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[mindsale]

Even with all the duds in Fire Emblem and Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy, I'll go with a controversial pick, too - Marle from Chrono Trigger.

Edit: Her design is great even if her spritework isn't, and she's outpaced by everyone else in terms of damage. Couple that with her dedicated role as healer being stepped on by heals from people with actual combat utility like Frog and Ayla, and she's only really useful for Techs and battles of attrition.

 

[Peltz]

Even with all the duds in Fire Emblem and Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy, I'll go with a controversial pick, too - Marle from Chrono Trigger.

Wat

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

Freed Y in Suikoden 2. This guy just sucks. There might be weaker characters in the game, but you're forced to take Freed with you on occasion, and he's just near useless.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Even with all the duds in Fire Emblem and Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy, I'll go with a controversial pick, too - Marle from Chrono Trigger.

I wish she was better. Love her character, weapon, and element. She's not even that bad compared to characters from other series that are true liabilities - but she's clearly a lot less useful than the stronger members.

 

[Lucky Seven]

Cath from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade comes to mind
Really low attack and defense stats. High speed level up rates, but that's about it. You can train her up to be decent, but there's two other thief units that you can get earlier that are better overall.

Eh, she's actually good at her job of stealing. If the other thieves happen to die, then she doesn't make a bad replacement as she's got good avoid and from what I remember she joins during the most axe heavy part of the game. I think there are weaker playable units in the DS titles through reclass.

 

[Nottle]

Statistically there will enevitably be a lot of Fire Emblem characters that fit this.

The Geomancer in FFV always sort of sucked.

I always felt like Naoto from persona 4 was weak because you get he so late so you don't have her s link built up, and she has the instant kill spells which are shoddy when it comes to successfully hitting the enemy.
Love her character though, just wish maybe you got her a couple dungeons prior.

Gobi from Breath of Fire 1 kind of sucked. I just played that recently and he is only useful underwater.

Cloud from FFT I've always heard is more trouble than he's worth.

I can't wait for this thread to become: person A complains about a character they dislike, then person B comes in with the speed runner tech knowledge bomb about how with the right setup you can pull some broken shit.

 

[Verilligo]

Even with all the duds in Fire Emblem and Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy, I'll go with a controversial pick, too - Marle from Chrono Trigger.

Edit: Her design is great even if her spritework isn't, and she's outpaced by everyone else in terms of damage. Couple that with her dedicated role as healer being stepped on by heals from people with actual combat utility like Frog and Ayla, and she's only really useful for Techs and battles of attrition.

I can see what you're getting at, but some of those techs are REALLY good. The Auto-Life effect from the Robo/Marle/Crono triple tech is invaluable for killing Lavos during the forced battle in the Underwater Palace. Personally I'm less fond of Magus. Sure, he does some pretty big magical damage, but you can't really USE him unless your entire party is based around him. Marle also gets Haste, which is pretty big.

 

[Basileus777]

Would Thomas from Suikoden III count?

Don't he and his crew get access to super high levels in skills and actually end up being really good?

 

[ShinySylvee]

Much as I wish it wasn't the case going to go with

Its stat distribution is extremely bizarre. It has 90/100/125 defenses (100+ is pretty dang good) which normally would indicate that it would make a good defensive Pokemon but has the absolute worst defensive typing I can think of with just one immunity, 2 resistances, and 4 weaknesses to the most common offensive typings in the game including 4x to rock, meaning that it will often take half its health on switch in thanks to Stealth Rock. As an offensive Pokemon things aren't good either since its move pool is absolutely abysmal with it pretty much only learning Ice and Flying type moves, meaning that you have almost nothing to do besides spam STAB Ice moves. Yeah you can use it to play through the main game but the main campaign for Pokemon is always easy and you could realistically do it with pretty much any Pokemon in the game with a couple of exceptions. I'm sure that some people will say that there are weaker Pokemon out there, and that is definitely true. But I would argue that almost all of them weren't intended to be actually strong Pokemon, just ones that you can use and get through the game. Articuno is a legendary and has some of the highest base stats in the game, only really being outstripped by the title legendaries. And despite its status it's barely usable in the lowest tier of battling that exists. It's one of the most powerful Pokemon lore-wise and yet in game it's less useful then many of the fully-evolved Pokemon in the game.

 

[Piers]

Literally the Novice class in Ragnarok Online, which is partly the point as players are supposed to change class once they hit Job Lv 10. On a more meta sense, Taekwon Masters are effectively worthless as a class because their major skills are so limited by being in specific maps on specific days of the month, and once a map is assigned a day they cannot typically change it for the rest of the character. Said skills even that good.

