History Main / NotCompletelyUseless

* Dispel tends to be forgotten in the series since the game provides little use for them. Then comes ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' with bosses like Cerberus and Raijin who use buffs to unleash [[ThatOneAttack killer attacks]] and dispelling them will save you dearly. But at this point, hardly any player even remembers it exists.

** Seymour on Mount Gagazet is one of less than a handful of enemies to use the Zombie attack. You can fight this battle the long and hard way with Aeons and Overdrives, or you can just keep a few vials of otherwise useless de-zombify medicine handy.

** Petrifying enemies doesn't usually count for much in many ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games, but in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' it's another matter entirely:
*** Having Rikku use Petrify Grenades on underwater fiends will instantly kill them, as they [[LiterallyShatteredLives sink to the bottom and shatter]].
*** Petrify on a capture weapon makes capturing monsters very easy, as many of them are vulnerable to petrification. most that aren't are vulnerable to instant death instead.

*** You can also use Stone Breath to one-shot Seymour's Guado Guardian escorts, who have this nasty Cover-Protect-Auto Potion loop. [[GuideDangIt You're supposed to steal a high potion from them to disable it,]] but this way is easier.

** Imprison is normally incredibly situational - the sheer number of moves the games have make it unlikely the move will even affect the opponent you want it to. However, Mew and Smeargle can learn both it and Transform, the latter of which allows you to copy a foe's entire moveset at once. Combine the two moves and you've suddenly made an opposing Pokémon unable to do anything but Struggle to their own doom in the span of two turns. It also works wonders if you already know the opponent has a specific move or two you'd like to shut down...such as [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome Protect or Fake Out in Doubles matches.]]

** The final chapter in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'' gives you a whopping ''four'' [[DamselInDistress damsels in distress]] to save: [[spoiler:Maria, Elice, Lena, and Nyna]]. They become playable if rescued, but otherwise cannot fight the ''many'' enemies of the chapter due to the major differences in stats. However, they have C-ranks in Staffs, so they can use Physic (distant healing) and Again staffs (grants their target an extra turn). The latter is all but necessary as only Marth can deal significant damage to the Final Boss.

* ''VideoGame/{{Palworld}}'' allows you to capture humans in Pal Spheres. This is something that's mostly something done for laughs given their ''awful'' stats; lack of Pal abilities; poor working abilities; and useless, nonreplacable attack. However, capturing merchants and black marketeers grants you access to an instant shop at your bases or even while you're roaming the overworld.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrolls'':

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' has the Scrolls of [[IcarusAllusion Icarian Flight]] (which allow the player to [[InASingleBound jump incredible distances]], [[GravityIsAHarshMistress then splat against the ground]]) have a number of users in certain tricky situations (to say nothing of [[{{Speedrun}} Speedruns]]). To note:
** In one particularly tall Daedric ruin, using one can allow the player to leap all the way up to the highest level in a single bound to acquire some valuable loot, skipping over all of the enemies in the ruin.
** Whenever fast travel is unavailable for whatever reason, such as the Tribunal Temple quest where the player is forced to take a vow of silence before traveling to the complete opposite side of the island. (A trip of several in-game days on foot.) Instead of that hassle, the player can simply use one of the scrolls to leap across the island, [[SoftWater crash down in the ocean]] beyond the shrine (or cast levitate when just above it,) and complete the quest in a fraction of the time.
** Another use is for getting out of a death trap in [[spoiler: Sotha Sil's Clockwork City]] in ''Tribunal''. The player has to climb up a spiral staircase in a room while outrunning a spinning blade that moves faster than the player. The usual high-level character approach to this puzzle would be to levitate to the exit; but levitation magic cannot be used there, and no practical jump spell that the player would have is capable of getting them all the way to the door. However, a Scroll of Icarian Flight will allow you to leap all the way to the top of the chamber, "crash" (harmlessly) into the ceiling, and land on the platform right in front of the exit.
** Solstheim in ''Bloodmoon'' has very limited fast travel options, so the scrolls allow the player to more quickly traverse the island. In particular, they can help with one East Empire Company quest that has a [[TimedMission strict time limit]]. The person you need to find will be in one of three random places, so placing a Mark spell ahead of time may not work. Using the scrolls to jump there can get you there much faster than running, and will allows you to pass over any enemies along the way who would otherwise slow you down.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'': The second-last Mages Guild {{Sidequest}} involves creating a ProtectiveCharm to NoSell the villain's [[BeginWithAFinisher opening attack]], which would otherwise [[ReforgedIntoAMinion transform the player character into a Worm Thrall]]. The attack is never used again and the item has no other use.

