Final Fantasy has at least one Crutch Character for every game in their franchise.
Back to Crutch Character - RPG.
- The Red Mage in Final Fantasy starts out as a Jack of All Stats, especially thanks to their high base stats and some buggy mechanics making them equal to the White and Black Mages in terms of pure power (though not as frequent of a caster). But as time goes on, the White and Black Mage learn more powerful spells and their charges become more numerous, and the Fighter and Black Belt (and eventually Ninja in all versions but the NES one) considerably outstrip the Red Mage in damage due to better stat growth. By the endgame, though hardly useless, they've fallen into Master of None territory.
- Final Fantasy II:
- Minwu is the Ur-Example for Final Fantasy. He joins with just under 200 HP and several high-level White Magic spells at a point when your characters have only begun to learn magic and have almost 100 HP, if you've been level grinding. He then leaves the group.
- The Soul of Rebirth mode in the remakes stars three party members from the main game, retaining whatever stats and equipment they had when they left the party. Two of these characters are the first two Guest Star Party Members of the game, meaning they'll likely rely heavily on Prince Scott, who was not previously playable and thus has fixed (fairly high) stats and Ricard Highwind, the last Guest-Star Party Member until the former two can catch up.
- Final Fantasy III:
- Every single Wind Crystal job. Warriors get obsoleted by Knights, Red Mages run into Master of None around the same time, and Monks, White Mages and Black Mages all get replaced by a job that is basically them but better (respectively Black Belt, Devout and Magus). They are better in DS version, where they get something to differentiate them from later jobs (Warrior eventually becomes a powerful Glass Cannon, Red Mage can become a terrifying Magic Knight once you get their exclusive equipment, Monk gets a powerful Retaliate ability, while White Mage and Black Mage start focusing to quantity of their magic over quality).
- Scholar is a crutch for a certain boss fight, then they get pretty much permanently replaced. DS version and Pixel Remaster both give Scholars Item Caddy abilities in order to retain their usefulness, but it's still hard and expensive to pull out all that potential.
- Guest characters in 3D versions, but especially Sara, Desch, Aria and Unei. Sara is only there for half a dungeon, but she comes with a free healing at a point where your MP is limited. Desch is strong for when he joins, and he stays the longest of all guests (no less than three major dungeons and several bosses), and he will surely be missed when he gets Put on a Bus. Aria is like Sara in that she brings free healing (and strong free healing at that) and free Protect for everyone, making Temple of Water much less of pain that it would be without her. And Unei brings Holy, which hits harder than anything the player might have at that point, along with full party Haste, and she can be used for some optional content, like Odin.
- Final Fantasy IV:
- Cecil is this for nearly his entire Dark Knight run. Once you lose Kain he'll be your only hard-hitting physical attacker (and likely the only one you keep in the front row) until you recruit Yang, making him essential for winning random battles as all your magic users at this point have vastly limited MP (Tellah can never go above 90, meaning at his absolute strongest he's limited to 18 casts of Fire, the weakest attack spell) and have physical attacks that can't even manage to hit most of the time. Ironically he becomes an inversion when you scale Mount Ordeals and Golbez sends the undead Scarmiglione and his minions, all of whom Cecil's dark sword can only manage 1 HP of damage against, to take him out.
- Tellah is an old sage with both black and white magic. He is overleveled for the cave at which he is first available, being able to allow himself and his allies to live off of the enemies with ease using Cura and Osmose. He is available again later on, but at this point you'll have caught up to him in power, until he gets his memories back and remembers all the top-tier magic he forgot before. Granted, his stats suck so those spells aren't as impressive as they could be (not to mention he can lose stats on level up), but he still gets access to them and can get good usage out of them.
- Believe it or not, Edward can be this. Yes, he starts at a low level, yes, he has crappy stats, and yes, he has utterly worthless abilities. It's his weapon. Being a projectile it does the same damage from the back row, but that's not what makes it valuable: it's nearly guaranteed to inflict status ailments on enemies at no cost (His initial harp inflicts sleep, and the one found in Antlion's den inflicts confuse). With a little bit of level grinding to boost his speed stat, you can utterly cripple the enemy party and pick them off without wasting Rydia's MP, and his low attack power actually becomes a benefit when equipped with the Lamia Harp as it guaranteed won't kill the enemies which are now attacking their allies instead of you.
- Fusoya of the same game is in a similar boat. He might not be a pure Crutch Character in that he isn't obtained until very late in the game and your party is fine without him, but he's very similar to Tellah, ability-wise. And rather than having some stats increase while others decrease when he levels up, Fusoya's stats never change at all.
