Useless shards... joke/trick shards?

I wouldn't want useless shards. I would be fine with shards having a niche secret use (like the Galamoth soul in Aria of Sorrow which was used just in a specific place, or the Killer Mantle soul which was basically only there to kill the Iron Golem), but please keep the useless stuff to a minimum. We'll have a great quantity of powers, but if quality isn't king then it's kinda pointless.

Pure Miriam I know "useless shards" will happen that is a given, I am not suggesting to have absolutely no "useless shards" I don't think that is possible... What I'm suggesting is having much more fun shards that you can use out of context even if there are no enemies it would still do something cool. again the singing shard I used as a suggestion still has its uses but is still awesome to use even when there are no enemies around... same with the dancing shard it just changes her move sets to dancing... not completely useless but even if there are no enemies around it will still be fun to play with. those are the type of shards I want... they are not just for "jokes" but I would love to try out a shard and find out its power is more than just shooting something out, or raising up my stats.

even the "joke shards" I want, would be useful in certain situations like the killer fish soul in AoS out of the water you just summon a useless fish (that quickly dies) but in the water it is a living torpedo... again I am just try to steer away from "useless shards" if you have a shard that only works in one place at least make it enjoyable/funny to use in other places... again it does not HAVE to be "funny"... but at least make it interesting when not used in the "proper" palace... I hated the sliver fish soul in AoS because the only place you can use it is in that one place... imagine if you used it in other places you can see fairies that fly off or something... the bottom line is... all I want are interesting shards.

BTW Clear I would love something like that maybe the armor may not look exactly a like the original but maybe they keep the stiff move set like the classic Axe Armor

yes that is what I mean Pure Miriam ... see fun to use just for the heck of it lol. I love getting a new soul/shard and get a strange new power... not just an obvious power... those powers are cool but I want powers that you might have to play around with to figure out how to use it (the text could give it away) but still like the Persephone soul it was fun to use and it was very useful...

but again I don't only want funny looking shards... I also want ones that can change the gameplay up... maybe transforms you onto a wolf or cat and it changes your move-set... I think that is a good use for a shard anyway I hope the devs are creative about the shards... I know they will be... but I don't think it would hurt to come up with some suggestions

Enkeria

I can get what you mean. And i can surely think of many useless powers some Igavania games had in the past, where they either was useless or had very limited use.

It was mentioned above, but i really think , on Aria of Sorrow, that Galamoth Soul is really useless. It has a single function, in a single area. It "recognize places in which time has been stopped." Basically, it lets you go through a corridor where a rabbit (called Chronomage) stops and rewinds time, making you go backwards every single time you try to enter. If you go there with it's soul ON, you are immune to this effect. The other side has some itens and a book related to the plot, but that's it.

Most of Aria of Sorrow's useless powers comes from the Enchant type. And that is a small fear i have, since Bloodstained has the same type for Shards. Aria has a lot of stats-boosting souls that makes each other useless when you find stronger ones.
One example is  White Dragon (CON +4) / Quetzacoalt (CON +8) / Gorgon (CON + 12) / Dead Crusader (CON + 16). If you pick up Dead Crusader before the others, ALL OF THEM are completely useless now. And you have a lot of Enchant Souls like that in Aria. They tried to fix that by creating a single stat-boost soul for each parameter on Dawn, and making the souls capable of leveling.
You also have other useless souls that canceals each other too, or are just plain useless on themselves.
A good example of this is Poison Worm (makes you immune to poison) and Zombie (makes you stronger when poisoned). First of all, Poison Warm shows up MUCH LATER but Zombie is way better. So, if you got Zombie soul first (and that's quite likely), Poison Worm soul is pretty much useless. And not only that, poison in Aria of Sorrow lasts for less than one minute, to give you the trouble of wasting the Enchant Soul slot to equip such things.

Another pretty useless soul on Aria of Sorrow is Devil. It's a familiar, really close to Alucard's Devil, but it never does anything besides flying around and attacking enemies when it feels like and that's quite rare.

Aria of Sorrow is a very good game, but man, it does have a ton of useless powers. I wonder if that may be the reason why they decided to make some enemies (it seems) in Bloodstained, to be "shardless". We only know for sure that Morte has no Shard, but i'm sure other enemies will also not have them, in order to avoid the "useless factor" that some powers could have, like it happened on Aria of Sorrow (and a bit on Dawn).

Many of the examples I was going to use have already been mentioned but I'm all for variety. Ideally I think they should have a use in combat or exploration.

Ideas I can think of are:
-the crystalized areas of Miriam reflect light with great intensity. Essentially making her a living disco ball that can immobilize enemies with blindness.
-leave a trail of crystal roses where she steps
-purify undead. The revived creature runs away, knocking over whatever is in the way.
-Summon a mimic chest to lure humanoids.

Enkeria JeffCross

Aria of Sorrow had Headhunter Soul, a soul from a boss that gave bonuses to all parameters (except Luck) for each certain number of souls you had. The fun (and hidden) aspect of this is that you could actually have more than 9 souls of each. The game still shows only as "9" but the internal system could count beyond that. Headhunter Soul gives +1 by each 16 souls you have, either different or stacked, counting beyond 9 each, although you can't see that. So, you can try to fill Soma with hundreds of souls to overpower Headhunter to it's limit (i think it caps on +33 for each parameter).

Some of those hidden things are also good and fun ideas.

@jeffcross that would be great actually. Like it's spitting out anything it won't eat. Or more specifically lining Miriam's pockets with mimic grade fertilizer. I can just imagine the mimic giving her a disgusted look too lol.

It is likely we will see a variety of shards with both general and niche uses.

I said it elsewhere, but Dark Metamorphosis needs to come back. Alucard's voice actor so powerfully delivered such a cool sounding ability that's only useful for recovering life in a room next to a save area...

But... DARK METAMORPHOSIS!

Even considering Gurthang's damage boost from it, it's just the best letdown of an ability ever.