Skyrim - everyone is useless unless as pack animal or distraction, hardly ever use them.
KotOR 1 and 2 - I never use any of the robot companions (even though HK-47 is hilarious), them being mechanic is just too much hassle. Oh, and never Juhani either, because she annoys me.
FFX - I practically never use Rikku, she just doesn't fit in my playstyle, except when going against machines.
FFXIII - I only use Lightning, Fang and Hope, because they are the best for their roles, the rest can stay on the bench.
Mass Effect 2 - I practically only use Miranda and Grunt, the rest is on the B-team, especially Jack, she can rot for all I care.
Fallout 3 - Does anyone need anyone other than Fawkes?
Dragon Age: Origins - I hate every single one of them, except the dog. Stop judging me, self-righteous assholes! Especially you, Morrigan!
To be fair, though, a team of absolute destruction can be found in Cloud, Barret, and Cid. They're the ones I used to kill Sephiroth BEFORE he could cast Super Nova once. Their final Limit Breaks are so powerful that it's just like that. (Cid's own is, of course, a bomb-run with the Highwind, with many high-damaging explosions.)
Still, to my mind...I could say any number of character that's already been said, but the ULTIMATE useless RPG companion in is the one they throw at you who has NO IMPACT ON ANYTHING EVER.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 - There is a point towards the end of the game where you are off to fight the villain by traversing a wasteland full of the undead and a castle with shadow-creatures all throughout the place, all to meet a sinister vampire. You have two companions who will fire an endless array of knifes and fireballs at the enemies...which do ABSOLUTELY NO DAMAGE. I checked! I walked around as they attacked a skeleton and waited for the sucker to die. NOTHING HAPPENED. Those two are there to look pretty, not to actually have any bearing on ANYTHING. Worthless!
Rafa and Malak from Final Fantasy Tactics. They get a whole plot arc where a villain is trying to get his hands on their powers. I have no idea why; all they do is imprecisely throw some energy around. Many of the other named characters are similarly underpowered and, in a game where you only get to bring five to a battle, there's no reason to ever use them. If I didn't suffer from bouts of completionism, I'd tell them to hit the road.
She comes with the Bard specialization, and can be made into a powerful archer, and archers are insanely good DPS when built right. I wouldn't classify her as having useless abilities. The worst thing about her is how keeping her in your party means sucking the Chantry's collective dick whenever she commands.
OT: All companions in Skyrim are all pretty much useless. Even if they can actually hold their own sufficiently, letting them do your fighting hampers your rate of skill increase. Their only redeeming quality is that they can carry all your crap, but once you get a house you can just dump anything you don't want to sell in a chest.
This. Fawkes is the reason why I always play a good karma character (that, and the fact that I have an amazing amount of sympathy for the plights of various collections of pixels).
That freakish pink animal thing in Xenogears. The game tries so hard to be serious all the time, but do they realize the main character is followed by a freakish girly carebear / muppet thing?!
Actually, in that one underground area at the end of the game, can't remember where it is it's been many years, you can buy state increasing items for your characters. Now, doesn't help much in the end game since most fighting takes place in mechs...
Except for the giant pink thing. You can throw a fortune of them on it and when it grows to giant mech size it'll be more powerful than any of your robots AND it doesn't have to worry about fuel.
DA:O
Leliana, never found her useful. I only used her to *cough* pickpocket people in towns. But otherwise if I wasn?t playing a rogue myself I would take Zev. I?m probably a bit bias tho because I don?t like her.
Dog take up a slot but doesn?t feel like a full companion so I never used him. It would have been better if there was a pet slot.
Oghren, you get him pretty late so can?t level him up yourself.
Mass effect 2.
Jacob, I barley ever used him.
