Man's Way which can knock down and/or inflict Dizzy on enemies for an easy All-Out Attack, but this skill is useless in boss fights and has middling success rates on mooks anyway. |
| 208 | ** In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', the DLC Persona have endgame abilities you can access within the first hour of the game. Unfortunately, as HP and SP are based on the Protagonist's level, you won't have the reserves to use most of those abilities more than once for 10 to 20 hours, barring any physical attacks which always consume a percentage of your HP. |
| 209 | *** Ariadne has Beast Weaver, which does colossal Physical damage to a single target, but applies an attack debuff to the user afterward. In a game where buffs and debuffs are rather important, the extra damage output doesn't justify the downsides, especially since there are Physical skills that also do colossal damage and don't debuff the user. |
| 210 | ** In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', there's the Speed Reading book, which grants the ability to read two chapters of a book per session. It's a useful skill, [[TheKeyIsBehindTheLock but to unlock it, you need to unlock Jinbocho, read three books with three chapters each, then buy and read the single-chapter book]]. Unlike ''VideoGame/Persona4'', in which most books had two to four chapters (and while Speed Reading had three, it didn't have any prerequisites), all the books in ''Persona 5'' besides those needed to unlock Speed Reading have one or two chapters, limiting how much time you save. Not only does Speed Reading give no benefit for the one-chapter books, but if you've already visited the hangout spots mentioned in the books, you don't have to spend time reading them. As such, there are better ways of spending your time if you're not planning on reading all the books in the game. Luckily, ''[[UpdatedRerelease Royal]]'' fixed this by making the book available earlier as a checkout from the library (starting in July) and not requiring you to read the other Jinbocho books. |
| 211 | ** ''Royal'' also has a few of the third-tier Persona skills. |
| 212 | *** Yusuke's third-tier skill provides Heat Riser (buffing attack, defense and accuracy/evasion) to the entire party. Unfortunately, it costs 90 SP, only lasts for three rounds and can be taken off by a single use of the much cheaper Dekaja. Joker can also fuse Attis, which has a trait that allows you to use ambush-only skills all the time and comes with Thermopylae, which does the same thing for 30 SP. |
| 213 | *** Makoto gets a multi-target Debilitate, which, as the opposite of Heat Riser, debuffs all three stats. Not only is it similarly expensive, and can be dispelled just as easily, but most boss battles in the third semester are against single opponents. |
| 214 | *** To a certain extent, Ryuji and Ann's ability to put Charge and Concentrate, respectively, on the entire party. This is a useful ability, albeit an expensive one, but Futaba can randomly put ''both'' Charge and Concentrate on everyone for free if you've progressed far enough on her Confidant. |
| 215 | [[/folder]] |
| 216 | |
| 217 | [[folder:''Tales Series'']] |
| 218 | * ''VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia'' |
| 219 | ** Maxwell, the optional Summon Spirit obtaind in Exire. He's the most powerful SummonMagic bar none and casts a higher-power meteor storm that blankets most of the battle, but he can only be cast while Sheena is in [[SuperMode Over Limit]] mode, which happens more or less randomly, and he appears only once you've unlocked the last stage of TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon. Odds are you'll never get to summon him at all; never mind summon him in a battle where he'd actually be useful. |
| 220 | ** Presea and Lloyd both have flashy, awesome-looking powers that have long lists of absurd requirements that are never even vaguely hinted at in-game. Consider Presea's ultimate attack, Crimson Devastation. Presea is able to rip off half of the ultimate boss's health, or downright kill the third Sword Dancer in one use. Problem? Everyone else in her team needs to be dead, she needs to be at 18% of her max health or lower, she needs to have access to the Mighty Charge EX skill (which activates at random), and have used Beast 100+ times. Then, activate Mighty Charge (it'll probably fail), run up to whatever needs to meet death, and use Beast. If you don't die from being below 18% HP. |
| 221 | ** Colette's "Sacrifice". If its absurd [[{{Mana}} TP]] Cost isn't enough of a deterrent, casting the spell ''causes Colette to die.'' While its effects are nothing to scoff at since it revives everyone else to full health, you will rarely want to use this. It's only useful in [[GodzillaThreshold desperate situations when your healer has died and you've run out of life bottles.]] |
| 222 | ** Kratos's Judgment spell. He only knows it if [[spoiler:he rejoins your party late in the game ([[GuideDangIt which is near impossible if you don't know how to do it]] and you'll [[PlotlineDeath permanently lose Zelos]] for the rest of that playthrough)]]. While it's more powerful than Colette's ,and has an ''[[BadassCreed awesome incantation]]'', Kratos takes significantly longer to cast Judgment than Colette (''fifteen seconds!''), his version's accuracy is just as piss-poor as hers, and his magic stat is low enough that even though his version is more powerful, he'll still deal less damage if he and Colette are anywhere near the same level. |
| 223 | *** This applies to judgment in the whole Tales series, including Colette's. Yeah, it nukes the whole field with insanely powerful rays of light, and CAN be a field-wiper if you're lucky enough. The problem is that at least in most of the games, as mentioned, it takes so long to cast on random battle encounters that the battle's practically done by the time it's cast. On bosses, you're relying on chance to make enough Judgment rays hit the single target to justify its massive cast time and TP cost, which almost never happens. The one aversion is ''VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia'', in which it hits only once and has such a wide range it'll usually hit the enemy. Of course, this is the localisation's choice ot name it "Judgment". |
| 224 | * Beryl Benito's Combination Blaster Extensions in ''VideoGame/TalesOfHearts'' are impractical for the same reason the Maxwell extensions in ''Eternia'' were -- a downright silly CG consumption, and her RelationshipValues have to be in the sky to boot. You have to grind Beryl stupid in the first place to have a chance of seeing it. |
| 225 | * Fatal Strikes in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia'' are an instant kill on all normal enemies, but in the course of normal comboing you're never going to see them. In fact, even if your normal combo is right for building up a Fatal Strike, the target is still probably dead or almost dead when the FS activates. |
| 226 | ** If you're playing on an elevated difficulty or at a low level, then the Fatal Strike is a good way to finish the battle more quickly. You also more rewards at the end of the battle if you finish with Fatal Strikes. Generally, they become more efficient the further in the game you are. |
| 227 | * The second-level mystic artes in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' are nearly impossible to figure out how to use, but are absolutely brutal. Most of them require a specific weapon to be equipped, or for magic to be used a certain number of times. Luke's Lost Fon Drive, for instance, requires that he equip the Key of Lorelei[[note]]This is not hard to do, since it's an InfinityMinusOneSword, and the plot requires you have it[[/note]], and be at less than 18% health to use it. His first level Mystic Arte does almost as much damage, and you don't have to have him at such low health to use it. But, the worst of these has got to be Anise's Fever Time, which will cost you twenty thousand gald if it doesn't finish off the last enemy. |
| 228 | ** For an InUniverse example, there's the Fon Slot Seal. Powerful people in this 'verse rely on their fon slots to function effectively, meaning that sealing them results in a ''massive'' LevelDrain -- the one time it's used in the plot, one of the most powerful soldiers in the world (arguably ''the'' most powerful) becomes weaker than a nearby beginner using a training sword. The impractical part? Fon Slot Seals are ''ludicrously'' expensive. It's explicitly spelled out that if the largest nation in the world spent their entire budget on Fon Slot Seals, they'd only have ten of them. And they only seal the fon slots of ''one'' person before you have to buy another one. There's a ''reason'' most professionals consider them TooAwesomeToUse. |
