Useless Skills in Megami Tensei Games

[Music] just like any turn-based rpg attacks are the very foundation of the combat in megami tensei for the most part the skills you find throughout the games are pretty useful like you got physical attacks elemental magic attacks status ailment attacks status buffs status debuffs if it's in the game there's probably some use you can get out of it but that's not always the case there are always going to be those skills that just aren't worth your time and some that can actually do more harm than they do good that is what i'm going to be looking at in this video the most useless skills in megaton games that i think you should never use now for the skills i include on here i'm going to be looking at other factors besides the skills themselves such as how and when in the games you get them and which demons learned them like it'd be easy for me to put all the low or medium damaging skills on here but the whole point of them is that you get them early in the game before you get access to the stronger skills but not only that i'm also going to be looking at specific situations where they may or may not be useful for example you might say that inferno from devil survivor 2 is a bad skill because it's basically maragi dyne but it hits everyone including the party but it also has a much lower mp cost than moragi dyne and if your entire party drains fire spells it can actually be used to heal the party so that can make it go from really bad to really good now if there are any i happen to miss be sure to let me know in the comments and also mind you this is not a countdown there is not going to be a top 10 9876 or anything like that and now that that's out of the way let's get on with the video starting off with nocturne we have not one skill but an entire category of skills and that is all the demon conversational skills these are the skills that keep showing up in your fusion results that you don't want like trade pester loan begging there are just too many to name them all so i gotta ask has anyone ever actually gotten any use out of these skills because i think the only time i've ever actually used one of these was in my nocturne no buff playthrough when i was grinding for money i used threatened to try to get maca from the enemies and even then it only gave me useless magic stones half the time more often than not they just get in the way of other skills that i'd rather have and if i'm trying to recruit a demon chances are i'll just use demi fiend to do it surprisingly we have another whole category of useless skills in nocturne the anti-element skills normally these skills are great because they can be used to counter a demon's weakness but unlike other games where it overwrites the demon's weakness in nocturne all it does is reduce the damage by half and nothing else meaning it doesn't actually cover your weakness i mean yeah it does reduce the extra damage but it still counts as a weakness and it still gives the enemy another turn so what's the point moving on to strange journey we have one that some of you may have noticed but we're probably too afraid to use and that skill is lost word the in-game description reads unpredictable effect but what it actually does is either fully heal hp fully heal mp or apply a random buff that doesn't sound terrible until you realize they can do that to either the party or the enemies even then if the skill only did apply to the party with a game so heavy on planning and strategy like smt if you're in a situation where you'd be so desperate that you rely on a skill with a random effect to get what you want you're probably already dead and the fact that even then it can apply to either side of the battlefield only makes it worse it's really not worth the risk if you ask me especially if you're fighting a boss and now here we are at smt4 and we're gonna be here a while because this game is home to some of the worst skills in the entire franchise the first of which is panic caster what this does is it increases the user's magic attack by 25 for a few turns but it inflicts panic on the user this provides a slightly higher buff to magic than tarou kaja which gives you a 21 increase however taru kaja also increases both physical and magic attack power it also works on the entire party lasts until the enemy cancels it doesn't give you any status ailments and it can stack three times which of these sounds like a better deal to you the next skill on here is blood ritual this skill was also in strange journey and what it did there is it reduced the user's hp to one but maximized all their stats okay kinda risky but i can still see the benefits of using it however now in smt4 it only increases your stats once yeah only the user only by one stage and it reduces your hp to almost death i mean yeah you do get it really early in the game before you get luster candy but by this time you're also already getting taro kaja raku kaja and suku kaja and you're gonna need to heal so blood ritual is basically gonna take two turns to use anyway so wouldn't you rather give your entire party plus one attack and defense rather than just plus one everything to one user this next one is actually two skills those are tetra coerce and makara