Outside of the plot, Edward is basically useless in FF4.
Gau on the other hand becomes a beast if you take a bit of time to get his rages and try them out to see what works for what situation so you don't have to worry when he uncontrollable. Ie: one of the early rages when you first recruit him can be very useful dealing with magitek armor/soldiers/anything weak to electricity due to having very early access to a Bolt 2 level ability. Some stages also bestow innate bugs to him such as float, etc. Gau takes a bit to learn how to use and some time, but the same can be said of any RPGs protagonist you can level up. Another note is that the rages on Veldt are directly tied to monsters you have encountered. Taking time to fight a new areas monsters for later rage learning is not a bad idea.
Cait Sith is very random with his weapons and limit break and it can be disastrous if rng isn't in your favor (there are at least 2 outcomes of his slots that an lead to game over scenarios if I remember correctly) However, while physical damage may be unreliable, he [REDACTED BECAUSE I HAVE SHIT MEMOERY AT 10PM] and can be a handy magical attack/support character when you aren't able to use anyone else for whatever reason.
Going to FF1 Monk/Master while it's true that they lack extra utility after class change like Knight (white magic) or Ninja (black magic), they make up for it with high damage output due to stat growth. A max level Master with Haste can basically one shot Chaos in the NES version, out damaging well equipped Knights and Ninja characters. His only weakness in in original game was poor magic defense which is remedied easily with a Ribbon.
Honestly, a character is rarely useless in a Final Fantasy game IMHO. It all comes down to personal play style.
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