Dark Souls is a pretty hard series. It’s not as difficult as most newcomers seem to think, nor is it as eဣasy as some elitists insist, but it’s a relatively challenging series that understands how to balance difficulty in a predominantly single player game. As ideal as the series’ challenge is, that doesn’t mean FromSoftware perfected every aspect of the franchise. When it comes to weapons there are some great ones൲, but there are also some that’ll leave you asking yourself “why?”

As balanced as the level design and bosses are, the weapons can end up leaving a lot to be desired. Most players won’t even notice unless they find themselves attached to a part꧅ic🦂ularly abysmal weapon, but if you look deep enough into Dark Souls’ bowels, you’ll find dozens o๊f weapons that simply have no reason to exist.

That’s good in a way, right? Weapon variety is always fun and🍰 sometimes you want to handicap yourself by using a weak weapon. The problem lies in more than just how strong a weapon is or isn’t, when and where you get the weapon matters. Plenty of weak weapons can be found late in the game but, since they’re found late game, they en💞d up being useless. Conversely, some decent weapons can be found early but the method of getting them barely justifies the reward.

There’s a lot of great things to admire about Dark Souls and there are plenty of great weapons🔯 to handle, but some weapons are so bad♛, so lame, and so pointless that you just can’t ignore them.

15 Any Raw Weapon

Raw weapons are kind of like Dark Souls’ Jeigan. For those unfamiliar with Fire Emblem, a Jeigan is an incredibly powerful unit who joins you at the very begi💙nning of the game who very quickly becomes outclassed and serves෴ as a crutch for players getting accustomed to the gameplay. Raw weapons are no different. Upgrading a weapon with a raw gem will make that weapon’s base damage higher, but it’ll stop taking your stats into consideration entirely.

Really, any raw weapon is a temporary solution to a bigger problem. It’s better to play around with different weapons and try to find a playstyle that matches you and build your stats from there. Since raw weapons don’t scale with your stats, they end up being early-game crutches that can’t keep up by mid-game. Lose the raw weapon🦩s and try to find something that actually has some pay off.

14 Any Broken Weapon

When it comes to games where you can choose from a horde of wea🍌pons, it comes to no surprise that some will be useless. Perhaps the most disappointing of the bunch, however, aﷺre those weapons that come off so useless that you think there’s no way they can be useless until you use them and realize that they are, in fact, completely unusable.

You’d think that there’d be some major payoff to sporting yourself with a broken straight sword, but itꦓ’s only real purpose is acting as a base. In that sense, it isn’t entirely useless but it’s not like you need to use it to make use of it. You’ll never need to mow down enemies with a broken sword, there’s just no point. FromSoftware really should have do𒊎ne something a bit more fun with the broken weapons. Give them a fun moveset at the cost of strength, make them absurdly fast if impractical. It’s better to be fun and useless than boring and useless.

13 Ghost Blade

Ghosts in Dark Souls are some of the toughest enemies you’ll encounter because of one simple thing: they can’t be hurt. Unless you’re cursed or using a Transient Curse, your best chance of getting through New Londo Ruins is just rushing through and hoping you won’t die. If you’re dying a lot, it can be annoying facing the ghosts time and time again. Thankfully, there’s a weapon that’ll actually do damage to them without you needing to get c🎃ursed! Too bad that weapon only drops from killing ghosts.

The Ghost Blade kind of defeats its own purpose, doesn’t it? Keeping yourself cursed is more trouble than it's worth and it’s easier than it looks to die in New Londo. The Ghost Blade should make things easier, but getting it really comes down to luck and circumstance. If you could get it someway other than from k⛄illing the one enemy it was designed to kill, it might have been 💛remembered as one of the most useful and practical weapons in the game. Instead, it’s a victim of poor design.

12 Morning Star

Unlike raw weapons, broken weapons, and the Ghost Blade, the Morning Star is designed with the expectation that it will actually be useful and worthwhile to hold onto. Unfortunately, that is exactly what it’s not. You can find the Morning Star tucked away in Firelink Shrine pretty soon into the game but even then you’re better off finding something 🌠else to use.

Its base stats are pathetic, its moveset is horrifically slow, and upgrading it down any path isn’t going to make it useful. Its best set bonus is B and the highest base damage you’ll get out of the thing is a pitiful 224. For all the trouble it would take you to fully upgrade the Morning Star, you’d really just be wasting your precious materials. Its only real use would be bashing in some skeletons but, even then, it’s not difficult to find a club or a divine 💙weapon that would do the job ten times better.