- The sequel's protagonist is, well, a particularly weak weakling at the start. The game compensates by giving you Biggs and Wedge then The Hooded Man, who are much better, to assist.
- The generic characters you get in Ceodore's, Yang's, Porom's and Edward's tales. The generics are not particularly strong and are capped to level 20 (or in case of Ceodore's tale, cannot level at all), but they generally fill a niche that, otherwise, is empty (like the generic Black Mage being the only offensive caster during the time they are in the team, the guards in Edward's tale providing much needed bulk to the team of Edward and Harley, or the monks in Yang's team similarly acting as muscle for much squishier Ursula)
- Brina in Rydia's tale, as she is the only healer you get. Then she gets wrecked by the Mysterious Girl halfway through the tale and you don't get to use her until the final dungeon of the game - at which point she and her "brother" automaton Calca are almost literally Joke Characters.
- Later in the game you get Golbez for the final tale, who much like Tellah and Fusoya gets access to high-level magic long before your other party members do, and gets around 1500-2000 more HP than them to boot. However, he doesn't get any HP until around level 60, and while his magic is powerful, he doesn't get any status spells (which avert Useless Useful Spell in this game). Plus it's possible to permanently lose him if you don't use a specific party against a certain boss.
- Final Fantasy V
- Monks have very strong physical attacks when barehanded and one of their early abilities is a free self-heal that also removes some status effects. Later on their unarmed attacks fail to catch up to powerful weapons other jobs get, and their abilities become largely useless outside of HP+30%.
- Red Mages can use both White and Black magic sets with only one command slot, giving them extra flexibility and freeing up the second command slot for something else. However, about halfway through the game they stop learning new spells from either school, rendering any time you spent training them wasted unless you commit to the long, long grind to unlock Doublecast, which by itself is nigh-useless unless you've spent the time training them as either a White or Black mage.
- Berserkers are the hardest hitting job at the time you get them and for a long while afterwards (hitting even harder than Monks), and also benefit from being able to get Death Sickle and Gaia Hammer early. But they are uncontrollable and, as such, useless for anything other than hitting hard, and are also the slowest Job in the game.
- Final Fantasy Tactics actually has two, in the form of the two characters Agrias and Gaffgarion, whose skills during the intro sequence make mopping up the tutorial enemies total child's play. This is also an example of A Taste of Power, as soon after the fight, the character has a flashback to several months prior with a level one party.
- The Black Mage job is perfectly usable (and borderline necessary at times) early on, but later on Black Mages sluggishness (especially since most powerful magic they can cast takes forever to charge) and squishiness boots them almost to the bottom of the power ladder.
- Final Fantasy VI downplays this. Some characters fall into the hazard of "extremely effective early on, but much less useful later"... if you rely on their natural abilities. However, with two partial exceptions and one full one,note all characters can be given near-identical stat spreads (via Level Grinding with the right Espers equipped), spell setups (via AP grinding with the right Espers equipped), and relic sets, allowing for almost any character - including the Crutch Characters - to be prepared with almost any Game-Breaker setup.
- To an extent, Sabin is a crutch character for most of the game because of his blitzes. But when you reach the end game and start getting the most powerful relics and weapons, most of his blitz attacks being single-target (and the multi-target ones not being particularly potent) causes him to fall behind.
- When first obtaining Gau, if you know how Rages work and which ones are useful, he'll have access to the -ra spells and some other extremely damaging moves before anyone else does. Also, his stats will be higher than everyone else's and the armor and weapons they can equip that he can't won't be powerful enough to make up the difference. Later on, his inability to equip weapons cuts him off of all the powerful melee tactics, leaving magic as his only means to keep up.
- Early on in the game, the party briefly has Banon, a Guest-Star Party Member with one specific ability: casting a completely free, party-wide Cura. Many players take advantage of this to rubber-band the A button on the controller down and let a looping set of fights play over and over, powerleveling their team. This turns out to be a bit of a liability, however, as the player doesn't have access to esper stat bonuses yet.
- Umaro in the Cultists' Tower dungeon. Everywhere else, Umaro being uncontrollable makes him sub-par at best and a liability at worst, but when everyone else is restricted to using magic, having a character who is too berserk to care about it can be... liberating.
- Final Fantasy VII:
- Aerith. She has the highest magic stats in the group (in a game where magic far outdamages everything else until the extreme lategame), you can get a staff that slots seven materia fairly early on (other characters don't get that until disc 2) and Yuffie is the only other character with a healing Limit Break. Likely done deliberately to make her Plotline Death that much more of a Player Punch.
