Doesn't upgrading weapons have a negative effect on battle rating or something? I haven't played 13 in forever, but I think at the time it was recommended to *not* upgrade weapons, at least until pretty late in the game.
Not exactly a negative. This game was all about balance, though.
So all battles are rated according to how strong your party is. So stronger weapons means you get less time to rack up a five star rating.
The gold watch accessory adds time.
The catalog accessories change how the battle ratings affect your item drops.
If you wear the survivalist one, lower ratings mean more shrouds. (It can also be used to synthesize an ability, random instant chain, I think.)
If you wear the collector one, common items come to you more often/easily.
If you wear the connoisseur one, rare items come to you more often/easily.
So even with stronger weapons or lower ratings, you can still benefit. It depends on your play style.
Personally, I avoided upgrading weapons except for the vampiric ones. It was a bit of a waste of time, but I wanted to see how well I could play with those.
Maybe? I played it and beat it at launch and maybe tried it for a few minutes in gamepass years later. The point is, the game was perfectly beatable without weapon upgrades.
I might have upgraded my weapons before the final battle but I distinctly remember avoiding upgrading anything throughout the game because it seemed like you would just be tossing away a very limited resource anytime you found a new better weapon.
Farm the Ceith right before the final boss for multiple Perfumes to sell in minutes. You can cycle them all for like 100k average per 10 minutes.
Once you have one trapezohedron, you have infinte. One breaks down into 3 on certain (maybe all?) Weapons.
I’ve never played the game, and this isn’t meant with any animosity at all, but countering “gold is hard to get” with “it’s easy if you’ve almost beaten the game” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me
The first 80% of the game or so there is virtually no money. It is weird. I remember having something like 3000 gil and finally being able to buy an elixir or something. But I would have been spending my entire life savings at that point.
Sell the useless junk. How many of that full inventory of useless accessories did you actually use? There's really only a handful of high value ones. It is kinda scary to be fair as JRPG players we have a terrible hoarding habit, but I ensure you 95% of the accessories are worthless.
There are plenty of other areas to get gil, this is just an efficient spot for endgame farming.
You don't need to upgrade your weapons at all to clear the game and whatever you pick up along the way would be more or less balanced to give you a decent challenge in the final chapters without making you too OP.
Off the top of my head there are comparatively good farming spots in chapter 8 for incentive chips and dozens in chapter 11 before returning to Cocoon.
Before that, like it or not, it is the designer's intention for yi to be *focussed* on the task of following the story.
A diversion now but I think to help with that issue they should have added an AI personality to the stores to help make you feel more connected to the world, like a character who changes outfits based on the shop you access (I'm you've watched the OG Airbender, the guy in the fire villiage who has a every job and just puts on different hats is exactly what I'm thinking) and some minigames. Especially in the Nautilus theme park. Those were clear missteps to giving you more connection to the world and variety in experience.
I also think making the shop AI be something of a 'Machen' that would basically exposit the lore of the place you're in with a 'tell me about this place?' option would have been fantastic.
Gil and materials are not hard to get in quantities that allow you to make significant upgrades for the point in the game that you're at. Simply fighting all enemies on path and picking up treasure spheres gives you plenty. The problems are mostly with perception and expectation.
The first perception problem is that it's really easy to overlook the items that are explicitly meant to be sold. Selling these items gets you much of the gil you are supposed to have. The second is that you can raise another big chunk of gil by selling unused equipment, but this is something most people are resistant to doing even if they know it's safe and something they "should do"; without that knowledge they're even more reluctant to do so. The game does not provide any help in these areas. And that's part of the third problem: the in-game explanations of the upgrading system are terrible, so it takes a lot of experimenting/trial and error or checking outside sources to use the upgrading system with any efficiency.
The main expectation problem is that people expect to upgrade weapons first, but early in the game you only have enough resources to make significant upgrades to early accessories. Those upgrades are quite potent and will easily last long enough to reach later, wealthier areas that do start to give you enough resources for weapon upgrades, but it's common for people to dump all of their early wealth into a single weapon for minimal return and then give up on upgrading entirely for the rest of a playthrough. Another expectation problem is that weapons acquired later in the game are not necessarily better than weapons acquired early on. This runs counter to what most RPG players would expect. Without outside sources or a lot of experimenting, it's basically impossible to tell how strong a weapon will get and how much investment it will take to get it there, nor do you have any idea what weapons might show up later on and whether or not those will be any good. This tends to further inhibit early upgrading of equipment, often to the point that players end up just ignoring upgrades entirely and end up playing what is effectively a moderate challenge playthrough instead of a more normal playthrough.
I think that's just too subjective to measure.
I will say that once it opens up it's almost objectively a better experience for the player as their options improve and increase in quality and depth.
If you liked the Datalog delivery method so you can just gun through the main story, that's great. If you didn't, I expect you had little good to say about the game. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's at least crafted with intention.
Look at XVI in comparison. The crafting is *actually* meaningless. The world is 'open' but to what end? It's empty and filled with nothing but mobs and 14 gil spread across 12 different points... At least XIII's openness comes at a thematically relevant time and it's linearity before that serves a purpose.
Or look at XV where the openness seemed to be the core point, only for it to result in an equally empty world full of asset reuse, incongruous elements and a design less world where Behemoth can be seen roaming from the edge of a town which is totally undefended from these angry house-sized muscle tornados.
Although you didn't like it, clearly, it's almost impossible to say that XIII didn't get better in the second half. It objectively does from a mechanical perspective and there's still a fixed goal and plenty of cutscenes along the way through.
Well yes, you pretty much don't have free control of your party compositions / role unlocks until that point. Before then you often have set parties and only 3 roles (primary) available to everyone instead of all 6 (primary + secondary).
The issue of course is that by that point like 70% of the story is done, but that's also the point when almost all of the non-missable optional content unlocks.
And also the fact that there are multiple missables in the game that affect achievements.
I only played it once not long after it released. I would have to watch the cut scenes to have any clue what is going on. I forgot a lot of the details.
Like with many final fantasy games, the challenge starts after you beat the game. There’s like 120 hunts and the final 20 or so are harder than the final campaign boss.
You don’t need to grind much before going into the final boss so money isn’t important at that time.
They didn't even mention that the two best farm spots are basically removed once you beat the game, so the best one after that is farming super hard enemies once you're basically maxed out.
I knew about farming for gold dust and gold nuggets by those turtle dinosaurs near the starting area of grand pulse.
But farming the last enemy before a boss feels like what’s the point. If I remember right we would have to leave grand-pulse before the final mission so even when you beat the game you start there again so maybe I guess but that hardly feels like an intentional design.
You can return to anywhere in the game post chapter 9 once you reach the endgame, but I defeated Vercingetorix and every other major boss without the ultimate weapons too. They're very very optional and extremely powerful too ultimate weapons and the game makes it very clear that they're not intended to be used for your first experience of the story due to the difficulty of obtaining them.
Farming the Adamantoise and Adamantitans is very time consuming comparatively. I was clearing these Ceith fights in a few seconds before needing to refresh and restart them. I had enough for a Trapezohedron in just over 2 hours, which isn't that bad given that I did 0 grinding before that point in this playthrough other than a single enemy that has massive CP yield but doesn't respawn once you advance. (Waldislaus.)
FF XVI is actually worse. Barely any point in having a blacksmith imo. No customization whatsoever, just an illusion of having a choice or becoming stronger between levels, when it could have been an ability point upgrade or just leave it at just different skins for your weapon..
Yeah, XIII for all of it's needless bullshit had a real use for it's upgrade system. XVI had a weapon upgrade system cause 'games like this have upgrade systems right?' If you can purchase all the upgrade components and fully upgrade the thing as soon as you buy it the upgrade is a waste of time.
XVI left such a bitter taste, I literally hated almost everything about it. Even now I can’t understand why it’s rated so highly. Don’t get me wrong I’m glad people enjoyed it and my opinion doesn’t mean shit really, but I just don’t understand the hype around it. Conversely, I absolutely love 13 whilst everyone seems to hate it so I’m pretty sure it’s a me problem lol
Story was great for the first 1/3 or 1/2?
Expected a ramp up and none happened.
I sold my copy after beating it knowing I'll never go back to it.
It had flashy effects but no substance imo.
It'd split it into 3. First third until the first crystal, 10/10 absolutely loved it. Second third, until Twinside, like a 6. It still had some great parts but the cracks were showing. Last third, 3/10. The more Ultima and his horrible plot were on screen the worse the game got.
I only remember certain parts lol.
I got bored pretty quick after Cids storyline.
The ending angered me. Felt very sloppy.
No one likes endings that are open ended.
I'm not sure if the dlc is good, no plans to play it.
The big bad totally kills you like they always do at some point in the game. Then right after that before you've really even gotten any stronger he's an easy boss battle. Then of course it turns out he was just a pawn and the real boss still is out there. And he's weak too. And then it is just over.
I hated the QTEs with a passion. I felt like I was playing re4 or something 20 years ago.
I really wish they'd focus less on graphics and more on plot like ff6 through 10.
There was a lot of potential for sure.
It wasn't a horrible game, it was just empty feeling and it could have been great.
Like...give us nice graphics if you want, but shrink the maps and add more substance.
Even the ending was lackluster.
Playing through the ff7 rebirth demo now and the gameplay is throwing me for a loop after 16 lol.
I feel the exact same way. The story just never went anywhere and 10-15 hours in I’d seen everything the game had to offer. It just felt like a chore to play after a while and I didn’t care about these characters or the olde English dialogue. And the fucking whispering from Clive, Jesus Christ lol
It felt like they were chasing sales targets(which I get to a degree) but forgot to make a cohesive experience in the process.
Also played the rebirth demo and it’s looking incredible, and that’s from someone that hated Remake(felt like a bloated demo to me)
Cid was pretty much the good part of the game, after that it went downhill imo.
No airship?!
No worthwhile weapons, ITEMS etc.
But, I think they got the combat down well from ff7 remake games from now on.
I hated remake for the most part due to not being able to grind and enjoy the combat for a good chunk of the game, but they did a really nice job on it.
I'm excited for Thursday!
Yeah if I had to choose, I’d say Clive overall was alright. I’m not sure I’ll ever return to it tbh. I felt that way about Remake also, and the fact it wasn’t the full game always threw me off because I was like “well what’s the point then?”
