History UselessUsefulSpell / VideoGames

* ''VideoGame/{{Palworld}}'' lets you capture humans in the Pal Spheres. Aside from laughs, there's really no reason to do so given that they only have one attack (a simple punch), even if they were armed before capture; poor stats; can't be taught additional attacks via skill fruits; lack Pal abilities; and have only the handiwork skill (at level 1).

*** Cryogonal, Minior and Mew (as well as Staryu and Starmie in ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'') are capable of learning Attract, which afflicts opponents of the opposite gender with Infatuation. However, since they are genderless species, it can't affect any targets.

*** Both Salandit and Salazzle are Poison/Fire and can have the "Corrosion" ability, which allows them to poison Poison- and Steel- typed Pokémon with poison-inducing status moves. It is actually less beneficial than it sounds, since the key words here are [[NonDamagingStatusInflictionAttack "status moves"]]; damaging Poison-type attacks still won't work, and since they're both {{Fragile Speedster}}s, a DamageOverTime strategy isn't ideal for them. Plus, Salazzle's Special Attack is high enough that she's better off just using a powerful Fire-type special attack to [[ElementalRockPaperScissors melt most Steel-types]] not named Heatran in her way instead of badly poisoning them with Toxic. It has a situational but effective use in competitive play where Salandit and Salazzle's poison-typing allows Toxic to be a guaranteed hit which, topped with naturally high speed, will make inflicting the badly poisoned status very easy to do. This will whittle down bulky opponents normally immune to poison such as Galarian Slowbro and Slowking, Alolan Muk, and Dragalge, the aforementioned examples having high Special Defense which is an issue for the Special Attack-based Salazzle to deal with.

** Bombchu in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor ''Zelda'' games. In the N64 games they could ''sometimes'' be useful to hit far-off bomb sites that a normal bomb can't reach, and ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'' made their use essential, but ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames''? You'll never need them. Ever. They're completely pointless. Worse, you can only get them by completing ALL of one game and at least a significant portion of the other. By the time you get them, you don't need them.

* ''VideoGame/{{Palworld}}'' lets you capture humans in the Pal Spheres. Aside from laughs, there's really no reason to do so given that only have one attack (a simple punch), even if they were armed before capture; poor stats; can't be taught additional attacks via skill fruits; lack Pal abilities; and have only the handiwork skill (at level 1).

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' has the Wound spell. Wounding reduces the max HP of the victim. On your characters, getting severely wounded was a grave concern, and a serious impetus to finish battles against enemies capable of Wounding quickly. Since enemies tend to have high HP and don't usually heal much, it's much less useful in player hands unless you have a monster with the Bloodthirsty ability.

* ''VideoGame/DiabloI'':

** The abundance of wands and rods that replicate the effects of specific spells might induce this trope. Even if these tools have limited charges, you can sell them to a merchant to recharge them and then rebuy them - at some point gold won't be a problem anyway, and you could also steal them. Certain examples are common among the community: why waste the very few high level priest spell lots, when you can get early on a free rod of resurrection?
*** Jaheira is an egregious case: she has the unique level 5 spell Harper's Call, which acts as a Resurrection spell, except for druids which normally don't have access to them. The problem is that other level 5 spells are Insect Plague, which is a devastating offensive spells that you want to use to disrupt enemy spellcasters and perform some useful crowd control, Iron Skins, which is mandatory when tanking.
** Healing spells are extremely useful until you reach the point where the game throws at you healing potions as loot - you won't even need to buy them.

** Majority of the View spells in first and second games, as they were hard to use effectively. In the third games, the view spells were consolidated in two, and those two were actually useful (even if they were situational).

** Protection From Element spells in the third game, but especially Protection From Water. All the spells do is reduce the amount of damage you take from offensive spells of that element, and the only offensive Water spells are Ice Bolt and Frost Ring, neither of which is particularly powerful.
** Scuttle Boat from third game. It destroys a boat within a certain range. While it's possible to do shenanigans with it on island maps, for the most part it's useless.
** Disguise in single player or when you do your turn after the others in multiplayer, due to a quirk in how it works (it works until the next day, not until your next turn).

** Magic Mirror, since it's so unreliable and completely outclassed by a lower level spell. Why waste mana casting Magic Mirror, which only has a 40% chance to reflect a spell, tops, when you can cast Anti-Magic instead, and make a stack completely immune to magic instead?
** Sacrifice is almost completely inferior to Resurrect, a lower level spell. The ''only'' advantage Sacrifice has is that it can resurrect Gold Dragons, which Resurrect has no effect on due to Gold Dragons being immune to anything other than level 5 magic.

