Boring but Practical/Video Games/Role-Playing Game

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Normal attacks in RPGs. Special moves and magic are a lot more flashy, but they are usually restricted by something or other (Mana, Limit Break, etc). And some spells might not even work when you really need them.
  • Brian from Quest 64 can learn a wide variety of magic spells from the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. However, each element has to be leveled up separately, and spells are learned and powered up based only on their individual element. Since the power of your staff attack is based on all four elements combined, it is frequently more powerful and useful than any of the attack spells you learn.
    • That doesn't include the fact that said smack also regenerates one MP, which is obviously required for those fancy, toss-around spells which cost a range of one to three MP with a hard cap of 500 (And that's if you're patient).
  • The Elder Scrolls games have an almost infinite variety of possible character builds and spells. But the best way to beat powerful enemies has always been to hit them very hard with a big melee weapon.
    • In Oblivion, Azura's Star is arguably the most useful item in the game, and can be used to game breaking effect. What does it do? It's a rechargeable soul gem.
      • ...that you can get as early as Level 2!
      • ...and it just so happens to be a Grand Soul Gem, this means from Level 2 you're able to trap the souls of anything not classed as an NPC train up Conjuration and Summon a high leveled creature and you'd be able to make enchantments with a Greater Soul at Level 2.
      • Also, that healing spell you start with has the best MP-to-HP conversion ratio in the entire game. Carry some potions for emergencies, and it's literally the only healing spell you will EVER need.
    • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has the Hand to Hand Skill which deals damage to an enemy's Fatigue, when trained up to high levels you can knock down almost every humanoid enemy in a single punch, you'll need a weapon to finish them off because the Health damage when they're on the floor is terrible, but with low Fatigue everything has a lower chance to hit and anything with below 0 Fatigue just collapses incapable of doing anything until enough time passes.
    • The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall uses a spell creation system that applies additional points of damage or chance of success per character level. Due to the leveling system The Elder Scrolls' games use, that "1-2 + 1-2 per 2 level(s)" spell you created at the beginning can remain useful over the course of the game.
    • In terms of the Dragon Shouts of Skyrim, there's the Fus Ro Dah, which is almost certainly the first Shout the Dragonborn completely masters. It is not nearly as impressive as some of the other fully-upgraded Shouts, but thanks to its utility in battle and relatively fast recharge rate, many melee players use it by default.
      • The "Throw Voice" shout is basically glorified ventriloquism. Useful for luring enemies to certain locations to throw them off your trail or to set them up for an ambush. Especially useful against the Falmer, who are blind and rely entirely on sound to find their prey.
    • Bashing in Skyrim. Smacking an enemy in the face with a shield or the hilt of your weapon may not be very exciting, but it's a lifesaver in melee combat. It can even interrupt a Dragon's breath attack. Investing a few perks in the Block skill tree gives you a chance to disarm enemies with bashing too.
    • Also from Skyrim, daggers. They aren't as big or as flashy as the giant warhammers or the greatsword, but if you invest points in the Sneak skill set you can do x15 damage with a sneak attack with a dagger. Get the Ancient Assassin Armor and equip it's gloves? That adds another x15. A whopping x30 sneak attack damage. So, if you had a glass dagger, you could do 690 points of damage in a single strike.
      • Also a good moneymaker. Iron Daggers are cheap to buy the components for, if you can't find them in the field, and with a filled Petty Soul Gem, they can be enchanted with something (best bet: Banish) that will increase their sell value severalfold.
  • Renting out property in Fable 2 or Fable 3 can automatically add money (in-game) to your pocket every 5 minutes, which can prompt players to spent more time building up money to continuously save up to rent out more property than on the actual quests, obviously a very boring chore, but very profitable in the long run.
  • Increm, the second level red spell from Skies of Arcadia, is probably the only non-healing spell you'll ever need—it boosts attack and defense by 25%, which makes boss fights oh-so-much more bearable. Only one character can make good use of attack magic, but Increm works just as well when cast by anyone.