- During the Nibelheim Flashback, Sephiroth effortlessly slaughters whole screens of enemies and requires no player input to do it, while your Level 1 Cloud is controllable, but can hardly scratch most monsters and falls unconscious in one hit.
- Yuffie was intended to be this, but in practice is more of a Game-Breaker. Assuming you recruit her when first available, she has good all-round stats, deals full damage from the back row, excellent speed and comes with the Throw Materia equipped, which will be your first way to achieve four-digit damage unless you're doing really strange things with the game. Her initial Limit Break is a Moveset Clone of Master of All Cloud's initial Limit Break Braver, and her second is a clone of Aeris's initial Limit Break Healing Wind, meaning that when you first get her she splits the difference between the two most powerful characters in the game. Her Ultimate Weapon and powerful-single-hit ultimate Limit Break can be obtained relatively quickly compared to everyone else's, with the idea being that other characters would surpass her in the endgame; unfortunately, thanks to a programming error, her Ultimate Weapon is the most consistently powerful one in the game, dealing higher damage against higher level enemies, instead of higher damage when the enemy's level is higher than Yuffie's.
- Red XIII has great all around stats, with the best speed without sacrificing durability or damage like Yuffie and Tifa do. And after completing his sidequest, which happens relatively early in the game, you're rewarded with the Seraph Comb, a weapon for him that's so powerful that he will out-damage and out-magic everyone else in the party until you start delving into the Disc-One Final Dungeon, at which point his poor Limit Breaks will be beginning to hurt as well.
- Tifa has shades of this. In the early to mid game her stacking Limit Breaks mean she can easily do the most damage in the party. If you game her powerful Powersoul's health requirements she can do thousands of damage when everyone else is barely hitting 4 digits. Her second most powerful weapon has a 100 percent hit rate so not only can her attacks never miss but neither will Death Blow meaning she'll always land it and if a counter is attached she'll always counter with a critical hit. She has the most awkward ultimate weapon in Premium Heart which increases in damage when her limit meter increases but a full meter replaces the attack command with the Limit Break command. Tifa's seven hit Limit Break also pales next to the dozen hits the other characters get. That much damage isn't very necessary until late game bosses and optional super bosses, so one can play a game without her limits becoming a liability.
- Final Fantasy VIII:
- The Guardian Forces (GFs) are powerful summon monsters that you can call at any time to attack all the enemies on screen. The best part: calling a GF doesn't cost anything (except a little time), you can call them as many times as you want, and while they're being summoned, any damage the character would take is dealt to the summon's HP instead. You can easily go though 99% of the game by having your GFs destroy everything in your path (though watching the summon animations over and over will make fights extremely tedious). But, this strategy backfires when you have to fight Adel because Adel takes Rinoa hostage and attacking all the enemies on the screen will result in a game over. In addition, trying to use your GFs in the final boss fight will get the GF killed. So, if you haven't taken the time to use the junction system by the end of the game, whelp, you're screwed.
- There's also Selphie. Early on, her Slot Limit Break can allow her to help the party in ways other characters cannot (with Full Cure being a full party heal to maximum, Wall being a way to cast Protect and Shell on the entire party, and Rapture oneshotting almost everything that is not a boss), but later on Quistis can do everything Selphie can, except she can do it reliably. The only thing Selphie has to her in the lategame is The End, but considering how rarely that skill appears during Slot, it's not something Selphie can count on.
- Final Fantasy IX has Vivi, who is the game's Black Mage. His spells can hit multiple enemies and he can dish out serious damage if he exploits the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. He joins right at the start of the game and stays with you for a good chunk of the beginning before story events has him split off with other party members and by the time that happens, everyone else will likely have caught up and can kick as much ass as Vivi can.
- Final Fantasy X:
- The very beginning of the game has Auron fighting alongside Tidus at the start of the game and has the ability to pierce armored hides on foes as well as lowering their attack power. He pretty much serves as crutch to keep Tidus alive since the kid isn't as strong to take on the early monsters on his own. Auron gets separated afterwards and he doesn't show up again until much later.
- Likewise, Yuna, being the game's resident Summoner and White Mage, will be your go to character for most of the game to heal the party as well as summoning her Aeons to shield the party and deal massive damage until your party grows strong enough to be able to take on bosses on their own as well as using Rikku's Mix ability to make powerful potions.
