As my gaming time has naturally reduced over the years, I’ve found myself having to be a bit more careful about how I bother going for the penultimate rewards for sidequests and such. This is purely anecdotal, but it still seems to me that it’s often not worth it to go for the best weapon, piece of armor or whatever final quest reward. This isn’t always the case, but seriously, why do so few “ultimate rewards” actually feel like such?

This thought occured to me while playing Final Fantasy XVI overthe weekend. For the most part, I actually rather like the game. It’s story is interesting enough, its characters are all well-written and likeable, its combat is exciting and everything about its presentation is downright beautiful. Really, in most respects Final Fantasy XVI is an absolutely fantastic game. However, the sidequests leave something to be desired, I think.

Not to get too deep into it, but they’re the sort of quests I would never bother doing for the rewards. It’s always just more useless money and maybe a marginally useful item. Fortunately, some of them offer good moments of characterization for major and minor cast members, so they’re not a complete waste of time as far as the story goes. This is a game though, and as someone playing a game, I want to see some sort of tangible gameplay reward for my time.

I’m now near the end of the game, have done all the side-content and my rewards for having done all this are also feeling rather middling. One one hand, I have the reward for getting as many Renown points as possible: a song for the jukebox. (Oh, my favorite.) On the other I have the “ultimate” sword…which is only a few points more powerful than the previous, much more easily obtained sword. I mean, it sounds cool, and I think it looks cool. The only problem is that there’s no way to examine items or weapons in the menus, so I can’t even get a good look at this weapon that I’ve spent so much time working toward.

I can’t help but think back to Kingdom Hearts’ and even other Final Fantasies’ ultimate weapons. At least those games gave you stuff that had cool effects, was CLEARLY stronger, and was easy to either examine in the menus or see on the screen.I don’t at all regret getting the Ultima Weapon in KH1 or FF7. In FF16 though? Yeah, it wasn’t really worth it at all. Come to think of it, Skyrim was a major offender in this regard too. Nothing you got as a quest reward was anywhere near as good as gear that you made yourself. What’s up with that?

Anyway, I just had to get that off of my chest I suppose. If a game is going to ask me to spend all kinds of time in it to get a particular weapon or what have you, that weapon had better be worthwhile, you know. If it’s not, then why on earth would I want to bother getting it? Well, that’s all. See you guys next week with something a little different. 🙂

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What do you think of this? Are there any games or quests that you feel wasted your time with cruddy rewards? Are there any other things like this in games that irk you?

Image from the FFXVI page