    • Aika's Delta Shield counts as well. It's only her second special ability and by far her least-flashy, but it's the one you'll be using every single turn for the rest of her life to protect yourself against bosses who spam instant-death spells at you.
    • And Aika's third special ability, Lambda Burst, will destroy most Random Encounters as your first action, once your party starts gaining 8 sp per round.
    • And Enrique's second spell, Justice Shield, halves all damage dealt to you for one round. Most medium to late and Bonus Bosses are basically fought by having Aika and Enrique cast Delta Shield and Justice Shield every round while you use the other two characters to accrue SP, until you can unleash an Incremed Pirate's Wrath at your enemy, rinse, repeat. It should be noted that trying to fight most of the Bonus Bosses from the Updated Rerelease without this strategy increases the difficulty many-fold.
    • Sylenis, the silence spell. This understated status effect spell can shut down cold the offense of the entire Valuan airship fleet!
    • Combining Boring Yet Practical with Awesome Yet Impractical, often the best way to beat bounty bosses are to spam Delta Shield and Justice Shield every round to protect yourself from attacks while everyone else focuses and heals until you max out your Spirit gauge in order to use Prophecy, the Awesome Yet Impractical attack of the game, to bring everything to near death in a single turn.
  • In-Universe example in Dragon Age: The Grey Wardens are an old order of warriors who possess supernatural powers to fight the Darkspawn and are the only ones who know the secret to permanently destroy an Archdemon. They never tell exactly what those powers are and what kind of training it includes, and even tell the new recruits only that there will be a ritual in which they will gain their new abilities. The ritual however, is purely symbolic and there is no training involved at all. All it takes to gain the powers of a Grey Warden is to drink a full cup of darkspawn blood. You either drop dead immediately, or you become immune to the taint and gain the ability to sense all darkspawn creatures nearby. That's the whole thing.
    • In a gameplay example for Mages, however: While mages are able to unleash all of the powers of the universe straight at their enemies, the spells that will see the most use will be Stone Fist(a powerful attack that knocks most enemies off their feet), Stone Armor(which can give a mage decent armor depending on their spellpower), Lightning(which has incredibly high damage considering it's an early-game spell), and Fireball(an area-of-effect spell that few enemies are immune to that can basically knock ANYTHING down).
  • In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, if you are at a considerably high level with good equipment (which isn't that hard to get) and proper classes, normal attacks are simply stronger than the flashy Psynergy. Especially with super-swords like the Sol-Blade or Excalibur, which have the potential to "unleash" even stronger attacks. This tends to result in caster-type characters getting permanently benched in favor of less spectacular but more reliable warrior-type characters.
    • It's actually a flaw in the game system. When attack power is increased by level grinding, you have to raise "elemental affinity" to boost your Psynergies. Which requires the use of the Awesome but Impractical summons, and it isn't worth it anyway, given the fact that the game is rather easy.
    • Defensive Djinn like Flash, Granite, and Shade create an aura that for one turn drastically reduces all damage your party recieves in any form. Therefore, by carefully timing and alternating to use one such Djinni per turn and summon with it the next, while remaining or recovering party members chip at the enemy's HP, you can go through the most difficult boss fights while taking very little damage.
    • Another variation of this takes place in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where Isaac is an assist trophy, causing him to appear randomly and perform a specific action when a certain item is picked up. People were expecting him to use something fancy, such as what would be considered to be his signature attack, (Ragnarok, a gigantic sword falling from the sky that explodes on impact) but instead he was given Move, his most basic Psynergy spell that has zero combat use in the actual game and is only used for moving objects over a distance as the name would suggest. People were suitably initially disappointed. However, what they didn't consider was that in a game like Brawl, the ability to move objects over distances would be far more useful than fancy exploding swords: this is because Move manifests itself as a gigantic palm that pushes the opponent off the stage, and since it doesn't damage them, it doesn't allow them to use their recovery attack(s) more than once. Not only that, but Isaac fires it off 3 times, just in case the opponent is somehow able to survive after being hit by the first one.
  • Fallout 3 has power fists, nuke-firing mortars, flamethrowers, missile launchers, and miniguns, yet the most useful weapon is the trusty hunting rifle due to a combination of accuracy, power, durability, and literally every third or fourth mook holding one to fix it with.