If gacha RPGs count, I recall Shadow (FF6) from Brave Exvius being right at the bottom of unit rankings for some of the worst stats (and growth) as well as skills of characters in the game. As the wiki sarcastically put it, "Has Escape so you can flee and summon a better character."

 

[Graciaus]

I always use Aerith when I play FF7. If she stuck around she would be pretty broken since her limit breaks are great.

Morgana from Persona 5 can be a good one. If you play anything less then hard I wouldn't say it applies though. His HP and defense are both very low so it isn't uncommon for him to get killed in one hit. Doesn't matter how good of a healer/mage he is if he isn't alive.

Bowman from Star Ocean 2 was considered a useless character when the game came out. But I have heard over the years he can be the best character in the game if used right.

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

Don't he and his crew get access to super high levels in skills and actually end up being really good?

Some of them yes Juan and cecile

 

[shouamabane]

.

 

[Miniature Kaiju]

Chu chu has a few odd gimmicks that only it can do, but none of those really justify including it over almost any other character ground or gear.

Max-level Chu-Chu with Drive-amped stats is a total beast in Gear form, easily out-damaging every other Gear in the game, while using no fuel and being able to heal massive amounts of damage. You can pretty much solo the last dungeon/bosses with Chu-Chu.

 

[Whompa02]

Nobody is going to mention Khimari from FFX I guess?

He doesn't hit as hard as Auron, his defense isn't as good as a lot of other characters, his attack speed, magic, and limit break are all pretty middle of the road.

Also, narrative-wise he never shines

He's pretty useless.

Runner up: Fran for being almost equally useless.

 

[SolicitorPirate]

Suikoden 3 Thomas he and the rest of his party at the point you play as them are all garbage except for two of them. Still liked his story part tho

Wasn't his team up attack with Cecile really good though?

 

[AppleSeason]

[img]https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/bof/images/1/1b/BoBF2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080229031537[/img]

Bow from Breath of Fire II. In a normal situation he would be an interesting character, but he leaves the party so early and joins back so late that by the time you can use him again he's lagging so much behind the rest of the team that he is useless.

 

[Kain]

Cath from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade comes to mind
Really low attack and defense stats. High speed level up rates, but that's about it. You can train her up to be decent, but there's two other thief units that you can get earlier that are better overall.

She's useless, but Roy is worse. He's a Lord who can't evolve that gets temporarily op with the binding blade and if you happen to use all of its uses (30 I think) he becomes useless again.

Speaking of FE, all the jeigans bar Seth and Titania are usually very, very bad. But well, there's a lot of bad chars in general in those games, too many to count. I remember the duo Micaiah Sothe was a mess, specially in a game with Ike and his troupe and all the op animal chars of that saga...

 

[Galang]

Disagree. And he's too cute to leave out the party regardless.

 

[mindsale]

I can see what you're getting at, but some of those techs are REALLY good. The Auto-Life effect from the Robo/Marle/Crono triple tech is invaluable for killing Lavos during the forced battle in the Underwater Palace. Personally I'm less fond of Magus. Sure, he does some pretty big magical damage, but you can't really USE him unless your entire party is based around him. Marle also gets Haste, which is pretty big.

I completely agree about Magus. He's a character that's great by himself at the expense of group synergy, which ironically makes him terrible. He's an anti-Marle.

 

[LambdaTeos]

Raine from Tales of Symphonia, at least in the NA GC version
Only 3 offensive attacks, Photon, Holy Lance and Ray (you could only have 2, photon and holy lance or ray)

Several unison attacks and offensive attacks cut, no mystic arte (hi ougi) and melee attacks weak unless you killed a lot of enemies with the devil's arms
Powerful as a healer, but offensive lacked a lot

 

[aaaaaa]

Marle from Chrono Trigger.

Pretty bad character but I always ran the all-female team in the endgame. Has a decent triple tech and the prism dresses are the best armor.

 

[Mendrox]

Lucky and Miracle Punch are serious lifesavers and he is the best healer in the game.

No.

And he also isn't a joke at all.

 

[Basileus777]

I can see what you're getting at, but some of those techs are REALLY good. The Auto-Life effect from the Robo/Marle/Crono triple tech is invaluable for killing Lavos during the forced battle in the Underwater Palace. Personally I'm less fond of Magus. Sure, he does some pretty big magical damage, but you can't really USE him unless your entire party is based around him. Marle also gets Haste, which is pretty big.