cores what these do is they cancel out the enemies tetracon or macar khan respectively this may sound good on paper but in practice it's actually really bad mainly because enemies don't use tetrakorn or macar khan that much and when they do you're better off just hitting them with the opposite attack type or just taking the turn to either buff or heal and it's not like these skills are easily accessible either in smt4 you have to buy the dlc beat the bosses and then go through the extremely complicated process of fusing uriel and gabriel that's about it for entirely useless skills in smt4 but remember what i said in the beginning about me also looking at which demons get them the main reason smt4 has so many useless skills is because a lot of them are just exclusive to demons that can't get any good use out of them one example being sanat's guy rage this skill deals heavy almighty damage to all enemies that is by no means a bad skill but being a magic attack and sanat being a physical focused demon there's really no reason for him to have it and this is sanat's exclusive skill you cannot teach it to flynn or pass it on to another demon through fusion and this isn't the only one either there's also breath on demon eho lightning of god on uriel and inferno of god on michael for example though i should mention that it's not completely impossible to pass exclusive skills to another demon you can actually do this through the app demon fusion light what this does is it lets you perform simple two deem infusion in battle and in what i can only assume was an oversight also works with exclusive skills the catch is that you can't hand pick your inherited skills the game just automatically passes the highest ranked ones to your demon so if you want to be really tricky and clever with your fusion you can give your demon the exact skill set you want but for the average player it's just more trouble than it's worth and before we move on to the next game we have a skill that is actually really good and not demon exclusive but is only on here because there's just a better alternative the skill i am talking about is great lagos great lagos is tied with anti-ticton for being the strongest almighty skill in smt4 it deals severe almighty damage to all enemies that is amazing however anti-ticton not only has the same base power but it also has an additional effect where it debuffs the stats of every target it hits what really makes great logos worse though in my opinion is the amount of hurdles you have to go through to get it the only demon that learns this skill is serif who you have to get by completing the four wings for heads quest which is only available in new game plus and only if you side with jonathan at the route split anti-ticton on the other hand is learned by three demons one of which being shiva who you don't have to unlock is very easy to fuse and you can even fuse him at a lower level the only advantages to using great lagos over anti-ticton is that one it costs 10 less mp and two it hits hordes three times whereas anti-tick-ton only hits them once so i suppose if you're really obsessed with conserving mp and are really worried about hordes that much you could make the argument that there are reasons to use great lagos but if you ask me it's just not worth the effort when anti-ticton exists and is much easier to get your hands on now we move on to the persona games and we are going to be looking at some skills that are terrible in pretty much every game life drain and spirit drain again these are skills that are normally great but in persona 3 4 and 5 they always deal a fixed amount in persona 3 life drain did 35 damage and spirit drain did 20. oh and let's not forget that these skills have mp costs 2. so to be exact you're really only getting back 15 mp with spirit drain just to show you how little that is the mp cost of mazionga and mabufula is 16 mp there is absolutely no reason for you to waste a turn using this skill if you really need a way to recover mp just use invigorate 3 do not waste a skill slot with this garbage oh but wait in persona 4 spirit drain was buffed to 30 mp and they nerfed a life drain to steal just 30 hp so yeah just don't use them moving on to persona 4 we have high counter now this was one of the best skills to use in persona 3 because this skill had a 50 chance to reflect all physical attacks so what makes it so bad in persona 4 well for one thing it along with the other counter skills were severely nerfed in persona 3 counter had a 15 chance to work while counter-strike had a 30 chance to work and high counter like i said had a 50 chance to work persona 4 counter only has a 10 chance to work counter strike has a 15 chance and high counter only has a 20 chance but the main reason i chose high counter specifically is because of the changes persona 4 made to the combat in persona 3 physical was divided into three types strike slash and pierce but in persona 4 it was all condensed into just one category which was physical so you have these counter skills which have a very small chance to reflect only physical skills but you know what else reflects physical skills repel physical which just straight up makes you reflect all physical skills 100 of the time the other