Not Completely Useless: Difference between revisions

 

Expect gameplay spoilers in the examples.

* The [[Undead Slayer]] in [[Adventure Quest]] Worlds is amazing in Doomwood due to it's unique quality of quickly becoming well over 9000 by a Spirit Power system that only works when fighting undead. Its normal power when out of it's element is pretty Dismal

* The Viy fight in ''[[La Mulana]]''. Going by how the rest of the game is set-up you are led to believe that Spears are your only option for this battle. However, as spears shoot directly downwards you must get right above the boss's eye to damage it, which also happens to be where all its most dangerous attacks comes from, making it one of the harder fights in the game. There is another weapon that turns out to be a savior; Throwing Knives seem pretty useless when you get them, so you tend to forget about them, as the shurikens do more damage and are faster horizontally and spears have better vertical damage and speed. However, the Knives property of "sliding" along the ground until they hit a wall allows you to just stand back (dodging some weak projectiles) and bombard Viy while coming under very minimal danger yourself, instantly turning it into a very easy fight. As a bonus, the Throwing Knives will damage the regenerating tentacles as well, making them much less of a hassle.

*** More in line as a subversion. Those axes still do not do enough damage to outclass the cross. To be even more frank, if you do not catch the cross, the rebound can score a free hit or two on the OTHER dragon. It's useful, but you still won't touch it. The knife on the other hand...

* Mondo Mole in ''[[Earthbound]]'' - one of the few bosses that is susceptible to [[Psychic Powers|PSI]] [[Standard Status Effects|Paralysis Alpha]].

** Shroooom! can be a rather tough boss...unless you use the otherwise nigh-useless PSI Flash Beta against him, which will either paralyze or kill him in one shot.

* In the ''Mega Man'' series:

** The card game ''[[Doomtown]]'' was especially bad at this. In one of the later expansions, the cards in question really ''were'' Magic Bullets--"Bullet" type cards were designed to insta-kill various character types.

** ''[[Magic the Gathering]]'' had the card One With Nothing, whose entire effect was "discard your hand." It was completely useless until a competitive deck came out that relied on giving the opponent a stream of cards and using spells that dealt damage based on the number of cards in an opponent's hand compared to yours.

* ''[[Diablo 2]]'' features a Paladin ability called "Holy Bolt". Virtually useless unless you're focusing on healing teammates or damaging Undead. Of course, only a 1/4 of all the monsters in the game are Undead so you're helpless against everything else, but Holy Bolt does smash the daylights out of Undead.

** If you spec out a Paladin to maximize Holy Bolt's healing properties, you won't be able to hit any monsters past Act 3 Normal. On the other hand, with the right gear (Faster Cast Rate rings for the win) you can heal 500+ HP a second. Not bad for a game that allegedly doesn't have a healing class.

* In ''[[Medievil (Video Game)|Medievil]]'', one of the earlier weapons you get is a wooden Club, which [[Cardboard Obstacle|breaks boulders]]. The Club is unfortunately also the game's only [[Breakable Weapons|breakable melee weapon]], is almost as weak as the Short Sword you start with, and the Warhammer can also break boulders while being stronger, with a longer range and an awesome [[Ground Pound]] attack. However, the Club can also be used as a torch, and the [[Gang Plank Galleon]] level at the end of the game has cannons with fuses...

* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' has the Rasp spell, which eliminates enemy magic points. While stronger at this task than the Osmose spell (the latter also gives you the magic points, saving on Ethers), most players overlook it for spells that do hit point damage - killing things the old-fashioned way. However, there are several enemies (including both iterations of the Atma/Ultima Weapon and literally every enemy in the Fanatics' Tower) that die if all their magic is depleted. On top of that, they usually have [[Taking You With Me]] magic attacks; if their magic is drained, they can't do the attack and leave you untouched as they die. And in Atma's case, using Rasp will prevent it from using its most dangerous attacks, which are activated when it has low HP.

** X-zone is a spell that removes enemies from combat. Like most instant death spells it rarely works on anyone you'd care to kill instantly. It works a lot better if you cast vanish on an enemy first (this may be unintentional), but it also works on the boss known as Wrexsoul, ensuring a quick end to an otherwise annoying boss fight (though you miss out on a reward).

** Not to mention the Imp status from the same game. Normally it makes you very weak and you don't want to keep it on you, but [[Oh Crap|if you equip the Imp-specific items while Imped...]]