Marle and Magus are both weaker characters, though it doesn't particularly matter in a game as easy as Chrono Trigger. Magus suffers from being an end game character that is actually a worse attack mage than Lucca anyway. Marle is undermined by the utility of items throughout the game, a character dedicated to healing is not especially useful. And late game Robo is the best healer anyway.

 

[R_thanatos]

No , morgana has decent attack power , excellent healing power and great support power.
And she certainly isn't a joke character either

 

[His Majesty]

Rhin from Torment: Tides of Numenera. She's a child whose main skill is hiding.

Completely useless in combat but one of the more interesting characters in the game.

 

[Niahak]

Freed Y in Suikoden 2. This guy just sucks. There might be weaker characters in the game, but you're forced to take Freed with you on occasion, and he's just near useless.

There are some weaker characters (Tuta is awful), but Freed Y would also be my pick for weakest character. What's worse (IIRC) is that you have Flik in your party for the same time, who is more or less the same archetype only actually good (~1.5x all of Freed Y's "good" stats). Freed even has a short range so he has to be in the front to attack - where his squishiness means he dies quickly.

Freed Y being in the party wouldn't be so bad if he could be in the convoy (like Miklotov for his whole section), but your party isn't full when Freed joins so he takes up a spot.

 

[SoundPulse]

Gordon from Final Fantasy 2.

He's the prototype Edward, but with none of the (dubious) benefits from the Bard job since that didn't exist yet. He starts off really weak with no redeeming qualities. While you absolutely can make him a decent fighter, why the hell would you? He's a guest character that will be leaving soon enough.

 

[ryushe]

yeah, no...
The only other character that's better than Morgana is the MC, and that's only cause he can change Persona's.

 

[Dragner]

I would say Haru is the weakest character in P5, her gun centric skillset is meh, and psy skills are nice and all but you can cover that with the MC with stronger attacks even.

 

[Waji]

Suikoden 3 Thomas he and the rest of his party at the point you play as them are all garbage except for two of them. Still liked his story part tho

I remember Melville being slightly worse but I'm not sure.

 

[Cornbread78]

So many characters in so many jRPGs I never bothered using much (unless I had to) because they were so week and useless that I don't even know where to start...

 

[DrFunk]

Whew what a stinky opinion

Morgana is the best healer -ever-

Edit: he's fast as all hell too.

 

[Dandy Crocodile]

Hahaha, what?

The hell...according to who?

Hope is THE mage to use in end game parties. Besides, who's your other option, Vanille?

 

[tsundoku]

Malak in Final Fantasy Tactics.

Both Rafa and Malak are terrible in their own classes -the low damage-random hitting special attacks they have are basically useless since they hit 4 random squares out of 9 for low damage. They're also both slow and fragile.

However, Rafa has one saving grace, she has a high Faith score which makes her a pretty decent white magic user.

Malak, however, has no saving grace like this. He's worse then anyone at everything and it's even more laughable that he shares a game with final fantasy's most broken character, Cidofas Orlandu

Cloud's worse.

e: OP is also weird because Aeris has a totally serviceable physical attack and I remember the game having lots of options to use it

 

[Syril]

Kiwi from Shining Force 2 is supposed to have the advantage in defense so high that most everything can only do 1 damage to him, but he doesn't really have the HP to go with it and he's also pretty weak. His defense also can't do anything against magic. Maybe he's more useful if you level him up enough to promote to his Gamera class, but I always end up replacing him with another character once you have to start choosing who to take into battle.

 

[Waji]

Considering you can get him instead of the strong guy with his scythe... it's sad.
I had hope he would get some battle skills but no, only average magic.

Badrach in Valkyrie Profile.

 

[tsundoku]

Kiwi from Shining Force 2 is supposed to have the advantage in defense so high that most everything can only do 1 damage to him, but he doesn't really have the HP to go with it and he's also pretty weak. His defense also can't do anything against magic. Maybe he's more useful if you level him up enough to promote to his Gamera class, but I always end up replacing him with another character once you have to start choosing who to take into battle.

He's Magikarp not really what the OP is saying. The on-foot archers and most of the tinydungeon party members that aren't Karna are what the topic's OP seems to be describing

 

[FSLink]

Morgana is a useless cat, Ryuji were right because there's nothing Makoto can't do better.

