Role playing games are littered with great characters, including ones that will live on forever in 15 year old girl’s fan fiction and Deviant art Accounts. These characters make us feel what they feel, love who they love, and hate who they hate. Then on the flipside there are the characters that we all hate. These may include evil villains that try to take over the world or double agents who sell us out. Then there is a third tier, those characters we simply don’t care about. Whether it be by a huge Character flaw, or complete worthlessness, some characters are not designed to be loved or hated, just forgotten.

Jogurt – Shining Force

Imagine a character that can’t attack for more than 1 HP at a time, and will never level up past level 1 because he is an honest to God hamster. Look no further than Jogurt from Shining Force to meet these qualifications. Quite possibly the most slapped together character in history, Jogurt is a hamster wearing a huge helmet. Simply attaining Jogurt was waste of time involving a complex multi-step quest. His only real use aside from roster filler is a dumb item you can get. When he “gains a level” for the first time, you obtain an item called the “Jogurt Ring” the wearer of which will look like Jogurt in the character avatar and on screen.

Candy Corn – Costume Quest 2

This one, unlike most others are on the list, is intentional. Candy Corn is a worthless character – literally. He never attacks and exists solely as a joke making fun of the fact that a LOT of people hate candy corn on Halloween. “Don’t expect much from Candy Corn,” reads a brief bit of dialogue as he gets ready to fight, then it’s the enemy’s turn.

Cloud – Final Fantasy Tactics

When speaking of Final Fantasy Tactics, one may argue that the brother and sister team of Malak and Rafa should make the list, but at least they don’t promise to be good and then slap you in the face with failure. It was a great idea to toss Cloud from Final Fantasy VII into the original Final Fantasy Tactics game, Final Fantasy VII was still incredibly popular at the time and a cross-over might just drum up sales. Problem was that he was not worth the mountain of trouble you had to go through to get him. The quest that eventually takes you to Cloud involves many meandering sub-stories involving robots, mythical creatures, and legendary literary heroes. After all of that, at last you have Cloud! But wait he doesn’t have any weapons yet, and is incredibly slow at his attacks. Guess what here is another quest to find his sword! Haven’t had enough yet? Get ready to level him up until your eyes bleed, so you can actually use him and his spells! Whoo hoo!

Poshul – Chrono Cross

Aside from Jogurt, I can’t think of a more worthless animal character in any RPG as bad as Poshul. Chrono Cross was a good game, but got bogged down a bit because of far too many characters with no reason to have that many, and a confusing storyline. When you have characters like an animated tree named Mojo, there is no stretch of the imagination that you could play as a pink chi’tzu. In Chrono Cross Poshul can really brighten up some dreary points in the game, but it’s about as needed as Jar Jar Binks making the Final Battle in The Phantom Menace more comedic. In theory you could build Poshul into a “tank” character that rivals all others, but c’mon it’s a talking pink chi’tzu!

Kimahri – Final Fantasy X

I know it’s cool to hate customizable characters in RPGs, but the trend of making them as generic as possible is getting old. First it was Gau having no back-story in Final Fantasy 6, then Quina was too weird and had no backstory in Final Fantasy 9, then we have Kimahri in Final Fantasy 10. When I played Final Fantasy 10, I never used Kimahri because I couldn’t have cared less about his character due to his lack of personality, backstory, and dialog. The game’s artists could have traded him for a picture of Kristen Stewart on a piece of plywood, and I probably would not have noticed the change. This could have been rectified had he been a good character battle-wise, especially with his pedigree as a huge awesome looking lion-dude, sadly I was disappointed. Kimahri’s only skill was that he could move around the Sphere Grid faster than anyone else. Potentially you could make him into the greatest character ever, that is if you cared enough.

Magikarp – Pokémon

There are some good Pokémon and there are some bad ones. While some just look dumb, it takes a special breed to be as bad as our next entry. Magikarp is the worst Pokémon, plain and simple. This is because it has no real physical attacks at all and is almost comedically worthless. The original move it has is called Splash, which does nothing. Let me rewind that for you one more time:

“The original move it has is called Splash, which does nothing….”

Aside from splash the only move it originally had that even did some damage was Tackle, but you couldn’t get that until level 15 or so. Since the Gold and Silver games, Magikarp also has had the move Flail, but it would be worthless if you stuck with Magikarp long enough to get the move instead of evolving it into Gyarados.

Mieu – Tales of the Abyss

I believe this video speaks for itself:

Mieu (the little blue mascot thing) is one of the few characters that I truly wanted to die about halfway through the game due to how annoying he was. One a side note whenever Mieu said the word “Mieu” my cat got angry at me. It would be an injustice not to heed my cat’s warnings and toss Mieu on this list.

Hans – Valkyria chronicles

Hans had the potential to be a cool character, (flying pig = awesome) problem was that he really had no relevance to the game’s overall story, and kind of disappeared in most of the game. When speaking of cutesy mascot characters, even ones like Pikachu in Pokémon or Chu Chu in Xenogears had the one awesome scene where the character’s worth to the party is materialized. Hans was there as just a token pointless cute thing that Sega will obviously use to sell plushies.

Cait Sith – FFVII

Cait Sith from Final Fantasy VII is a neat idea for a character. For those that do not know, Cait Sith appears to be a cat riding around on a giant stuffed animal that yells into a blowhorn, and fights with gambling equipment. Can you think of anyone at all that played through the entire game using Cait Sith? Nope, because it has never happened. He happens to be one of the many RPG novelty characters that you say, “heh!” and never use again. “What makes him so bad?”, you may be asking, well there are a few reasons. He is incredibly weak unless you build him up to ungodly proportions, but many will never go that far. Cait Sith’s limit breaks are allegedly the best in the game “if you know how to exploit them”, but for the casual player they are completely random, caste all sorts of random status ailments, and may even heal the enemies that you are fighting. Ouch!

Thief – Final Fantasy I

When you see the name “thief” one would assume that this person may in fact do things like thievery, perhaps some backstabbing, or even taking candy from a baby. Not so for the old Final Fantasy I thief, a character that seems to be a good choice at first, but will leave you cursing your way to the reset button. Not only does he not steal, but his intended purpose to run away from battles better only really happens if he’s front row. Since he is weak against attacks, this will make him die far more often than he should. When I am forming a party I tend to stay away from people with credentials like these:

“I am much weaker than any other class in amazing ways without the benefit of strength, magic, or even some kind of passable gimmick!”

When he levels up to a ninja, he is still useless as a red mage can do better than him in almost any way.

Qlon – Suikoden

Words cannot express the worthlessness of Qlon from the original Suikoden game. Imagine a job that lies below that of a supermarket door greeter in terms of skill level. Door greeters at least have to pay attention to shop lifters and put stickers on things, but not our good friend Qlon. Whether rain or shine, sleet or snow he (….wait a minute…is Qlon even a man? ….) stands outside your castle and regurgitates the same saying over and over and over again:

Qlon: “Hi! This is [whatever you called it] Castle! I feel so good.”

Qlon: “Hi! This is [whatever you called it] Castle! I feel so good.”

Qlon: “Hi! This is [whatever you called it] Castle! I feel so good.”

Nobody cares how you feel Qlon, get to work! In Suikoden every character serves a purpose even if they are not an actual “battle character”. Let’s say you need a blacksmith, and you happen to find one, BOOM, instant blacksmith shop. Qlon just kind of stands there with these parting words:

Qlon: “Hi! This is [whatever you called it] Castle! I feel so good.”

I wish I could buy a signpost instead…