TLDR: which games do WEAPON BREAKING without making you want to tear your hair out?
i’m playing through Dark Cloud and had forgotten how tedious the weapon system is. weapons function as “leveling up” instead of using a traditional experience-based system. weapons need to be upgraded, fused, and repaired throughout the game. and a durability system dictates that once your weapon hits 0 durability, it breaks. broken weapons can cost you hours of gameplay if you’re not careful. there’s even the possibility of breaking all your weapons and starting from square one near the end of the game if you’re not vigilant with repairs.
for Dark Cloud, this weapon system is a unique leveling system that differentiates itself from its action-rpg peers. it introduces a level of risk that keeps you alert while making weapons you’ve upgraded-and-maintained feel like valuable treasure. however, this system is also tedious to keep up with as weapon durability decreases quickly and repairs are time consuming.
after hours of playtime, i think i’ve isolated the reason why the weapon system is so annoying: menus. the entire system is menu-based. i often find myself pulling up the menu mid-battle to repair my weapon. there are automated repairs, but these require some setup. if Dark Cloud somehow incorporated more interactive ways (outside of a pause menu) to repair weapons or made weapon durability decrease at half the rate or made a broken weapon repairable (instead of gone for good), this would have gone a long way to reduce tedium.
games like Breath of the Wild are often criticised for similar weapon-breaking systems, and it got me thinking about the fact that i have NEVER seen a weapon-breaking system praised or even vaguely complimented.
are there any games that do weapon breaking especially well, and why?
There was a mod for XCOM: Enemy Unknown called Long War that included an option for weapon breaking. After every battle there was a chance that equipment on your soldiers would break, dependent on how much damage they took. I think I adjusted the rate down from the default, but as an occasional risk I think it worked really well. Normally once you built enough stronger weapons to kit out a squad you didn’t care about building more. Now you had to consider the risk of your weapons breaking and not having access to them. You can repair broken weapons, but it takes time and you never know when the aliens are gonna attack. Investing more money into excess weapons greatly reduces the risk but means you spend more when you could be spending that money on other essential things.
that sounds interesting. weapon breaking may work better for strategy games, as an extra level of strategic consideration; but it seems to be less than well-received for action/adventure games.