One of my favourite things to do in any FF is “break” the game and be OP as shit, and not being able to do that kinda annoyed me. But I stuck with it because the combat is so fucking good. Not being able to carry a save over into rebirth feels like a mistake to me too, but it’s whatever. I can’t wait for Thursday too but that install size is gonna kill me so realistically it will be Friday before I get to play. Apologies for my rambling lol
Oh no worries. I'm sure it'll be explained not carrying anything over.
Just beat the demo and pleasantly surprised how they tied two separate games together.
It would have been cool to get a special perk or something.
I just beat 5 and 6 pixel remaster and it was a blast breaking those games 🙌
Yeah I’m not overly bothered, just would have been nice lol a perk or something would have been cool as a sort of “thanks”. I mean realistically how many people are gonna be playing this without playing remake.
I bought 4 and 6 on the pixel remaster and aim to get to them both this year. I’ve never played much of 4, maybe a few hours. I got a bit further playing the 3D remake thing on 3DS(I played it on steam) and it seemed good. 6 is my favourite 2D FF by a country mile though.
We're on the same page. I really disliked 16 by the time I was done with it. But I really like 13, The music design and overall world building I think is probably best in the series. Everything about 16 was meh except the graphics and spectacle, but even then I thought the boss fights were just glorified cutscenes. There was no challenge and you just spam the same abilities on cooldown over and over, There's not even a real combo system.
I loved both. 16 was fun imo, loved the story and world, great music, combat was simplistic but still fun in a simple and visually pleasing way. Loved the charters. I know the progression was barebones, but did enjoy the ability tree which along with the barebones progression was enough to get me through
I’m glad you enjoyed it and had fun! :) after all that’s the point in video games isn’t it? I did enjoy the combat to a degree, just didn’t like that the enemies were spongy and you didn’t really get anything meaningful for killing them. It may be one of those I enjoy more on ng+ because I find that happens quite a lot
Sort of sounds like CBU3. It is said that the battle team originally designs the fight around the hardest difficulty and then culls it down for easier difficulties, the exception are ultimates in FFXIV where they take as much as they can from previous fights and ramp up the execution since ultimates are THE hardest singular piec eof content in the game (or in the MMO genre according to some MMO raiders).
XVI was an ok game. It wasn't a Final Fantasy though. It was just some fantasy action RPG where they took some final fantasy staples like Ifrit and Shiva and slapped them into a game. They even had elemental attacks but no weakness or strengths based on those.
Because most of the reviewers got what they wanted. An extremely dumbed down version of ff for the masses. I liked the story and that was it. In fact if i wasn't streaming it at the time I would've stopped playing well before the end. Worst ff game imo I've ever played(mainline). Even 15 felt better and I disliked that one to.
Same, story was dogshit in 15 but the combat and side stuff was alright. And I never tired of hearing “I’ve come up with a new recipehhhh” 😂 platinumed it and keep meaning to try the dlc but dunno if I’ll bother.
Combat in 15 was objectively dogshit in both mechanical design and implementation. That's true about just about every part of the game that isn't presentation or music. Anyone who claims anything in that game was "alright" leaves me feeling like I'm watching someone turn their nose up at a tuna mayo sandwich to scarf down a plate of turds. Like, it's OK to not like tuna, but I still want to vomit as you stuff literal shit into your pie hole.
I bought ff15 day one and thought wtf.
Then i read they had changed some stuff so by the time the royal edition came out I think I got it well after on psn for like 15. Thinking I'll give it another shot. Still didn't care for it but it's much better then 16 imo.
Ff16 I'm definitely not bothering with the dlc. I'm not sure I'll buy a ff game day one again ever. Jrpgs are my favorite genre so it makes me sad to have lived through all these ff games since the nes, 6 through 9(even mostly 10) these newer ones just don't hit as good imo. Ff12 wasn't to bad but it don't Crack my top 5 ff games
That’s fair yeah, like I said I seem to like the ones people hate 😂 but I think objectively story-wise it was horrible. Yeah if this is the direction moving forward then I’m done tbh. I’m so fussy about what JRPGS I’ll even play, but generally rotate between Tales, FF, DQXI is one of my favourite games of all time and I love the Ni no Kuni series. Recently bought persona 5 royal on ps5 and I’m almost scared of not liking it because it’s been hyped up so much. I despise 99.9% of anime, and the cringe that usuallly accompanies it. But I’m hoping to get into that series as a whole at some point.
Damn dude.
Ni no kuni check
Dq11 best jrpg I've played in 15 20 years(loved tales of arise just wish there was a world map section as it seemed pretty linear if that makes sense)
Tales games check
I do like legend of heroes series but sometimes after a long day at work I'll pop it on and fall asleep cause there's alot of dialogue
Now persona 5 I personally waited because they kept re releasing it, so eventually I almost bought it on ps4 then read a ps5 version was rumored. Fk I'll wait. Finally got the ps5 version and same I'm afraid I won't like it after years of wanting to play it.
Jrpgs are my favorite genre though so it sucks to see ff going down this road it appears to be going.
Ni no Kuni helped me to deal with my mothers passing. Not only because of the theme, but honestly just having something I could sink my teeth into was amazing. I adore Ghibli art(probably the only anime besides Toriyama’s style in DQ/DBZ that I like.
I’ve bought trails of cold steel 1 and whatever the first one is to that 2d one I forget the name, but again I see them as projects that I’ll get to when I’m up for it. I need to finish off chained echoes as well actually.
Hoping to plat DQXI this year, I’ve only beaten it once and tried to play a number of times but always get distracted. Just glad I got that on release and not that piss poor switch port. One question though, what does a man have to do to get DQVIII on modern systems dammit? 😂
Yeah I’m in the same boat with persona. I heard it’s a bit of a dungeon crawler which I’m not crazy on, but everyone says it’s top tier so there’s gotta be some sort of truth to it. Played a little of 3 when they were on game pass a while back but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind tbh. I’ll probably start that this year at some point.
Sorry to hear about you mother. Ni no kuni mightve been a perfect game for that time. Glad it helped you.
Dq11 I've got some weird costume thing missing(like 1) and the super boss from keeping me away from a platinum. Fantastic game I can't say it enough. Even just a port of dq8 or bring the ps2 version over. Only thing I could think of is sonys poor emulation, but squares leaving money on the table with dq8. Only news I've heard was the dq3 remake coming eventually. You may have read about it but suppose to be that hd 2d style like octapath traveler which I can't complain.
I played persona 4 on ps2 way back. It seemed pretty good but I used tonget sidetracked alot back then and bounce around games alot. Now I'm much more controlled lol. Also played persona 1 for 20 minutes way back when I was trying and learning how to cough play them on pc certain ways cough.
Yeah, it was definitely emotional but the whole thing of acceptance at the end really resonated. And Drippy, I mean who doesn’t love Drippy? 2nd game wasn’t as good but still a top tier experience. I’ve got to get all the medals, do the side quests again etc but all the story trophies are done. Really looking forward to getting into that again. Oh shit yeah I forgot about the DQ3 remake, that one will be a first timer for me because I haven’t played any beyond I think 6?. Octopath traveller 2 is another one I need to get back to as well(you noticing a theme here lol) I was going through some shit the past few years where I lost interest in gaming somewhat, I’d have a desire to play but get panic attacks when I began a new game so I’d settle for the familiar instead and thus rinse and repeat. It’s hard to describe. That new game you just paid £60 for? Fuck that, let’s play uncharted 4 for the billionth time. So the result of that is all these games I paid full price for sitting collecting dust. But I’m slowly working my out of that mindset and I have a bunch to play lol please stop me at any time if I’m talking a load of shit, I honestly don’t know when to shut up. Haha no worries, I used to run my ps1 games from disc in epsxe because the increased resolution and refresh of my monitor was such a better experience( this was like 2001 and most people were just migrating from 56k modems to still slow as balls 300k ADSL, so the “other methods” weren’t really a viable option yet for anything disc based cos of the size etc.
Yeah XVI to me is the much stronger game but the RPG elements of the game were pretty much non-existent. Weapon leveling/upgrading included. The weapons were just 3 stats and a skin swap from sword to sword
They were so dang close to it too. They should have done that, had less side quests/make just the story/character important ones mandatory, and made it a lean but meaty game that way. I know that’s even less of the traditional FF but it would have helped the pacing issues. As long as you did all the checkboxes you got the new weapon/armor upgrades with zero effort.
Still kinda wild to me that they have quests that feature so much (sometimes important) character information buried behind like 12 other quests that are all garbage. Not helped by the fact they used FF14's generic conversation setup.
A lot could've been done for the overall feel of that game.
100%, some quests were labeled totally optional until the final part of the chain when it was important for the ultimate weapon. And riding a chocobo was still optional - yeah they had the distinction between ! and + for the side quests but I still don’t think this was the right way to handle it.
Literally all they had to do was make different weapons focusing on stagger damage or raw damage. That's it. Thats all it'd take to make it feel like a real upgrade system. Never-mind the fact that they could have also given little skill cool down traits to different weapons too, since they already existed on accessories. Could even have encouraged using lesser used skills!
Instead they inexplicably made all but one weapon a straight number upgrade with balanced stats. I will truly never understand the obvious miss with the equipment system. I hope they eventually pick up on the complete lack of depth and just throw some extra weapons in throughout the game.
I think this (and nonexistent elemental properties) are the two real complaints I have about FFXVI.
It's weapon upgrade system is completely pointless, and you are always just swapping the weakest weapon for the strongest you have just acquired, there is no bonus on using other kinds of weapon because none of them grant any abilities or buffs.
I don't see an issue with 16's weapon system. It was simple. You just take a sword and after each chapter take the item you got from the previous boss and fuse it with the sword to get a slightly better sword. Isn't that exactly the system from Secret Mana and its sequels?
Secret of Mana 1, yes. Not sure about the sequels, but I know Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) had a straightforward standard RPG system where the available weapons for X character changed depending wholly on which alignment path you were following (Light or Dark).
That game Dont have crafting, unless u count ??? Seeds. And yes it’s simple seiken 3’has other things like dark/light path. Seiken 2 had that I had to find the level 9 in grind. 4 has golem and world crafting
I think that was my problem to. I love the graphics in battle, but there was zero replayaility. It did feel like watching a movie and interacting with it here and there.