*** Several spells are either too situational to use effectively or are generally worthless. The Thunder spell can instantly kill all enemies on screen, but the cost is so expensive that most player won't ever use it and save it for the Thunderhead boss where it's invincible until you cast Thunder on it. The "Spell" spell can turn most enemies into the blob monsters, but it also reduces the EXP gained from them plus most enemies and bosses are immune to it anyway. The only use for the spell is to reveal a hidden location. The Reflect spell is required to beat a specific boss since Link can't damage him with his sword, but it's pretty much worthless outside of the boss fight since no other enemy can have their projectiles reflected.

*** Cryogonal, Minior and Mew are capable of learning Attract, which afflicts opponents of the opposite gender with Infatuation. However, since they are genderless species, it can't affect any targets.

*** Synchronoise is very situational in most cases, since it's a Psychic-type move that can ''only'' hit enemies that have the same type as the user. But for some reason Umbreon, a Dark-type is able to learn it, meaning the only enemies that could be hit by this spell are the ones that are already completely immune to Psychic-type attacks. In addition, most of the Pokémon that learn it by level-up are of the Psychic-type (chain breeding is a different story), and Psychic-types take half damage from Psychic attacks.

*** Stunfisk suffers a worse fate in Generation VI, when game mechanics changed to have all Electric-type Pokémon be immune to paralysis, making its Limber Ability useless, unless it for some reason changes its own type (which is just fine for [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration explaining]] how a [[ElementalRockPaperScissors Ground-type lives in water]] but usually a waste of time for the player) or an enemy forcibly changes its type (Stunfisk is a slow StoneWall, so it's rare when an opponent would benefit enough from paralyzing it to go to the effort). Downplayed as of Generation IX where the new Terastal phenomenon mechanic will allow Stunfisk to utilize Limber..... If Stunfisk was available in Scarlet and Violet.

** However in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'': Yuri's Revenge, the Genetic Mutator (Yuri's secondary superweapon) sounds good on paper, turning all infantry on a large area into brutes at your command, but since it's rare your enemy will ever have a large collection of infantry in one spot, the only use it can ever be is to turn your own or other players' slaves into usable soldiers, since slaves are free.
*** When you figured out the secret, the Mutator was possibly the best superweapon in the game. Use it with the grinder and Yuri has potentially infinite cash, especially useful in a long game where the ore has run out.

** The Chinese [[NukeEm nuclear missile]] from the same game is the worst superpower when it comes to taking out GLA structures, since their special gimmick is that when the structure is reduced to zero HP it turns into a "GLA hole" which, if not destroyed, will eventually spawn a worker to come rebuild the building. The nuclear missile just causes a lot of damage at once and the lingering radiation it leaves doesn't harm structures.

* In ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', The Sandman was subject to a lot of complaints and balance changes. Eventually, Valve made a drastic change by removing the full stun (except at the maximum range) and replacing it with a "scared" animation that disabled weaponry and reduced movement speed. Due to a bug, however, the 'stunned' players could still fire their weapon. Once that was fixed, however, it became a pretty balanced sidegrade.

** ''VideoGame/MegaMan4:'' The Skull Barrier is generally seen as the one real dud among its weapon roster. While it does let you move with it, unlike the Leaf Shield, and has a reasonable amount of uses, it takes a massive hit in durability due to breaking after taking any damage at all, and it also can't be used as a projectile. Thus its poor offensive capabilities make it difficult to use in its designated boss battle — Dive Man can be caught in a pattern fairly easily by keeping your distance and out-shooting him, but the Skull Barrier requires you to get up in his face, at which he tries to ram you.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' has more useless spells than any other game. Vox reverses the effect of silence spells, except there are only four enemies in the entire game that use it and your chances of ever seeing said enemies use it are slim. Death, Warp, Quake, and Kill are all useless instant death spells because by the time you can learn them... all enemies are invulnerable to it, except those that a White Mage can kill in a single punch. Even useful spells like Heal, Thundara, Fira, and others can be replicated by specific weapons and armors used as items during battles (Thor's Hammer for instance can cast Thundara).

*** The Gemini Laser may sound cool because it bounces off walls, but unless you're a geometry master, good luck hitting something on the rebound. Plus it's a PainfullySlowProjectile. The one biggest problem it suffers from, however, is that [[OnlyOneBulletAtATime if any bit of the laser is still bouncing around, you can't fire another one]].

*** The Gemini Laser may sound cool because it bounces off walls, but unless you're a geometry master, good luck hitting something on the rebound. Plus it's a PainfullySlowProjectile.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManX3'' has the Gravity Well, which is a OneHitKill that affects the entire screen... if the enemies are small, easily-killed enemies. Any larger enemy (i.e. the ones you'd want it to kill) is completely immune to its effects. It's also useless against any boss that isn't Blast Hornet, who does take a good bit of damage from it. Parasitic Bomb downplays this -- it's a OneHitKill on enemies it can affect and deals measly damage to those it can't, but the range of enemies vulnerable to it is wider than Gravity Well's.