Let's compare:

1. Salvation vs Mediarahan, at this point, almost all negative ailments will be cured by your teammates free due to Social Link. Salvation also costs more MP than Mediarahan hence there's no point in choosing Salvation to Mediarahan.
2. Samarecarm, revive skill is almost always a waste in SMT, you better save that skill slot and use item instead.
3. Makoto has Marakukaja.
4. Makoto has better damage spell.
5. Makoto hit harder than Morgana.
6. Makoto strongest gun has +10 stats which is the best in the game, even Joker strongest gun cannot compare.
7. Morgana equip sucks ass because he's a cat, hence his armor option is limited.
8. Morgana has Miracle punch which is pretty useless late game, you are better off with Joker special gun abilities.

That good enough for you?

I dunno, I feel like there's worse in Persona 5. And even then none of the party members are bad. Feels out of place in this topic when he's more than competent.

Also Morgana gets healing faster than Makoto, and it's also not a bad idea to have both of them (since Ann is probably best to use for damage dealing than healing) making him a great asset in dungeons to save SP before you get SP recovery items.

 

[Drillary Clinton]

LOL he's the best Mage in the game, not even close to 'weak'

I figured anyone would be able to tell this is obviously from a character perspective. Dude is a loser.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Oh, another one springs to mind, although one that is much better after patches:

Retribution Paladins circa Vanilla WoW.

This was before Blizzard got the hang of PvE balance, and they'd internally had the idea that since Paladins could fulfil multiple roles, they should do each weaker than a specialist in that role - but fights never really called for that adaptability, so you could either bring a poor-performing character, or a specialist, and the fights were designed around the assumption that you'd brought a specialist.

And of the poor-performing characters, Retribution Paladins - ostensibly the damage-dealing role - were arguably the weakest. Had to be in melee, were slow attackers, whose single notable attacking move (Seal of Command) was entirely RNG-based. Their itemisation was massively confused, with a mish-mash of stats of varying levels of benefit with nothing that really stood out.

DPS feral druid since BC. They finally figured out how to make the classes unique and viable in WotLK.

 

[Caronte]

Baldur's Gate II

She's just there as a bad replacement of Imoen, and there's no reason to have her in your party unless you want to do all the side quests in chapter 2.

I guess she's not weakest as in "useless" more as in "why does this character even exist".

 

[Drillary Clinton]

Machinist in FFXIV (((


Stop misgendering poor Morgana. He is a proud male feline. #Problematic

 

[C.Mongler]

I'll give a Final Fantasy VI analysis since that's the most recent great RPG I played through with this problem. I'm gonna have to give this award to Umaro, a character so bad I'm not sure he falls into the category of 'joke character' or not. He has practically no story; he's an abominable snowman who wants to kill you, and then once you kick his ass he inexplicably decides he's your friend.

He has pretty good physical damage, however that's it. You can't control him, you can't teach him spells, he's completely unreliable and has no utility. There's moments his shtick is useful sure, like there is for anyone in this game, but they are super few and far between. He's just bad. Sorry buddy.

Runner up would be Cyan, which sucks because unlike Umaro, as a character Cyan is awesome.

He's got a fantastic backstory and maybe the biggest motivation of any of the cast members to really want to give Kefka what's coming to him. He also has a great design too; a chiseled, bad-ass samurai who has mastered the blade and seen some shit with it. The problem is, he sucks. Once you get to the point in the game where you have the option to not have Cyan in your party, you're at the point where he's fallen off a cliff in terms of viability. Bushido seems like it would be cool, but it's just annoying in reality. Wait 12-years to charge your attack to get a super underwhelming move that literally every character in the game can do better damage than instantly, oh boy! Thankfully, with the esper system in FFVI you can give Cyan some utility spells so he's not completely worthless, but boy is he close.

 

[Chuckie]

Quina - FF9

Or maybe it was because I never really understood the blue mage stuff.

 

[singo]

Pikachu, Pokémon Yellow

 

[Remmy2112]

Rhin from Torment: Tides of Numenera. She's a child whose main skill is hiding.

Completely useless in combat but one of the more interesting characters in the game.

Once you level her up she actually becomes pretty badass.

Spoiler

She gets an ability that allows her to use any cypher twice, instead of once.

Treat her as a healer and she is pretty damn good.

 

[Caronte]

Quina - FF9

Or maybe it was because I never really understood the blue mage stuff.

 

[Lord Azrael]

Nobody is going to mention Khimari from FFX I guess?

Multiple people have already mentioned Khimari.

 

[Ruff]

Does playing flashback Cloud as he fights a dragon with Sephiroth count? Guy does like 4 damage to it and dies instantly while sephy basically 1-2 shots it.