Final Fantasy 16 Players Disappointed By Gear System

Traveling around Valisthea with your companions and your favorite weapons in hand might be the quint essence of Final Fantasy 16. Especially, the weapons were always a huge part of the franchise and its gameplay. But now Final Fantasy players have expressed their disappointment with Final Fantasy's weapon and gear system in general. Read everything about it.

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Final Fantasy 16 Players Disappointed By Gear System

Final Fantasy 16 was in general well received by the community and the fans of the franchise. But now, just a few days after its release, the first criticism can be heard throughout the forums. One of the biggest negative aspects of the game is the gear system, as pointed out by some players. In the Final Fantasy Subreddit, a thread has gone viral with a meme about the swords of the game.

Let me upgrade you my precious by u/nier4554 in FinalFantasy

This meme is about the swords that get dropped by the Eikons, once you have beaten them. They are called "worthless" by the meme and parts of the community, since players feel that they are too weak after a short amount of time.

So they can't build an emotional bond towards their weapon, which is an important thing in a lot of other games, where you can at least upgrade them to stay up-to-date. Also, the rewards don't feel that rewarding, when they are "useless" nearly immediately.

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A user named "BuyChemical7917" compared this system with the predecessor Final Fantasy 15: "Say what you will about FFXV, the Engine Blade was never useless"

Another user with the name "Sulinia" posted a very highly upvoted comment about the FF16 system:

I'm so confused about this system. I'm probably 1/3 of the way through the game and it's a constant battle between random +1 swords and the epic quality Eikon swords you get. I'm barely unlocking new patterns at all even when doing all side quests. I just now unlocked some rare/blue armor from the Blacksmith's blues quest, but it requires items from a hunt which I haven't unlocked yet.The progression system is imo way too linear and there's barely, if any, excitement over it, because it's just "numbers go up" upgrades slowly but surely. As far as I can see, there's no really big difference between the weapons, most other titles had you able to get very good items early if you did side quests and/or knew what you were doing, like stealing from the right mobs etc.With the amount of exploring I've done I feel like 99% of everything I find is useless.

User "skep90" explained his feelings in a shorter way: "Yep, is so frustrating come to the base and your purple sword is already weak to a white or green sword"

Also, the fact, that even crafted swords are getting too weak too quickly enraged some players. User "Pied_Film10" wrote: "Crafting system is useless in this game. Just proceed through the main story, you’ll find a better sword eventually." This is an understandable argument, since it doesn't feel rewarding when you invested time in resource gathering and crafting and the sword is too weak too quickly.

Conclusion:

It will be interesting to see if and how Square Enix will react to this criticism, but it should be in their own interest that players are happy. They can even feel charmed by the fact that players are grown attached to their early game weapons and want to use them in later parts of the game as well.

But it's a bad sign, that players are feeling that even handcrafted weapons are getting too weak too quickly, since they are investing time in gathering the needed resources and crafting the weapon. Therefore, Square Enix should look out for a solution to this problem. Maybe a transmog-system could be the way, just like in Destiny, World of Warcraft or Diablo.

More Final Fantasy 16 guides:

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