I always loved the whole materia system in Final Fantasy VII - slotting different materia into different weapons allowed you to set up all sorts of cool effects, such as having armor that absorbs ice-based spells but also automatically casts protect on the wearer. By the end of the game, you could set up ridiculously complicated chains of auto-actions, so that your character might always get the first attack, and also automatically counterattack any attack, and so on.
I really like stuff like that - being able to create weird, customized setups like that in RPG’s. What are some console RPG’s (especially for PS1, PS2, DS, or Gamecube) that have deep systems that allow for this sort of stuff?
Well Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 has a similiar, if less comprehensive system in which you customize your weapons and armor by using a workbench to affix various improvements. Depending on your style, there’s a variety of different routes you can take (high damage, high accuracy, high criticals, high stun, whatever). The system is underexploited, but it’s there.
The original Chrono Cross doesn’t allow you to customize items as much as it forces you to buy elements for your characters, allowing you to customize (to a certain extent) how your main characters will function.
Final Fantasy XII is the recent king of open-ended party building, insofar as everybody starts out with the same basic abilities; progress along the leveling treadmill is transparent and 99% player-driven, allowing you to dictate how your party will function from start to finish. They even include a rudimentary editor that allows you to program your party’s AI. (warning: it takes some trial and error before you figure out what strategies work succesfully. Such trial and error usually takes the form of you getting your ass kicked several times before coming up with a good strategy.)
Hmm, what else… the original Deus Ex is less of a traditional RPG and more of an RPG FPS, but the customization is definitely there; you periodically find or purchase addons for the large array of weapons you amass, which allow you to change the way your guns behave. Furthermore, you recieve various packages of nanites as the game goes on, which allow you to customize your character’s permanent abilities. (Actually, this is one system which is a lot more fun to cheat on: a lot of the permanent abilities aren’t found until late in the game, and I personally find it a lot more fun to give yourself all the abilities you want at the very beginning. You still need to find special items to make them more powerful, and it gives you a lot more latitude with your early strategy.)
Champions of Norrath (and its sequel, Return to Arms) for the PS2 have a pretty good smith system that allows you to apply different effects to both weapons and armor using various objects found as loot. For example, an ice shard, when applied to a weapon, will grant an ice damage bonus, but when applied to armor will grant an ice resistance bonus, and so forth. Different sizes of ice shards will grant different levels of bonus damage/resistance, and so on. Also, each armor/weapon has an initial number of open slots for such alterations, and certain enhancements take up more slots than others, allowing you to stack multiple bonuses or go with one major bonus. It’s definitely a lot of fun to make your own enhanced weapons, and adds a lot of treasure-hunting value to the game.
Star Ocean 3 (PS 2) has an item creation system from which you can produce certain objects (such as strong metal alloys, etc.) that, when applied to weapons, will grant certain bonuses. This is just a small aspect of the overall item creation system, which can be a blast or a tour of hell depending on your fondness for experimenting and patience.
Dragon Quest VIII (PS2) has a different item creation system - the alchemy pot - that allows you to combine two or three items to make one stronger item. For example, you can combine two regular medicines to get one strong medicine IIRC. Using this, you can make various weapons and armor, but the outcomes are pre-set and there isn’t much customization to speak of - you just end up with a stronger weapon, not necessarily one with the exact enhancements you want.
Rogue Galaxy (PS2) is somewhat unique in that you level up not only your characters, but their weapons as well. The more you fight with a particular weapon, the stronger it becomes. You can also combine two weapons to make a stronger weapon with some of the damage bonuses of its parent weapons. There are many, many possible weapon combinations.
Thanks for the replies so far. I have FFXII, Rogue Galaxy, and Dragon Quest VIII, and that’s exactly the type of thing I’m asking for. Are there any games that take it even farther?
Probably the game with the best equipment customization that I’ve ever played is the PC-based Neverwinter Nights (also available for Mac/Linux). While there is an honest-to-goodness forge system in the second official expansion pack (Hordes of the Underdark), the level of equipment customization is near-limitless in some fan-created modules available for free on the web. Some modules were designed solely to house forges where one could add literally any enhancement to any piece of equipment they wanted, from damage and resistance bonuses right down to weapon visual effects (like flames or lightning bolts) or spells that one could cast by “using” the item.
So even though NWN isn’t a console game, I still highly recommend it due to its enormous replay value and customization options…it is not an MMORPG, so no monthly fee and no having to connect to a server.
If you can find it “Star Ocean 2: the second story” on PS1 has probably one of the best item creation engines I’ve encountered (it goes a lot further than the item inventions in Star Ocean 3, and you can use some of the items you create to change the ending, teach skills and so on.)