Useless Items?

[Dr3W21]

Have you ever noticed that some items become useless after a while, if they were ever even useful? Examples: the Slingshot on TP, the Mirror Shield on LA, the Lantern on TP.

What do you guys think?

 

[Con-man]

I think the lantern was very useful. But yeah, the slingshot was a dud. The bomglings were stupid, Ice arrows in Oot, Nayru's Love in Oot, Telescope in WW and fairies in TP(they didn't refill life all the way!)

 

[Kybyrian]

Yeah, a lot of the games only focus on a few items throughout the main course of the game, and a lot of the other items become miscellaneous. A lot of the items you only use right after you get them, or right after you get them, and then at one brief moment in the game. It's hard to make every single item a big deal throughout the entire game, though.

Oh and love your sig, read mine.

 

[insanity76]

The Golden Scale was pretty much useless unless you're going for 20 heart containers.

And in MM, the Great Fairy Sword is utterly useless.

 

[Xinnamin]

Yeah, that was one of my biggest issues with TP, the large number of near useless items. Things like the Spinner and Horse Call and some of those other items that are either discard-able or useless beyond a few isolated events or locations. I think it's just the game designers trying to cram too many ideas into one game and thus not being able to flesh them all out to their greatest potential.

Actually, I don't think it's so much that an item is useless, as no item is ever completely useless, it's just that they're not useful enough. You can't give every item a big role in a game, that's understandable, but it would be nice if they stop giving us items with only half their potential realized (that or just upgrade old items to do new things rather than make more items to do little things for the sake of just having more items).

 

[Zenox]

I totally agree, Xinny. The games recently have had tons of items, mostly new. Almost all of them you used them in the dungeon you acquired them in and never again. That's another thing they tend to do that bugs me. You get an item, and almost all the puzzles in that dungeon revolve around that item. That makes the puzzles insanely easy, as you practically already know what to do before even seeing the puzzle. After the dungeon's over, you might as well put the item on the ground for some other adventurer, as you don't need it anymore. They need to make dungeon items have a purpose outside the dungeon you get them in, heck, maybe in future dungeons after you get it.

 

[insanity76]

That was a nice thing about Ganon's Castle in OoT .. in each of the rooms they recreated a lot of the types of puzzles you dealt with in the 5 temples, therefore making you reuse some of the temple specific items.

 

[TheGreen]

I think that Link's Awakening had the fewest useless items.
My personal favorite was the Roc's Feather from the first dungeon (i think its "level" in the game) and is the best defensive weapon in the game if you ask me.
The thing about Link's awakening is that you need all those items (hook shot, roc's feather, power bracelet, etc.) to navigate around the island.
If there was a fairy who made you turn around or a character blocking your path then many of the items become useless except against a couple enemies.

Most of the items could be used against enemies as well. Magic powder worked for puzzles and a good amount of enemies.

The only bad thing about the system of blocking of paths until you got the next item is that you run into similar objects (rocks and then the green rocks you have to dash through) and you continually have to throw rocks or jump gaps to get to various places. I wish the power bracelet was a passive item :/


Also. Telescope from WW is pointless.

 

[February Eve]

I don't like a completely useless item, but I actually don't mind if it's only useful in one dungeon. I think having items that are fairly reusable and dungeons that are non-linear are somewhat at odds with each other. The more an item is used in later dungeons, the more important it becomes to pick up that item first.

I think one attempt at achieving both would be to have some dungeons that didn't rely on previous dungeon items, but have optional dungeons in the overworld that did. For example, I really liked those labyrinth-caves in TP (one in Hyrule field, one at Lake Hylia). Adding an extra would have been a good way to bring items like the spinner and double clawshot into effect. The double clawshot would have also been an excellent opportunity to bring some rock climbing into play.

Anyway, I also like Xinnamin's idea of upgrading items so they had more than one use, particularly if they made it so that some puzzles could be solved in more than one way. That way the items could be reused but it could also up the potential for nonlinearity if some of the usage overlapped. (Not too much, though, otherwise they would just become redundant.)

 

[nano5896]

The telescope was pretty useless, only to see Tetra being captured. That's the only useless item I can think of

 

[Phantom Zelda]

Well the only item that strikes me as (almost) completly useless is the telescope from WW. Everything else has a use somewhere...

 

[illmatic]

Every Zelda game seems to have at least one of these items. The lantern in ALttP after you get the Fire Rod, and the shovel in the GBA remake.

 

[arkvoodle]

I agree with the above posts- the telescope is one of the most useless items ever presented in a Zelda game.
Aside from that, the shovel was pretty useless after you found the Ocarina in ALttP.

 

[Emma]

I know this exact topic thread existed before on here. But I think it was lost in a hacking.
Most dungeon items become very useless after you get them. To me, the most useless item was Oocca. The dungeons were way too easy to ever really bother with leaving them. The only use I can think of is to save your place in the dungeon if you have to turn the system off. Which brings up the Similar item of Farore's Wind. The only time I found myself using that was in Jabu-Jabu's Belly in case I went down the wrong hole in the room with Ruto.
I can't agree with the Lantern in TP being useless. I have played TP on two TV's. On one, it was bright enough that I would never need the Lantern. But on my current one, which for some reason has no option to change the screen brightness, is too dark and you cannot see anything without the lantern in those caves.

One useless item though that I think was cleverly useless was the Giant's Knife. You hear the hype from the Goron that he's making an awesome sword, you get it and try it out, SURPRISE! That was awesome. First time I played that and saw that it was just so great. They need that again in the series. And a properly constructed version that you need to go on a quest to get.

 

[LozzyKate]

There are a few items that become useless to you when you are playing the game, but they do come in handy when you get them. Also, the items that are useless can also be used in places that are dark (Lantern), places that you need to knock things that are high up, down (Slingshot), and that goes on and on. Sure, some items can be a little annoying or space takers, but they can be used in certain areas that you may need them later on.