- Speaking of the Aeons, Valefor, the first Aeon Yuna learns how to summon, deserves a mention as well. Unlike the next three Aeons, which all specialize in just one of the elements, Valefor has access to the first spells of all four elements and her Limit Break is Non-Elemental, so there is never a situation where her damage output will be effected by the element of the enemy or that she will be particularly vulnerable to enemy spells and attacks. She also hovers in the air, so short-ranged enemies won't be able to target her. Furthermore, Valefor has the Sonic Wings attack, which hit single enemy on the field and delays its turn. If the enemies are slow enough or you've leveled up Valefor so she's fast enough, you can delay the enemy's turn indefinitely and spam Sonic Wings at them until they die. Basically, Valefor is specifically designed so a novice player can bail themselves out of trouble in the early stages of the game by summoning her. She starts to be Overshadowed by Awesome after the party spends a few hours of leveling up, however, especially if you're grinding along the way.
- Lulu, she was able to one shot pretty much anything early on with her magic spells. Later on, due to poor scaling of magic, and her Overdrive being weak, she becomes almost useless especially when other characters begin to learn others' skills on the Sphere Grid. Not to mention her physical attack animation is also the slowest in the game.
- Final Fantasy XI has Trust party members, which allow one person to do group content without actually grouping up with other people (and some Trusts can be very strong). However, Trusts are nearly always inferior to human players, are nowhere near as versatile, cannot be resummoned in the middle of the fight and, most importantly, vanish into nothingness if their summoner dies, whereas a regular player can be Raised and can return to the fight.
- Final Fantasy XII has Guest characters. They start out a few levels above the party, have access to several useful skills before your party members do (e.g. Telekinesis, which lets melee characters hit flying enemies) and expand the party size from three to four while they're present. However, they're uncontrollable, their equipment, licenses and gambits can't be changed, and they don't level up (in the Zodiac version on the PS4 and Steam, however, they can level up and be given commands).
- Final Fantasy XIII
- Lightning as a Medic is decently good early on (especially during the times when you have no other Medic), but later on her inability to use Curasa renders her worse than any other Medic other than Fang (who also cannot use Curasa, and has lower Magic to boot).
- Sazh in general - his early access to offensive buffs, En- spells and especially Haste means that Sazh can allow the party to punch significantly above their weight class, but his poor stats and slow animations mean that he is much weaker as a Commando or a Ravager than everyone else. In the endgame, when other characters can do everything Sazh can, he falls off outside of specific circumstances.
- Final Fantasy XIII-2 has pretty much any non-DLC 'Early Peaker' monster. They start out strong and tend to get good stat growth, but their levels are capped at 20 at most, meaning they eventually get overshadowed by your 'Well-Grown' and 'Late Bloomer' monsters. They're still useful for infusions, though.
- In Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, The Wildlands are a great place to start your adventure since you quickly gain a chocobo ally called the Angel of Valhalla. Not only does this NPC help you in combat but it also has healing abilities, in a game where the ability to recover your health is severely restricted. The Chocobo is so useful that it becomes difficult to move on to the other zones where its help is unavailable.
- In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Cloud has the easiest storyline in the game and plays in a straightforward, accessible style with clearly telegraphed and high-powered attacks, so beginners can easily see what they're doing and get their head around the game mechanics. Once you get to playing against human opponents, his predictability, inflexibility and lack of good long-range attacks start to become big problems, encouraging you to ditch him in favour of a more complicated character like Ultimecia or Exdeath.
- Mobius Final Fantasy:
- General play provides you with many monster cards which teach you "Lesser" versions of attacks, which are easy to collect and raise. As your levels increase and you tackle the harder content in the game, you'll want to transition to using cards that know the basic version of the attack, which are much more expensive to raise but much more powerful and can be raised further.
- Some cards available in the ability shop come with their Ability Level maxed out, but cannot be Augmented. This means you can dish out Lv. 6 abilities at a point when you only have Lv. 1 ability cards otherwise, but begins to become a problem as you start buying multiples of your Lv. 1 cards, Fusing them, and then Augmenting them into cheaper and much more powerful versions.
- The Masamune dished out to players at the time the Steam version launched is awesome. It has good stats, can be upgraded further, and has two highly useful abilities (its Reunion ability, which gives a 15% chance of recycling used orbs into an equal number of Prismatic orbs, being especially good). It's designed to be the best thing to play the VII content with as a player brand new to the game, but if you've been continually playing since the mobile game launched you'll find its statistical caps limited.
