Four Most Useless Party Members in Beloved JRPGs

One of the great things about JRPGs is that they tend to be pretty well balanced when you have to manage a party. There are some games, though, that fail to live up to this expectation. Whether they say less-than-helpful things, make bad decisions, or simply don’t do anything at all….they’re not the best companions to have on a dangerous adventure.

But which ones are the worst of the worst in the genre? These five.

Cait Sith

Final Fantasy VII

You know a character is bad when you completely forget that he(?) exists. When I played through FF7 I did everything in my power to not use this party member. For the few instances where I was forced to use Cait Sith, I let him die and carried on with the rest of my crew.

It also doesn’t help that he’s basically the Jar Jar Binks of Final Fantasy lore.

Amanda Ken

Persona 3

As the only child in your party, Ken is not the most useful of party members. This could be simply because, being a child, he’s not really made for fighting. Just play pretend with any ten-year old and you know you can easily overpower them.

And while that might be a good reason to be useless in real life, it’s not really good enough in a game where you are fighting things that don’t exist in the real world anyway. In a fantasy world, why can’t a child be just as powerful as a full-grown adult/teenager? I don’t know….but this one definitely isn’t. 

Low-Level Companion X

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

I realize that this isn’t necessarily a single companion, but I think it still counts as each one does have a name. In a game where you can choose the role of your companions, though some are limited, once you find a few characters that can switch into any role you could possibly need, they become your primary six. But that doesn’t stop you from recruiting more and more as the game goes on and your guild grows larger. Any party member beyond those are just redundant. You can try and bring a few along on low-level bounties or send them on missions outside of the game-map, but that doesn’t really help you much in the long-run. Thus, they seek to fill the roster with quantity and not quality.

Aerith Gainsborough

Final Fantasy VII

While not entirely useless, she does (spoiler alert) die. After spending several hours leveling her up to be a useful companion to mostly just keep Cloud and company alive, she goes and gets run through outside of battle.

Being dead late-game is rather frustrating. If you had known that the first time around, you probably would have swapped her out with another healer as soon as possible. This makes you have to stock up on more potions and defend more often while you level up her successor for your final fight.

These are just a few of the most useless. Who do you find to be a useless companion in your favorite JRPGs?