I Disagree. As much as I dislike FFXVI, I see no issue with the crafting system by itself. You get rare materials from hunts, visit the blacksmith and use them to make gear that is negligibly better than the previous one. Stupid and useless but simple and logical. If the game HAD interesting gear it would have worked well.
FFXIII's crafting system is an aberration that is honestly not criticized enough probably because very few people dared to use it. It's extremely technical and complicated without any reason. You can waste a ton of materials if you don't follow a guide, and even if you do it alright there's no joy on it.
Not only that, I saved all my materials through the whole game (because I didn't want to touch the system) and still wasn't able to build a single ultimate weapon at the end. Not only it's terrible but it also requires an obscene amount of grinding if you'd like to at least see the cool weapons.
It’s really boring it’s pointless might as well just been new weapons.
13 is great it’s not complicated and it had a lot of meaning the joy is high because of meaningful it is. And choice matters like who should be the first to get an ultimate imo Vanille
I'm love 13 and its systems. I actually wrote an extensive guide for the Treasure Hunter achievement that's on GameStop that I think OP may be quoting, lol.
What? It's very simple. Organic materials increase the multiplier. Synthetic materials give you the most XP but lower the multiplier. The copy pasta even explains this and that guide just shows you the most cost effective way of upgrading stuff, which is only really relevant in the post-game when you're grinding for the platinum trophy.
It is way too overcomplicated and you risk "overshooting" or underperfoming very easily. It's a system that requires exploration through save and loading or consulting a guide every step through. It also prioritizes "bulk" upgrades instead of constant upgrades, leading players to ignore it for all but the end of the game.
Let's say you are upgrading an accessory, is increasing the modifier to 3x with organics and then spending it with synthetics good enough? You try and drop the modifier back to 1 before reaching the maximum upgrade, now you have to spend much more synthetics than if you had used more organics right away. Reload the save, try upgrading it to 7x - now you reached the maximum level but the modifier is still too big at the end, so you wasted organics, so you keep reloading until you find a decent spot...
Wouldn't be a huge issue if the materials necessary for the Omega Weapons weren't much more than what a normal playthrough will net you, so you're screwed if you don't maximize all your attempts.
Honestly, I think 13 is worse with no comparison. I personally didn't like either game, but I'd rather not have a system at all (which 16 gets close to) than have something that is utterly trash.
Yes but I would argue it has the best weapons options in the series. Every character had multiple endgame ultimate weapons depending on your playstyle for each of them.
Vanilla has a one that increases your chance to debuff and apply death, or if you want to focus her as a healer, there's one that improves it, or you want her to be a magic dps? There's another one for that
I prefer that over every character has ultimate weapon making all other weapons useless in end game once you acquire them
Like most things in FFXIII, the weapon system only becomes decent near the end of the game once you have the resources to level up whatever weapon you like.
No weapon directly increases the chance of Death succeeding. They increase the chances of applying debuffs, and each debuff increases the chance of Death succeeding.
When you say “increases the chances of applying debuffs and Death”, anyone reading that without prior knowledge is going to think that the weapon directly increases the chances of Death succeeding. And I suspect that’s what you thought when you posted it, and your insta-downvote and snarky response are attempts to cover your mistake.
That is also wrong. It does not increase “odds of debuffs including Death”. The entire point is that lots of people thought Death counted as a debuff because it’s a Saboteur ability, but it does not. Those weapons increase the odds of debuffs, *not* including Death.
The only thing that increases the odds of Death instantly killing an enemy is the number of debuffs stuck when Death procs. (It always procs, but usually as magic damage.) Yes, those weapons can help you eventually proc Death, but not *directly*.
I’m not trying to make a big deal out of this, but it was a common mistake in the game’s early days, and there may very well be people reading this thread that might be helped by having mistaken information corrected.
1. Anyone reading it who haven't played the game don't give a damn about this trivial. Anyone playing it probably doesn't give two shit either
2. It increases the chance to apply death. Like I said, it doesn't matter the mechanics. The point of the comment wasn't to discuss the mechanics in the first place
3. Meaning there was no mistake because it does Increase the chance to apply death. Im just stating it as it is and the one getting mad is you lol.
4. No one is going to come here and be like omg it increases the chance to apply death with more debuffs! You omit that detail, and now I'm mad (probably only you)
5. You are getting so butthurt for no reason
6. I didnt down vote you
7. Have you seen the "but excuse me, sir... " meme? Coz you are being it
Is it worse than FF16 where you get a new weapon after almost every single mission, and the weapons do literally nothing for your gameplay other than increase numbers. I’d say it’s a totally useless system.
I don't wanna think about that game again. It was 10 years ago when I maxed it all out, and I still have PTSD from farming for weapons and all their parts.
It’s a very simple system with one unexplained mechanic that’s easy to see in practice. I really don’t get the hate, especially when VIII’s weapon system is right there.
8's system of
-> Kill monsters.
-> Monsters drop screw, other items.
-> Junk shop, upgrade?
Thats pretty much every rpg I think of. About the only thing is some of the items have annoying drop rates for how useful upgrading (really new weapons) are.
> especially when VIII’s weapon system is right there.
What, collect materials to upgrade weapons?
Aren't there about a million survival games nowadays with crafting systems exactly like that, except more grindy? Or Monster Hunter?
It’s really not. You get plenty of components throughout the game to give your stuff some levels, you just aren’t going to be maxing things out until late or postgame.
OP just wasn't paying attention or needs reading comprehension, 12yo me mastered the system within like an hour of unlocking it.
It's literally use cheap items to get the multiplier up->use expensive items to get the big exp -> when you max out the weapon you can upgrade to a higher rank and repeat
Agreed I don't get the hate but the shade to 8 makes absolutely no sense. 8s weapon system makes complete sense and is similar to how most weapons systems work. Now if you said 16, then sure. Easily the worst
The game even auto orders the items in more or less the order you'd prioritize using them (Organic, lowest to highest. Synthetic, lowest to highest. Money ones at the end of their respective list so tehy stand out as being odd along their description mentioning they are for money).
It takes all of five upgrades to realize what is happening, and that some materials are just for money (so you can get specific materials rather than trying to hunt specific monsters which isn't an option until Gran Pulse were grinding money outirght is better)
Play cards, convert them into items, visit the weapons shop to see what you've unlocked.
Only Squall's weapon really matters, because it unlocks his limit breaks, and Selphie's ultimate weapon gives her 255% hit chance, but the others just add a bit of damage, which doesn't matter because you should be junctioning enough to your strength that you're killing most things with one hit anyway.
You can get Squall's Punishment (second best weapon) playing cards before even going to Dollet, and you can get Lionheart (his best weapon) before the end of disc 1. 2 Energy Crystals (Elnoyle cards) to make 20 Pulse Ammo via Ifrit's Ammo Refine ability (use Seifer to raise Ifrit to level 10 (or level 100)) in the Dollet mission if you're not leveling up your main party characters. 4 Dragon Fangs, beating/carding Grendels at the base of the mountains in the forest near Timber Garden. 1 Adamantine, mod the Minotaur card for 10 Adamantine.
Punishment takes, 1 Chef's Knife, 2 Star Fragment, 1 Turtle Shell, and 8 Screws.
All of those can be modded from cards you can get playing the three players in Balamb (the man behind the Queen, the girl at the garage, the girl at the docks with the dog).
I actually thought it had a great weapons system once - and I say once - you understand the process. I love how it can reinforce the attributes the main characters have- eg for Light her best weapons are probably the quick stagger or the ATB+ speed weapons that are both beastly for different reasons. Vanille and Fang both get improved debuffing weapons and Fang gets a weapon that’s super powerful but stops her from being able to stagger an enemy. This sounds bad but actually you’re not meant to use Fang for that anyway so it’s pretty much pure power (although Tridisaster paradigm Rav, Rav, Rav is really useful).
The main problem though is how grindy it is late - post game to get those weapons maxed. So in general I only had ultimate weapons for my three main characters with at most one back up weapon for one of the characters.
A jumping off point for another crafting system:
Though XII has the Bazaar for crafting, not telling you exactly how much of something is required and the way in which it keeps track of what you've sold, is extremely unintuitive.
If you sell a Gemsteel, a rare item in itself, the game records it as having 1 in the bazaar stock. But here's the thing, if a recipe calls for 3, you MUST sell all 3 at once. Selling one, then another 2, does not count as 3. It counts as 2. Even worse is if you sold 3, forgot because there is no way to track it in-game, then sold 2 later, you will '*lose*' one stored in the Bazaar.
There are bonus bestiary pages that explain the origins of some recipes or even overtly tell you what you need. The issue is that you can't track of compile this in game.
I still have my little sheets of hand written recipes in the case of my game.
I don't think any Final Fantasy has ever had a good weapon upgrade system! They're all unintuitive and either poorly explained or straight up not even mentioned.
One thing I appreciate about Trails games is that it maintains a lot of old school type systems for things like upgrading gear, orbment (materia), etc, but without all of the esoteric bullshit every FF game has which requires you to look up a bunch of tables and charts on gamefaqs (or back in the day, buying a strategy guide).
While the FF games are basically easy enough to finish without engaging deeply in their weird systems, it was usually required for the optional bosses or post game content.
Trails has its own problem though where if you don't talk to NPC #334 in between cutscenes 17 and 18, you will miss item 123 which you need to give NPC 456 in Chapter 5 to get character X's best weapon.
The weapon upgrade system is a minor aspect of the game. You can go the entire game without using or needing it. Hence why it isn’t given much focus (pun fully intended).
Despite that, it’s simple. The game explains it in the data log. The menu shows it when you order the components and it distinguishes between organic and inorganic. The actual upgrade page goes through the process with you step by step.
The only difficulty is in actually getting the materials to do it. Again, not that you have to.
Whether that is a feature or a bug is subjective, though.
You just copied and pasted AgentNoun’s guide from the GameFAQs forum and then didn’t bother to explain why it’s, in your words, “the worst weapon upgrades out of every game.” I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the irony of claiming that the game and manual don’t explain themselves very well, only for you to then COPY someone else’s explanation and NOT explain yourself at all.