Mordon, tho I never really tried with him. Maybe I was just using him wrong
Allot of people thing Jack is useless. It true on higher difficulties when all enemies have defences it disarms her somewhat, she certainly isn?t the most powerful and using her effectively requires micro management but she is still very useful against husks IMO. She has the fastest cool down of your biotics, shockwave and pull. Group them up, strip their defences, use CC and watch them all fly. Shockwave can also slow enemies down and knock them out from behind cover so you can take them out even if it won?t send them flying tho flashbang is better for that. I just wish she wasn?t using a shotgun. It?s the worst weapon to go with her skills and means she runs in and gets herself killed if you don't watch her.
BG2.
Been years since I played that game but I don?t think I ever really used Jaheira or Haer'Dalis.
There's a mod you can download that makes Dog (Barkspawn in my game) an summon. So you get to have him as a full fledged party member without losing the character slot. You'll want to crank up the difficulty a notch to compensate.
Dragon Age Origins: Alistar. He annoyed me to no end. When forced to interact with him I was always a dick towards him.
Dragon Age 2: Humans, especially what's-her-name...the pirate wannabe. She reminded me of Megan Fox in that she always seemed look like she was sticky and, dirty. Don't care much for slutty girls either to be honest.
Fallout 3: I actually didn't use any of the companions until I ran into Fawkes. The dog seemed useless to me and I didn't want anyone else following me around.
Fallout New Vegas: What's-her-name from the Brotherhood of Steel. Love the Brotherhood but she seemed kind of bland.
Final Fantasy 7: I didn't care for Barrett or, Aerith to be honest. Nanaki was also someone I just couldn't get into. My party always ended up being Cloud, Yuffie and, Vincent.
Final Fantasy 8: I had a powerful dislike of the Laguna sections, mainly because of Ward. Kiros was freaking awesome though. I also kept Irvine out of my party after playthrough 2 or 3 (whichever one it was when I started paying attention to the story). You couldn't take the shot Irvine?! Well fine then, get the hell away from us and leave Selphie alone too!
Final Fantasy 9: Eiko for being annoying and, Freya. I never cared for Jumping and Dragoon powers.
Mass Effect: Humans. I want to be part of a massive space odyssey, I can't do that with a bunch of freaking humans all over the place and sharing in my wonderment.
Mass Effect 2: Same as above but since there are more aliens...no, still just humans. I should have used Thane a lot more than I did but Grunt is a tank and, Mordin is hilarious.
Knights of the Old Republic: For this one, I almost exclusively had another force-user and, a droid. I disliked Juhani and, Bastila. Carth was fine but I didn't care too much for him and Zalbaar...he can take his life-debt with Mission and just leave.
Sith Lords (KotOR 2): Atton, Handmaiden, Mira and, Visas. I never liked using any of them but, especially Atton. It's funny if he goes Sith but he turns into a freaking henchman.
Xenoblade Chronicles: The only party members I ever used in my first playthrough were Shulk (The main character with the magical sword), Reyn (The tank) and Sharla (The healer). I occasionally switched out Sharla or Reyn with Dunban (DPS), but not often. Once I got the 7th party member*, I pretty much stuck with Shulk/Reyn/7th for the rest of the game. I considered Mellia (Black Mage) to be too fragile to be useful; and Riki? Well...
Everything you need to know about him, right there.
It was only AFTER I finished my first playthrough that, due to the way the level-up system works, it's best to vary your party as often as you can... and I was wondering why the Final Boss was givin' me grief.
* No, I'm not telling you who the 7th Party Member is. Deal.
BLASPHEMY!!!
Love Veronica, she is such a lovable but tragic chracter!
Anyway, for me I'll sa that I've never found a companion that I like in a Bethesta game. Dogmeat doesn't really count, since that is just an old FO1 charchter.
In New Vegas, I don't like the Granny-Mutant, and I don't care for Cass nor Boone (The Genocidal A-hole).
I don't like the Mass Effect humans, except Jack.
Planescape, I dumped Fall-from-grace and took here earings for the Tiefling. I need to finish that game.
