The most useless skills in games

[brighter]

Oblivion has a hand-to-hand combat skill. It's the only form of combat in the game that doesn't have any weapons - no brass knuckles, no fancy gauntlets, nothing. No weapons means no enchanted weapons, which means no magic damage. Thus, the maximum damage you can possibly do with the hand-to-hand skill is 11, assuming you have the skill and your strength stat at 100 and your opponent isn't wearing armor. If you've ever gotten an Oblivion characters stat's that high, you know that's around the point where the game starts spawning trash mobs with the resilience of Lu Bu. This is tedious enough with enchanted weapons - it might actually be impossible to play a hand-to-hand character at that point??

Oh, and on top of that, you also get the shortest attack range in the whole game. Anyone with a longsword will be zoning you out like Old Sagat. Have fun!!!!

(I only learned this the other day because I wanted to get comfy on the couch and punch skeletons as a lizard monk. Very disappointing.)

 

[UnDubious]

One status ailment that's particularly useless in 99.9% of RPGs is Poison. It'll probably miss, and even when it hits, it just does some tiny amount of damage every turn that probably won't add up to one normal hit throughout the entire fight. It's obvious a lot of devs just throw certain skills in just because some genres always have them and don't question their use.

A cool counterexample to this is 7th Dragon 2020. Each character class has an ultimate skill you can get late in the game through a mini sidequest, and it requires a certain gauge be full to use so you usually only get to do it once per boss battle. The Tricker's ultimate skill does less damage than the other classes (still a good hit), but it inflicts every single status ailment in the game, with a good chance of success. The boss will be paralyzed, asleep, blinded, slowed down, take damage every turn from poison and fire, and who knows what else. A strong boss will recover from the worst ones pretty quickly, but you'll still get 1-2 free turns at least. It's super useful.

 

[hitenmitsurugi11]

It's Shin Megami Tensei related, it's Marin Karin from the original Persona 3. Not only did Mitsuru constantly use it, but it never worked unless she charmed herself.

There is a way to counter-act: change her tactics to Full Assault, that way she's won't use status ailments nearly as much as she would otherwise.

And speaking of status ailments, while playing IV and IV:A, it's actually impressive how useful they are in both of these games, damn near all of them (except maybe poison?) can be used against most demons (and even some bosses), plus some other uses they have, like for example, using Bind Voice+ Fundraise on a demon, so you can get a good amount of macca and avoid wasting press turns or having them run away from the battle, or using Dormina/Lullaby + Eternal Rest or Pandemic Bomb/Death's Door to make random encounters a joke, and etc.

 

[Atlas45]

I think the worst skill that I can think of, would be great shield from Fire Emblem Sacred stones, it's a skill that generals get that allows them to negate all the damage they would take from a attack, doesn't seem too bad, but most of the time it does nothing cause generals already are a bulky class and also cause the chance to activate it is really low, being 1% per level of the enemy you're fighting so at max it's a 20% chance and good luck finding level 20 enemies, so in the rare cases where it would make a difference, like you didn't see a enemy with a effective weapon, it prolly won't activate cause the chances are so low.

 

[glokglakglak]

nice to see everyone pointing out persona games

 

[UnDubious]

All attack magic in Phantasy Star III is useless. Actually almost all non-healing magic. Must be because of the rushed development, but it does so little damage that it's never really better than just attacking. Then again there barely are any bosses in the game and they're pushovers anyway.

 

[ATenderLad]

Fallout 1 and 2 are full of this sort of thing!

There's perks like Light Step, which makes traps less likely to go off. That sounds nice, but the game has very few floor traps - or traps in general - and the majority of them don't actually check to see to see if you have this perk! (There's like, two spots in the game where the developers implemented that script).

There's also Adrenaline Rush, which confers a barely noticeable bonus - +1 to Strength - for the delightful cost of being at less than 50% health.

(Actually, in general I think most skills in games that only kick in when you're in danger are actively bad. If you gotta be losing in the first place, why not get something that helps you win instead?)

 

[Yousef]

nice to see everyone pointing out persona games

The poster child for useless skills

 

[SoraSquood]

....okay, so y'all know BT2, yeah?

Well there's an ability Gohan and Yajirobe have in that game called Hidden Energy. Its intended use is to hide your ki so your opponent can't sense and lock on to you.

But given that the only possible use of this ability is against a CPU character, one that you're more likely to just go head-on at, it's not exactly useful at all, making it more of a waste of energy if anything, which is probably why BT3 removed it.