** ''VideoGame/MegaManX3'' has the Gravity Well, which is a OneHitKill that affects the entire screen... if the enemies are small, easily-killed enemies. Any larger enemy (i.e. the ones you'd want it to kill) is completely immune to its effects. The attack also has a startup time before the gravity device activates. Parasitic Bomb downplays this -- it's a OneHitKill on enemies it can affect and deals measly damage to those it can't, but the range of enemies vulnerable to it is wider than Gravity Well's.

** ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts'' has Vortex, which is a gap-closer that is bad at gap-closing thanks to its short range and slow animation, and is learned at a very late level. The ''Final Mix'' version even adds Sliding Dash, which is better at gap-closing in every way, making Vortex even more outclassed.

** The typical case of {{Status Infliction Attack}}s being useless is averted for the most part, since ContractualBossImmunity is absent[[note]]powerful {{Mon}}s can still be immune to status effects, but that's down to typing or ability, which can be changed and can affect all Pokemon equally if they have or gain that type or ability themselves[[/note]] and various status effects are all helpful in the competitive battling realm, either for whittling that one opponent that just won't go down (burn, poison, confusion, Leech Seed) or just getting in that extra hit before your opponent does (sleep, freeze, paralysis, confusion, infatuation).
** ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' introduced the physical/special split, wherein individual moves could now be physical or special attacks. Before this, the ''typing of the move'' determined if it was either physical or special, regardless of the attack's own description. This lead to several Pokémon having their STAB moves being among the weakest in their moveset (Dark-types got this the worst, as most had better attack than special attack, but all Dark-type moves were special; Ghost-types also suffered, because Ghost-type moves were physical despite most Ghost-types having better special attack) or unable to take advantage of their movesets in general (Hitmonchan can learn the FireIceLightning punches to give it perfect neutral coverage, but its pathetic special attack stat rendered them completely worthless in Generation I to III. Contrastingly, Alakazam and Gengar could learn those same punch attacks and thrived with them in Generation I to III but the physical/special split made those attacks almost useless for them).
** Entry Hazards are things created by certain moves which cause various negative effects to the opponent's Pokemon on switching in such as damage, inflicting poison status, or a reduction in speed. These moves are almost useless during normal play, since AI trainers pretty much never switch out their Pokemon and they typically don't have additional effects other than making entry hazards. However, in multiplayer these types of moves are extremely powerful, to the point where entire mons are made or broken competitively by how they interact with them. Stealth Rock in particular is notorious for being a GameBreaker, with otherwise perfectly viable mons like Charizard and Articuno being relegated to being low-tier trash purely because of their stealth rock weakness.

*** Skitty and Delcatty can have the ability Normalize, which turns all of their moves into Normal-type ones. While this means they get STAB on everything, it also means they can't hit anything for super-effective damage, are completely useless against Ghost Pokémon, and also easily walled by Rock and Steel Pokémon. It pales in comparison to its Generation VI counterparts Refrigerate, Aerilate and Pixilate which not only turns Normal-type moves to Ice, Flying and Fairy respectively, but also gives a 30% boost in damage too and still allows the user to use attacks of other typing too. While Generation VII gave Normalize an additional effect of a 20% increase in all attacking moves strength, its main use is still paralyzing Ground-types with Thunder Wave.

*** During Gen V, Genesect's SecretArt Techno Blast was largely useless since Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt were more powerful, had more PP, could easily be replaced on the field thanks to infinite [=TMs=] and didn't require Genesect to hold an item to use a Fire/Ice/Electric attack. Genesect couldn't even get STAB for it. Gen VI buffed its power to 120, making it an always accurate Hydro Pump/Blizzard/Thunder/Fire Blast,[[labelnote:*]]Which were all nerfed in power to 110, making it even stronger than them.[[/labelnote]] but using the different types still takes up Genesect's valuable item slot with an otherwise useless item.

*** The Gothita line can learn Mean Look, a move which prevents the target from escaping. They can also have the Hidden Ability Shadow Tag, which does the same time automatically, making Mean Look redundant (except in the rare circumstances that their Ability is removed, or when they are facing another Pokemon with Shadow Tag, which cancels itself out).

*** The ability Run Away allows guaranteed escape from wild battles... unless the opponent has an ability preventing escape or used a move that prevents it, the very situations it would be useful for. Even foregoing that, the success rate of fleeing battle is based on speed, and most Pokémon that have the ability are already bound to be faster than the opponent if they're around the same level. In Generation VI onwards, if the player finds themselves in a situation where they need guaranteed escape from wild Pokémon constantly, any Ghost-type Pokémon is an alternate option as all Ghost-types are guaranteed to escape from battle the same way Run Away works, while having a more versatile ability in its place. Gimmighoul's Roaming Form is the biggest offender of this ability, both having Run Away ''and'' being a Ghost-type, making the ability redundant unless it gets its type or ability changed by an opponent.