    • The hunting rifle in the earlier games is pretty much the mainstay of your arsenal for the first half of each game. It's only in the late game that the exotic stuff (plasma guns, Gauss rifles, and so on) becomes necessary and even then a cut-down pistol version of that rifle is very effective.
    • And you can find that with maxed Unarmed, your practical bare fists (which never need repairing and which you don't need to scavenge parts for) will deal more knock-downs and crippling and lethal criticals than your Power Fists, Shocker or Deathclaw Gauntlets.
    • While a shotgun might not be considered the sneakiest weapon in a game, combat shotguns become somewhat ridiculous when taking into account how Fallout 3 handles critical hits (per projectile rather than per shot,) and shotguns fire nine projectiles. With relevant perks and the proper-name version, shotguns can do more damage from a sneak attack than the Fat Man.
    • "Lincoln's Repeater" is a favourite among players for being light, having good range and accuracy, satisfactory reload speed, fantastic damage, and it's easy to maintain because it's repaired by the aforementioned Hunting Rifle. Some people are put off by it's somewhat rare ammunition, though. Also, the fact that it has a pimpin' gold finish and it was the personal weapon of Abraham Lincoln might make it count as Awesome Yet Practical.
    • For those preferring energy weapons, the easily acquired Laser Pistol deals decent damage, is perfectly accurate, and makes use of those oh-so-common (and relatively cheap) energy cells you will never use for anything else ever. Supplement (or replace) with a plasma pistol when the Enclave starts showing up, and you will never run out of cheap firepower.
    • For those who play the role of sniper: The Sniper Rifle. It is nearly as common as the Hunting Rifle, the ammo is everywhere, it has a very nice scope which makes it more efficient than V.A.T.S. and it does Massive Damage on head shots. If you are after Stopping Power: The Gauss Rifle, which you can literally access at lv 2 is easily in the top 5 weapons for damage/shot, and knocks enemies over on critical hits. And you can easily get an unbreakable Gauss Rifle from completing a very nice sidequest also available at Lv 2.
    • The Lever-Action Rifle from the Point Lookout DLC. When nearly fully repaired, it's quite powerful and uses cheap and plentiful 10mm ammo. It's not as common to repair as the hunting rifle or as accurate, but it holds more ammunition and gives you a very nice reason to use that 10mm ammo that has been piling up since you got that hunting rifle while still being a long distance threat.
  • Fallout: New Vegas grandfathers in most of the above, but has a substantial number of Boring but Practical Perks that the player will get a lot of mileage out of. Since the player gets half as many Perks as in Fallout 3, it's a tougher choice.
    • For example, Intense Training is the metric most other Perks as measured against; it provides a single point in one of the player's 7 primary stats. This means +2 to 1-3 skills (or +1/2 a point, rounded up, to all of them, in the case of Luck), as well as any derived stats that are governed (More hit points for Endurance, more carrying capacity/melee damage for Strength, etc.). However, despite all the passive bonuses, it doesn't actually do anything noticeable.
    • Educated and Comprehension grant extra, often much-needed, skill points. And that's it.
    • Jury Rigging becomes available at level 14, competing with Perks that do things such as doubling the blast radius of explosives, causing shotguns to knock enemies off their feet, reinforcing the strength of all your limbs, or giving you a pistol-packing Guardian Angel. Jury Rigging allows you to repair any item with any remotely-similar item, meaning that while the Perk itself is Boring but Practical, it turns a great deal of Awesome but Impractical gear into Awesome Yet Practical.
    • In terms of weapons, New Vegas' Cowboy Repeater can serve for almost the entire game.
    • A fully-upgraded Varmint Rifle has night-vision targeting capability, and a suppressor, making it a fantastic entry-level long-range stealth weapon. The parts are also much easier to find than the suppressor for the Sniper Rifle. A critical stealth hit to the head can bring down or seriously damage almost any low-level enemy, and even higher level enemies will feel it's sting until you can get a hunting rifle or sniper rifle fully upgraded.
