While I have not played all of them, I feel like from my memories that this is kind of how the weapon upgrade system has worked in nearly every single Final Fantasy game the franchise has ever made as well.
It's simple, I see no reason to change it, and perhaps it appeals more to old-school gamers like me that were first introduced to this sort of upgrading system at a time when they likely didn't have much other choice.
I am specifically referring here to Final Fantasy: Resonance though, which is the latest Square-Enix Final Fantasy installment in the series.
In a lot of RPG's your quality of weapons is going to be a large determining factor in how you perform in battle. A simple new find can change your DPS dramatically and this brings about the question of "how do I find these new weapons?"
Well, in Final Fantasy games of which I have played, the answer to this is normally very simple: You find them in the stores of whatever city you have most recently encountered. These cities are spaced out at just the right distance from one another so that your DPS will increase to a much higher level once you get to that shop and unless you have been dodging battles, you will have enough money to buy them.
Every time you get to a new area it is going to have some shop or area like this. They are going to have items, weapons, and armor all in one place.
Unless you found something in a hidden chest along the way, there is a very good chance that every single one of these weapons is at least going to slightly better than what you currently have equipped. In this particular instance, this is more than a 10% increase in stats to both magic and physical attacks. At the time of this screengrab, I had over 50,000 gil so there is no reason for me to not just buy everyone a new thing for their hands, but the smart thing to do is to only buy them for your active party.
I don't know about everyone else but I don't swap out characters all that often unless I encounter an issue with an area that is clearly trying to tell you that you are using the wrong party members. And upgrading people that you don't use is a waste of time because you are likely only an hour or so of game time away from finding a different and better store so the purchase would have been wasted anyway.
While I feel as thought this option is basically universal now, I do like that you can equip right in the store rather than needing to leave the store, then find the weapon, then equip it. believe it or not this is NOT how it was in stores for something like 20 years of gaming. It was tedious and unnecessary so I am glad they did something about it.
The same goes for armor. Kit everyone out unless you don't have the money.
Here's the thing that I believe is intentional on the part of Squre. If you do NOT have enough money to do this I think that in most situations it is a strong indicator of the fact that you have gotten to the point you are at TOO EARLY. You have dodged too many battles or run from them (easy do to, especially once you have "Lid" in your party) and by doing so you have missed out on getting money rewards from battles.
A rule of thumb that I have taken on for myself is that if I CAN NOT buy all the upgrades at a store that I encounter, I buy what I can, normally weapons first, and then go out and grind (just a bit) in the surrounding area before that town. Your 10-20% increased damage is going to make those battles an absolute breeze and you you probably don't even need to have a strategy most of the time. Just do simple attacks over and over and over again and to quote 50 Cent "if they wanna hate let em hate and watch the money pile up."
You can quickly get all the money you need by doing this and in the meantime you will probably upgrade your other skills and gain a few levels at the same time.
This might also be a good time for you to equip Visions that you normally wouldn't use on your toons and this will gain levels quickly, has no negative impact on your DPS, and you will get the permanent bonuses from upgrading them without trying.
Before I hijack my own post I just want to conclude by saying that the Final Fantasy stores are a fantastic gauge of where you happen to be in the game at that point. In other RPG's the stores are damn near useless and normally only carry crap that you never want to buy outside of potions anyway. In Final Fantasy Resonance, every new shop is an adventure in iteself.