*** Toedscruel as of Generation IX is ''the'' fastest user of the move Spore, a status move that puts the opponent to sleep and the only sleep-inducing move with 100% accuracy. This would be extremely useful... if not for the fact that Toedscruel has Mycelium Might as their ability which makes the user go dead last in its priority bracket if it uses a status move. Slightly downplayed as Mycelium Might also allows the user to use status moves on targets which are immune to said status move via their ability... except most abilities which grant status effect immunity also cure the Pokemon if it is somehow given the relevant effect.

* The pocket watch in the ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' games is largely a Useless Useful Item. Paying 5 hearts to stop time for 5 seconds sounds like a good deal -- until you realize that almost all the bosses, ''and even some of the stronger normal enemies'', are still able to move during the watch's use. The watch is occasionally useful in some of the game's more NintendoHard segments (such as some difficult platforming sections with flying enemies around), and does quite well against Medusa, the second level boss in the first game (one of the few bosses in the entire series who is vulnerable to its effect), but it's largely useless, and hardly ever more useful than any other weapon you can carry. Its only real use is to be able to catch certain superfast enemies (such as the Tsuchinoko in Aria) so you can get their rare drops.

** Sacrificial Pact is a 0 mana Warlock spell that destroys a demon and restores 5 health to your Hero. Sounds pretty awesome, except that the only neutral demons in the game are weak and/or rarely played in constructed. That means unless you're up against another Warlock (which even then, don't use enough powerful demons to justify running Sac Pact over regular removal), it's a completely dead card. You can target your own demons too (which considering it's called ''Sacrificial Pact'' is pretty obviously ''the entire point of the card-'' using it to destroy your opponent's demons is NotTheIntendedUse), but it's not worth killing off a minion just to restore a measly 5 health.
*** It does sometimes get attention in highlight reels, since it can insta-kill your opponent if they become Lord Jaraxxus.

*** Ashes of Outland actually subverted this trope with the card, but thats because the new Demon Hunter class introduced to the game was so ridiculously Game Breaking[[note]]Demon Hunters had a whopping 80% winrate on release before nerfs happened.[[/note]] and used demons a lot, that suddenly Sacrificial Pact became mandatory as a tech against Demon hunters. It didnt take long for Demon hunters to be nerfed and Sacrificial pact being changed to no longer destroy enemy demons, however.

* The ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' [[UpdatedRerelease Final Mixes]] seemed to be bent on making the respective games' [[UselessUsefulSpell useless useful spells, abilities, and forms]] into actually useful skills: Stop is necessary to defeat most of the added monsters in the original Final Mix, and the same for Aero (which was not so much useless as too costly for its benefits). In Final Mix+, a whole slew of optional boss fights and [[ThatOneSidequest sidequests]] became either significantly easier or even possible in the first place by cunning use of Wisdom Form, the by-far least useful of Sora's forms in the main game, or various kinds of magic (including {{limit|Break}}s), often eschewed in the main playthrough or the original versions as it is generally easy enough to off the mooks with regular attacks.
** Vexen can be ''incredibly'' trivialized in Final Mix 2+. You can attack while moving so you can avoid the trap that collects data and summons a Shadow Sora while you destroy his shield...then what do you do after that? FIRAGA SPAM!!! Lexaeus also likewise requires you to pretty much spam reflect unless you don't wanna get crushed by tons of boulders.
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' has a few, such as Esuna, which heals status ailments, which are rare, short-lived, and generally don't do anything that can't be healed with a Cure spell, making it a complete waste of a deck slot; Bind, which is fun to use but is possibly the worst status spell simply because of how many enemies are immune to it and how many more can still attack you during its effect; and Blackout, which isn't so much ''bad'' as much as outclassed by Confuse, which is ''one of the commands required to make it.''

* Fever mode in ''VideoGame/{{DJMAX}} Technika 2'' and ''3''. Activating it converts all green MAX hits during its activation period to rainbow MAX hits, and a rainbow MAX is higher than a green MAX...by 1 point...out of 300,000. Therefore Fever is only ever useful if you are capable of getting a [[FlawlessVictory Perfect Play]] (all MAX hits in the chart, rainbow or otherwise). To add insult to injury, activating Fever requires tapping a button in the top right corner of the screen, which can distract you, causing you to get a COOL or worse in the process, thereby rendering Fever useless for the remainder of the song.

* The ''[[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Mario]]'' RPGs has these examples as well:

* Nearly every offensive spell in the first ''VideoGame/RuneFactory'', as the player character only has 100 [[{{Mana}} RP]] per day to work with (for the most part) and the spells have a fixed RP cost. Fixed in the sequel, where magic costs decrease with practice just like every other ability.