Not really. Wrex truly is a great tank, but I found myself mostly using Liara and Tali (when playing a soldier) because then I have everything (tech, biotics and guns) and holy crap, biotics are useful. Makes every fight a lot easier. Tali's tech stuff also isn't half bad.
Edit: Cool, had to agree to the Escapist forum rules again. I was kinda hoping, I don't know why myself, that that meant that they had removed the captchas, but alas, they're still here...
I almost never use Cid in FF7. By the time I get to where he's available, Tifa's a wrecking machine and Cait Sith is a sponge. I'd replace Cloud if I could, and put Vincent, but eh...
Pretty much every Final Fantasy has at least one person I don't use.
FF1: Thief. Doesn't seem a viable choice in a party of Fighter, Fighter, Black Mage, White Mage
FF2: Been a while since I played last, can't recall...
FF3: As above.
FF4: Never bother with Edge, unless I have to.
FF5: Class-wise, the Ninja. Not sure why...
FF6: Strago. The blue magic system isn't great. On a similar note, Gau.
FF7: The aforementioned Cid.
FF8: Rinoa. The whole love story always felt a little shoehorned, and she's the target.
FF9: Quina, because of blue magic, and Eiko because she annoys me.
FF10: Wakka. So you're good against flying types? Big whoop.
FF11: All of them, because it shouldn't be counted in the numbered games.
FF12: Penelo. When everyone can learn everything (eventually) she seems pointless.
FF13: Hope. He annoys me so.
FF Tactics: Any special characters. I trained my units, dammit, and I'm going to use them!
Hmm... in KotOR I don't use Juhani or Jolee. One Force user is enough, thanks!
1: Thief always turns into Ninja which = godly
2: You don't get any expendable party members
3: Same I think
4: You can't change any party members...
5: All down to choice
6: meh, it's all down to choice but I tend to use Locke, Sabin, Edgar, Terra, Celes and Shadow, the rest aren't great.
7: I'll agree with Cid but also add Yuffie, I'd only use people that are relative to the story...that one boss you need two teams for I'd split into a vs Sephiroth team and a for the planet team. 1 would be Cloud, Tifa and Vincent, the other would be Barret, Cait Sith and Red.
8: ...meh, I don't think I didn't use a character here but Selphie/Quistis would be the one I wouldn't use because they're essentially the same character in battle.
9: I'd only use Quina as a back up for when I needed an extra character, my main team at the end was Zidane, Garnet, Vivi and Steiner.
10: Here I disagree, as the only three characters that can fight underwater and with the flexiblity of the sphere system after a certain point in the game I only ever needed to use Tidus, Wakka, Rikku and Yuna.
11: Don't think there is anyone
12: Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses but I would use Balthier, Basch, Ashe and Fran as opposed to Vaan and Penelo.
13: Hope annoying you is fair enough but he's the best mage in the game..not using him and using Vanille or Sazh instead is a bit of a waste.
Aris Khandr said:
Erja_Perttu said:
In FFX you're missing out the wonderful Rikku. What's that; you're hideously weak and have no offensive skills? Ok, back to the pile you go!
Rikku not only was my favorite FFX character, but one of my favorite characters period. And if you level her up, she's amazing. I took her through EVERYONE's sphere grid.
I did that, was HI-larious when she was dealing more damage than Auron but was the fastest character I had AND auto-haste...5 turns to Rikku, 1 turn to Tidus, 5 Turns to Rikku, 1 Turn to Yuna, that's how it went .
In Mass Effect 1 and 2 Garrus was my main man and I would switch the other out and about when needed but it'd usually be Wrex or Thane...cause the guys rock.