    • The Luck statistic. It aids with critical hits and the feature mentioned above, as well as giving you an edge in the random number generator. Now, in most games this wouldn't mean much, but at maximum Luck you essentially never, ever lose at the casino games, especially blackjack. If you're looking for a way to get money to pay for those expensive, pretty guns or stimpacks, the casinos are where to go. Only downside is that if you win too much, the casinos ban you. All this in addition to critting almost every other hit.
  • Rookies to the Pokémon series may fall prey to the lure of the Awesome but Impractical moves like Frenzy Plant and Hydro Cannon, which have crazy power but often have catches (stat decrease, low PP, unreliable accuracy, recoil damage, turn loss...). More experienced players know to keep moves like Razor Leaf and Water Gun, which are learned fairly early on but are still capable of dealing reliable (if relatively low) damage if you battle smart. Plus, you can muscle through a long dungeon area without having to go back and heal PP at the Pokemon Center.
    • Moves like Flamethower, Ice Beam, and Thunderbolt are all used frequently in competitive play because of their high PP (the amount of times one can use it), relatively high damage, and they have a chance to inflict status effects. At some point, people are given the chance to pick between these moves and their stronger counter-parts (Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, Blizzard, and Thunder), which do more damage, but have very low PP and are inaccurate.
    • Soloing the game. One of the most interesting aspects of the game is catching and adding pokémon to your team to cover a diversity of types, but by using only one pokémon throughout the whole game will make said pokémon so overleveled that most enemies will be KO'd by one move from your beast and, if they ever get an opportunity to attack, unless the move hits a galring weakness it will roughly deal 10% of your HP. At least until Pokémon Black and White, as changes to the way experience is earned have made it very difficult and time-consuming to raise the level of a Pokemon much higher than the level of what it can train against while raising the level of several that are on a lower level than that became much easier.
    • While Pokémon found later in the game may be more interesting, the Pokemon used to defeat the Elite Four and Champion at the end of the game are likely to be the evolved versions of Pokemon found towards the beginning of the game.
    • Even though the move Flash has about as much use in battle as Sand-Attack, there's no way you can go through one of the dark caves without it or a strategy guide. Especially one that resembles a maze.
  • In Parasite Eve 2, it's often better for the most part to stick with single shots if the gun has that option. And even highly recommended to use a pistol for a good portion of the game for regular mooks. Why? Critical hits increase when firing rate decreases. In fact the highest critical hit rate weapon is actually the boring looking P8 (which looks like a pea shooter). It's also noteworthy to know that you get infinite basic pistol ammo throughout the game.
    • While some of the more exotic attachments for the M4A1 might seem to be useful, a lot of them (the M203 and the Pyke for instance) are difficult to use or use expensive ammo. The two most useful attachments in the game are the magazine clip, which adds another 30 rounds to the magazine and the Hammer, which can paralyze enemies and knock them out of their attack animations. The ammo is free to boot. In the Nightmare Mode, the later is practically a requirement to your continued survival.
  • You have to defend Fort Condor in order to get the Phoenix materia in Final Fantasy VII. This leads to a mini game where one can put together a very elaborate defense strategy to defend your base. You can get a variety of units, everything from birds to fire catapults to tri-stoners. But the second most easiest method to win? Get 20 fighters together and march them down the hill. They'll kill everything and halt the attack before the boss shows up. The easiest method? Lose the mini game and have your team win one very easy battle.
  • In Final Fantasy VIII, Zell's Limit Break consists of a series of Action Commands to trigger various martial arts moves, with the more complex the button sequence, the flashier and more damaging the attack. However, the most effective overall combination is to alternate the two most basic moves, Punch Rush and Booya; because they're also the quickest moves and have the simplest button sequences, it's possible to get in many more hits this way than is possible with the fancier moves, adding up to greater damage overall. The combination has acquired the Fan Nickname "Armageddon Fist."
