I'm reminded of Dragon Quest 8, where there's a critter in the main character's pocket who likes chesse, but who is pretty useless. Thing is, you can feed him cheese during combat, and he'll use some sort of breath attack, but it's generally hard to justify doing so. The thing is:
* Doing this requires a consumable. Cheese are not buyable, and you can't buy all the ingredients for them until later in the game, so there's already a strong disincentive toward using them (just consider how many players don't like using consumables). In particular, this means that you can't afford to use these in random encounters.
* Furthermore, only the main character can use them.
* In addition, you can only use 2 cheeses per battle, so even if you stock up on them somehow, you can't just spam them during boss fights.
* Most of the cheeses tend do be things that either are just single-use all enemy targeted attacks (and most boss fights are single enemies, as is usual in JRPGs), or effects that you can replicate with spells. The only exceptions are multi-target healing earlier in the game (later on you get your own multi-target healing, and there's another item you get that fully heals the party without the same usage limitations other than being consumable), the one cheese that revives the party (and I'm not even sure about that cheese's behavior), and the cheese that gives the entire party tension (but you can eventually get an item that does that for free).

So, aside from some niche speedrunning usage, and maybe mild cheese for early multi-target healing, cheese, and hence this character, is useless.

Some other DQ games have had characters who've felt useless:
* In DQ4, Meena (Nara on NES) has poor stats, levels up slowly, and doesn't get either the party heal or the reliable revive. (Remakes fixed her.) Kyrill (Cristo on NES) had some AI issues with trying to instantly kill bosses, but he at least has good stats and can cast those two spells I mentioned. And then there's Borya (Brey), who doesn't get the best attack spells, and whose Oomph (Bikill) spell the AI just doesn't know how to use properly. (Worth noting that, in the original DQ4, in Chapter 5 AI control of companions is *mandatory*.)
* In DQ5, aside from there being some useless monsters, there's also useless characters, like Sancho (though the remake gave him some use, with some unique non-combat spells) and Pipin. Also, the daughter (who I mentioned earlier in the topic) and the wife (without the echoing hat, and without Deborah who was only added in the second remake) just aren't that good. (At least Bianca has some good use early on, and has some early plot importance well before marriage becomes a topic.)
* In DQ6, Barbara/Ashlynn isn't that good during combat. Her HP is low, and if you make here a mage (as seems to most fit her character) will lower it further, to the point where using her in that particular class is just not feasible. Also, her signature ability Magic Burst is hard to justify; you spend all of her MP (which isn't that easy to regain; no Elfin Medicine in this game) just to do 3x that MP in damage to all enemies, and that's *all* of her MP that you spend to do that. The remake didn't help her; in fact, that Magic Burst now only does *2x* damage. (And yet the remake made one of the most useful abilities, Vacuum/Thin Air, even more powerful, to the point where I think it was enough to put enemies that use that attack into unfair territory. Because of this and the removal of monster recruitment, I'd say that, while DQ6 is (for the most part) one of my favorite DQ games, it got the worst treatment in its remake.)

Also notably appears in the Japanese name for the Yakuza franchise, Ryu Ga Gotoku or Like a Dragon.

That reminds me of the very few times someone could actually have medical assistance performed on them in Close Combat. Either you were going home in pieces or were as good as dead.

Hi there. Thanks for the detail, I didn't know

And it seems SF2 have symbols there for the keen eye
like the Edmund Honda rising sun and painted face,
something else about Chun Li as female, etc
I barely remember articles/discussions about those topics when it was on its peak,
but were other times and at that time I wasn't interested (And not yet)
But yeah, maybe all that context/culture knowledge
could explain things like the Ken & Ryus case

I know most people kill Mud, and even enjoy it. I didn't. Mud was my first sex partner in the Colony, though hardly the last. He earned his name every night (and several times during the day).a

I don't like her either. I'm guessing many players liked her because of her OP stats, and the fact she comes with a wand of missiles and some healing pots, which were very rare in the vanilla game.

There are banter mods that really fleshed out all the companions with some funny lines, but a young kid "playing" at being an adventurer just rubbed me the wrong way.

Not a video game, but Deadpool 2 has one character in particular who appears to only exist to be the cute girlfriend of a more important female character. Thing is, whenever there's action, she would disappear and then turn up afterwords once the action is over.

Imagine a dRoid lik2 that in Dhe Star Wars movi2s.

I have deciphered that teceem is talking about R2-D2, but we all know C-3PO is more "why are you here" than R2 in every way possible. Was there ever a moment in the Original Trilogy that actually needed 2 droids? Imagine a roller-skating humanoid droid who can hack and hover like R2 but speaks with the personality and knowledge of 3PO. That way, Chewie wouldn't be burdened with a worthless hunk of junk on Cloud City, there'd be no Dalek-vs-stairs dilemma, and a droid's seat on fighters would be more reminiscent of World War co-pilots in their spinning turrets.