General RPGs' Ultimate Stuff Held by Ultimate Foes

Sorry for the no rant on Monday...been kinda sick and out of it this week mostly...on Tuesday I was delusional enough to swear several times while drifting in and out of slumber that I was fighting Lex Luthor using nunchucks. So yeah. Mostly better now. I think.

(I totally kicked his ass, incidentally)



Anyways. Something that's always driven me crazy about many RPGs. We're all familiar with those lovely optional weapons and abilities and armor and so on that are the strongest in the game and can only be gotten through various special hidden sidequests, usually involving dungeon crawls, right? Always a good time. And we're all probably equally familiar with those optional bosses in a lot of RPGs that're way, way tougher than the final boss yet just sorta sit around and wait to be killed rather than go out and conquer the world themselves, right? Nasty fellows such as the infamous Emereld and Ruby Weapons of Final Fantasy 7, that crazy huge mech suit thing in Xenosaga 2, or that damnable King Mammoth in Live A Live.

Well, what I want to know right now is, why the HELL is it that most often the BEST weaponry and spells and items and what have you are always the ones guarded by these ultimate foes? I mean, for fuck's sake, if I can manage to find some way to kill these nasty motherfuckers, I don't have to worry about ANY other enemy in the game, so why give me a stronger sword NOW? I could have used it just a few minutes ago while I was fighting the only enemy I could conceivably really need it for! That's not a reward for your hard effort, that's just the game slapping you in the face and laughing!

What they need to do is give YOU, the player, a reward for going the extra mile in games, not the character you control. Screw the super accessory that ups all your stats to maximum (I am looking at YOU, fucking Egg Dragon of Lufia 2). You obviously don't NEED it. What they ought to do is give you special features for this stuff, things like bromides of official artwork (like in the Lunar series) or special game features or something. Something that YOU can appreciate, because at that point, there's really just not much that an unstoppable suit of armor's going to do for you.