11 Short Bow

Ah, the Short Bow. It really shouldn’t be as terribl𒈔e of a we🎃apon as it is. I mean, how do you mess up a bow? Well Dark Souls figured it out. At first glance, there’s really not much wrong with the bow. It does its job at ဣshooting things from afar but you’l🔯l slowly realize, it’s not doing that great. So you look for a new bow and you find one! And then you never have a reason to use the short bow again. That’s a problem.

Weapon growth is a natural thing for games to have, but at what cost? Should a weapon lose its relevance entirely꧒ just because another weapon is right around the corner? The long bow completely trivializes the short bow’s existence. Everything the short bow does, the long bow does better. In a game with so many weapons, it would have been amazing to have a reason to go back to seemingly weaker weapons, but the Short ♋Bow just ends up feeling like the Long Bow lite.

10 Bare Fists

Many RPGs make using your bare hands a viable option. Some games eve⛄n give you perks for ditching your weap𝓡ons in favor of the ol’ one-two. Dark Souls does let you use your fists if you want, but it doesn’t let you for🌱get you won’t be making it far without a weapon. And that’s alright, the game is designed with weapons in mind, it’s just disappointing that your fists cannot be used reliably whatsoever.

Miraculously, fists scale with strength, but not by much. You won’t be parrying and you aren’t going to be doi🅠ng much damage. Your range is also piss poor, so don’t expect to be any🧸where, but up and close. It’s a shame because while Dark Souls does focus on weapons, martial arts could have been added in fairl✃y ease. Just tweak how fists work and you’ve got something unique and fun to play with. Alas, Dark Souls isn’t that kind of game and bare fists exist only for those th൩at crave an incredibly tedious and pointless challenge.

9 Straight Sword Hilt

Imagine you’re looking at the Broken Straight Sword. It’s weak, clunky, and barely dealing any damage. Now imagine it’s ten times worse. That’s the Straight Sword Hilt for you. Somehow, for some reason, FromSoftware decided to give you two of the exact same weapon, but made one completely unusable while the o༒ther was only slightl💟y less unusable.

The games have reused weapon types before, but for something as obscure as a broken sword? Come on. Players don’t need two versions of what are effectively the same weapon bogging down their inventory. The Straight Sword Hilt share♛s all the problems the broken weapons do in genera♛l, but it’s made worse because this one is the single worst weapon in the game by design. It just barely outdamages your bare fists꧙ and that’s downright criminal.

8 Painting Guardian’s Curved Sword

The Painting Guardian’s Curved Sword is a weapon that, by all accounts, should be good. You can get by the halfway point, it can inflict blood rather reliably, anꦛd you can even use it for parrying. On paper, it’s an awesome weapon with a cool look that begs to be used. In practice, however, it’s little more than a toothpick that’ll get you killed before you can even take advantage of ﷽the weapon’s high bleeding factor.

The sword’s biggest downfall is its range.൲ With a weapon like the Painting Guardian’s Curved Sword, you neeꦛd to be up really close to actually📖 make contact with whatever you’re fighting. ♒It’s pretty easy to die in Dark Souls and one small misstep can cost you your life, so sporting a weapon that requires you to be in the line of fire isn’t always in your best interest. If you’re intent on keeping the sword on your person, just mak🎃e sure you know you’re going to be dodging more than you’re going 🙈to be fighting.

7 Harpe

There’s nothing more exciting than the thrill of killing an enemy and having them drop their weapon. Some of 𒀰the coolest weapons in the Souls series are drops. The only thing that makes an enemy dropping their weapon more satisfying is when the♊ drop rate is abysmally small. You spend hours grinding and, finally, you get that weapon you’ve had your eyes on. It’s a great feeli🅺ng. Unless said weapon is the Harpe.

Featuring a drop rate so ꦡlow most people qu🧜estion its existence, the Harpe isn’t worth any of the trouble it takes to get your hands on one. It’s a sickle that pla♉ys exactly like a dagger, it ✱can’t even parry, and its base damage is shockingly low. And this is a list with plenty of weak weapons, already. The Harpe is just all around baffling. No📖body wants to spend hours grinding a sickle, so they can stab enemies without even killing them.

6 Whip

In an ideal world, the whip would not be on this list. FromSoftware would have realized how innovative and engaging a whip could be and ꦉbeefed up its da♒mage while giving it some decent combos. This is not an ideal world, though. This is a very dark and upsetting world where you won’t be able to make your own 3D Castlevania via Dark Souls.

The main problem with the whip is that it’s just not viable in any realistic way. That’s a recurring problem with a lot of these weapons, as FromSoftware shoves them into the game without consideration of how well they’re going to work. The whip is a great idea, genuinely, but nothi𝕴ng about it is practical. From its damage output to its reach, it makes you wish FromSoftware would put more effort into these unique weapons. It’s cool and all to have access to some amazing swords, but it’d also be nice to have access to an amazing whip.