counter skills well you get them early on so at that point if you want to reflect physical skills those are really all you've got but high counter the earliest you get it is from tamlin at level 53. repel physical on the other hand you get from ronda at level 55 and if you're playing golden and you have a persona with resist physical you can actually use magician skill cards to get it even earlier i just did persona team not think this through you have the option to run high counter which has a 20 chance of working or you can just run repel physical which has a 100 chance of working who at atlas thought this was a good idea persona 5 kinda did the same thing with the counter skills but they're a little better now because it's divided again only into two categories though physical and gun and in fact there are no skills that resist in block guns so i can see somebody making a case for high counter in persona 5 but it's still only a 20 chance and i still think it's better to have a 100 chance to reflect half of them then a 20 chance to reflect both but now that we're on persona 5 let's look at some of the new skills that were added in this game like ambient aid which increases the rate of inflicting status ailments during rain or some other extreme weather condition like a pollen warning that is just kind of a situational thing and it's only for an effect that's not even that good there's also climate decorum which doubles your evasion rate during the same conditions so i guess that's a little better but still having an effect that only works during special weather conditions just does not seem worth it to me i'd rather save my skill slots for something i can always rely on though i should mention in royal there's the gloomy child trait which makes these effects always work but if you're playing vanilla well what you should do is stop and start playing royal instead but if you don't have a choice then don't waste your time with these skills speaking of situational skills that are too unreliable how about skills that only work when you're being ambushed like adverse resolve which increases your critical rate after you've been ambushed you know what else does this apt pupil except it always works oh and there's another one survival trick which allows you to survive an instant death attack with one hp once per battle so that's an option or you can just run indoor which also does this and actually works for all attacks and last but not least we have the devil survivor games which for the most part are pretty balanced games in fact i'd even go so far as to say most of the skills in these games are actually a little too good but i'm going to end this video with a skill that i actually think does more harm than good and the worst thing about it is that it's one you actually can't say no to because it's a race skill and that skill is the viles exclusive race skill chaos wave what this does is it increases your attack range by two squares sounds good but it also disables extra turns and reduces your movement speed by one and worst of all it has your movement priority meaning you'll only able to move half as often as everyone else so yeah you have your increased damage range but it doesn't really matter because you have movement priority gives the enemies more than enough time to get up close to you and pummel you with extra turns that you don't have and if you somehow are alive when you do get to move you still gotta deal with your reduced movement range now this can be countered by running again mo with phantasma which gets your movement priority back to normal but if that demon dies you're screwed oh and if you're wondering what the upgraded version of the skill does in devil survivor 2 all it does is increase your attack range by three instead of two dragons on the other hand they have the option to temporarily increase their attack range to six so even with this upgrade you can't even fight back against them my god what a way to ruin one of my favorite races of demons and that is going to be about it for this video let me know if you guys agree or disagree with my analyses what i believe to be the worst skills in megaton also be sure to let me know if there are any i missed i know i only covered a small handful of games and that's mainly because in most of them i don't think there are actually that many bad skills in the franchise but i do plan to make another one of these videos if i get enough suggestions as always thank you all for watching be sure to rate comment and subscribe be sure to check out my other social media links in the description and if you want to support me on kofi consider leaving a donation of just three dollars it will get you featured in the credits of my next video until the next video i will see you all [Music] later [Music] you

Channel: Nyarly

Views: 573,500

Keywords: Megami Tensei, Persona, Persona 5, SMT, Shin Megami Tensei, Atlus, SMTV, Nocturne, SMTIV, Devil Survivor, DeSu2, MegaTen, Japan, JRPG, RPG, Nintendo, Sony, Playstation, Switch, PS2, PS3, Marin Karin, Persona 3, Persona 4, Gameplay, Commentary, Opinion, Mitsuru, Strange Journey, DS, 3DS, Emulation, PSP, Royal, Jack Frost

Id: dN8WGJGpkeI

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021