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ishiki on 24 October 2012
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Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
Scoobes said:
darkknightkryta said:
 

May I ask which "JRPGs"?  Except for Star Ocean 3 and Final Fantasy XII, that I've played, all my inventory was filled with healing items, current armour, or items used to enhance weapons/armour/stats  (Which doesn't make them useless FYI).

Nearly every Final Fantasy game since the SNES days (possibly before but I never played I-III for any decent length of time), Grandia 1 & 2, Xenoblade Chronicles and StarOcean 3 (never played 4 and I only vaguely remember 1 & 2). I mean, just take FFVIII for instance. You collect a range of items in the game, but for large portions I didn't even bother having the item command in battle as I could get by based on Junctioned magic. Actually, at the end of most Final Fantasy games I had a whole host of useless items I never needed to use because I either had an equivalent spell or a more powerful/useful ability already available. The items I actually used (healing potions, elixirs, ethers, heroes etc.) were the very items I would be short of or at the very least tactically rationing. Not to mention that most weapons and armour are useless after a short period anyway.

I make the same argument for the likes of Mass Effect 1, Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age. The problem isn't something that's exclusive to one sub-genre of RPGs. There's also the argument of how the RPGs organise items. Few manage to get an intuitive system together. They usually just boil down to edited/sorted lists or in the worst case scenario, something resembling an Excel spreadsheet.

Now, I could say the likes of the Deus Ex series or Mass Effect 2 & 3 are examples of WRPGs getting inventory systems right, but that wouldn't be very representative.

Funny you mention FInal Fantasy 8 cause every item has some kind of purpose, like giving str+20% to your GF, teaching Quistis limit breaks.  There's nothing in that game that's sole purpose is to be sold for money (Cause you can't).  All the Final Fantasies bar 12 use items as some kind of enhancement to something.  And I agree, Mass Effect 2& 3 get it right, but then again they removed most of it (Which I agree with).

There were plenty of items that were effectively redundant. Half of Irvine's amunition was useless, the attack/magic stones were just an alternative to drawn spells (and were doubly redundant because spells were useless once Junctioned.... why bother with magic when your STR is at 255?!), and most of the construction items used to upgrade weapons just built up and collected virtual dust with the exception of the few you actually needed, lol.

Now take Final Fantasy VII as another example of redundant items in the series. What was the point of the attack items like "Fire Veil" when Fire3 was easily attainable by the time I got my first "Fire Veil" anyway? The only time I used those items was if I did Yuffie's side quest because your materia gets taken away. By the end I had quite a collection of attack items I didn't ever need to use. And what about most of the nuts? The only useful ones were Carob and Zeio nuts! The rest were just filler. Or the absolutely useless "Easter egg" items like the 1/35 soldiers or the tissues! These were doubly annoying because they took up space in the long inventory list, yet were absolutely useless!

not entirely true. For instance if you used like strength +20% you could use a magic that isn't like ultima or meteor (comet I forget) to get to 255. And not junction more than  a couple magic to magic wielding characters. Or junction magic to certain characters to give ice affinity, or poison/blind status. It's not useless because you can't get infinite magic easily, so you have to allocate carefully atleast in theory. It just has a different utility than most other games, but the idea is cool.

However the issue with that and basically every FF game is there's a way to exploit it the battlesystem, so the systems are never as deep as they should be, except for a few optional bosses like making squall/zell 255 strength with aura and lionheart and zells QTE's. Pretty much beats everything in the game, except like omega weapon (because that boss involves a bit of luck+that).

But I agree with you, both JRPG, and WRPG's have useless stuff. But imo RPG's should have some of that.I mean maybe generally WRPG's have more useless stuff, but tactics ogre, last remnant, dark soul's, and countless other JRPG's give you useless, or semi-useless.

But generally I just sell my shit so I can buy things, problem solved :P