More Ghost of Yōtei thoughts, this time about progression design. Minor spoilers maybe? Read on below the cut.
It's interesting the ways in which Yōtei improves on the systems in Tsushima, and where it drops the ball in terms of improvement. One of my chief complaints about the previous game is that getting materials for most upgrades didn't feel like it mattered, except for when rare materials were required. That, and the materials needed for upgrades were all orthogonal, wood for bows, cloth and fur for armor, steel and gold for swords.
They've fixed it in one direction and kind of ruined it in another in this game. They fixed it in the sense that material costs are no longer completely orthogonal; some stuff still is gear specific, but there are a few rare materials that apply to lots of different types of gear. The thing is, now getting enough materials is so trivial that I don't even care if I find rare material. It's not like 'oh shit here's some gold!', it's 'are my upgrade icons blinking'.
Thing is, that wouldn't feel so weird and jarring if they hadn't made some of the other progression systems so good! One of the new things in Yōtei is an updated charm system. Certain charms—minor to major perks that you can equip in any combination, separate from your armor's perks—can be upgraded by performing certain tasks. Some of these are easy, and likely to happen naturally through play (get x headshots) but some of them are things you have to consciously do to improve the perk (stagger x enemies by throwing sake jars at them). Sometimes the trigger is directly related to the perk, sometimes it isn't.
This system is great! I have learned a bunch of systemic combat interactions this way, and I'm regularly making sure that I check what upgrade paths are still available to me.
Similarly, instead of leveling granting you a point to spend on new abilities and perks, you find shrines in the world that fulfill this role instead. There's no XP in Yōtei, meaning the driving force for improvement is exploration. It's all very Breath of the Wild in that way.
So why are weapon upgrades (and, frankly, the effects of the upgrades themselves) so vanilla still? Its easy to point to the cost to change things, and by in large I agree with that, but as someone who designs in game economies, I think a currency that doesn't matter most of the time is bad, actually!
It seems like some kind of middle ground would have served the purpose here. We still have shrine paths in Yōtei, but now that so many charms are upgradable and there are so many just out in the world, it seems like that would have been a great opportunity to make it so that you get this one rare material all at once at the peak, (or, idk, a new understanding of your relationship with the forge and how to improve a weapon). Maybe the bounty system could have been the way you get armor upgrade materials. You gotta engage with the world to get the goods, rather than drown in materials until the next thing you can upgrade hits your inventory.
It's still really compelling, don't get me wrong. I just wish getting my sword or armor fully kitted made me _feel something_.