Most Useless Game Feature?

[Treacle]

Most of the Pokétch 'apps' were pretty pointless.

 

[GreatLiver]

I'm uh... I'm guessing that there wasn't a whole lot of consideration for muscle memory put in there.

This so much. I love the thought put into letting people rearrange that based on actual use, but no matter what every time I go into my box now I'm still automatically scrolling down two to where I'm used to 'Move' being.

 

[Zeb]

The censor system needs improvement really bad. I find it a little ridiculous an English version censors "Violet" just because it has a French cuss word in it, because how would people really even know that?
O-Powers are pretty useless in my opinion. Throughout the entirety of Y and Omega Ruby, I've never used O-Powers, not even once.

Hatching O Power is useful though

And the EXP one. Combine Lucky Egg + EXP O-Power Level 3 + Amie EXP boosts, then go beat three level 100 Blisseys in a Secret Base and gain like 50 levels.

 

[The Outrage]

The censor system needs improvement really bad. I find it a little ridiculous an English version censors "Violet" just because it has a French cuss word in it, because how would people really even know that?
O-Powers are pretty useless in my opinion. Throughout the entirety of Y and Omega Ruby, I've never used O-Powers, not even once.

Hatching O Power is useful though

And the EXP one. Combine Lucky Egg + EXP O-Power Level 3 + Amie EXP boosts, then go beat three level 100 Blisseys in a Secret Base and gain like 50 levels.

Now that ORAS makes it possible to soft-reset for nearly all the legendaries, with the new minimum 3 IV mechanic, the Catch Rate O-power is also incredibly useful, especially if you want to use less effective types of balls for aesthetic purposes.

 

[Harris]

Walking Pokemon in HGSS.

 

[Winmon]

The ability to heal at home. It is only useful during the very beginning of the game, and 99.9% of people don't even use it. EVER.
Also, Shinies (I typed that wrong.). Why... just WHY would anyone spend hours just trying to catch them if they don't do anything special?

 

[UltimaChandelure]

^ But ... They SPARKLE! <3

 

[henrymidfields]

Come to thinking about it, the Exp Scaling in Gen 5 for overlevelled Pokémon was pointless. For underlevelled Pokémon, the scaling is fine, but the scaling should have stopped once you're at the same level as the opponent.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Also, Shinies (I typed that wrong.). Why... just WHY would anyone spend hours just trying to catch them if they don't do anything special?

They're rare and they look cool (well, most of them anyway), that's all that matters when it comes to collectibles. They don't need to do anything special to have value.

 

[Beth Pavell]

The coin flip app gets my vote. I really don't recall whether it even had tangential use

 

[Muur]

The ability to heal at home. It is only useful during the very beginning of the game, and 99.9% of people don't even use it. EVER.
Also, Shinies (I typed that wrong.). Why... just WHY would anyone spend hours just trying to catch them if they don't do anything special?

Tbf in gen 2, the shinies had higher attack due to how they were calculated.

 

[ReturnofMCH]

bike, now that the running shoes and roller skates serve similar purposes.

 

[henrymidfields]

Actually, I completely forgot this, but one thing that is worse than useless, which isn't limited to Pokémon, but which does detract from the Pokémon exerience:
- Wi-Fi limitation on the 3DS. That essentially use most Wi-Fi in Sydney unusable, and thus trade/battle oppourtunities being limited. So much for encouragement of interaction...

Also:
- Mandatory in-store codes for Wi-Fi distribution. Seriously, WTF?

 

[Silverwynde]

The coin flip app gets my vote. I really don't recall whether it even had tangential use

You could use the Coin Flip app to help manipulate the RNG in Diamond and Pearl, iirc. You had to flip the coin a certain amount of times and tap one of the other apps another certain amount of times to get/breed whichever shiny you wanted. In-game it was utterly useless but if you were a shiny hunter and wanted to RNG for a prized shiny, it was very useful.

The walking Pokemon feature gets my vote. Once I was out of Johto, I honestly didn't miss it at all.

 

[DarkMeow]

I'm gonna have to say Musicals. Those things are so boring, and I never bothered with them after the first two tries. It may have had potential, but in the end, it is boring to me.

 

[whiplash8807]

I would have to say right now my least favorite is the Wonder Trade.....got a stupid level 1 on my very first trade.....took me almost an hour before I got something decent.....about 80% were level ones that were pretty much useless........out of that 80% about half of those were low level Magikarps

 

[sonic10158]

Definitely think the most useless is the annoying walking Pokemon of Heartgold and Soulsilver

 

[Jersey Jimmy]

I have to agree with DarkMeow about Musicals. There isn't even anything major you get from them. Money? Nope. TMs? 'Course not. Rare Pokemon? Why would you ever? Instead, you get... cosmetics. For more Musicals. And yet, I still find myself entering them.

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

The phone in Gen II was pretty bad, but at the time, it was a decent way to have rematches. Of course I'd never want to go back to that, but still, you have to give it some credit.

Out of all the useless malarkey Game Freak had shoved into these games (there's a lot), I hated the musicals the most. It wasn't fun like the contests in Gen III and IV and I though the lamest wi-fi distributions were given when it came to this crap, especially when you consider the fact that there were better stuff to be given out. It had the potential to be a great feature, but they missed the mark.

 

[Ghostsoul]

Do HM's count? Everyone hates HM's.
Especially Flash, thank god they changed it.