When iconic weapons/gears are the useless ones in the game

[FakeSympathy]

Don't you always get annoyed whenever game does this to you?

So a trailer gets released, and the supposed protagonist is wearing or carrying a badass gear. You wait months for the game to come out, and what happens? The gear that was in the trailer or even in the cover of the case gets outclassed by everything else in the game.

For example, kingdom hearts's starting weapon the "kingdom key" is shown in cutscene, game covers, and trailers. However, the starting weapon will get replaced by more powerful keyblades. Another good example would be the iron armor in Skyrim. Seriously, the dovahkin in the trailer looks badass in that armor. However, as we all know, iron armor set is only better than handful or armor sets and gets out-ranked by steel sets and above.

Can we please get the iconic gears to be a good end-game gear, or at least be able to upgrade in such way?

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Wait, the Buster sword isn't an endgame weapon?

That explains some things honestly.

 

[Fox12]

Yeah, the fact that Cloud's iconic buster sword gets replaced with a lightsaber is stupid.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Not really a 'weapon' per se, but it really bothered me that the protagonists' initial personas in Persona 3 and 4 became useless so early on while your party members' levelled up appropriately.

 

[aozgolo]

Wait... what do you mean that hot chick with the big rack isn't actually IN Evony?

 

[Bad Jim]

The chainsaw in the first two Doom games was somehow iconic but a pretty bad weapon to actually fight with. It does okay damage, but you have to get close and it locks you in place, so you take a lot of damage from anything around you. Sometimes you can back into a corner and kill dozens of pinkies one by one, but those cases are rare and the only benefit is saving ammo for your better weapons.

The crowbar in the Half Life games was also iconic yet weak, though you could get a fair bit of use out of it at the start of both (non episode) games.

 

[DoPo]

The crowbar in the Half Life games was also iconic yet weak, though you could get a fair bit of use out of it at the start of both (non episode) games.

I think the only reason it's iconic is because it's the first weapon you get and you generally get to use it frequently in the beginning few levels if you want to save up ammo.

In multiplayer it could also be useful as it did quite heavy damage on strike - 25HP, so it would kill a person in 4 swings (assuming they had full-ish health and no armour) - if caught somebody camping, killing them with a crowbar was the traditional humiliation option. I remember there was also a bug in one version which would cause the crowbar to swing insanely fast - I'm talking 10+ hits a second. If you got it to trigger basically you had an instant death touch against which not even full health + full armour would protect.

I actually doubt the multiplayer portion is that significant for its iconic status, though. I think it's just because it's a weapon you probably get to use the most frequently in single player that did it.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Meanwhile FFX subverts this hard by having it be the best sword for you for a surprisingly long time.

 

[Erttheking]

Not really a 'weapon' per se, but it really bothered me that the protagonists' initial personas in Persona 3 and 4 became useless so early on while your party members' levelled up appropriately.

Good god, agreed. At least the SMT games make it clear that the Pixie you usually start with is going to get supplemented very early on.

Also, a couple of shooters have a tendency to show characters wielding very early on/crappy assault rifles. Not a whole lot, but Master Chief always seems to be wielding the crappiest weapons on the covers to Halo games. Usually assault rifles, but he got in on dual SMG action in 2. I think the developers realized this when they were working on the Anniversary edition of Halo CE though, because on THAT cover he's using the Halo 1 pistol. IE, a very overpowered weapon. Shepard does something similar. If you can find a Mass Effect cover where Shepard is holding a weapon, it's the M-8 Avenger assault rifle, which just about everyone will drop ASAP. But come ME3, Shepard has traded that in for the Carnifex, a very powerful heavy pistol. Odd little parallel.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

In Zelda: Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time, we are given items that are borderline useless: a telescope that doesn't see further than you can and an ocarina that doesn't travel in time, I get it that we're given them as "sentimental value" for the characters that gave them, but if those those items were to do anything, maybe they wouldn't be so token.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Not really a 'weapon' per se, but it really bothered me that the protagonists' initial personas in Persona 3 and 4 became useless so early on while your party members' levelled up appropriately.

Well in the case of Persona 4 at least, while its initial form isn't the strongest, Izanagi does have the "powered up" form of Izanagi-no-Okami.

 

[maninahat]

The Land Shark gun in Armed and Dangerous. It's what everyone points to when they want to say how great the game is (I bought it entirely on the mention that there is a gun that shoots sharks), but in game, the gun is a fun novelty thing that essentially shoots equivalent of very slow homing missiles - it isn't practical at all, especially in an intense firefight.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Wouldn?t call it objectively ?useless,? more a matter of personal taste, but I always find it irksome that Master Chief is always depicted throughout Halo media and in cutscenes with the Assault Rifle, then cut to gameplay, and most people drop it for literally anything else the second they can. Also, the iconic pose of Master Chief on the cover of Halo 2, dual-wielding the SMGs atop the mountain, and it turns out to be the most ineffective dual-wield in the game.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The wooden plank-with-nail James gets in Silent Hill 2. It's his first weapon and you see him with it in almost every concept art/ fan art, but there's no good reason to go back to it once you get the pipe, and in the end you probably get more mileage from that.

The animal guns from the Ratchet & Clank games. Feature prominently in every trailer, but in practice they're not very practical. Nothing quite beats the starter-ish machine gun/bomb glove weapons, even though you pile up dozens more gadgets throughout the game.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The Assault Rifle from Halo: Combat Evolved. It's horribly inaccurate, does paltry amounts of damage and has a slow-ass reload. The only thing it's good for is mowing down Grunts and Flood infection forms, but you can do that with just about anything. The only other weapon I can think of that's worse is the Needler, and even that had some merit against Elites (still not as effective as the "noob combo," though). Later games made the Assault Rifle semi-viable, but I still found myself swapping it out most of the time for a Battle Rifle or Covenant Carbine.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Not really a 'weapon' per se, but it really bothered me that the protagonists' initial personas in Persona 3 and 4 became useless so early on while your party members' levelled up appropriately.

Well, playing around with that, you can fuse better versions of both Orpheus and Izanagi in the late game, and they're among the most powerful Personas in the game.

 

[CaitSeith]

Starter Pokémons. Yeah, kinda utilitarian to consider them just weapons; but that doesn't deny that they are iconic and never the strongest ones.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Starter Pokémons. Yeah, kinda utilitarian to consider them just weapons; but that doesn't deny that they are iconic and never the strongest ones.

Eh. While they aren't the strongest ones, they're designed to be, for the most part, well rounded and capable of being your go to for the entire game.

 

[CaitSeith]

Starter Pokémons. Yeah, kinda utilitarian to consider them just weapons; but that doesn't deny that they are iconic and never the strongest ones.

Eh. While they aren't the strongest ones, they're designed to be, for the most part, well rounded and capable of being your go to for the entire game.

Then I'll reduce it to one single iconic starter: Pikachu from Pokémon Yellow. He's one of the weakest electric type (if not the weakest) from the original 150 Pokémons, he can't be evolved into Raichu and you can't catch other Pikachus in the game.