 

[trickybus]

In Dragon's Crown, one of the elf archer's skills grants her bonus damage when she fires a charged shot. The problem with this skill is that you are rooted to the spot while charging and will almost never be able to fully charge a shot before whatever you're fighting is all up in your business. This is even true for stationary monsters because they can and do have projectiles they will use regularly.

What about multiplayer? Your teammates will be too busy launching enemies out of your line of fire, so still no.

 

[E0N]

There's a move called Curse in Pokemon that cuts half of the life of the pokemon. What benefit it has? I don't know but whenever the opponent uses it it surely makes the battle a lot easier for me

 

[Glimbo]

In Dragon's Crown, one of the elf archer's skills grants her bonus damage when she fires a charged shot. The problem with this skill is that you are rooted to the spot while charging and will almost never be able to fully charge a shot before whatever you're fighting is all up in your business. This is even true for stationary monsters because they can and do have projectiles they will use regularly.

What about multiplayer? Your teammates will be too busy launching enemies out of your line of fire, so still no.

That's one of her best skills. She can stay in the air for a long time by using kicks and you can let off at least 3 charged shots before you touch the ground. It also affects cloned strike arrows. A few seconds of this video shows it in action.

 

[trickybus]

That's one of her best skills. She can stay in the air for a long time by using kicks and you can let off at least 3 charged shots before you touch the ground. It also affects cloned strike arrows. A few seconds of this video shows it in action.

I stand corrected! The elf is one of the characters I suck with, so that tracks lol

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:56 PM

There's a move called Curse in Pokemon that cuts half of the life of the pokemon. What benefit it has? I don't know but whenever the opponent uses it it surely makes the battle a lot easier for me

I don't know how the move currently works but in Gen 2 games, if the user Pokemon is a ghost-type, they sacrifice half their health to place a curse that takes 1/4 of the target's health each turn. Still not that useful of a move, since the target Pokemon can switch out to remove the curse, but it does do something.

 

[TechnologicalMF]

The poster child for useless skills

Honestly I fee like SMT Nocturne and SMT IV have WAY more useless skills than you see in Persona games.

Fallout 1 and 2 are full of this sort of thing!

There's perks like Light Step, which makes traps less likely to go off. That sounds nice, but the game has very few floor traps - or traps in general - and the majority of them don't actually check to see to see if you have this perk! (There's like, two spots in the game where the developers implemented that script).

There's also Adrenaline Rush, which confers a barely noticeable bonus - +1 to Strength - for the delightful cost of being at less than 50% health.

(Actually, in general I think most skills in games that only kick in when you're in danger are actively bad. If you gotta be losing in the first place, why not get something that helps you win instead?)

Was waiting for the Fallout examples, love this about these games and honestly in SMT too. I don't actually mind there being a ton of useless options in a game just to clarify but yes I was almost going to bring up Fallout myself lol

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:22 PM

I think the worst skill that I can think of, would be great shield from Fire Emblem Sacred stones, it's a skill that generals get that allows them to negate all the damage they would take from a attack, doesn't seem too bad, but most of the time it does nothing cause generals already are a bulky class and also cause the chance to activate it is really low, being 1% per level of the enemy you're fighting so at max it's a 20% chance and good luck finding level 20 enemies, so in the rare cases where it would make a difference, like you didn't see a enemy with a effective weapon, it prolly won't activate cause the chances are so low.

Oh my god you're right!
Been a while since I played Sacred Stones the game felt a little too easy for me so I never replayed it but I forgot about this!

Post automatically merged: Today at 4:23 PM

Oblivion has a hand-to-hand combat skill. It's the only form of combat in the game that doesn't have any weapons - no brass knuckles, no fancy gauntlets, nothing. No weapons means no enchanted weapons, which means no magic damage. Thus, the maximum damage you can possibly do with the hand-to-hand skill is 11, assuming you have the skill and your strength stat at 100 and your opponent isn't wearing armor. If you've ever gotten an Oblivion characters stat's that high, you know that's around the point where the game starts spawning trash mobs with the resilience of Lu Bu. This is tedious enough with enchanted weapons - it might actually be impossible to play a hand-to-hand character at that point??

Oh, and on top of that, you also get the shortest attack range in the whole game. Anyone with a longsword will be zoning you out like Old Sagat. Have fun!!!!

(I only learned this the other day because I wanted to get comfy on the couch and punch skeletons as a lizard monk. Very disappointing.)

Only TES game I've played from start to end has been Morrowind.
Tried the others but honestly they kind of just bored me a lot