| 229 | [[/folder]] |
| 230 | |
| 231 | [[folder:Other Games]] |
| 232 | * ''VideoGame/AbsentedAgeSquarebound'': |
| 233 | ** Rush type skills allow characters to move several tiles, but if they're attacked immediately afterwards, they get toppled, preventing them from moving to another tile and using rush attacks for a few turns. However, there's an amulet that can [[RequiredSecondaryPowers prevent this drawback]], making Rush skills safer to use for cameo characters only. |
| 234 | ** The Nikkari Aoe has an excellent ATK cap at 23, but Karen cannot easily use it because as a ghost, she'll continuously take psychic damage from it. Fortunately, it's possible to give this weapon to Iris in her skill tree, and she won't take damage from it due to being a robot. |
| 235 | * In ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'', you can get a lot of artifacts designed to screw with your enemies; showing their health, decreasing their turnover speed, etc. However, most of them are ridiculously limited, take a whole turn just to use, or both. In general, the deck space is better allotted to simpler cards; equipment magnus, healing or revival artifacts, or specials. |
| 236 | * In ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'', every character can learn a unique Megahax –- a very powerful spell with a nifty effect, like putting all enemies including bosses to sleep, or giving everyone in the party an AutoRevive. The thing is, not only can a Megahax only be used once per battle, but it locks the user’s ability to cast magic for the rest of the fight. That’s not so bad for characters who mainly rely on physical moves, but for those who use a lot of magic -- like Catie, the party’s main healer –- it’s absolutely ''crippling''. You’re way better off just using items to achieve similar effects. |
| 237 | * Special Moves in both ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' and ''VideoGame/BravelySecond'' are often more trouble than they're worth. First, the parts required for them are gained through the respective rebuilding mini-game of each game, meaning you'll only be able to make good use of them once you're fairly deep into the game. Second, they require "charging" through a series of repeat actions in order to use them at all (thankfully, the second game lets you customize these triggers), so you'll more than likely fight dozens of throwaway random battles to do so. And you have to do this ''every time you want to use them'', which means you'll probably relegate their usage to boss battles only. And to get the absolute most out of them, you'll also have to use your precious SP to break the damage barrier since many of them easily top off at 9999 damage. That said, if you're willing to put up with the Impractical side, the Awesome is there, as a fully supported special move (generally requiring two other party members to set things up for the user), especially in Second, can be capable of ''overkilling bosses from full health. While underleveled.'' |
| 238 | * ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireII'' , being an infamously rushed game, has several examples. Most every offensive spell does anemic damage until the late game, making caster characters much less useful than they should be. Ryu's dragon morphs are probably the prime example of this trope, though; rather than having him morph into a new form, he now just does a single fullscreen attack that burns ALL of his MP. Sure, it does a lot of damage, but it's much more tactically sound to just save MP for healing and whittle enemies down with normal attacks instead. Surprisingly, the most useful attack spell is Chop, a hidden spell which any character can learn -- it does a flat 60 damage and costs 0 MP. |
| 239 | ** For that matter, most characters' special abilities are far less useful than they sound too. Ryu's Guts skill restores HP based on his Guts stat and how low his current HP is, but it's far less reliable than just using a spell or item. Nina's is much the same, just with MP instead. Bow's Shot will either do 1 damage or (very rarely) 999, so normal attacks end up being far more reliable for defeating enemies. Katt gets the ability to draw more enemy attacks, which may have been okay if she weren't the textbook definition of a glass cannon. Sten's RIP is the polar opposite but equally useless, causing him to play dead for a turn and making enemies less likely to attack him; however, wasting a turn and taking more damage when he is attacked ensures that it's never worth using. Rand's Wake attacks one of your allies -- pointless on anyone living, with only a miniscule chance to revive a downed character with 1 HP (at which point they will almost always be attacked and knocked out again immediately). Spar's Nature command will deal damage to all enemies... But only outdoors on the world map, which you won't be spending much time on anymore once you have him. Jean's Stab hits all enemies, though at such reduced damage that it only really helps you in areas well below your current level. Of the base characters, Bleu's Shed is the only legitimately useful one, restoring her HP to full while lowering her defense for the rest of the fight. Many of the Shaman-fused special characters get much better ones as well. |
| 240 | * In ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'', Garr can obtain a weapon called the Beast Spear. At 150 attack points, it's far and away his strongest weapon (the second strongest weapon, the Dragon Spear, only has 110 Attack Power), and is even obtained about halfway through the game (provided [[GuideDangIt you know where to look]], and [[PermanentlyMissableContent don't miss it]]), instead of at the end like most of the other strongest weapons. However, the Beast Spear also weighs a whopping 15 points (making it heavier than any other item in the game and practically ensuring that Garr will have a Speed of 0) and will drain 10% of Garr's max HP every single round. These drawbacks will naturally turn most players away from it (though if you're willing to work with them, Garr can become a damage dealer, thanks to his already high Attack power). |
| 241 | ** Breath of Fire III also suffers a similar problem to 2, in that offensive magic scales so poorly that it becomes effectively useless at about the midpoint of the game. One extra point in intelligence equals out to one extra point of damage per spell, which is a very poor tradeoff when most magic-focused masters also nerf far more useful stats like HP, Attack and Defense. For this reason Nina usually just gets relegated to the role of a "skill mule", learning skills from Masters and transferring them to your other characters who spend their levels building up physical characteristics. |
| 242 | * ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireDragonQuarter'' prominently features a mechanic that's impractical by design. Ryu's ability to D-link transforms him into an invincible killing machine with unlimited move range, powerful melee attacks and the ability to stack attack buffs and use an infinite-damage fire breath. The downside is that using any of these will fill his D-counter, and if it hits 100% at any point [[spoiler:besides the very last leg of the final boss gauntlet]], it's game over. The trick is that most of the final bosses are all but untouchable without using these powers (the first time through, at least), so you'll want to conserve D-counter as much as you can over the course of the game to make it through their nasty regenerating barriers. D-breath is also rarely used outside of specific speedrun setups for this reason -- using it deals damage as long as you hold the button, but at the cost of rapidly and continually increasing the D-counter. |
| 243 | * ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'': |
| 244 | ** Some Double Techs and nearly all Triple Techs suffer from this, especially late game when your gear breaks the game mechanics. Even early game, their only real advantage is where they may allow a single-member heal to be a party heal, or when engaging enemies with counter-attack mechanics. Simply put, you're almost always better off having each individual character take their action than using all of your turns up at once. |
