In which game does "steal" feel most rewarding to you?

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I guess I've just been lucky in the RNG department as far as IX goes. I don't remember having any trouble stealing.

I almost forgot that Rikku could dismantle machina in battle. That was awesome, too.

[Wolf Kanno]

I never felt like stealing was a pain in IX. Maybe gunning for the super rare item in timed fights like the ones with Beatrix, sure. But most of the time it was pretty favorable. Of anything, I feel IX gave me the thief class I always wanted, barring the one broken skill and unrelated Trance mode. I feel thieves should have a skill that tells you what enemies are holding, and one that turns battles into back attacks.

Still, I'd say stealing is most rewarding up until FFX where it's useful, but not in the way you think as this thread has pointed out. For mainline games. I'd say V, VI, VII, and IX are generally the most rewarding since stealing offers a lot of avenues for players like acquiring better gear early or allowing you a cheap and easy way to stock up on better healing items.

The problem with games like VIII and X is that stealing isn't really optional. If you want better weapons, you need to steal. Stealing from Machina is so beneficial, your only excuse not to would be for a challenge run. It reduces a fun mechanic to a necessity that makes it boring and less exciting. As for XII, that's the game that tends to screw you more for steal rates. And by endgame, it's manipulating the drop rate that is more beneficial since all the ultimate weapons are tied to the Bazaar mechanic.

[Quindiana Jones]

FFIX's Steal felt the least rewarding for me, since you'll spend most of the boss fights just turtling until the lousy RNG decides to give you the items, which often have terrible drop rates. FFX's Steal was pretty useful, not to mention it has tactical uses for breaking Machina and stopping enemies from using Auto-Potions. FFXII is the one where I used Steal the most, and it really makes a difference in the amount of sellable Loot you obtain.

These are some really good points that immediately made me change my mind on what I was gonna say. Even if the rewards are super satisfying and regular in IX, the fact that you spend every boss fight stealing and trying to both live + not kill the boss really takes the momentum out of it.

rt

I was gonna say IX - and will still say some nice things about it - but it's actually a great point that the actual "gameplay" aspect of it interrupts both the regular gameplay and the story-telling going on around in.

However, the consequences of successfully stealing in IX were very nice. Great items accessed early and Zidane's 9999 potential being tied to it were great.

XII is probably my favourite that I can recall, largely because there's always some kind of use for anything and also it's so easy to program in to the general cadence of gameplay with the Gambit system that it never felt burdensome or counterproductive to use.

[MJN SEIFER]

For me it was FFVII simply because that is my favorite game of the series, and I loved finding out what I would get back in the day - I remember that I would make sure to steal from each enemy, and then finish them off with Morph to see what I got both times, and I loved doing so (I used cheat codes, because I suck at gaming, so it was pretty easy for me to do this.)

But yeah, I loved finding out what each enemy had (or became) during FFVII.