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View Full Version : The Benchwarmers: Part Deux



Wolf Kanno
09-10-2016, 06:01 AM
I did this thread a few years ago, hence the Part Deux nonsense.

Anyway, we all have that favorite team we use for our various RPGs, so which characters spent most of their time warming the menu party screen/base/ship than actually see combat?

NeoCracker
09-10-2016, 06:18 AM
Breath of Fire 2, Jean and Sparr. Pretty much the games only two worthless characters in combat (Well, Spar is pretty good if you teach him Missile).

In Xenosaga I always dropped Momo, I never liked little girls in my battle party if avoidable. Most of them annoy me, really Ken from Persona 3 is one of the few exceptions, but anyone weak to Mudo or Hama? No thank you, shit's not worth dealing with.


Throw in Relm as a throw away in FF VI for that same Reason, and Eiko in IX. Fucking hate little kids in Video games.

Yuffie From FF VII, Selphie from VIII, Rikku from X (though technically your whole party participates, I never swap her in), and while I love many of them, Tactics is too frustrating to build up many Special characters by the time you get them. I already have all these guys, I don't want to build you all too damnit! I've been playing for so long already!

FFNut
09-10-2016, 05:14 PM
Neocracker disagree on Breath of Fire II on Jean. Once levelled he out tanks Rand and doubles his attack. He is a bit of a late bloomer but becomes extremely dominant. Spar on the other hand I agree. You can make Spar good with morphs, but ya... He is the weakest team member followed by Bow.

Final Fantasy VI Cyan always sits and warms a seat in the airship. Also Edgar in the second half. Celes usually ends up back there too as I end up using Terra instead. Shadow also gets limited time on the team as he is a great character yet falls short from others.

Mog would be on a seat also if he didn't have that charm to abuse for some exploration

Pumpkin
09-12-2016, 02:39 AM
Trails of Cold Steel: Machias (Not a fan), Rean (already a Gary Sue), Millium (Annoying)
Atelier Rorona: Iksel, Tantris (Not a fan of either)
Atelier Ayesha: Keithgriff (same)
Atelier Shallie: Keithgriff (Not a fan), Kortes (Better people to use)
Atelier Sophie: Harol, Oskar (Don't like them)
Tales of Vesperia: Raven (Not a fan and him being an archer pains me)
Tales of Hearts R: Hisui (Not a huge fan)
Persona 4: Naoto (She comes in too late and my parties are already sorted)
Final Fantasy VIII: Irvine (Do not like)
Final Fantasy IX: Amarant (worst character)
Dragon Age: Origins: Morrigan (She hates me and I'm afraid she'll leave)
Dragon Age II: Fenris (Meh)
Suikoden series: MOST OF THEM

NeoCracker
09-12-2016, 01:02 PM
Neocracker disagree on Breath of Fire II on Jean. Once levelled he out tanks Rand and doubles his attack. He is a bit of a late bloomer but becomes extremely dominant. Spar on the other hand I agree. You can make Spar good with morphs, but ya... He is the weakest team member followed by Bow.

Final Fantasy VI Cyan always sits and warms a seat in the airship. Also Edgar in the second half. Celes usually ends up back there too as I end up using Terra instead. Shadow also gets limited time on the team as he is a great character yet falls short from others.

Mog would be on a seat also if he didn't have that charm to abuse for some exploration

He out-tanks Rand in terms of Defense, but Rand still has far more HP. Plus a fantastic set of healing spells.

Jean's spells are damn near worthless, and his ability to Tank a hit isn't all that much better then Rands. Furhter more he's hardly going to replace any other hitter in your group, so you have a guy whose only purpose in life is to take punches to the face.

Galuf
09-12-2016, 06:25 PM
ff6: definatly Gogo and sometimes Setzar
FF8 anyone not selphie or squall.

Wolf Kanno
09-16-2016, 09:10 PM
Rand's definitely a better character than Jean, who is mostly mediocre. The only time Jean gets useful is when you start abusing the Shaman Fusion system.

Vermachtnis
09-16-2016, 11:27 PM
Fallout 4: Paladin Danse and X6-88 (setting Danse on fire with a rocket was one highlight of the early game)

Final Fantasy VI: Umaro
Final Fantasy VII: Red XIII and Vincent
Final Fantasy VIII: Irvine
Final Fantasy IX: Freya and Armarant
Final Fantasy X: Kimari
Final Fantasy XII: Basch (I don't know why but I just didn't use him. He was like Lv12 at the end of the game where even Vaan and Fran were in there mid-20s.)

Neptunia: Noire (I can count the number of times I voluntarily put her in my party on one hand.)
Neptunia VII: S-Sha (she's the worst parts of Squall and Lightning put together.)

Digital Devil Saga: Cielo (who thought it would be a good idea to have him weak to ailments.)
Persona 3: Yukari (she's so annoying)
Persona 4: Noato (not a fan)
Persona Q: The above + Koromaru (I wanted to use Koromaru but can't stand his whine when he gets hit. Poor puppy.)

Tales of Phantasia: Klarth
Eternia: Chat
Symphonia: Regal
Legendia: Moses and Shirley
Abyss: Anise
Hearts: Kunzite
Graces: Malik

Xenoblade: Sharla (I liked her character but you didn't need healing that game.)

