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?
Breaking for breaking sake is bad, like any game mechanic added for tradition reasons (i.e. we do it because that’s what you do). I often can this Anti-QoL, and that concept is killing me in these retro inspired games lately.
Consider why you break weapons and you can see when it can be done to a positive effect. BotW, I think, adds it for the sake of encouraging you to get more weapons or find steady supply of decent weapons, since they generally respawn. That seems fine, and honestly plays fine when you get to mid game and can utilize weapon spawns effectively (I think it’s lame just how easy they break, and that they break even if you are breaking rocks, but that’s a balancing issue, imo.)
Dark Cloud noticably does not do a good job justifying it’s breakage system. It’s more about fusing new ones, so you already have a way to recycle and encourage new weapon usage (plus, weapons are kind of rare). Not to mention, weapon customization is a big part there and iirc, you even lose the stones you put in the weapon if it breaks. So, at this point, the breakage is more a harsh punishment for an easy accidental crime- fighting too damn hard. Clearly not a well thought out feature included for inclusion sake.
A good system is going to use perma-breakage to encourage use of an abundance of weapon and armor drops, and temporary breakage to encourage resource management, be it repair items or stat bonuses, or in the case of Monster Hunter (mentioned in another comment), valuable seconds and potential vulnerability when sharpening the weapon. There are probably other good rationales, but punishing players is not one of them.