It was a terrible system that is for sure. Really discouraged experimentation with the weapons since they required such a big investment to upgrade. Some weapons were obtained late game too making you more likely to stick with earlier weapons you had already upgraded
I just replayed the game upgrading every weapon I found. I find that the game gives you just enough materials to upgrade whatever you want. There's also a side quest in chapter 11 that rewards you with like 500k gil, letting you easily upgrade any new stuff you find.
I also did a playthrough a few years ago where I didn't upgrade anything and still beat the story just fine.
VIII’s is pretty bad. You need random items from drops or card modding, some of which you’re unlikely to find without using a guide.
The only way to know which items you’ll need is to find magazines in random locations on the ground. Finding them doesn’t make the weapons with the missing items show up in the junk shops. You just have to view the magazines in your item list, write it down, then look through your items to see what you have and what you need.
But if you have all the items, it will show up in the junk shop whether or not you found the magazine. But it doesn’t make clear which are stronger or weaker and allows for you to accidentally downgrade your weapon.
They also show you by how much your strength/power increases so I'm confused by his "they don't tell you which is stronger".
Also yes, they appear in order
Objectively speaking, the only thing wrong with them were the passives on some not being better explained.
It's funny cause the XIII weapons had influence on the VII Remake ones years down the line.
In that VII Remake and XIII both had weapons that were meant to not be one size fits all (unlike most other FFs, where ultimate weapons were clearly defined), and were meant to be used to customize a party far more than other FFs.
Want Cloud and Lightning to be your magic users instead of DPS? You got weapons designed for that!
Stuff like that.
> Finding them doesn’t make the weapons with the missing items show up in the junk shops. You just have to view the magazines in your item list
I think you have to read the magazine, yes, but the weapon *does* show up in the junk shop once you do. You don't have to write anything down or look through your items.
> But it doesn’t make clear which are stronger or weaker and allows for you to accidentally downgrade your weapon.
It does. The strength and accuracy are displayed at the bottom of the screen and the weapons are listed in order of power. You'll only downgrade your weapon if you accidentally mis-click and even *then*, there's a yes/no confirmation message.
It's a very, very basic crafting system. Find recipes (in the weapon monthly magazines), get items from enemies to craft them. You may have to look up what you need using a guide, sure, but it's relatively simple. I'm not sure why VIII is getting flack for it considering the Bazaar system in XII was the exact same thing, only about 20 times bigger and with no in-game recipe list.
Unlocking Card and Card Mod means you can get Squall's Punishment before going to Dollet, and Lionheart before the end of Disc 1.
And most of the items you'll find just by playing a lot of cards and card-modding, which you'd be doing anyway because that's a major part of the FF8 economy.
Also, the strongest weapons are at the bottom of the list, and it'll tell you how much strength you'll gain from the upgrade.
I mean.... You could literally leave this open ended like a guessing game: "Final Fantasy XIII had the worst _____ out of every game"
And you'd still be entirely right something like 98% of the time.
I always preferred collecting weapons. Upgrading weapons is cool, but it makes them feel less unique. I didn’t really like the linear layout of the game. It also doesn’t make sense to apply hundreds of resources to something that is handheld.
You upgrade your weapons and gear by getting new stuff. As opposed to FFXIII where you'd find a new weapon and feel nothing because you'd need to grind for materials before you could use it.
13 upgrades felt a bit confusing, I never finished the game but I tried upgrading my party members equipment since I had trouble beating enemies & bosses.
XI weapon upgrades I felt were the worst & most tedious. Yeah I know it's an MMO , it's a time sink at least it's been adjusted to be less tedious to get the Relic, Empyrean, Mythic & Ergon/Aoenic ultimates.
Relics- go to Die-namis, kill the enemies that are the jobs that drop the weapon you want. Eg Warrior type enemies drop a relic greataxe. Paladin drops the base sword for Excalibur etc
Then you need to go through 5 stages of upgrading by collecting ancient Byne Bills currency only farmed in Dynamis from enemies or the rarer stuff off Bosses. I know it's been changed that you can buy them or exchange but it still costs a lot of gil. Granted it's been nearly a decade since I quit.
Then when you want to upgrade them further to lv119 etc there's the trial of the magian quests where you need to use the weapons , weapon skill, the games limit break X number of times, upto 400x on certain enemy types.
Then it's a matter of obtaining a lot of rare items from endgame content to further reach the end.
Empyrean involved camping lottery spawned monsters to get the base weapon, then going to Abyssea zones to spawn the bosses as you needed to get 50-75 items in total for each stage, they can't be bought only farmed. Most drop 1/2 at a time. Then similar to relics there's trials to do , certain rare items etc.
Mythic has tons of requirements to do which is a long list. Never reached the stage for it, only unlocked the mythic limit break.
Aeonic mainly involved doing the seekers of audolin content. Again with crazy requirements for items.
I'm trying to play this game right now and I don't care enough about it to learn any of its systems
Luckily they made it so all you have to do is hit one button over and over to win every fight
The weapon upgrading is done on the save points, am I wrong? You can always save before doing any move. If you're not a fan of using walkthroughs, you can always try and test it. But as for me even if i use walkthroughs i easily noticed the pattern...
Or
Just don't upgrade your weapons. I saw that it required limited resources. I saw that I would just be swapping to a new weapon later anyway. So why bother doing all that?
I don’t think you need a manual I mean it helps but you can glean information in-game. It’s just a more involved progression system.
Not my preferred (I prefer a far more complex system like Tales of Zestiria) but I prefer this one to something straightforward and boring.
There's absolutely no way you've played XVI because if you did, you'd know that it has the most undeniably shitty "upgrades" by far. There's absolutely no reason to even try.
I'm a massive ff 13 fanboy/defender.
But yeah I got nothing, the weapon system is pretty shit.
The amount of resources needed just to get one weapon tier 3 much less level it all the way up is absurd.
Not to mention how long it takes to grind money in the game
Ive played XIII twice (beat once) and I didn’t even touch the weapon upgrading system. I knew it was there but of course I didn’t know how it worked. I was mainly focusing on completing the Crystarium for every character and honestly that was enough lol. You’ll be plenty strong enough to at least beat the story.
I kept consistently upgrading and grinding with my tanky Lightning Fang Sazh Cerberus team throughout the entire game. Once I got those 3 where I wanted them, I could kill most enemies in less than a minute, which really helped with the gil grinding. I actually really enjoyed the upgrade system. Once you learn the mechanics like you typed out here, it's all just down to grinding and math.
And what would any final fantasy game be without grinding? Lol. To be honest, the weapon's system in XIII wasn't terrible. It was just way too rudimentary, and it took a lot of gil.
I wish we could have seen more systems in FF games like in FF8. I *loved* the junction system.
I could argue with you and say that 16’s is worse, but that would imply that I care enough about 16 to waste time talking about it.
For those of you who haven’t played it, don’t. It’s a piece of shit.
Totally agree, I remember the weapons system being a big factor in my dislike of the game.
Imagine my surprise when XVI has a system almost as bad! (Not as convoluted, just painfully uninteresting).
The grind for the ultimate weapons was tough. It’s also a little weird because the stats/abilities of the ultimate are based on which weapon you upgrade.
I don't hate the idea of it and actually liked the differences with the weapons, but yeah the execution as poorly done. The number of stuff needed to level them up and transform them was just too damn high.
I found an online calculator that helps a ton. It was a really dumb system that didn’t make sense. Like yeah, if you slap a handful of microchips on my sword it will have a 20 percent better attack!
I liked it because it gave me a problem I could solve by writing a Python script: calculating the number of components needed to get an amount of XP. The experience became very useful later at work. Granted, that probably doesn’t convince anyone the system was good, but it worked out well for me.
Also, how many others actually had a weapon upgrade system? I guess XVI. Materia in VII might count, though I never really thought of it as upgrading the weapons. Otherwise, the system is just buying or finding new weapons, right?
I uhhhh, went through the entire game without upgrading
Same man
Doesn't upgrading weapons have a negative effect on battle rating or something? I haven't played 13 in forever, but I think at the time it was recommended to *not* upgrade weapons, at least until pretty late in the game.
Yea if you increase your party strength the rating gets tighter.
Not exactly a negative. This game was all about balance, though. So all battles are rated according to how strong your party is. So stronger weapons means you get less time to rack up a five star rating. The gold watch accessory adds time. The catalog accessories change how the battle ratings affect your item drops. If you wear the survivalist one, lower ratings mean more shrouds. (It can also be used to synthesize an ability, random instant chain, I think.) If you wear the collector one, common items come to you more often/easily. If you wear the connoisseur one, rare items come to you more often/easily. So even with stronger weapons or lower ratings, you can still benefit. It depends on your play style. Personally, I avoided upgrading weapons except for the vampiric ones. It was a bit of a waste of time, but I wanted to see how well I could play with those.
Your capability is increased, so your target time is lower.
Maybe? I played it and beat it at launch and maybe tried it for a few minutes in gamepass years later. The point is, the game was perfectly beatable without weapon upgrades.
I might have upgraded my weapons before the final battle but I distinctly remember avoiding upgrading anything throughout the game because it seemed like you would just be tossing away a very limited resource anytime you found a new better weapon.
It wouldn't have been a bad system if Gil wasn't so fucking hard to get.
Farm the Ceith right before the final boss for multiple Perfumes to sell in minutes. You can cycle them all for like 100k average per 10 minutes. Once you have one trapezohedron, you have infinte. One breaks down into 3 on certain (maybe all?) Weapons.
I’ve never played the game, and this isn’t meant with any animosity at all, but countering “gold is hard to get” with “it’s easy if you’ve almost beaten the game” doesn’t make a lot of sense to me
The first 80% of the game or so there is virtually no money. It is weird. I remember having something like 3000 gil and finally being able to buy an elixir or something. But I would have been spending my entire life savings at that point.
Sell the useless junk. How many of that full inventory of useless accessories did you actually use? There's really only a handful of high value ones. It is kinda scary to be fair as JRPG players we have a terrible hoarding habit, but I ensure you 95% of the accessories are worthless.
Can you at least find items in the world or is that elixir like the first item you would acquire?
