7 Summons That Ended Up Being Almost Completely Useless

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Final Fantasy has featured plenty of incredible Summons over the years, but they haven't all been winners. Throughout this video, we're exploring some of the Summons that didn't quite have the same awe-inspiring impact.

[drakemane]

I give bonus points to the Tonberry summon for being so fun to watch over and over...That doink!.

[FlawlessCowboy]

I think that people underestimate the usefulness of the tonberry in FFVIII. The combination of item refinement, haggle, and sell high allows for an infinite money loop, which can be translated into an infinite number of stat up items, thereby allowing max stats at any level.

[PsychoSavager]

For FF8, I would have personally ranked Carbuncle as being more useless than Tonberry. Tonberry was decent enough at dealing non-elemental damage to bosses. Carbuncle just made it impossible to cast Cure on your own characters, and likely helped enemies heal themselves by absorbing their own elemental spells.

[salculd]

Here's an obscure one: Bahamut in Final Fantasy Record Keeper.... sort of.

For the game's second anniversary in the global version, every player was given Bahamut for free. This was a big deal--it was a 5-star ability, the highest available at the time, and getting enough of the items required to create those ranged from extremely difficult to literally impossible. Unfortunately, DeNA screwed up, and the version of Bahamut that was given to players was accidentally a one used in an early game tutorial, and it was EXTREMELY weak. Its damage multiplier was a mere 5, meaning it could be outdamaged by 3-star summons like Shiva, or even the 2-star Chocobo summon if it was a single target.

Their response was to rename the pre-existing, obtainable Bahamut in-game (whose multiplier was 16.5, for comparison) to Bahamut (V) and let players keep the wrong version, which ended up being colloquially referred to as Bughamut. Incidentally, this ended up being the only "ability" that was unique to the global version of the game--the JP version had different rewards entirely for its second anniversary.

(I might have messed up some of the details here, since it's been a long time since it happened, but that's the gist of it.)

[Johnny_Fox_Show]

Disagree on Tonberry being near useless compared to Carbuncle, Cerberus or Siren. At least he gives you the shop abilities which is incredibly convenient when trying to get the final weapons later or just getting supplies in the field.

[JovialRoger]

You're just wrong about the Tonberry GF in VIII. His Luck and Eva bonuses are often the biggest boosts available to those stats in the game, and his Level Up/Level Down (which he knows by default) are the primary way to manipulate enemy drop tables (and possibly draw-able spells, can't remember). It's shop abilities also allow for infinite gil cycles and remove the need to backtrack for missed books for more casual players. Carbuncle is worse by far as Recov Med RF isn't particularly useful, Auto-Reflect is double edged, and Counter is only alright since it requires physical attacks and most mid and late game challenging enemies tend to use more magic attacks.

[dyent]

Doomtrain is pretty useless if Sabin is

[Pbeastcollins]

Atomos was perfect for grinding on Yans in FF9. They’re not immune to gravity and if they’re asleep, Atomos won’t wake them up.

[DroWarriorOfLight]

I just want to add that learning about Eggman in this video has made my day happier

[aaronlefebre]

Reflect in FFT was not only not random in its targeting, but incredibly useful in extending caster's ranges, and did not double reflect nor go back to the caster.

It took into account the distance and orientation of the caster to the target with Reflect, and plotted a target on the far side from the caster in the same range and orientation to decide what panel to hit. Think of it like plotting points on a graph.

If your caster was 3 squares away from the Reflect holder, then the Reflect would bounce the spell 3 panels away in the opposite direction, effectively continuing in a straight line. If someone was in that panel 3 squares away, they're getting hit with the spell, even if they also have Reflect.

Just like Arithmancy, Reflect worked in a very specific way, but it worked that way every single time, and if you know what you're doing, it can be used to extremely devastating effect.

FFT Carby does not deserve this slander.

[AmataRayne]

The fact that Ultros was incredibly useless in Dissidia is probably the most accurate thing i've ever seen. Lol

[Toshinegawa]

The Spirit Moogle from DFFOO

when Summoned, he only gave 1 Free turn. He also didnt damage the enemy or heal your party either. His ability was that he "removed any debuffs on Terra" while his blessing was "increasing Terra's Love by 10" a stat that doesnt even exist.

However, he was meant to be bad due to being given as an April Fool's event

[MarcoSilva-jjxo]

How dare you say Tonberry is useless. Granted his attack is average but his animation is funny and cute. Not to mention the abilities he brings to the table are some of the best, haggle, sell-high, familiar and call shop.

[lofoten]

At some point you will have to make a supercut of all summons from worst to best.

[s-wo]

Wow I don't think I ever heard about this Eggman summon! I'm not sure about Crusader either but definitely Eggman.

[PraisetheFluffyTail]

Tonberry wasnt very useful in combat but his shop abilities were top tier, could help in CD4 a lot, and make you a ton of gil if used in tandem with other GF abilities, also for the cost you could always kill cactuars with Squall since he has a fixed rate of 255% hit and Selphie with Strange Vision, each Cactuar gave about 20 AP so wasnt too hard to farm

[alexdavid]

So i like to shout out the "spirits" from ffxi. the way summons worked in 11 was they drained a certain amount of mp a "tick". You could unlock the avility to summon spirits verse traditional summons for each of the 8 elements. they be able to cast any spell from there element at random.

If them casting spells at random wasnt bad enough they cost more mp per tick then the traditional summons. Leaving them largely unused aside light (since it could cast cure) and dark (since it did cast sleepga occasionally which was great for crowd control.

[raphwalker]

As a Summoner in FF14, I can tell you Carbuncle is not useless.

[anthonyjackson]

Idk, I’m playing FF8 currently and that LV Up and LV Down from Tonberry has been great for my magic stocks lol

[LEE-]

Speaking of summons. I pray to all that is good and holy that Knights of the Round is not obtained through Chadley in the next instalment of the FFVII Remake series. I want to actually pick up the materia from the Round Island.