| 245 | *** This includes the Triple Tech "Grand Dream." It deals higher damage the lower ''your entire party's'' overall HP is; with everyone at 1 HP, it hits the damage cap. This would be at least ''somewhat'' useful, except it's cast by Marle, Robo, and '''''Frog''''', whose Frog Squash works on the exact same principle and can deal just as much damage, and costs him the same amount of MP... in other words, if you can dish out 9999 damage with Grand Dream, you're better off casting Frog Squash while having Marle and Robo ''prevent a party wipe.'' |
| 246 | ** Lucca's Wondershot is frequently accused of this too; the random multipliers attached to its damage mean that its attack power is either so good it bests Crono's Rainbow Sword, or so bad it's bested by his Mop (the Prism Specs help out... at both ends of the scale). Plenty of people stick with the Turboshot for consistency. |
| 247 | * ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', for its part, has [[SummonMagic Summon Elements]]. Necessary for [[ItemCrafting the most high-end equipment]], but requiring an elaborate setup every time one is used. With so many restrictions, they tend to get used on only the final few battles, and sometimes not even then. And like its predecessor, many of the Techs look pretty cool, but are just too much trouble to set up for their average payoff. |
| 248 | * ''VideoGame/DarkCloud'''s Chronicle 2 is quite an ordeal to get, requiring you to complete the game and then go through a 100-floor long bonus dungeon full of powerful enemies that are often immune to all attacks save for one specific element. Then fight a very annoying optional boss. But while your reward for all of this is the most powerful weapon in the game by a big margin... you really have nothing left to fight with it. |
| 249 | * Many weapons and items in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' are like this. |
| 250 | ** One of the biggest examples is the Dragon Great Sword, a huge person sized weapon that appears to be made of flesh. Not only that but it has a special attack which causes a huge RazorWind to tear along the ground, wrecking enemies. Unfortunately the stat requirements for it are insane, and by the time you have the stats to use it, there are other better weapons available because it also doesn't scale with stats. Even weapons that don't have insane stat requirements might end up being so large that the attack animation feels like it takes forever and drains a lot of stamina, which can be good against bosses except for the fact now you're likely wide open to attack because you just used most of your stamina swinging a giant weapon at them. |
| 251 | ** The [[http://i.imgur.com/Ol5Vw1q.jpg Smelter Hammer]] (lovingly dubbed the Chicken Leg by the community) from ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'', introduced in the ''Crown of the Old Iron King'' DLC is a '''monstrously''' large and also monstrously heavy melted hunk of metal that is wielded as its name suggests. The Smelter Hammer is so large and unwieldy that it swings significantly slower than its fellow Great Hammers with unique animations to boot, eats your stamina faster than you can swing it, requires a ridiculous amount of strength to wield it (70 Strength to wield it one-handed, and 35 Strength to even wield it two-handed), and in lieu of the ability to parry it possesses a unique triple spin attack that results in you losing your balance and flying forward with the weapon. |
| 252 | ** The Soul Stream sorcery from ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII''. The most powerful sorcery by a fair margin, taking the form of a giant magical Kamehameha. Problem? Extremely high stat requirements and FP cost, and it takes a few seconds to charge up before it fires, which makes it near-useless in a pitched battle. |
| 253 | * ''VideoGame/EldenRing'': |
| 254 | ** Comet Azur, identical to the above example in that it is a huge high-damage dramatic laser beam that chews through a max-level FP bar in a matter of seconds. Couple this with you being locked in place for a few seconds afterward, and it just can’t keep up with the chaotic fights. That is, unless you pair it with the Crystal Tear that offers ''[[GameBreaker 15 seconds of infinite FP]]...'' |
| 255 | ** Several advanced spells or incantations are devastating, but they take up multiple memory slots and suffer from a long-windup and/or poor range which exposes you to interruption or punishment. This was countered in the 1.04 patch that speeds up their casting animations and recovery speed, and gives them a poise bonus so that you can't be interrupted or punished as easily. |
| 256 | ** The Quality infusion improves a weapon's scaling with both Strength AND Dexterity (unlike Heavy or Keen which corresponds to one) but also imposes a heavier penalty on its base damage. The problem is that most players would have enough skill points to focus on one of Strength OR Dexterity, and trying to optimize both to make the most of a Quality weapon detracts points from other useful stats like Vigor and Endurance. Ultimately, a Quality infusion comes off as a MasterOfNone compared to the other infusions. |
| 257 | * In the first game of the ''VideoGame/DragonballZTheLegacyOfGoku'' series, energy attacks are extremely useful and really the only practical way to defeat most enemies, while punches are highly risky. However, in the second game this is reversed, energy attacks may look flashy but don't cause much if any real damage while also being the fuel for transformation states, [[BoringButPractical Simple punches and other melee attacks]] cause much more damage especially in a transformed state than energy attacks do, [[note]][[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard The same is NOT true of enemies capable of energy attacks]] [[/note]] while also being capable of stunlocking the enemy to death. Buu's Fury alleviates the impracticality a bit by giving transformations their own separate energy bar that automatically refills when the player transforms, but energy attacks are still far far weaker than punches. |
| 258 | * The spell Thordain/Kazapple from a few ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'' games. It's an extremely powerful single-target lightning spell, and in this series lightning is a very difficult element to resist. The catch is that it uses your entire team's power to do this. Not only does it force you to skip your own allies' turns, but it draws 10-20 MP (depending on the game and version) from all allies. If any one of them doesn't have enough MP (or they're under a status ailment that prevents them from casting), you can't cast the spell. This is especially bad in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'', where some of your best allies don't have ANY MP at all. It's certainly possible to get around this by giving them Seeds of Magic (which permanently increase one character's max MP), but that's a heck of a waste when you could just feed those seeds to actual spellcasters and just let everyone take their turns as normal, which will probably generate more overall damage than Thordain anyway. |
| 259 | * ''VideoGame/EarthBound1994'': |
| 260 | ** The Casey Bat for Ness, which is his strongest weapon but has an incredibly lame hit rate. [[Literature/CaseyAtTheBat That's implied]] [[DontExplainTheJoke in the name]]. The only way the bat is genuinely useful is when you realize you can use it for preemptive strikes, since if you get a sneak attack on an enemy, the higher attack rating means you are much more likely to kill the enemy without actually entering the battle screen. So it's a situational weapon, not intended for traditional battles. |
| 261 | ** PSI Rockin'. It's one of the strongest attacks in the game (rivaling even Starstorm), and attacks all enemies. However, stronger variations end up costing large amounts of PP, which is a problem considering how Ness is the primary healer. [[spoiler:Later, this is partially mitigated by the Magicant upgrade]]. And Ness is the only PSI user who DOESN'T HAVE PSI Magnet so he can steal PP from enemies. Ness also has the strongest melee attack in the game, further reducing the effectiveness Rockin' has on single enemy fights. Lucas from [[VideoGame/Mother3 the sequel]] is essentially in the same boat as Ness, minus [[spoiler: Magicant buffs]]. |
| 262 | ** The bicycle you get from Twoson is ''awesome'': it moves fast and plays happy music when you ride it. Unfortunately you can't ride it with more than one person in your party or with anything following you. Since the very next place you need to visit is [[ThatOneLevel Peaceful Rest Valley]] which you'd be very lucky to survive without a teddy bear to soak up some damage and you recruit Paula in Happy Happy Village immediately after, you basically only get to enjoy this bicycle for all of about 5 minutes in Twoson before it's tossed in storage and never used again until after you've beaten the final boss. |