Don't think I've had many useless companions in other games...
oh and I don't use companions in Bethesda rpgs, they are always more of a pain in the ass than their worth. Well I did take dogmeat in fallout 3 despite all but only because I wanted a dog, no post apocalyptic wonderer is complete without one. He mostly just screwed up my stealth, ran off and engaged random enemies, made animal friend useless (because it doesn?t extend to your companions so they still get attacked) caught grenades, set off traps and got me stuck in places. Even Fawkes was a pain, he keeps moving in front of me and screwing up my line of sight, he is even worse than dogmeat for getting you stuck and...he kept making me go ?oh shit super mutants!!? every time he opened his mouth and I kept shooting him by accident but that?s just me being stupid.
And Ashley in Mass effect, a pure solider just didn?t seem that useful. I used Wrex instead. I like her character tho.
Paladin Anderson said:
DementedSheep said:
DA:O
Leliana, never found her useful. I only used her to *cough* pickpocket people in towns. But otherwise if I wasn?t playing a rogue myself I would take Zev. I?m probably a bit bias tho because I don?t like her.
Dog take up a slot but doesn?t feel like a full companion so I never used him. It would have been better if there was a pet slot.
Oghren, you get him pretty late so can?t level him up yourself.
Mass effect 2.
Jacob, I barley ever used him.
Mordon, tho I never really tried with him. Maybe I was just using him wrong
Allot of people thing Jack is useless. It true on higher difficulties when all enemies have defences it disarms her somewhat, she certainly isn?t the most powerful and using her effectively requires micro management but she is still very useful against husks IMO. She has the fastest cool down of your biotics, shockwave and pull. Group them up, strip their defences, use CC and watch them all fly. Shockwave can also slow enemies down and knock them out from behind cover so you can take them out even if it won?t send them flying tho flashbang is better for that. I just wish she wasn?t using a shotgun. It?s the worst weapon to go with her skills and means she runs in and gets herself killed if you don't watch her.
BG2.
Been years since I played that game but I don?t think I ever really used Jaheira or Haer'Dalis.
There's a mod you can download that makes Dog (Barkspawn in my game) an summon. So you get to have him as a full fledged party member without losing the character slot. You'll want to crank up the difficulty a notch to compensate.
I already play on max difficulty tho there is probably a mod for that to. Might try that on my next play through. Thanks for reminding me that mod exist.
I don't get this. When I play Skyrim, if I'm even just standing on top of a companion, they'll say something in an annoyed tone (Lydia's "Ohh!" or Jenassa's "What the?") and step back. Worst case I move back into the room a bit til they step out of the doorway and presto.
Though I do wish they'd kept the ability to push NPCs around by running into them, because even if they do eventually move on their own it'd be quicker to push them myself.
Speaking of Skyrim companions, I have the same problem with all of them: they're in the way in combat. It's really annoying when I can't use AoE or Chain Lightning because of them. I'm considering adventuring solo...
Anyone who isn't Fawkes in Fallout 3. I set him against a Super Mutant Behemoth and 2 Overlords once and he lost 3 bits of health (Is bits right? Them little lines that show the health bar) and that was after the Deathclaw showed up, there is simply no need to ever have anyone else when he's around.
About Jack: They just neglected to give her a damage-focused power. Warp Ammo is very effective, but ammo powers are boring. Shockwave is handy for taking out multiple waves of Husks and Abominations (provided you have taken out their armor, Husks die instantly if their feet leave the ground). But she needed something like Warp or Reave, which are the stars of the biotic talents in ME2.
The problem with Jack is a problem with Biotics in general in ME2 - on any higher difficulty so many enemies have one or more defensive layers (Armor, Barriers, Shields) that by the time you get to their health bar, you may as well just kill them off. As a result, powers like Shockwave are rendered borderline useless. Anything that can be affected by it can just be gunned down. Anything that you'd WANT to affect with it is likely protected in some way. Warp ammo isn't bad, but there are plenty of other ways to get a group ammo power, so it's not really a selling point...
Any of the companions in Skyrim. Why?
A. They disappear for no reason.
B. They disappear for no reason with my loot.
C. They disappear for no reason WITH MY LOOT!
D. They have no personality.
E. They have no side quests to flesh out their personalities.
F. MY LOOT!
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