Are there RPGs where status ailments are actually needed to be used?
As in they're not a complete waste of time because you can just deal with the enemies too easily
>>332490371
SMT games tend to throw statuses and buff/debuffs a bone; though usually it's because they'll gape your asshole in return.
Tactics Ogre. Sleep and Petrify work on every enemy except bosses and are easily the best reason to use a wizard for most of the game, some of the less powerful debuffs like attack down are pretty useful too, though nowhere as broken.
Didn't we have this exact thread a few hours ago?
SMT and Lisa the Painful come to mind
You can do a lot of nasty shit in Earthbound with support/status effect moves. PSI Freeze was good at single target damage but also had a good chance of immobilizing the foes.
>>332490371
Etrian Odyssey, of course. Most support backliners have some way of removing or negating statuses, because a line status at a bad time can be game-ending.
Other than that and the other examples here, there aren't really many games where statuses are even recognized as anything more than "that annoying thing an enemy does while you beat it with a stick until it dies".
>>332490371
The South Park RPG. Status ailments in that game were almost too good. To the point where most enemies, including bosses, you could just stack a couple things like bleed and poison, then just wait and you'll win
FF13 batthandelus and orphan. Status effects made the fight easy
In Persona 4G I ended up heavily relying on berserk to keep those dice from instantly killing my party. And if you have an item with reflect physical you can use it to silence evil Naoto to make her fight a cakewalk.
Dungeon Travelers 2 status effects are pretty strong because of wizards ruining everything. Lilian's 3rd eye ability has saved me countless times by stunning/sleeping enemies right as they begin their turn. Lilian also has a magic roulette that randomly inflicts your party or the enemy's with 100% chance of getting fucked. Sometimes you get lucky and the boss is just stunned or silenced for a whole fight, unable to even fight back.
all atlus games
Etrian Odyssey II. Having a hexer in your party helps enormously with random encounters.
>>332494654
EO2 is too imba, Hexers are too OP