| 263 | ** As a general rule, any of the strongest pieces of equipment in the game. Nearly all of them are very rare (1/128 chance) drops from very specific enemies, which means you'll likely grind battles for hours and hours and never see them drop. Sure, they get amazing benefits (the Gutsy Bat in particular boosts Ness's Guts by a whopping 127, ensuring he'll get critical hits every other swing or so), but they all become available very late in the game, and by the time you luck out and get the drop you'll probably have gained so many levels that any extra bonuses they grant will be trivial at best. The Gutsy Bat is the worst offender in this regard; the enemy it drops from only appears in the very last leg of the final dungeon, and only the first two stages of the final battle are resolved by dealing damage -- the rest is a scripted event where a traditional offense does you no good whatsoever. |
| 264 | *** ''VideoGame/Mother3'' fares slightly better in this regard, with most of the rare items either being hidden behind a tough optional boss fight or a 3% chance item drop (still low, but much less tedious to grind for than 0.78%). Mother 3 is also a substantially harder game than Earthbound, so having a few extra levels under your belt for the final stages can't hurt! |
| 265 | * In ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'', {{Horn Attack}}s are easy to use and do good damage but tend to {{break|ableWeapons}} before too long. Your EVO points are usually better spent on other things. |
| 266 | * Two types of this occur in ''VideoGame/FossilFighters''. The first involves mons like ''T. rex'', which are incredibly powerful, but which also have very damaging support effects-if one's in a support zone, your main fighter is worthless. The second involves two specific mons, Zino and Centro, who ALWAYS score critical hits-but have such appalling accuracy that the rest of the team needs to be focused around altering stats to get them to hit. While powerful, knocking out even one of the supporting mons causes the entire strategy to fall apart. |
| 267 | * ''VideoGame/GoldenSun: The Lost Age'''s best Djinn Summon can only be acquired after confronting the strongest {{Superboss}} in the game, and that can only happen after you get halfway through the final dungeon. And using the summon costs a full complement of Mars Djinni and half of your Mercury Djinni -- a hefty cost that, depending on your class setup, can deprive you of your best healing for a few critical rounds. However, since it revives and fully heals everyone in the party, active or inactive, it's great to have your backup line able to pull it out and make the final boss substantially easier. |
| 268 | ** The endgame Summons in general are this, because while they do a metric crapload of damage in one shot, they all require you to have a sizable amount of Djinn on standby -- meaning the stat boosts they give to their user disappear until they reset. They're still capable of inflicting impressive damage (particularly Daedalus), but the Summons acquired earlier in the game will generally see much more use solely due to using less Djinn. |
| 269 | ** Offensive Psynergy itself, to some degree. To increase attack for mundane weapons use, all you have to do is acquire better equipment or level-grind, but to increase elemental affinity for Psynergy you have to use tons and tons of Summons (and the bonus only lasts for the battle) or specifically set up a character with the correct Djinn and (rare) equipment. And while most Psynergy have very strict damage formulas that result in them quickly losing effectiveness, the basic attack will always do a solid amount of damage, if not more due to Golden Sun's overpowered critical hits. The only real advantage of combat psynergy is the ability to hit multiple enemies at once, and then all that does is save the player a turn or two of selecting Attack (and perhaps not even that due to Golden Sun's lack of cursor memory; every time you want to use a certain spell a menu dive is required). |
| 270 | ** To make a comparison, the best offensive Psynergies will do a couple hundred damage, tops, even with a high elemental Power and against enemies which are weak to its element. Megiddo, an attack obtained via the Sol Blade in ''The Lost Age'' and ''Dark Dawn'', takes the user's attack power ''times three'', which will easily have reached three digits by the endgame. |
| 271 | ** The Psynergy skills "Haunt", "Curse", and "Condemn" in all three games. They make the foe take damage when they attack, kills them in 7 turns, or kill them immediately, respectively. However, you get them at such high levels that most foes are immune to them and it would also be faster just to kill them regularly. |
| 272 | ** In ''[[VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn Dark Dawn]]'', Sveta's Beast Form can be this. On one hand, she turns into a seven-foot-tall werewolf who can smack bosses around barehanded. On the other hand, it drains one of her Djinn into Recovery Mode per round, and expires when she runs out of Djinn, leaving her in her more-human form and without her Djinn-enabled stat boosts until they recover. |
| 273 | * ''VideoGame/Grandia1'' gives us Feena's Time Gate, which pauses combat for 2-5 turns for everyone but Feena herself. Which sounds great, until you realize that you need to max out your Wind and Water elements at 99 (which takes a solid twenty hours of grinding), it costs a whopping 99 Level 1 MP to cast, and that by the time you're likely to get it, you've already cleared most of the points where it would be useful. Feena gets a bunch of free turns, but has very few options to use them efficiently because of late game enemies' magical resistance and her poor attack power, and the sheer amount of grinding required to even unlock Time Gate means your party has gained enough levels that you probably won't ever need to anyway. This example gets subverted in the Nintendo Switch HD Remaster version of the game, as Time Gate's way too high requirements turned out to actually be a programming error, with the remaster fixing that bug and lowering the Water and Wind levels required to 35 and 33 respectively (the in-game menu shows that you learn them once you reach level 18 for each, but it's yet ''another'' bug), and the spell's cost to 25 instead of 99 |
| 274 | ** ''VideoGame/GrandiaIII'' has a similar ability that is given to you as part of the story, doesn't cost MP to use (instead running off a rechargable meter) and gives the entire team some free turns, making it a solid desperation move. The only downside is that that it and the other orb abilities take a very long time to recharge after use. |
| 275 | * ''VideoGame/{{Gungnir}}'' gives us War Gods, powerful summons that would be incredibly useful if they discriminated friend from foe, which they don't. |
| 276 | ** War Gods actually do target only enemies, but only if you meet certain requirements, making them useful for a pre-empitive attack or a desperation attack. Naturally, the game doesn't tell you this, nor do they tell you the requirements each god has. |
| 277 | ** Gungnir itself arguably qualifies, as it takes up ''3/4 of the user's inventory'', thus restricting them to little armour or items. While it certainly has some advantages to make up for this, some may argue that it's inferior to a normal weapon. Averted later on, as Giulio becomes strong enough to make up for the spear's weight. |
| 278 | * ''VideoGame/LastScenario'' has the Gamma spellcard. For starters, just equipping it gives noticeable penalties to your HP, Strength, and Vitality. Gamma itself inflicts a highly random amount of damage to all enemies, which means that while it ''might'' do tons of damage, there's also a good possibility that it will totally whiff. Its Crisis spell, Nuke, deals "unspeakable" damage to all enemies, but has a prohibitively high cost of ''999 MP''. |
| 279 | * In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'', Dragoon form itself becomes this. In the early game, it's more important to level up Additions. In the late game the majority of the bosses can cripple it with the Dragon Block Staff or instantly kill characters[[note]]Only Shana/Miranda has a Dragoon spell to revive a character, and characters in Dragoon form can't use items[[/note]]. This includes the final battle. Also, by the time you max out characters' final Additions, you'll probably be doing more damage with them than you would in Dragoon form, meaning you're better off not transforming into a glowing winged MagicKnight unless you're planning on using magic. |