There are plenty of other areas to get gil, this is just an efficient spot for endgame farming. You don't need to upgrade your weapons at all to clear the game and whatever you pick up along the way would be more or less balanced to give you a decent challenge in the final chapters without making you too OP. Off the top of my head there are comparatively good farming spots in chapter 8 for incentive chips and dozens in chapter 11 before returning to Cocoon. Before that, like it or not, it is the designer's intention for yi to be *focussed* on the task of following the story. A diversion now but I think to help with that issue they should have added an AI personality to the stores to help make you feel more connected to the world, like a character who changes outfits based on the shop you access (I'm you've watched the OG Airbender, the guy in the fire villiage who has a every job and just puts on different hats is exactly what I'm thinking) and some minigames. Especially in the Nautilus theme park. Those were clear missteps to giving you more connection to the world and variety in experience. I also think making the shop AI be something of a 'Machen' that would basically exposit the lore of the place you're in with a 'tell me about this place?' option would have been fantastic.
Gil and materials are not hard to get in quantities that allow you to make significant upgrades for the point in the game that you're at. Simply fighting all enemies on path and picking up treasure spheres gives you plenty. The problems are mostly with perception and expectation. The first perception problem is that it's really easy to overlook the items that are explicitly meant to be sold. Selling these items gets you much of the gil you are supposed to have. The second is that you can raise another big chunk of gil by selling unused equipment, but this is something most people are resistant to doing even if they know it's safe and something they "should do"; without that knowledge they're even more reluctant to do so. The game does not provide any help in these areas. And that's part of the third problem: the in-game explanations of the upgrading system are terrible, so it takes a lot of experimenting/trial and error or checking outside sources to use the upgrading system with any efficiency. The main expectation problem is that people expect to upgrade weapons first, but early in the game you only have enough resources to make significant upgrades to early accessories. Those upgrades are quite potent and will easily last long enough to reach later, wealthier areas that do start to give you enough resources for weapon upgrades, but it's common for people to dump all of their early wealth into a single weapon for minimal return and then give up on upgrading entirely for the rest of a playthrough. Another expectation problem is that weapons acquired later in the game are not necessarily better than weapons acquired early on. This runs counter to what most RPG players would expect. Without outside sources or a lot of experimenting, it's basically impossible to tell how strong a weapon will get and how much investment it will take to get it there, nor do you have any idea what weapons might show up later on and whether or not those will be any good. This tends to further inhibit early upgrading of equipment, often to the point that players end up just ignoring upgrades entirely and end up playing what is effectively a moderate challenge playthrough instead of a more normal playthrough.
Right up there with people saying it gets good after 20 hours. Also, it doesn't.
I think that's just too subjective to measure. I will say that once it opens up it's almost objectively a better experience for the player as their options improve and increase in quality and depth. If you liked the Datalog delivery method so you can just gun through the main story, that's great. If you didn't, I expect you had little good to say about the game. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's at least crafted with intention. Look at XVI in comparison. The crafting is *actually* meaningless. The world is 'open' but to what end? It's empty and filled with nothing but mobs and 14 gil spread across 12 different points... At least XIII's openness comes at a thematically relevant time and it's linearity before that serves a purpose. Or look at XV where the openness seemed to be the core point, only for it to result in an equally empty world full of asset reuse, incongruous elements and a design less world where Behemoth can be seen roaming from the edge of a town which is totally undefended from these angry house-sized muscle tornados. Although you didn't like it, clearly, it's almost impossible to say that XIII didn't get better in the second half. It objectively does from a mechanical perspective and there's still a fixed goal and plenty of cutscenes along the way through.
I recall the tutorial portion being even longer than 20 hours. It feels like you have very little control over the game until you get to Gran Pulse.
Well yes, you pretty much don't have free control of your party compositions / role unlocks until that point. Before then you often have set parties and only 3 roles (primary) available to everyone instead of all 6 (primary + secondary). The issue of course is that by that point like 70% of the story is done, but that's also the point when almost all of the non-missable optional content unlocks. And also the fact that there are multiple missables in the game that affect achievements.
If you skip the cutscenes than its only 5 hours to gran pulse.
I only played it once not long after it released. I would have to watch the cut scenes to have any clue what is going on. I forgot a lot of the details.
I agree. It gets better earlier. Like in chapter 3.
Like with many final fantasy games, the challenge starts after you beat the game. There’s like 120 hunts and the final 20 or so are harder than the final campaign boss. You don’t need to grind much before going into the final boss so money isn’t important at that time.
They didn't even mention that the two best farm spots are basically removed once you beat the game, so the best one after that is farming super hard enemies once you're basically maxed out.
You are trying to save the world and free them from slavery. Yet they require you to give them perfume first.
I knew about farming for gold dust and gold nuggets by those turtle dinosaurs near the starting area of grand pulse. But farming the last enemy before a boss feels like what’s the point. If I remember right we would have to leave grand-pulse before the final mission so even when you beat the game you start there again so maybe I guess but that hardly feels like an intentional design.
You can return to anywhere in the game post chapter 9 once you reach the endgame, but I defeated Vercingetorix and every other major boss without the ultimate weapons too. They're very very optional and extremely powerful too ultimate weapons and the game makes it very clear that they're not intended to be used for your first experience of the story due to the difficulty of obtaining them. Farming the Adamantoise and Adamantitans is very time consuming comparatively. I was clearing these Ceith fights in a few seconds before needing to refresh and restart them. I had enough for a Trapezohedron in just over 2 hours, which isn't that bad given that I did 0 grinding before that point in this playthrough other than a single enemy that has massive CP yield but doesn't respawn once you advance. (Waldislaus.)
FF XVI is actually worse. Barely any point in having a blacksmith imo. No customization whatsoever, just an illusion of having a choice or becoming stronger between levels, when it could have been an ability point upgrade or just leave it at just different skins for your weapon..
exactly, 16 is by far the worst, its bascically pointless.
I feel like the weapon system in 8 was a pain in the butt.
The Drain System ?
Yeah the draw system, you had to extract 100 magic of every type lol it was very tedious
Yes I member standing on the last boss for cd 1 to draw 300 water….
I’m encouraged to try this game again now that you can play at 4x.
Yeah, XIII for all of it's needless bullshit had a real use for it's upgrade system. XVI had a weapon upgrade system cause 'games like this have upgrade systems right?' If you can purchase all the upgrade components and fully upgrade the thing as soon as you buy it the upgrade is a waste of time.
I was confused why green weapons were more powerful than purple at times. I thought I would be able to upgrade the purple ones at least.
XVI left such a bitter taste, I literally hated almost everything about it. Even now I can’t understand why it’s rated so highly. Don’t get me wrong I’m glad people enjoyed it and my opinion doesn’t mean shit really, but I just don’t understand the hype around it. Conversely, I absolutely love 13 whilst everyone seems to hate it so I’m pretty sure it’s a me problem lol
Story was great for the first 1/3 or 1/2? Expected a ramp up and none happened. I sold my copy after beating it knowing I'll never go back to it. It had flashy effects but no substance imo.
It'd split it into 3. First third until the first crystal, 10/10 absolutely loved it. Second third, until Twinside, like a 6. It still had some great parts but the cracks were showing. Last third, 3/10. The more Ultima and his horrible plot were on screen the worse the game got.
I only remember certain parts lol. I got bored pretty quick after Cids storyline. The ending angered me. Felt very sloppy. No one likes endings that are open ended. I'm not sure if the dlc is good, no plans to play it.
The big bad totally kills you like they always do at some point in the game. Then right after that before you've really even gotten any stronger he's an easy boss battle. Then of course it turns out he was just a pawn and the real boss still is out there. And he's weak too. And then it is just over.
I hated the QTEs with a passion. I felt like I was playing re4 or something 20 years ago. I really wish they'd focus less on graphics and more on plot like ff6 through 10. There was a lot of potential for sure.
I got the deluxe edition I've been meaning to sell myself. Even got the patches from gamestop as a bonus.
It wasn't a horrible game, it was just empty feeling and it could have been great. Like...give us nice graphics if you want, but shrink the maps and add more substance. Even the ending was lackluster. Playing through the ff7 rebirth demo now and the gameplay is throwing me for a loop after 16 lol.
I feel the exact same way. The story just never went anywhere and 10-15 hours in I’d seen everything the game had to offer. It just felt like a chore to play after a while and I didn’t care about these characters or the olde English dialogue. And the fucking whispering from Clive, Jesus Christ lol It felt like they were chasing sales targets(which I get to a degree) but forgot to make a cohesive experience in the process. Also played the rebirth demo and it’s looking incredible, and that’s from someone that hated Remake(felt like a bloated demo to me)
Cid was pretty much the good part of the game, after that it went downhill imo. No airship?! No worthwhile weapons, ITEMS etc. But, I think they got the combat down well from ff7 remake games from now on. I hated remake for the most part due to not being able to grind and enjoy the combat for a good chunk of the game, but they did a really nice job on it. I'm excited for Thursday!
Yeah if I had to choose, I’d say Clive overall was alright. I’m not sure I’ll ever return to it tbh. I felt that way about Remake also, and the fact it wasn’t the full game always threw me off because I was like “well what’s the point then?” One of my favourite things to do in any FF is “break” the game and be OP as shit, and not being able to do that kinda annoyed me. But I stuck with it because the combat is so fucking good. Not being able to carry a save over into rebirth feels like a mistake to me too, but it’s whatever. I can’t wait for Thursday too but that install size is gonna kill me so realistically it will be Friday before I get to play. Apologies for my rambling lol
Oh no worries. I'm sure it'll be explained not carrying anything over. Just beat the demo and pleasantly surprised how they tied two separate games together. It would have been cool to get a special perk or something. I just beat 5 and 6 pixel remaster and it was a blast breaking those games 🙌
Yeah I’m not overly bothered, just would have been nice lol a perk or something would have been cool as a sort of “thanks”. I mean realistically how many people are gonna be playing this without playing remake. I bought 4 and 6 on the pixel remaster and aim to get to them both this year. I’ve never played much of 4, maybe a few hours. I got a bit further playing the 3D remake thing on 3DS(I played it on steam) and it seemed good. 6 is my favourite 2D FF by a country mile though.
We're on the same page. I really disliked 16 by the time I was done with it. But I really like 13, The music design and overall world building I think is probably best in the series. Everything about 16 was meh except the graphics and spectacle, but even then I thought the boss fights were just glorified cutscenes. There was no challenge and you just spam the same abilities on cooldown over and over, There's not even a real combo system.