  • In Paper Mario, the normal jump, the most basic attack you have, doesn't require any FP, and any attack-increasing badge will raise its power by two if you time the attack right; the hammer only gets + 1 if timed correctly. In other words, in a game where most enemies don't have more than 10 HP, you can kill them in a single hit just by using two attack plus badges. With the Soft Stomp (2 FP) and the Spike Jump, you can virtually defeat any regular Mook around just by pressing button A with a proper timing.
    • In Super Mario RPG Mario's Jump attack gets a permanent + 1 damage bonus when you use it twice, up to a max of 250. It costs 3 FP to use, you can wear an accessory to jump on The Spiny, and you'll have it from level 3 onward. This renders all his other attacks but Super Jump useless (if you're good at Super Jump.)
    • Super Jump will let you keep jumping on the enemy as long as you can time the button press correctly. There are challenges to perform 30 and 100 consecutive Super Jumps for some crazy strong equipment. There are maybe a handful of enemies who can actually survive a 100 Super Jump, usually due to Event Flags.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, normal attack cards are typically the best way to defeat enemies, especially when combined with Card Soldier or Maleficent enemy cards.
    • In Re:Coded there's finish commands that let you summon pillars of light and also transform your keyblade into a BFG, but the most efficient one seems to be Mega Flare which simply makes your screen goes blank and everything is burning with all the enemies dead.
  • Final Fantasy games, especially the early ones, fit the "normal attacks in RPGs" to a 'T', as do a great many other older console RPGs. During extended dungeons or open world travel, and even just level grinding, using magic often is typically unsustainable. Often the only way to restore MP is to use rare/expensive items, if it even CAN be restored. The result is that frequently you're better off with a party of brawlers who rely on the considerably cheaper HP restoring items than you are with a party slot wasted on a mage who dies quickly, is targeted by enemies frustratingly often, spends most of his MP keeping himself alive, and contributes very little offense in the majority of fights, for the sole benefit of being a nuker/healer when you get to the boss (assuming he has MP left to nuke/heal with). Completely subverted in FFVI, where MP is infinitely sustainable with the Osmose spell and mages reign supreme.
    • Final Fantasy VI. Magic spells have a damage cap of 9999. That's all good, but what about giving a high-end melee fighter the Offering, so he can deal 9999x4 in a single turn? Suddenly that Ultima spell doesn't look so.... ultimate. Or, get a party full of imps and deck them out with Imp Armor and Imp Halberds. Then you got an army of people who kill everything (including the last boss) with nothing but the Fight command, because, well, Fight is the only thing they can do, except use potions.
    • Averted by Final Fantasy X, eventually. Assume your average physical attack can do 99,999 to one enemy, the maximum damage. You can't get better than that, surely? Try doing 2 X 99,999 to the entire enemy team. The only way to do that with your average character is to Doublecast Ultima. Admittedly, it's MP Expensive, but by the time you have access to Ultima, your black mage should have access to '1 MP cost', which is what it says on the tin.
      • Aeons are also very powerful in the game. They cost no MP to summon, and they replace your team, doing and taking damage for you. They probably won't attack as frequently as your whole team, but they'll do more damage, they'll stop you from being killed, and some of them are frighteningly powerful. Yojimbo, for example, can kill anything in the entire game in one hit.
    • Final Fantasy XII makes this more apparent. Melee attacks are executed quickly while magic takes time to cast and there's a slight delay between the finished charged and the animation playing. Because of this, most players by the halfway point of the game will rely on melee attacks to damage most enemies and bosses (unless the enemy makes themselves immune to physical damage). Very flashy spells like Holy and Flare are so grapics/animation intensive that they actually delay other moves that require a flashy animation while melee attacks can still be executed. Strategtic players can use this to their advantage by having one character cast a big spell to force the enemy's spell to wait while the other two characters slice up the target.
    • Final Fantasy, the first NES game. The easiest party to beat the game with, is also the most boring: Two fighters who will turn into Knights to act as tanks, one Black Belt who will become a Master who is your primary Damage Dealer, and a White Mage. The White Mage is only there for Harm Spells earlier in the game, and Life in case someone dies during the last dungeon to an untimely Death attack. The occasional Cur4 also helps. Otherwise, the Heal Staff, and the 2 Heal Helms do 80% of the healing during the last dungeon.