| 280 | ** At dragoon level five, each character learns a spell to summon their dragon and deal massive damage. Except for Meru and Shana/Miranda who have sky high magical attack (and the latter's spell heals the party as well), this spell is almost completely worthless compared to using a couple weaker spells. Not helping matters is that, unless attacking an enemy who takes extra damage from that element, most characters do roughly equal or even better damage with physical attacks. |
| 281 | * In ''VideoGame/LiveALive'', Masaru's final skill does high damage against enemies in a large area and has a pretty cool rock-splitting animation. Too bad its charge time is so agonizingly long that you're better off using his skills that activate immediately. The remake notably toned down the charging time, making it a valuable attack against his chapter boss if the player manages to learn it beforehand. |
| 282 | * ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey''[='s=] "ultimate" magic spells require the player to visit a side area and defeat a boss to obtain them. The rewards? "Sacrifice Self" kills the caster to revive any dead party members and "Divide" damages the entire enemy party for an amount equal to the caster's current health divided by the number of enemies. Averted with "Leveler", which has an ingame description that makes it sound like a single-target version of Divide, but it's actually based entirely on the caster's Magic Attack stat and is the only spell in the game that can reliably do 5-digit damage. Divide also tends to veer towards NotCompletelyUseless when it comes to the final [[MonsterArena Backyard]] opponent and the DLC {{Superboss}}, since they're both basically immune to all other physical and magical attacks. |
| 283 | ** That's not even touching the cannons that shoot ''swords'' instead of arrows. |
| 284 | * ''VideoGame/MakaiKingdom'' has vehicles, which come with powerful attacks and stats that increase with the driver's TEK stat and should dominate the battlefield. Unfortunately, each vehicle take up two regular unit spaces, meaning you can only field at most four at a time; all their attacks cost SP (in contrast to regular units, who always have one zero-cost attack) which makes prolonged dungeon use problematic, since they'll run out of juice eventually; leveling them up is extremely costly (in addition to grinding exp, they also need to be upgraded each level, using materials); and they don't have anything that enhances stat growth (unlike regular units), so they're stuck on a very pedestrian scale, while your warriors and casters and thieves can skyrocket their stats with little effort and some cleverness. All in all, unless you need a very specific effect (such as the Yamazaki's ability to inflict Gamble on groups), you're better off leaving the vehicles back home and just use your regular soldiers. |
| 285 | * In ''VideoGame/MetalWalker'', Marine Cores have good attack and defense, but can only move well underwater. Coupling that with the fact that their weakness, Sky Cores, can move well on any field, you'll likely switch to something else as soon as you hit land. |
| 286 | * The Quadruple Giga skill in ''Monster Girl Quest''. Not only does it take four turns without spirits to charge up (that's more than enough to be defeated in, by the way) but you need to do it ''without getting hit''. The only times where it's useful are when the plot mandates it, or against a helpless enemy (in which case it's overkill). |
| 287 | * Up & Away in ''VideoGame/PaperMario'' will destroy the enemies, without giving you a single [[ExperiencePoints star point]]. It can easily miss the target, how it's [[UselessUsefulSpell useless against Bosses]], and the Star Power cost, when pressing the "Run Away" button has the same effects, except you lose a bit of your money instead... [[MoneyForNothing not like you'll miss it by the time you get the attack, either]]. |
| 288 | ** Showstopper in ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' works in a similar way to Up & Away, but rewards the player with star points so they can still level up. However, strong enemies have a higher resistance to Showstopper and every boss (except the FinalBoss, who is immune to it) has an extremely low success rate for the move. Luckily, Showstopper is cheap to use, but you're better off using other abilities. |
| 289 | *** Supernova is an extremely damaging move that, when used to the fullest, causes 15 points of damage to all enemies, but using the move eats a ton of star power. |
| 290 | ** ''VideoGame/PaperMarioStickerStar'': |
| 291 | *** The Infinijump stickers. They're a guaranteed kill against any enemy with less than 100 HP, but do you really want to press the A button ''100'' times? They are also quite rare, with the only way to farm them being via a tedious upgrade process or replaying ThatOneLevel repeatedly. |
| 292 | *** The Cake thing is found in the Enigmansion in World 4, and despite being a [[TooAwesomeToUse Thing]] that takes up four inventory slots, it has an unintuitive Action Command, an OverlyLongFightingAnimation, and its healing is outclassed by a simple ''Flashy Mushroom'' of all things. |
| 293 | *** Megaflash Eekhammer is easily the worst Megaflash. It can be found rather easily in a World 5 level, but it can only deal 40 damage at most without any buffs or debuffs. Similar to the above example, something like a Flashy Clone Jump or Big Shiny Hammer can outperform it while taking less space. |
| 294 | * ''VIdeoGame/ParasiteEve'' has different rates of fire for every weapon, which determines how many bullets you can fire in a single turn. While firing several bullets at an enemy seems awesome, the damage output is reduced the more bullets the gun can fire. Guns with low rate of fire do more damage per shot. On top of this, Aya stays rooted in place until she fires all of the bullets you had her shoot, which leaves her open to attacks. The "Enter 2 (or 3) Commands" effect, combined with a gun that shoots only one bullet at a time, can let you do higher damage output without any damage restriction. |
| 295 | ** A case could be made that Parasite Eve is the poster child for this trope, as nearly all of its higher-end weapons have serious flaws that hold them back from being truly useful. Grenade launchers have a slow firing rate, mediocre damage and elemental properties, which many late and postgame foes resist. Machine guns can launch up to ten bullets at a time, but the damage falloff from anything higher than a two-shot mod ensures that these eat up tons more ammo for virtually no benefit. Rocket launchers are only really useful on a first playthrough -- ammo for them is very scarce and once you get into the heavier weapons available in the postgame dungeon, they'll quickly become obsolete. Even shotguns and rifles aren't great -- they take far longer to aim than other weapon types and the bit of extra range they get hardly makes up for this drawback. Pistols are your friend for much of the first playthrough, and once you hit EX Mode, you'll want to go for a heavily-modded P90 to ensure the most efficient damage output possible. |
| 296 | ** ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'''s Aya has exactly two attacks in her list of magic abilities, both of which pack a punch. However, the first one, which is described as draining the user's energy, reduces Aya's movement speed from a run to a slow, slow crawl for a considerable amount of time. The second one is capable of obliterating anything that isn't a boss... but completely wipes Aya's Parasite Energy, leaving her unable to do other useful things that require PE, such as heal. With either of these moves, you're screwed if your target survives. |
| 297 | * ''VideoGame/PhantasyStar'' prominently features the Laconian Axe, Odin's strongest -- and yet least used -- weapon. In the late stages of the game, enemies tend to attack in groups of 4-7 at a time, making single-target attacks all but worthless. And many of the late-game bosses dodge nearly all melee attacks anyways. You're honestly better off giving Odin a Laser Gun instead; it hits all enemies at once, does a respectable flat 20 damage and never misses. |