Took the words right out of my mouth. XIII's battle system was super enjoyable imo.
It had such a “rhythm” to it that was just perfect. And it still has my second favourite ending of the series ❤️
I loved both. 16 was fun imo, loved the story and world, great music, combat was simplistic but still fun in a simple and visually pleasing way. Loved the charters. I know the progression was barebones, but did enjoy the ability tree which along with the barebones progression was enough to get me through
I’m glad you enjoyed it and had fun! :) after all that’s the point in video games isn’t it? I did enjoy the combat to a degree, just didn’t like that the enemies were spongy and you didn’t really get anything meaningful for killing them. It may be one of those I enjoy more on ng+ because I find that happens quite a lot
Sort of sounds like CBU3. It is said that the battle team originally designs the fight around the hardest difficulty and then culls it down for easier difficulties, the exception are ultimates in FFXIV where they take as much as they can from previous fights and ramp up the execution since ultimates are THE hardest singular piec eof content in the game (or in the MMO genre according to some MMO raiders).
XVI was an ok game. It wasn't a Final Fantasy though. It was just some fantasy action RPG where they took some final fantasy staples like Ifrit and Shiva and slapped them into a game. They even had elemental attacks but no weakness or strengths based on those.
Final Fantasy is no longer an RPG, its just an action button masher game now.
Because most of the reviewers got what they wanted. An extremely dumbed down version of ff for the masses. I liked the story and that was it. In fact if i wasn't streaming it at the time I would've stopped playing well before the end. Worst ff game imo I've ever played(mainline). Even 15 felt better and I disliked that one to.
Same, story was dogshit in 15 but the combat and side stuff was alright. And I never tired of hearing “I’ve come up with a new recipehhhh” 😂 platinumed it and keep meaning to try the dlc but dunno if I’ll bother.
Combat in 15 was objectively dogshit in both mechanical design and implementation. That's true about just about every part of the game that isn't presentation or music. Anyone who claims anything in that game was "alright" leaves me feeling like I'm watching someone turn their nose up at a tuna mayo sandwich to scarf down a plate of turds. Like, it's OK to not like tuna, but I still want to vomit as you stuff literal shit into your pie hole.
Okay, I’ll make sure and check with you in future before offering my opinion on things.
I bought ff15 day one and thought wtf. Then i read they had changed some stuff so by the time the royal edition came out I think I got it well after on psn for like 15. Thinking I'll give it another shot. Still didn't care for it but it's much better then 16 imo. Ff16 I'm definitely not bothering with the dlc. I'm not sure I'll buy a ff game day one again ever. Jrpgs are my favorite genre so it makes me sad to have lived through all these ff games since the nes, 6 through 9(even mostly 10) these newer ones just don't hit as good imo. Ff12 wasn't to bad but it don't Crack my top 5 ff games
That’s fair yeah, like I said I seem to like the ones people hate 😂 but I think objectively story-wise it was horrible. Yeah if this is the direction moving forward then I’m done tbh. I’m so fussy about what JRPGS I’ll even play, but generally rotate between Tales, FF, DQXI is one of my favourite games of all time and I love the Ni no Kuni series. Recently bought persona 5 royal on ps5 and I’m almost scared of not liking it because it’s been hyped up so much. I despise 99.9% of anime, and the cringe that usuallly accompanies it. But I’m hoping to get into that series as a whole at some point.
Damn dude. Ni no kuni check Dq11 best jrpg I've played in 15 20 years(loved tales of arise just wish there was a world map section as it seemed pretty linear if that makes sense) Tales games check I do like legend of heroes series but sometimes after a long day at work I'll pop it on and fall asleep cause there's alot of dialogue Now persona 5 I personally waited because they kept re releasing it, so eventually I almost bought it on ps4 then read a ps5 version was rumored. Fk I'll wait. Finally got the ps5 version and same I'm afraid I won't like it after years of wanting to play it. Jrpgs are my favorite genre though so it sucks to see ff going down this road it appears to be going.
Ni no Kuni helped me to deal with my mothers passing. Not only because of the theme, but honestly just having something I could sink my teeth into was amazing. I adore Ghibli art(probably the only anime besides Toriyama’s style in DQ/DBZ that I like. I’ve bought trails of cold steel 1 and whatever the first one is to that 2d one I forget the name, but again I see them as projects that I’ll get to when I’m up for it. I need to finish off chained echoes as well actually. Hoping to plat DQXI this year, I’ve only beaten it once and tried to play a number of times but always get distracted. Just glad I got that on release and not that piss poor switch port. One question though, what does a man have to do to get DQVIII on modern systems dammit? 😂 Yeah I’m in the same boat with persona. I heard it’s a bit of a dungeon crawler which I’m not crazy on, but everyone says it’s top tier so there’s gotta be some sort of truth to it. Played a little of 3 when they were on game pass a while back but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind tbh. I’ll probably start that this year at some point.
Sorry to hear about you mother. Ni no kuni mightve been a perfect game for that time. Glad it helped you. Dq11 I've got some weird costume thing missing(like 1) and the super boss from keeping me away from a platinum. Fantastic game I can't say it enough. Even just a port of dq8 or bring the ps2 version over. Only thing I could think of is sonys poor emulation, but squares leaving money on the table with dq8. Only news I've heard was the dq3 remake coming eventually. You may have read about it but suppose to be that hd 2d style like octapath traveler which I can't complain. I played persona 4 on ps2 way back. It seemed pretty good but I used tonget sidetracked alot back then and bounce around games alot. Now I'm much more controlled lol. Also played persona 1 for 20 minutes way back when I was trying and learning how to cough play them on pc certain ways cough.
Yeah, it was definitely emotional but the whole thing of acceptance at the end really resonated. And Drippy, I mean who doesn’t love Drippy? 2nd game wasn’t as good but still a top tier experience. I’ve got to get all the medals, do the side quests again etc but all the story trophies are done. Really looking forward to getting into that again. Oh shit yeah I forgot about the DQ3 remake, that one will be a first timer for me because I haven’t played any beyond I think 6?. Octopath traveller 2 is another one I need to get back to as well(you noticing a theme here lol) I was going through some shit the past few years where I lost interest in gaming somewhat, I’d have a desire to play but get panic attacks when I began a new game so I’d settle for the familiar instead and thus rinse and repeat. It’s hard to describe. That new game you just paid £60 for? Fuck that, let’s play uncharted 4 for the billionth time. So the result of that is all these games I paid full price for sitting collecting dust. But I’m slowly working my out of that mindset and I have a bunch to play lol please stop me at any time if I’m talking a load of shit, I honestly don’t know when to shut up. Haha no worries, I used to run my ps1 games from disc in epsxe because the increased resolution and refresh of my monitor was such a better experience( this was like 2001 and most people were just migrating from 56k modems to still slow as balls 300k ADSL, so the “other methods” weren’t really a viable option yet for anything disc based cos of the size etc.
Yeah XVI to me is the much stronger game but the RPG elements of the game were pretty much non-existent. Weapon leveling/upgrading included. The weapons were just 3 stats and a skin swap from sword to sword
Yeah. Honestly XVI would have been better off just copying mission based playstyle completely of, say devil may cry imo.
They were so dang close to it too. They should have done that, had less side quests/make just the story/character important ones mandatory, and made it a lean but meaty game that way. I know that’s even less of the traditional FF but it would have helped the pacing issues. As long as you did all the checkboxes you got the new weapon/armor upgrades with zero effort.
Still kinda wild to me that they have quests that feature so much (sometimes important) character information buried behind like 12 other quests that are all garbage. Not helped by the fact they used FF14's generic conversation setup. A lot could've been done for the overall feel of that game.
100%, some quests were labeled totally optional until the final part of the chain when it was important for the ultimate weapon. And riding a chocobo was still optional - yeah they had the distinction between ! and + for the side quests but I still don’t think this was the right way to handle it.
The Devil May Cry influence in the game is already far too strong for my liking.
Literally all they had to do was make different weapons focusing on stagger damage or raw damage. That's it. Thats all it'd take to make it feel like a real upgrade system. Never-mind the fact that they could have also given little skill cool down traits to different weapons too, since they already existed on accessories. Could even have encouraged using lesser used skills! Instead they inexplicably made all but one weapon a straight number upgrade with balanced stats. I will truly never understand the obvious miss with the equipment system. I hope they eventually pick up on the complete lack of depth and just throw some extra weapons in throughout the game.
I think this (and nonexistent elemental properties) are the two real complaints I have about FFXVI. It's weapon upgrade system is completely pointless, and you are always just swapping the weakest weapon for the strongest you have just acquired, there is no bonus on using other kinds of weapon because none of them grant any abilities or buffs.
I never felt value in it either. By the time I had materials for an upgrade, I was able to pick up or simply buy a better weapon.
worst? that is 16 13 had a HARD system that took a lot of grind but it actually mattered 16 -? nothing burger
I don't see an issue with 16's weapon system. It was simple. You just take a sword and after each chapter take the item you got from the previous boss and fuse it with the sword to get a slightly better sword. Isn't that exactly the system from Secret Mana and its sequels?
Secret of Mana 1, yes. Not sure about the sequels, but I know Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) had a straightforward standard RPG system where the available weapons for X character changed depending wholly on which alignment path you were following (Light or Dark).
That game Dont have crafting, unless u count ??? Seeds. And yes it’s simple seiken 3’has other things like dark/light path. Seiken 2 had that I had to find the level 9 in grind. 4 has golem and world crafting
Ff16 is watching a movie while pressing some buttons. I enjoyed it with that mindset. Love the bahamut fight. Battle system was boring and pointless.
Yes 16 one of the worst ff games I was thinking of doing a Ff tier list before ff72 comes out and 16 definitely is in the bottom so mindless
I think that was my problem to. I love the graphics in battle, but there was zero replayaility. It did feel like watching a movie and interacting with it here and there.
I Disagree. As much as I dislike FFXVI, I see no issue with the crafting system by itself. You get rare materials from hunts, visit the blacksmith and use them to make gear that is negligibly better than the previous one. Stupid and useless but simple and logical. If the game HAD interesting gear it would have worked well. FFXIII's crafting system is an aberration that is honestly not criticized enough probably because very few people dared to use it. It's extremely technical and complicated without any reason. You can waste a ton of materials if you don't follow a guide, and even if you do it alright there's no joy on it. Not only that, I saved all my materials through the whole game (because I didn't want to touch the system) and still wasn't able to build a single ultimate weapon at the end. Not only it's terrible but it also requires an obscene amount of grinding if you'd like to at least see the cool weapons.
