Final Fantasy: Full Weapons and Armor set or Weapon/Accessory combination?

[Depression Moon]

It doesn't really matter all that much to me, but I can see full-armor sets providing more options than what X and VI had.

[Greatermaximus]

Full armor. Honestly I didn't care for the newer FF's and I'm not the only one.

[Mirage]

I find it hard to believe that the lack of full armor is why you didn't care for the newer FF games. After all, FF13 gives you 5 equipment slots, just like FF4 and FF5. The only difference is that they're not locked to a specific body part.

[Del Murder]

I find it hard to believe that the lack of full armor is why you didn't care for the newer FF games. After all, FF13 gives you 5 equipment slots, just like FF4 and FF5. The only difference is that they're not locked to a specific body part.

Well, accessories are different than armor. Accessories are typically have one random trait like Auto-haste or Strength+10%. A lot of them are situational, and many of them are useless (Deprotect resistence +30%? wtf?). You could easily go through a game like FFXIII with just some basic HP+ or damage+ accessories. Armor on the other hand focuses on defense and upgrading thoughout the game. Level 1 armor will probably not make it easy for you when you face hard-hitting bosses. Certain armors also come with bonuses making a tradeoff of defense vs. bonus possible. It requires a lot more active management of equipment and I like that about it.

[Jiro]

Status boosting accessories also offer that though. I know I made good use of them throughout XIII.

[VeloZer0]

Certain armors also come with bonuses making a tradeoff of defense vs. bonus possible. It requires a lot more active management of equipment and I like that about it.

That comes down to the quality of the itemization more than the breakdown of what you are equipping. The idea of armor pieces with stat trade-offs is closer to an accessory based system than a traditional armor itemization. (Where every piece is simply a statistical improvement over the last.)

The main flaw of a primarily accessory based system is that with a lot of passive effects there my not be as much of an onus to continually upgrade, which is something that good itemization has to address. Because we all know that plot and gameplay are all things we use to dress up the pursuit of acquiring shiny new equipment!

[Lamia]

Well if I remember correctly in VII, VIII, and X the armlets you get are essentially armor that you just upgrade when a better armlet appears. But it's boring... weapon + armlet. It seems like there is more variation in the FF games with full armor systems... In FFVI you had magic blocking shields that could either be paired with typically high physical defense armor or you could make your magic def and block insanely high by being completely decked out in magical resistant armor (Aegis Shield, Force Armor, etc) as well as two relic slots! In FFXII you could pair the helmet cat-ear hood with hermes sandals and have a ridiculously fast character. Equip a fast weapon with a high combo rate on that character and you have one hell of a damage dealer. Equip the masamune and mage body armor to up your magic stat and you're dealing maximum damage at a very high combo rate. Nice. It seems like these combinations don't seem to exist in the Final Fantasy games when it is just your weapon and an accessory. Although there were a lot of possibilities with FFX's customization system since you could add several passive abilities to both your armlet and weapon and of course the materia and junction systems in VII and VIII add some customization but they all require some deal of grinding. In VI and XII, when you find an awesome piece of armor, it is yours and you dont have to level materia or grind for customization materials.

[Mirage]

Except of course that the physical block stat in FFVI didn't actually work . Physical evasion was actually calculated with the magic evasion stat :>.