| 298 | * ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' features the Megido spell, which deals heavy damage to your enemies... but also to your allies. So unless you've got Star Mists to spare (not likely owing to their rarity) or plenty of MP left on your healer (also not likely in the final stages) or you're doing a solo run (lol), it's really not worth using at all. Probably why it was reduced to a story-only spell in the third game and when it returned again in 4, they removed the negative side effect. |
| 299 | * ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarIV'' has the Destruction combo; it requires four of your five party members, it requires them to act in exact order with no interrupting actions on either side, three of them are using their most powerful attacks possible, two of those were obtained through semi-hidden [[{{Sidequest}} sidequests]]... and in the end, it does much less damage than the three attacks in question used independently thanks to the damage cap. |
| 300 | * In ''VideoGame/{{Robopon}}'', the * (Star) software sort of falls into this. On one hand, the attacks they create can do obscene amounts of damage. On the other, they require a team of Robopon that mutually like each other, eat anywhere from a third to a half of a Robopon's Energy Points, and do pathetic damage if the enemy has appropriate stats. |
| 301 | * ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' gives us super cool LimitBreak combos for each playable character. Based on the buttons you press during the sequence, you'll accumulate more damage. Some of it's VERY flashy too. This works great on enemies and you can restock on your limit pretty quickly too (blue balls for each kill). The downside is that you can't use them on bosses. AT ALL. |
| 302 | * ''VideoGame/SacredEarthPromise'': The second-tier EX Arts cost 40 EX vs the first-tier at 25 EX, but they still only increase the Limit Index by 1, making them less EX-efficient when it comes to unleashing EX Limits. |
| 303 | * ''VideoGame/SagaFrontier'' has several high-tier spells that qualify. Arcane magic gets the Tower, which dumps all of your JP into one big lightning-element attack, doing more damage the more you spend; that said, even with 200+ JP spent its damage isn't particularly impressive, and all those points could have been much better spent on other, more tactically sound spells; healing/buffers for your party or just more cost-efficient attack spells, whether they combo well (Shadow Sphere, Vapor Blast) or not (Vermilion Sand, Flash Fire). The Stasis rune likewise eats all of your JP to put both the caster and the target in stasis, rendering them effectively invulnerable but also unable to take ANY actions for several turns; rather pointless in most situations, though it could potentially be useful if you desperately need to heal up with the rest of your party before the effect wears off. Finally, the Time Stop spell gives the caster 6-8 uninterrupted free actions (during which all spells and techs are effectively free), but once it wears off they're hit with a backlash effect, leaving them with 0 JP and WP and a huge penalty to all of their stats; basically a sitting duck. It's ridiculous overkill for normal foes and a bad strategy against bosses; unless you land the killing blow during those free turns, you're basically down a character for the rest of the fight. It does have a rather twinky exploit in Blue's story, though -- if you cast Stasis rune on the last turn it will prevent the backlash effect from occurring, leaving you with tons of free magic-spam-filled turns every round. |
| 304 | * ''VideoGame/SecretOfEvermore''[[note]]OK, so it's a Western game, but gameplay-wise it's based on Eastern [=RPGs=][[/note]] has the Reflect spell, which as its name implies, reflects alchemy spells back at the caster. This would have been a great spell, since no enemy absorbs alchemy spells and bosses frequently use very powerful alchemy (especially ThatOneBoss, Verminator). Unfortunately, you don't get this spell until the beginning of Omnitopia. At that point, the only enemy left that uses alchemy is the {{Superboss}}, the Faces (aka "Your Cleanliness") |
| 305 | * ''VideoGame/SecretOfMana'' featured a ton of great moves you could unlock as you leveled up your weapon skills. Unfortunately their long charging times meant you were better off using regular attacks or stunlocking enemies to death with magic. The remake makes this a little better by increasing weapon charge speeds with weapon level, and making the high level charge skills either hit multiple times or do more damage. |
| 306 | * Yuri and Kurando's demon fusions in ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsCovenant'' are reworked to consume a larger amount of Sanity Points each turn, rather than taking a flat sum up front. This, plus the fact Yuri has mediocre magic stats that barely complement the spellcasting abilities of these fusions and the stat boosts fusion forms grant tend to be pretty marginal until you power up quite a bit, make it more practical to just stay in base form and use Rage-buffed normal attacks until you hit Disc 2 or so. Even then though, you'll probably want to equip a Flare Brooch to make their SP costs more manageable. |
| 307 | * Both Shadow Hearts Covenant and ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld'' have an accessory called "Extreme" which triples attack power, but can only be acquired late in the game if you have a Ring Perfect rate of 65% or better (in Covenant) or 95% successes and 75% perfects (in New World) - an exceptionally difficult task even among expert players. It also makes the Judgment Ring's hit zones AND indicator invisible, though to be fair if you can pull off that consistent a perfect rate you can probably hit them in your sleep, let alone blind. Could be considered a case of DifficultButAwesome instead in that case. |
| 308 | * ''VideoGame/ShiningSoul II'' features "Soul" items that allow the player to perform a WaveMotionGun attack after having filled a meter by killing a few trillion Mooks. On triggering it, the player is treated to a lengthy cutscene of whichever godlike entity's power is being used generally strutting their incipient-apocalyptic stuff.. followed by the Soul doing about as much damage as [[SlapOnTheWristNuke two or three good regular weapon hits.]] |
| 309 | * ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia'' has plenty of these: |
| 310 | ** [[FieryRedHead Aika's]] super moves attack multiple targets, and are quite useful for quickly clearing out trash mobs early in the game. Her ultimate move, Omega Psyclone, has impressive visuals, where she throws a boomerang of fire onto her enemies, plunging into a burning pit on a rock. By the time you reach the halfway point, [[TheHero Vyse's]] only multi-targeting super move can do twice as much as Omega Psyclone (and takes significantly less effort to learn). Aika's damage-dealing Super Moves are all fire-elemental as well, meaning some enemies in the game resist or outright ignore the damage done from them; Vyse's Rain of Swords is non-elemental, costs only slightly more SP to cast, and works on everything. Aika's ''support'' moves, on the other hand, are extremely useful. |
| 311 | ** Fina's ''Lunar Glyph'' super move is rather weak, and there's a slim chance that it will actually [[TakenForGranite turn the enemy into stone]] as it should. |
| 312 | ** Gilder's ''Aura of Denial'' (blocks status effects) can easily be substituted for Aika's ''Delta Shield'' (protects from all magic), as even by the end of the game, very few enemies actually cause StatusEffects with a basic attack (and Fina's super move that cures it requires low Spirit Points). |
| 313 | ** Actually, the ''entire magic system'' by the end of the game is damn-near useless with the advent of the items that replicate them. The two massive advantages are that they do not require Magic Points ''or'' Spirit Points, and the offensive items are generally far more powerful than the characters' magic, including Fina, who is a SquishyWizard. Also, Aika's Delta Shield -which the player has to spam against the {{Superboss}}es to avoid [[TotalPartyKill Total Party Kills]] -- blocks ''all'' magic used against your characters, both friendly and hostile, but it doesn't block items. And like many other games, the instant death spells are completely useless. |
| 314 | * ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheSecondStory'' has its own brand of impractical, with ridiculously flashy, full-screen "ultimate" attacks like Meteor Swarm, Extinction and Tri-Ace (which is so awesome it's named after the developers). All of which hit just one time, running up against the game's damage {{cap}} of 9,999. As opposed to the supposedly less advanced techniques like Mirror Slice, which can hit more than a ''dozen'' times. |