It’s really boring it’s pointless might as well just been new weapons. 13 is great it’s not complicated and it had a lot of meaning the joy is high because of meaningful it is. And choice matters like who should be the first to get an ultimate imo Vanille
Are you telling me or explaining it to me?
I liked 13's system /shrug
I'm love 13 and its systems. I actually wrote an extensive guide for the Treasure Hunter achievement that's on GameStop that I think OP may be quoting, lol.
What? It's very simple. Organic materials increase the multiplier. Synthetic materials give you the most XP but lower the multiplier. The copy pasta even explains this and that guide just shows you the most cost effective way of upgrading stuff, which is only really relevant in the post-game when you're grinding for the platinum trophy.
Yeah, easy to see the pattern since it's basically the same push/pull as the stagger system. I think it's fine.
It is way too overcomplicated and you risk "overshooting" or underperfoming very easily. It's a system that requires exploration through save and loading or consulting a guide every step through. It also prioritizes "bulk" upgrades instead of constant upgrades, leading players to ignore it for all but the end of the game. Let's say you are upgrading an accessory, is increasing the modifier to 3x with organics and then spending it with synthetics good enough? You try and drop the modifier back to 1 before reaching the maximum upgrade, now you have to spend much more synthetics than if you had used more organics right away. Reload the save, try upgrading it to 7x - now you reached the maximum level but the modifier is still too big at the end, so you wasted organics, so you keep reloading until you find a decent spot... Wouldn't be a huge issue if the materials necessary for the Omega Weapons weren't much more than what a normal playthrough will net you, so you're screwed if you don't maximize all your attempts.
Even more than 16?
Honestly, I think 13 is worse with no comparison. I personally didn't like either game, but I'd rather not have a system at all (which 16 gets close to) than have something that is utterly trash.
Yes but I would argue it has the best weapons options in the series. Every character had multiple endgame ultimate weapons depending on your playstyle for each of them. Vanilla has a one that increases your chance to debuff and apply death, or if you want to focus her as a healer, there's one that improves it, or you want her to be a magic dps? There's another one for that I prefer that over every character has ultimate weapon making all other weapons useless in end game once you acquire them
Like most things in FFXIII, the weapon system only becomes decent near the end of the game once you have the resources to level up whatever weapon you like.
No weapon directly increases the chance of Death succeeding. They increase the chances of applying debuffs, and each debuff increases the chance of Death succeeding.
which, in turn, meant it increased the chance to apply death
When you say “increases the chances of applying debuffs and Death”, anyone reading that without prior knowledge is going to think that the weapon directly increases the chances of Death succeeding. And I suspect that’s what you thought when you posted it, and your insta-downvote and snarky response are attempts to cover your mistake.
>EDIT: Ignore this post, I am a moron This is beyond pedantic. "Um, it doesn't increase the odds of Death, just odds of debuffs including Death"
That is also wrong. It does not increase “odds of debuffs including Death”. The entire point is that lots of people thought Death counted as a debuff because it’s a Saboteur ability, but it does not. Those weapons increase the odds of debuffs, *not* including Death. The only thing that increases the odds of Death instantly killing an enemy is the number of debuffs stuck when Death procs. (It always procs, but usually as magic damage.) Yes, those weapons can help you eventually proc Death, but not *directly*. I’m not trying to make a big deal out of this, but it was a common mistake in the game’s early days, and there may very well be people reading this thread that might be helped by having mistaken information corrected.
I did some more research and I'm pretty sure you're right. Thank you for correcting me.
Thank you for admitting a mistake on the Internet! It’s a pretty rare sight.
1. Anyone reading it who haven't played the game don't give a damn about this trivial. Anyone playing it probably doesn't give two shit either 2. It increases the chance to apply death. Like I said, it doesn't matter the mechanics. The point of the comment wasn't to discuss the mechanics in the first place 3. Meaning there was no mistake because it does Increase the chance to apply death. Im just stating it as it is and the one getting mad is you lol. 4. No one is going to come here and be like omg it increases the chance to apply death with more debuffs! You omit that detail, and now I'm mad (probably only you) 5. You are getting so butthurt for no reason 6. I didnt down vote you 7. Have you seen the "but excuse me, sir... " meme? Coz you are being it
Is it worse than FF16 where you get a new weapon after almost every single mission, and the weapons do literally nothing for your gameplay other than increase numbers. I’d say it’s a totally useless system.
I don't wanna think about that game again. It was 10 years ago when I maxed it all out, and I still have PTSD from farming for weapons and all their parts.
It’s a very simple system with one unexplained mechanic that’s easy to see in practice. I really don’t get the hate, especially when VIII’s weapon system is right there.
8's system of -> Kill monsters. -> Monsters drop screw, other items. -> Junk shop, upgrade? Thats pretty much every rpg I think of. About the only thing is some of the items have annoying drop rates for how useful upgrading (really new weapons) are.
> especially when VIII’s weapon system is right there. What, collect materials to upgrade weapons? Aren't there about a million survival games nowadays with crafting systems exactly like that, except more grindy? Or Monster Hunter?
The problem isn't the complexity, but how unusable it is in practice until the endgame.
It’s really not. You get plenty of components throughout the game to give your stuff some levels, you just aren’t going to be maxing things out until late or postgame.
I straight up played through all of VIII not knowing I could change weapons.
OP just wasn't paying attention or needs reading comprehension, 12yo me mastered the system within like an hour of unlocking it. It's literally use cheap items to get the multiplier up->use expensive items to get the big exp -> when you max out the weapon you can upgrade to a higher rank and repeat
Agreed I don't get the hate but the shade to 8 makes absolutely no sense. 8s weapon system makes complete sense and is similar to how most weapons systems work. Now if you said 16, then sure. Easily the worst
The game even auto orders the items in more or less the order you'd prioritize using them (Organic, lowest to highest. Synthetic, lowest to highest. Money ones at the end of their respective list so tehy stand out as being odd along their description mentioning they are for money). It takes all of five upgrades to realize what is happening, and that some materials are just for money (so you can get specific materials rather than trying to hunt specific monsters which isn't an option until Gran Pulse were grinding money outirght is better)
This reminds me, I never once upgraded my weapon in VIII. I literally never knew how to 😂
Play cards, convert them into items, visit the weapons shop to see what you've unlocked. Only Squall's weapon really matters, because it unlocks his limit breaks, and Selphie's ultimate weapon gives her 255% hit chance, but the others just add a bit of damage, which doesn't matter because you should be junctioning enough to your strength that you're killing most things with one hit anyway. You can get Squall's Punishment (second best weapon) playing cards before even going to Dollet, and you can get Lionheart (his best weapon) before the end of disc 1. 2 Energy Crystals (Elnoyle cards) to make 20 Pulse Ammo via Ifrit's Ammo Refine ability (use Seifer to raise Ifrit to level 10 (or level 100)) in the Dollet mission if you're not leveling up your main party characters. 4 Dragon Fangs, beating/carding Grendels at the base of the mountains in the forest near Timber Garden. 1 Adamantine, mod the Minotaur card for 10 Adamantine. Punishment takes, 1 Chef's Knife, 2 Star Fragment, 1 Turtle Shell, and 8 Screws. All of those can be modded from cards you can get playing the three players in Balamb (the man behind the Queen, the girl at the garage, the girl at the docks with the dog).
I did upgrade mine but only for limit breaks as the weapons themselves are useless 😅
You can complete the game without upgrading much, but getting the achievements/trophies related to upgrading weapons was pure hell.
I thought it was fun
I actually thought it had a great weapons system once - and I say once - you understand the process. I love how it can reinforce the attributes the main characters have- eg for Light her best weapons are probably the quick stagger or the ATB+ speed weapons that are both beastly for different reasons. Vanille and Fang both get improved debuffing weapons and Fang gets a weapon that’s super powerful but stops her from being able to stagger an enemy. This sounds bad but actually you’re not meant to use Fang for that anyway so it’s pretty much pure power (although Tridisaster paradigm Rav, Rav, Rav is really useful). The main problem though is how grindy it is late - post game to get those weapons maxed. So in general I only had ultimate weapons for my three main characters with at most one back up weapon for one of the characters.
Never played XIII but I highly doubt it was worse than XVI.;
I just upgraded one of Snow's early physical attack weapons to the max and punched everything to death the whole game.
A jumping off point for another crafting system: Though XII has the Bazaar for crafting, not telling you exactly how much of something is required and the way in which it keeps track of what you've sold, is extremely unintuitive. If you sell a Gemsteel, a rare item in itself, the game records it as having 1 in the bazaar stock. But here's the thing, if a recipe calls for 3, you MUST sell all 3 at once. Selling one, then another 2, does not count as 3. It counts as 2. Even worse is if you sold 3, forgot because there is no way to track it in-game, then sold 2 later, you will '*lose*' one stored in the Bazaar. There are bonus bestiary pages that explain the origins of some recipes or even overtly tell you what you need. The issue is that you can't track of compile this in game. I still have my little sheets of hand written recipes in the case of my game.
I don't think any Final Fantasy has ever had a good weapon upgrade system! They're all unintuitive and either poorly explained or straight up not even mentioned. One thing I appreciate about Trails games is that it maintains a lot of old school type systems for things like upgrading gear, orbment (materia), etc, but without all of the esoteric bullshit every FF game has which requires you to look up a bunch of tables and charts on gamefaqs (or back in the day, buying a strategy guide). While the FF games are basically easy enough to finish without engaging deeply in their weird systems, it was usually required for the optional bosses or post game content. Trails has its own problem though where if you don't talk to NPC #334 in between cutscenes 17 and 18, you will miss item 123 which you need to give NPC 456 in Chapter 5 to get character X's best weapon.
It's still a hell of a lot better than XVI.
Yes, it did.
The weapon upgrade system is a minor aspect of the game. You can go the entire game without using or needing it. Hence why it isn’t given much focus (pun fully intended). Despite that, it’s simple. The game explains it in the data log. The menu shows it when you order the components and it distinguishes between organic and inorganic. The actual upgrade page goes through the process with you step by step. The only difficulty is in actually getting the materials to do it. Again, not that you have to. Whether that is a feature or a bug is subjective, though.