Wolf Kanno
10-19-2016, 07:42 PM
FFVI - I tend to use everyone a little but I'll admit I usually bench the Figaro Bros in order to make the game more challenging and I probably don't use Gau, Strago, and Gogo as much as I should.

FFVII - Yuffie, Cait Sith and Red XIII are usually the ones playing catch up the most in the game for me.

FFVIII - Selphie and Quistis, their limits are just not as useful.

FFIX - Amarant, Eiko, and Garnet are usually benched when I finally get full control of my team.

FFX - Yuna and Kimarhi, healing is really easy in this game and Rikku's a superior healer anyway and Kimarhi just has not good niche on the team.

FFXIII - As much as I would like to bench certain characters, Sahz unfortunately always tends to get picked last due to losing a lot of his useful qualities once the whole party is available and sadly everyone tends to do his primary Roles better than him or have more useful combinations. It doesn't help that he has my least favorite summon in the group.

FFTactics - Most of the specialty characters that are not Mustadio, Agrias, T.G. Cid, and Beowulf.

FFTactics Advance - Same deal as above, most of the specialty characters are not worth the time except Cid and Ritz. Even then, it's a shame both are relegated to post game nonsense.

FFTactis A2 - Cid keeps falling out of the plot too much and can never play catch up, I also usually drop Adelle because she's annoying and her Inheritor Class is a dumb idea and OP but only really comes into play in the post game.

Persona 1 - Ayase and Brown tend to get shafted unless I'm doing the Snow Queen quest. Ayase just has poor weapons and Persona choices, bad stats and an irritating personality. Atlus seems to agree because she's still the only character from P1 whose fate is completely up in the air as she doesn't get any cameo/mentions in P2 and P3. Brown is equally annoying but at least he's a better party member.

P4 - Chie and Naoto tend to be benched a lot, mainly because they are both too tailored to one type of role with Chie being great for boss battles but terrible in dungeons, especially since melee defense is way more common than I would like in the game, and Naoto is the opposite, being great for dungeon grinding but worthless in boss battles due to her spell repertoire being instant death magic and overly expensive Almighty spells that Naoto's stats can't make any use of.

DDS1 - Cielo just has bad stats, a bad weakness, and is annoying as hell.

Breath of Fire - Pretty much everyone that isn't Ryu, Nina, Dias/Bleu, and Karn. I tried using all of them but they are just not as OP as this team.

Breath of Fire 2 - Jean, Stan, and Spar: Jean has been discussed on the fact he's kind of a lousy character in general, Stan is a bit more useful but he's basically a Red Mage type with shitty defense and his special move makes more vulnerable characters a target. Spar is also a bit mediocre, especially how late you get him. The main thing all three have in common is that all three have some obnoxious story sequence you have to go through and all three of them are infinitely better with the Shaman System in play.

Breath of Fire 3 - Nina and Peco get the short end. Nina is great in the early sections but once the Dragon system starts to expand, she loses her niche on the party as an elemental damage dealer. Peco is pretty much like Kimarhi, he can be built to your specs but the game already gives you great people to fill most roles you may want to give him.

Suikoden I and II - Most characters that are old, young children (10 and below) , and have a non warrior/mage profession. The series plays all these types very seriously especially in S1 where you're often forced to use doctors, farmers, and scientists in battle who can't fight to save their lives.

Mass Effect - Kaiden and Ashley, Kaiden is just a terrible class and Ashley often got benched cause I played Shep as a Commando so she was rarely needed once the full party came together.

Mass Effect 2 - Jacob, Miranda, Grunt, Samara, Legion, and Zaeed. Didn't care for any of them, except Legion but he arrives way too late in the game to really care. Game had way too many characters if you ask me.

Xenosaga - M.O.M.O. and Ziggy for the most part, not bad characters but Ziggy is too slow and has an advantage on very few types and M.O.M.O. is too frail until end game and her niche can be covered by Shion.

Xenosaga Eps.2 - Ziggy and Chaos. Ziggy again just has bad attack types that are useful against very few types that other speedier characters can't cover and chaos got nerfed as all hell in this game and lost most of his type advantages.

Wild Arms 2 - Laika and Marivel, Laika gets supplanted by the more useful Tim once he fully joins thanks to some of the bad balancing for her Crest Magic and Force abilities. Marivel is pretty fun to use but can't pull off the type of damage Ashley, Brad, Kanon, and Tim can do.

Dragon Quest IV - Meena, Borya, and Torneko. The first two just have awkward spell sets that happen to not include my go to spells in the series so they rarely saw action when I had Kyril and Maya as options. Torneko is just a bad class combo and losing his ability to get enemy drop rates more often after his chapter kind of sealed the deal there. I also don't really care for Psaro either.

Dragon Quest V - Pretty much all of the human characters not you wife. The great hero is surprisingly crummy.

NeoCracker
10-20-2016, 10:03 AM
I sometimes wonder why Human characters other then your family were even included. They are all so lame.

And even if they weren't fuck you I want a monster party.

Pete for President
10-23-2016, 06:40 AM
I never really use Rikku in FFX (unless doing Dark Aeons and stuff), using ability spheres to teach Mug and Use to tankier characters seems to work way better.