| 315 | ** ''The Second Story'' also has a ''lot'' of problems with Ashton's moves. All of them are cool to look at, and do respectable damage, but ''take forever''. Once of his first abilities, Leaf Slash, has him disappear in a whirlwind of leaves, then flash step and strike his target from behind...but it takes ''five seconds'', during which main character Claude just landed four Air Slashes, or seven Head Splitters, both of which execute much faster. And Ashton's mutually exclusive party member, Opera, has attacks that are faster, more powerful and have better range, as long as you can withstand her ear-splitting battlecries. |
| 316 | ** In ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'', the last symbology attacks you get are flashy and hit most of, if not the entire battle field. However, they generally can't be used in a chain combo, which cripples their damage capabilities compared to the basic symbology attacks that can be chained together repeatedly to acquire a huge damage multiplier. |
| 317 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Suikoden}}'' series contains a large number of 'Team Attacks' that fit this trope -- they look flashy, but have so many special restrictions that most of the time you'd be better off just having each individual character attack separately. The exceptions to this are attacks that spread out the damage to multiple targets without losing efficiency, like the Buddy Attack from the second game, which hits all enemies for 1x damage, which doesn't sound great, until you realize that it only takes two characters and ''will'' hit every enemy (up to six) for as much damage at once as if you'd hit the enemies individually. |
| 318 | ** The True Fire Rune in ''VideoGame/SuikodenIII'' fits this trope like a glove. It holds some of the most powerful spells in the game, easily capable of wiping out enemy teams in a round or two. The big problem is that with S3's mechanics, the spells hit EVERYTHING within their range, your own team included. |
| 319 | ** From a story point of view, some of the True Runes, such as the Soul Eater and the Rune of Punishment qualify. |
| 320 | ** In ''VideoGame/SuikodenIII'', the Waking Rune is this. It gives a massive strength increase at the cost of the unit starting each battle asleep. In most games, give this to a front-line fighter, and he'll likely only miss the first round of combat. In ''Suikoden III'', however, you need to run up to the enemy, meaning he'll be left behind and will be unlikely to get attacked. |
| 321 | * In ''VideoGame/SummonNight Swordcraft Story'', the elemental attack spells, especially the screen wide spell of your Guardian Beast is this, but mostly in the second game. In the first game, the damage and area combination is really neat and useful during some hard to manage random encounters, and save it from being completely useless, even the ultimate spells that charges slowly. Against boss since using weapon is simply faster and more efficient, you will want to use the enchantment spells most of the time. However, by the second game, the random encounters are simply easier to handle, especially considering the new buffed Drill, making them completely useless. |
| 322 | ** The second game is really, filled with this. The high end technique that consumes tons of weapon durability, some of them even outright destroyed your weapon. It deals 999 damage easily. But it wont even OneHitKill a boss, and combo moves that hits less multiple time and deals higher damage for far less cost, and [[GameBreaker Drill Special]] that is simply absurd and has ridiculously small cost. The EleventhHourSuperpower version and Standard version of the transformation move counts as well. It increases your stats at the cost of taking away your special move slot into an exclusive special move that simply shots a red wave of power for massive damage. Except, it only hit once. Part of the reason why the FinalBoss is harder in its OneWingedAngel mode is because you are forced to use this form against said boss, since despite the battle allows you to use spells and items, you cant use your locked weapon special move since otherwise you can just spam Combo and Drill Special and win in seconds. As for the normal version, you will prefer to use your offensive spells and basic move against random encounters. Against boss, Basic multiple hit Special moves deals massive damage for low cost. This translates to it being useless except for the revival effect. And this before we count the fact that your weapon durability is degenerated and you cant use spells and items when transformed coupled with the fact that you need to recharge the Daemon gem before using it again. |
| 323 | * ''VideoGame/TacticsOgre'', the second game in the ''VideoGame/OgreBattle'' series of Tactical {{RPG}}s has four super powerful elemental spells. Well, five, really. One for each of the four elements and the Dark element (Light being the only element left out, for some reason). To gather the four elemental spells, you must jump through an insane amount of truly ''ludicrous'' hoops. Here is the short version. Wall of text incoming. |
| 324 | ** First of all, you must gather the four Shaman Sisters. You meet one of them in the very beginning of the game, and depending on what you say then she may or may not join you later. These spells can only be found at the END of the game, probably thirty hours or more into the game. If you happen to offend her during the first hour: congratulations! You're screwed! If you want these spells, start over from the beginning and try to be nicer this time. Assuming you DO recruit her, you still have to get the three other sisters. One of which you have to kill to win a mission that you have to go through in order to find these spells. The trick is to bring her below 20 health without killing her, which is very hard to do "by accident" since your regular attacks can easily deal 100+ , maybe even 200+ damage by this point, depending on class, weapon and ElementalRockPaperScissors. Instead you have to use the ranged attack "Throw Rock" that every soldier has when not equipped with a real ranged weapon. It always deals between five to ten damage. (In rare cases, it can deal up to fifteen.) If you DO manage to bring her down without killing her, she will flee the battle. After that you have to go to a specific town and fight in a training battle in order to use the spell "Summon Storm" which does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. You make it rain. When you then try to leave the town, you will find her moping in the rain, and you get the chance to convince her to join you. That's two out of four. And gathering them is the FIRST step. Then you have to talk to their father several times during this whole mess, get the elemental shields, find the elemental temples, beat up a lot of different people in a lot of other places... When you finally DO get these spells, they seem really awesome. The fire spell, for instance, is described as a [[NoKillLikeOverkill thermonuclear detonation]] above the battlefield. It deals about as massive damage as you'd expect, but all of these spells deal damage to everyone but the caster. Which means you will lose your own troops just as often (if not more so) as you kill the enemy. In this game it's usually easier to just load the game and redo the battle if you lose an important soldier rather than trying to train a new one from scratch. Not considering the large cast of unique characters who can't be replaced, and who you will also blast to bits if they happen to be in a battle where you use this spell. Oh, and there is a hidden shop that is less bothersome to find (just go to th right town at the right date) and that sells item that do exactly the same thing but without the friendly fire. So why did you actually get these spell again? |