  • Arcanum has the Harm spell. It's a humble first level spell with alomost no visual effect, but you can kill almost anything with this baby.
  • Final Fantasy XIII averts it with the paradigm system. Ravagers, Commandos and Medics are the Boring but Practical classes, but the other 3 classes are all vital to success in the game (although the Sentinel will probably see less use). For once, the debuffing abilities of saboteurs actually work on many bosses (even Death!), and the removal of magic points coupled with the automation of team-mates makes the Synergist class a lot more viable than manually casting a bunch of buffs every battle. Played straight when the game opens up, and every weak enemy is a 10-second chore for your Commandos and Ravagers.
  • In Dragon Quest IX, some of the rewards for the level 40 class / maxed out skill quests are Awesome but Impractical. One exception is the reward for completing the maxed Shield skill quest. It's a scroll that allows the party member who holds it to automatically block any critical hit with a shield. It's no flashier than any other times you block with a shield, but combine it with a Paladin's Forbearance and your party will never have to worry about any enemy criticals ever again.
  • The Soldier class in Mass Effect 1 and 2. None of the "flash" of other classes (outside of bonus powers, but you only get one of those) but its versatile selection of weapons and ammo types means a properly-leveled soldier can handle any conceivable situation in the game, bar none. Also, the pistol. Doesn't have the range of the sniper rifle, the fire rate of the assault rifle, or the stopping power of the shotgun, but doesn't have any of the major drawbacks of those weapons either. There's a reason every playable class has one.
    • The Bastion specialization class. It improves your Barrier, for one thing. More important, when maxed out, the Bastion skill allows you to hurt enemies you've locked in Stasis. Master Stasis allows you to lock an enemy down for 21 seconds. That's 21 seconds where you can attack them without them fighting back. This makes even Thresher Maws a piece of cake.
    • Also happens in-story with one of the DLC weapons for ME2. The Illusive Man sends you a few of the old, reliable Mattock rifles on the recommendation of the ship's AI. He mentions that the AI warned him against ignoring "older, proven technologies" in his obsession for the latest cutting-edge advancements. The rifles themselves fall under Awesome Yet Practical.
    • Mass Effect 3's Crusader shotgun. It fires a single slug round, but it's almost perfectly accurate and packs a hell of a punch.
    • Similarly, you have the Disciple, the asari shotgun. It's not as flashy as the Graal Spike Thrower or the Geth Plasma Shotgun, but it's the lightest and most accurate shotgun (not counting slug shotguns), and can fire fast enough to make up for its rather low damage.
  • Non-gameplay example: In The World Ends With You, one quest has Ken Doi's ramen shop getting shut out by a new ramen shop, and Neku and Joshua have to (indirectly) help him whip up a bowl of ramen that will attract customers again. Neku can make him whip up things like curry ramen and dessert ramen, but the dish that ends up making him popular again? An ordinary ramen bowl.
  • Might and Magic, especially VI and VII - the humble bow (Longbow in VI, Crude Bow in VII) allows you to engage enemies from a safe distance and never runs out of ammunition. In terms of affecting play balance it's of far bigger impact than all the artifacts in the game: by the time you're strong enough to loot artifacts off dead dragons, you're tough enough not to need them, but a party equipped with bows can breeze through many an early-game challenge that would be a killer otherwise.
  • The combination of a bow (preferably the Black Bow of Pharis, which has the highest range), a ton of arrows(Particularly poison arrows), the Hawk Ring (which increases bow range), and the Fog Ring (reduces your visibility) will allow you to slowly but surely kill any non-boss enemy in Dark Souls (the bosses don't give you enough breathing room to snipe them) without any fear of retaliation. It's also incredibly boring.
    • A regular spear and shield is incredibly effective due to its ability to block and attack at the same time. Even though there are swords and other weapons that are enchanted with lightning and fire, the regular +15 spear is more effective late game than the +10 lightning spear due to the way damage is calculated.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Boring_but_Practical/Video_Games/Role-Playing_Game?oldid=1965499"