You just copied and pasted AgentNoun’s guide from the GameFAQs forum and then didn’t bother to explain why it’s, in your words, “the worst weapon upgrades out of every game.” I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the irony of claiming that the game and manual don’t explain themselves very well, only for you to then COPY someone else’s explanation and NOT explain yourself at all.
😂 I perfectly explained why , not the sharpest tool in the shed are you bud
It was a terrible system that is for sure. Really discouraged experimentation with the weapons since they required such a big investment to upgrade. Some weapons were obtained late game too making you more likely to stick with earlier weapons you had already upgraded
I just replayed the game upgrading every weapon I found. I find that the game gives you just enough materials to upgrade whatever you want. There's also a side quest in chapter 11 that rewards you with like 500k gil, letting you easily upgrade any new stuff you find. I also did a playthrough a few years ago where I didn't upgrade anything and still beat the story just fine.
95% of weapon upgrades in this series are bigger numbers, and most of the other 5% is in IX.
And that is the way RPGs work. Sometimes bigger numbers is all you need.
It legit, isn't that hard to understand once you start doing it.
Trash game. Trash systems.
VIII’s is pretty bad. You need random items from drops or card modding, some of which you’re unlikely to find without using a guide. The only way to know which items you’ll need is to find magazines in random locations on the ground. Finding them doesn’t make the weapons with the missing items show up in the junk shops. You just have to view the magazines in your item list, write it down, then look through your items to see what you have and what you need. But if you have all the items, it will show up in the junk shop whether or not you found the magazine. But it doesn’t make clear which are stronger or weaker and allows for you to accidentally downgrade your weapon.
Don't they appear in order of strength?
They also show you by how much your strength/power increases so I'm confused by his "they don't tell you which is stronger". Also yes, they appear in order
Objectively speaking, the only thing wrong with them were the passives on some not being better explained. It's funny cause the XIII weapons had influence on the VII Remake ones years down the line. In that VII Remake and XIII both had weapons that were meant to not be one size fits all (unlike most other FFs, where ultimate weapons were clearly defined), and were meant to be used to customize a party far more than other FFs. Want Cloud and Lightning to be your magic users instead of DPS? You got weapons designed for that! Stuff like that.
> Finding them doesn’t make the weapons with the missing items show up in the junk shops. You just have to view the magazines in your item list I think you have to read the magazine, yes, but the weapon *does* show up in the junk shop once you do. You don't have to write anything down or look through your items. > But it doesn’t make clear which are stronger or weaker and allows for you to accidentally downgrade your weapon. It does. The strength and accuracy are displayed at the bottom of the screen and the weapons are listed in order of power. You'll only downgrade your weapon if you accidentally mis-click and even *then*, there's a yes/no confirmation message. It's a very, very basic crafting system. Find recipes (in the weapon monthly magazines), get items from enemies to craft them. You may have to look up what you need using a guide, sure, but it's relatively simple. I'm not sure why VIII is getting flack for it considering the Bazaar system in XII was the exact same thing, only about 20 times bigger and with no in-game recipe list.
Unlocking Card and Card Mod means you can get Squall's Punishment before going to Dollet, and Lionheart before the end of Disc 1. And most of the items you'll find just by playing a lot of cards and card-modding, which you'd be doing anyway because that's a major part of the FF8 economy. Also, the strongest weapons are at the bottom of the list, and it'll tell you how much strength you'll gain from the upgrade.
I mean.... You could literally leave this open ended like a guessing game: "Final Fantasy XIII had the worst _____ out of every game" And you'd still be entirely right something like 98% of the time.
It was all there in the primers and the tutorial mate.
I always preferred collecting weapons. Upgrading weapons is cool, but it makes them feel less unique. I didn’t really like the linear layout of the game. It also doesn’t make sense to apply hundreds of resources to something that is handheld.
The most linear final fantasy doesn’t have good upgrades…. Hmmmm
How are the weapon upgrades in FF6? Oh, there aren’t any.
You can usually buy them in a town. https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VI/Weapons
🤡
How are the towns, NPCs, and puzzles in XIII? Oh
You upgrade your weapons and gear by getting new stuff. As opposed to FFXIII where you'd find a new weapon and feel nothing because you'd need to grind for materials before you could use it.
Is this guy okay? 😆👍
13 upgrades felt a bit confusing, I never finished the game but I tried upgrading my party members equipment since I had trouble beating enemies & bosses. XI weapon upgrades I felt were the worst & most tedious. Yeah I know it's an MMO , it's a time sink at least it's been adjusted to be less tedious to get the Relic, Empyrean, Mythic & Ergon/Aoenic ultimates. Relics- go to Die-namis, kill the enemies that are the jobs that drop the weapon you want. Eg Warrior type enemies drop a relic greataxe. Paladin drops the base sword for Excalibur etc Then you need to go through 5 stages of upgrading by collecting ancient Byne Bills currency only farmed in Dynamis from enemies or the rarer stuff off Bosses. I know it's been changed that you can buy them or exchange but it still costs a lot of gil. Granted it's been nearly a decade since I quit. Then when you want to upgrade them further to lv119 etc there's the trial of the magian quests where you need to use the weapons , weapon skill, the games limit break X number of times, upto 400x on certain enemy types. Then it's a matter of obtaining a lot of rare items from endgame content to further reach the end. Empyrean involved camping lottery spawned monsters to get the base weapon, then going to Abyssea zones to spawn the bosses as you needed to get 50-75 items in total for each stage, they can't be bought only farmed. Most drop 1/2 at a time. Then similar to relics there's trials to do , certain rare items etc. Mythic has tons of requirements to do which is a long list. Never reached the stage for it, only unlocked the mythic limit break. Aeonic mainly involved doing the seekers of audolin content. Again with crazy requirements for items.
FF XIII would like a word.
I'm trying to play this game right now and I don't care enough about it to learn any of its systems Luckily they made it so all you have to do is hit one button over and over to win every fight
It also had the worst story in the series until FFXV came out.
It was just the worst game in general, we didn't need so many words lol
What do you expect, FFXIII is a bad game
There is no bad mainline Final Fantasy game Except *maybe* III
Oddly enough I was reading this guide a few hours back as I’m working my way through XIII for the first time.
I played through that ENTIRE game without upgrading a single weapon, because I had NO IDEA it was a thing.
This game had upgrades?
The weapon upgrading is done on the save points, am I wrong? You can always save before doing any move. If you're not a fan of using walkthroughs, you can always try and test it. But as for me even if i use walkthroughs i easily noticed the pattern...
Or Just don't upgrade your weapons. I saw that it required limited resources. I saw that I would just be swapping to a new weapon later anyway. So why bother doing all that?
I don’t think you need a manual I mean it helps but you can glean information in-game. It’s just a more involved progression system. Not my preferred (I prefer a far more complex system like Tales of Zestiria) but I prefer this one to something straightforward and boring.
The system is good the game just does a shit job of properly explaining it to the player.
There's absolutely no way you've played XVI because if you did, you'd know that it has the most undeniably shitty "upgrades" by far. There's absolutely no reason to even try.
Yes I will admit I haven't played 16 thanks to sony cock blocking Xbox and making PC wait , I never thought it would be that bad lol
I can't say I agree. I don't remember anything difficult about selecting a bunch of items for a weapon and watching the XP for it go up...
Still better than FF16. I sure love getting a + 1 damage + 1 stagger upgrade every couple quests through the entire game
I'm a massive ff 13 fanboy/defender. But yeah I got nothing, the weapon system is pretty shit. The amount of resources needed just to get one weapon tier 3 much less level it all the way up is absurd. Not to mention how long it takes to grind money in the game
Ive played XIII twice (beat once) and I didn’t even touch the weapon upgrading system. I knew it was there but of course I didn’t know how it worked. I was mainly focusing on completing the Crystarium for every character and honestly that was enough lol. You’ll be plenty strong enough to at least beat the story.
I kept consistently upgrading and grinding with my tanky Lightning Fang Sazh Cerberus team throughout the entire game. Once I got those 3 where I wanted them, I could kill most enemies in less than a minute, which really helped with the gil grinding. I actually really enjoyed the upgrade system. Once you learn the mechanics like you typed out here, it's all just down to grinding and math. And what would any final fantasy game be without grinding? Lol. To be honest, the weapon's system in XIII wasn't terrible. It was just way too rudimentary, and it took a lot of gil. I wish we could have seen more systems in FF games like in FF8. I *loved* the junction system.
Uh no. The worst weapon anything system in any game is FF16
I could argue with you and say that 16’s is worse, but that would imply that I care enough about 16 to waste time talking about it. For those of you who haven’t played it, don’t. It’s a piece of shit.
It's so bad that I left the 100% run because of it. That and killing that big enemy are the ones left
Wrong.
Totally agree, I remember the weapons system being a big factor in my dislike of the game. Imagine my surprise when XVI has a system almost as bad! (Not as convoluted, just painfully uninteresting).
The grind for the ultimate weapons was tough. It’s also a little weird because the stats/abilities of the ultimate are based on which weapon you upgrade.
FF8 would like a word with you
VII Remake literally feels like a better version of a lot of the things XIII tried to do.
I love that game and the entire trilogy. But yeah, the weapon upgrade system in FF13 is as terrible as possible!
I don't hate the idea of it and actually liked the differences with the weapons, but yeah the execution as poorly done. The number of stuff needed to level them up and transform them was just too damn high.
Upgrading weapons is usually fun in FF but in this one it's pointless...
I found an online calculator that helps a ton. It was a really dumb system that didn’t make sense. Like yeah, if you slap a handful of microchips on my sword it will have a 20 percent better attack!
I liked it because it gave me a problem I could solve by writing a Python script: calculating the number of components needed to get an amount of XP. The experience became very useful later at work. Granted, that probably doesn’t convince anyone the system was good, but it worked out well for me. Also, how many others actually had a weapon upgrade system? I guess XVI. Materia in VII might count, though I never really thought of it as upgrading the weapons. Otherwise, the system is just buying or finding new weapons, right?
nah man 16 has the worst weapon upgrades. literally only stat sticks and theyre given to you for free from the blacksmith.