Useless Characters

[Jiro]

This guy has a list of nine characters he deems to be utterly useless. Criteria involves both combat and story significance, so there is undoubtedly some fair comments on his end, but I can't help but feel that his mentioning of Quina might anger a few people

Who do you reckon is useless?

[blackmage_nuke]

Quina and Vanille

And thats saying a lot since Im one of those people who considers all 14 characters of FFVI essential to the game

[Jinx]

I agree about Quina, Amarant, Vaan, and Edward.

I disagree about Yuffie. I enjoyed her as a character.

[VeloZer0]

I think the list picked some low hanging fruit, but it could have been better.

[Formalhaut]

Definitely Fran, her stats are, on average, the lowest and she also has almost no story development, except for her little slice of cake in Eryut Village.

[Jinx]

Also, Freya.

I love her character on the first and beginning of second disc! Then her story falls off.

[Hollycat]

Is the guy talking about TAY Edward?

I can agree with some of these. Off the top of my head,
Freya
Vaan
Khimari
and most definately the pirate girl from 2.

[Chris]

In battle, Quina is most definitely not useless. The only ones who would claim this, have never even bothered to use her/him. Storywise, yes. Comic relief at most.

Storywise, the list is actually disturbingly long. I love FFVI, but most of the characters are pretty much nothing but filler.

[Hollycat]

What about the scene with Quina and Eiko. That felt serious enough.

[sabin101]

I don't agree at all with gau being useless he is far from it. Once of his rage abilities from I think it was from the soldier helped me cast fire 2 and that helped me in the battle at narshe. Far from useless.

[VeloZer0]

That is the big problem with the Blue Magic type characters. If you don't know what skills to acquire use then they are largely useless. If you know them inside out they tend to be very powerful. Unfortunately the only way to really know outside reading a guide is painful experimentation.

[Raistlin]

I disagree with Hope, despite how annoying he often was as a character. Hope had the highest magic stat in the game and was a beast in battle. I also disagree with Yuffie, because I'm one of those rare freaks who actually liked her sidequest.

I agree with Vaan (the obvious choice), Gau, and Quina -- though the latter only from a story perspective. Also Irvine because FFVIII sucks. I also agree with whoever suggested Khimari in this thread.

As for my own choice that hasn't yet been discussed, how could we go this long without FFI's Thief not getting a mention? The individual classes don't have any story, so just basing it on battle skills, the original Thief is probably the most useless character in the series.

[Wolf Kanno]

1. Thief Class (FFI) - I agree with Raistlin, weak armor and weapon pools, mediocre stats, and no useful abilities, the only reason to bother with this class is to get the Ninja upgrade but considering the earlier dungeons are pretty brutal, I don't feel it's worth it in the long run.

2. Kimarhi - The nature of his unique skills (Blue Mage/Dragoon) being tied to his limit break and thus not useable at all times destroy their usefulness, the way the Sphere Grid is designed around him also regulates him to playing most of the game as a second tier version of one of your parties more specialized characters in a game where all you need is one, so Kimarhi pretty much gets the short straw no matter what. Especially since Jump and Blue Magic are tied to different stats meaning your choice of whose path to go down will most likely make one of the skills useless for most of the game. As a character, he really doesn't serve much purpose than just being the fantasy ethnic group shoutout like Mog and Red XIII.

3. Yuffie Kisaragi - You knew I was going here. As a playable character, Yuffie is pretty weak with mostly below average stats compared to the rest of the party, her weapons are also pretty weak. Her Limit breaks do have a few standout entries but many of them have more useful counterparts from other party members or just Materia in general. Her only saving grace is the Confomer that allows her to do max damage despite her stats but even this is something that doesn't get unlocked until late into the second disc. From a story standpoint, she serves no purpose, there is nothing unique to Wutai's situation that wasn't told more blatantly dreadful by almost every other city in the game the Shin-Ra touched. So she's just window dressing...

4. Umaro - He's a completely optional hidden character so he has no story purpose whatsoever in the game so that's one check against him. He's a berserker type which is probably one of the most under-appreciated and loathed job classes in the fanbase, so check two. He's also limited to one weak elemental group attack and the rest of his attacks are single hit melee in a game where we have the broken Quick/Ultima/Soul of Thamasa combo and the Ultima Weapon/Master's Scroll combo, so he ends up being potentially the weakest character in the game as well if you actually screw around with customization and acquire all the games broken gear, so check three.

5. Evoker Class (FFIII) - Randomized magic that actually cost MP, wrapped in a weak mage body with a poor equipment pool, all while being outclassed by a dozen other mage classes you already have access to... Yeah, not a great class. Let's not forget the few good spells you have involve getting access to the higher summons of whom you need some of the higher tier classes to make getting them easier and one of said higher jobs is the infinitely more useful Summoner class...

[Cloudane]

Obvious ones would be any blue mage or Selphie, but all of those have some great tricks up their sleeves for the toughest boss fights which arguably balance out how useless they are outside of them.

I'd agree with Vaan, but I have some anti-XII bias there, I didn't consider him to have any redeeming features whatsoever, battles or otherwise

[VeloZer0]

Vaan does have the best stats in FF12, though I can understand why one would never actually notice. That and being largely superfluous to the story.