*** Alternately, sometimes you can dispel the enemies' Reflect spells and let them get blasted by their own spells. One particularly funny instance is against the fight against Seymour on Mt. Gagazet in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', where he tries to bounce a Flare spell off his Reflect barrier to hit you. If you dispel his barrier before he gets the chance, he'll hit himself and then the game will snarkily note that the "Combination Failed".

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin'' has Johnathan's Cream Pie subweapon. It's dark element, in a game where you're mostly fighting demons, it does about as much damage as you'd expect a pie to, and it's thrown in an awkward arc that doesn't give it much range. About the only thing it has going for it is the negligible MP cost. And the fact that it makes a bastardly sidequest boss much easier: He's among the few enemies that are actually weak to dark damage, boosting the damage up to passable, and the throwing arc is such that you can reliably hit the boss from a position that doesn't leave you immediately open to counterattacks.

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'':
** Mondo Mole is one of the few bosses that is susceptible to [[PsychicPowers PSI]] [[StatusEffects 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.
** Poo's Mirror ability allows him to transform into any normal enemy in the game and act out their AIRoulette. But since Poo on his own is generally stronger than any regular enemy, and you can't control what he does, it's usually useless. Except when you're fighting [[ShootTheMedicFirst Atomic Power/Nuclear Reactor Robots]], which will cause Poo to use what is effectively the full heal Lifeup Gamma for free 75% of the time.
** The New Year's Eve Bomb in ''VideoGame/Mother3'' inflicts HPTo1, but it fails against most things... unless they're the King Statue, which has 99 million hit points. It's more or less a PuzzleBoss; there's even a guy selling the item in the same area.

** The Red Rust is the more useless of the first two weapons you pick up, doing pitiful damage despite being picked up ''after'' the more effective Short Sword. However, it can inflict the cursed status on the [[MirrorBoss doppelganger]], rendering it helpless and making for an easy win against a WakeUpCallBoss. It being one of two available weapons at the time also served to teach the player a valuable lesson about the at-the-time new style of Castlevania: equipment has effects and the nominally strongest weapon isn't always the ''best'' weapon for every given situation.

* The Taunter in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002''. Despite it being sold as weapon, it has zero offensive capabilities on its own. It can destroy boxes with it sound waves and increases range of mines from Mine Glove, but there are more mundane approaches for both box destruction and combat which are faster, less impractical and more fun. However, this thing allows to lure enemies to specific places such as weighted switches, which comes handy for some Gold Bolt puzzles and Skill Points.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonBallZBudokaiTenkaichi 3'', one of the game's many borderline-{{Joke Character}}s is Spike the Devil Man. He's mediocre-to-bad overall--sluggish, weak, frail--but has one standout move, the Devilmite Beam. Said move deals damage that varies depending on the character--according to the series, [[MoralityGuidedAttack it "amplifies the darkness in a person's heart until it explodes"]]. Against some characters, like variants of Goku, it does no damage or barely scratches them, other characters lose the health you'd expect for an Ultimate Blast, major villain characters like Frieza will usually lose multiple health bars to it, and MadeOfEvil characters like Janemba, Kid Buu, or King Piccolo will actually face a OneHitKill if it connects. Consequently, he becomes far stronger against that small subset of character--which is showcased in a what-if storyline in the game, where he fights Frieza and his father during their attempted invasion of Earth and actually manages to defeat them despite the vast difference in power.