To Play, Perchance To Grind

Aye, there's the rub.


Well, I've managed to hit a low point in Rogue Galaxy.  To be fair, I'm probably not going about it at the right time or even the right way; there's evidence that at least some of what I'm doing is supposed to be done either really early or in the post-game content.


I jumped away from the nifty storyline and decided to do a bit of grinding and crafting; mostly I'm just trying to make sure everybody's weapons are up to stuff for the final boss.  It's been going about as well as can be expected.  Some characters have fairly simple recipe chains to get their final uber weapon, others have a bit of complexity and somewhat counter-intuitive requirements. 


The whole thing about it that's sticking in my craw is that our hero Jaster does have a fairly simple subweapon (a energy gun of flashy harvesting awesomeness) recipe, but he has eight--eight!--different candidates for an ultimate sword.  The first seven are the Seven Star Swords, unique and kickass manifestations of doom upon the wicked.  Each one is acquired in a different way, with the first one handed to you at the beginning of the game, and all share the same basic upgrade scheme (fuse a common sword of high enough level for each of the stages).  The big problem is that a) the other six swords in the set have acquisition methods that vary from fairly straightforward to requiring a bit of patience and investigation to flat-out obtuse (I'm looking at you, Duke Nightmare), and b) their power levels are simply just not commensurate with the effort you spend.  None of them have any real advantage over the first one, nor do they have any plot significance or collection bonus.  At least they look badass.  But then the game decides to mock you by giving you another uber-blade right before the endgame!  At least Final Fantasy VII and its damn chocobo races didn't have a reward overshadowed by the plot.


Anyway, I finally gave up after getting most of the party up to snuff, and went back to the story.  It still hasn't managed to disappoint so far, and it's been an absolute blast to go through.  Everything is getting resolved, and while there's still a good bit of angst going on, the characters are actually plowing forward and are proving that they have what it takes to get things done.  It should actually be rally corny, but it works very well overall (except for the Myoko and Chie cutscenes, yuck), and I'm looking to smiting Jenova 2.0 and saving the universe soon.  The Harvest will triumph!