| 325 | * In the ''VideoGame/{{Telefang}}'' series, each Denjuu is capable of learning powerful Denma Attacks, which can do massive damage. However, in the first game, to be able to use them, the user has to charge up a Denma meter, which takes many turns, and by the time that it's fully charged, the attacker would have been better off using regular attacking moves over and over. The attacker could easily faint from all the turns that it wastes, due to it being vulnerable from repeated attacks from any opponent. In addition, Denma attacks in general have a slight chance of ''missing'' (or the defending Denjuu can use a move to evade the attack), so using them can be even more of a waste since the Denjuu wasted many turns charging all for nothing. Some Denma Attacks run off the user's and opponent's Denma stats rather than their physical stats, so the only time when it's a good idea to use them is when the attacker has a terrible Attack stat but an excellent Denma Attack stat (this is the case for a lot of mod-evolved Denjuu), '''and''' if the defender has an excellent Defense stat but a terrible Denma Defense stat, in which case Denma attacks will out-damage regular attacks. |
| 326 | ** Denma attacks work completely differently in Telefang 2 -- the meter is already charged up and the Denjuu simply has a limited amount of times where it can use these attacks. Items can refill the meter though. |
| 327 | * In ''VideoGame/TerraBattle'', Recoded Ellvern learns the skill Poison Predator, which deals x6 physical damage (highest multiplier of all skills) to all poisoned enemies. Problem is most bosses are immune to poison so you can only use this on mobs. Even then, it's easier to just kill them than try to inflict them with poison. And despite the skill's high power, Ellvern himself has low Attack stat, so it's still going to deal mediocre damage anyway (unless you equip Attack boosting Companions). |
| 328 | * ''VideoGame/TheiaTheCrimsonEclipse'': Some guest characters have excellent stat growths, but no Atlas shard slots on their one and only weapon. While they can still use powerful armor like Epic Garb, they cannot equip Atlas that protects them from ailments or elemental damage. |
| 329 | * ''VideoGame/TrialsOfMana'' has the Ancient spell. It's a devastating, full-screen spell that can kill almost any non-boss enemy with one cast. And Angela learns it if her class is changed into Magus. The downside is that the spell costs 18 MP per cast, which really isn't worth it to use a lot, as 99 is the maximum MP a player character can have. |
| 330 | * ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' |
| 331 | ** Once you get your hands on the Real Knife and the Locket in the Genocide Route, which give a +99 to Attack and Defense, respectively (for comparison, the next best boost is the Temmie Armor, which gives +20, and most other items are less than half that). However, to get them requires being in the endgame, and being in a Genocide Route requires you to kill enemies in every zone until the random encounters stop. Because of this, once you obtain these two items, there are no enemies remaining to use them on except the FinalBoss, a OneHitPointWonder who uses attacks based on ScratchDamage (plus a nasty poison effect), meaning that the two items are completely useless for any purpose aside from bragging rights. However, all of this is very much an intentional deconstruction. |
| 332 | ** During the Genocide Route, Mettaton debuts a new body [[spoiler: called Mettaton NEO [[RevelingInTheNewForm which he boasts has advanced human-eradicating features]]; it looks quite intimidating and he blocks the player's path. In reality, the body does nothing (he will never attack if the player wastes moves), he can't even shift from his position, and can be killed by a single hit from the protagonist.]] |
| 333 | * A fair number of attacks in ''VideoGame/VanguardBandits'' are this. But most apparent is the Blizzard Break attack, it deals good damage, is fairly accurate and cheap on one cost. But it takes a ton of your Action Points to use, so you generally can't move and use it on the same turn. |
| 334 | * In ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'', most of the Gatito pins don't have any workarounds for their problems and are in fact quite Awesome But Impractical. Also, the elemental deck. It looks cool, but it's not exactly a deck to play seriously with. The Anguis pin has the highest attack power of all the pins... but it's extremely slow to level and does not reboot once used, meaning you get one shot per fight. |
| 335 | * ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'' has the Well-Weathered skill, which grants a large number of Tension Points when a character takes damage from weather. Since Tension Points are used to use Tension Arts, activate [[SuperMode Overdrive]], and revive downed teammates, having a good supply of Tension Points makes a character far more effective in battle. So what's wrong with Well-Weathered? First, weather events occur randomly and infrequently. Second, most types of weather don't do any damage, meaning that there are large sections of the game world will the skill will never activate. Finally, even if you do have it equipped in damaging weather, the constant drain it puts on your HP will make any battles much harder to win. |
| 336 | * Late in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'': one of the playable drivers becomes an equip-able healer blade with great stats and abilities. Unfortunately, it's extremely impractical to use them in this capacity because doing so results in them being unavailable as a driver and reducing the total number of blades you can have active at one time. Furthermore, Rex is the only one who can use this character in that capacity, and he's much more effective as an attacker than a healer. Ultimately, it's just far more efficient to just use them as a driver. |
| 337 | * ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' has a few examples: |
| 338 | ** First, the last special attacks that can be earned for certain characters. They are awesome to watch and rack up the damage, but unless you have the right accessories and/or items, you'll never have enough boosts in your gauge to pull them off. |
| 339 | ** Second, Erde Kaiser Sigma. Leaving out the fact that the crucial item needed to get this ether skill is only obtained through a near impossible side-boss battle, the ether cost is absurdly restrictive. The Erde Kaiser line is like this in all three games. Insane damage, but insane ether cost too. |
| 340 | ** An item in Episode III called Seven Moons brings the character back with full HP and EP. Unfortunately it can sometimes crystalize the character you use it on, meaning if you don't have the item that cures crystallization, they're out in three anyway. And to upgrade this to its better form (no crystallization), you have to go through a GuideDangIt sidequest in a limited-time area. |
| 341 | ** MOMO's Episode I transformations, due to their time limits (2 turns normally, with one or two added if MOMO has lost a lot of HP) and once-per-battle usage restrictions. |
| 342 | ** Most special moves you earn from completing sidequests in Xenosaga II fall under this; they might look nifty and do impressive damage, but so does landing a string combo against an enemy's weak point, which cost no EP and are easy to puzzle out with a couple turns of trial and error. They usually inflict more damage than specials, too. |
| 343 | * ''VideoGame/Yakuza0'' has a lengthy and fairly involved quest where you help a citizen with a bag phone -- pretty fresh and swanky technology in the '80s. It entails first finding a battery (it drains its charge after he makes a single call), then a health item (it's extremely heavy and throws his shoulder out of whack), and finally, fending off some thugs who are harassing him. Your reward for all of this is to finally get to use the bag phone... which works just like any other save point/phone in the game save for not costing 100 yen (a piddly amount in any Yakuza, but especially in one set during Japan's economic boom where money doubles as experience points). But to be fair, it's true to life -- actual bag phones were also notoriously expensive, unwieldy and impractical, especially in a big city where there's a perfectly functional pay phone every other block or so. |
| 344 | * ''VideoGame/YakuzaLikeADragon'' has the Essence of Orbital Laser, a reward for completing the [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou business management minigame's questline]]. It is one of the most damaging abilities in the game, hits all enemies with lightning-type damage, and is a ''frickin' KillSat'' besides. It is also one of the most expensive abilities to use, costing 200 MP per shot. If you get it early on, there's a good chance you won't even have enough MP to use it at all, and even when you can use it, it will leave Kasuga with precious little MP left over, forcing you to use your turns to recover MP. |
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