What games feature the most satisfying power/weapon upgrades and variety?

[RetroGiant]

I love upgrades. Powers. Weapons. Abilities. Armors. Variety. Let me upgrade and unlock it all! Some games clearly do it better than others. Not all loot games are created equal either. Just cause you have a billion different types, if they all kind of do the same thing what's the point. Fun factor also plays a huge role in them as well imo. What are some of your favorites?

First game(s) that come to mind are Ratchet and Clank. Fun and goofy variety with decent progression and uniqueness by the time they are fully leveled up.

 

[LewieP]

The God Hand system for learning new moves is fantastic. You unlock new moves, and map them to a face button, and can design your own combos.

 

[Whalerider84]

Kid Ikarus Uprising and Sunset Overdrive.

 

[Valkyrie]

.

 

[dipship31]

Shadow of Mordor was super satisfying for a while but then got kinda out of control

 

[ActWan]

Infamous where you can get different powers depending on the karma you have.

 

[Toxi]

For weapons, few games come close to having as many weapons that are just plain cool as Bloodborne (with Old Hunters DLC).

Like just going through some of the weapons individually, we have...

• A saw that becomes a meat cleaver
• Ivy's whip sword
• A giant pizza cutter
• A sword where the sheath is a bigger sword
• A hammer with a miniature furnace attached
• A katana that covers itself in the user's blood
• A gunblade
• A glowing magic sword that shoots lasers
• A giant wheel haunted by the souls of the people it crushed
• A cannon
• The severed arm of Cthulhu
• Magic tentacles you can use by becoming Cthulhu
• A Morningstar that becomes a gigantic bloody Morningstar when you stab it into your own chest

 

[Septimus Prime]

Buying new moves in Devil May Cry games feels great. Stinger is a game changer.

Castlevania: SotN (and some of the later ones) is great, too, because of the huge weapon variety.

 

[ffdgh]

Kid icarus uprising comes to mind.

 

[Juke Joint Jezebel]

God Hand and Dark Souls respectively. The former has instant gratification from purchasing roulette abilities and mapping them to your movelist manually, and the latter has a fantastic "slow burn" of gradually getting stronger with it's tradition D&D esque list of stat upgrades and categories.

 

[Morrigan]

Monster Hunter has insane weapon trees, and each weapon type really feel like a whole new game.

 

[Godcannon]

One of my favorites is Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning. Some of the best combat and variety of weapons to mess with. Oh yeah, fatalities too!

 

[Pantaghana]

Warframe - you start with fairly standard guns: rifles, shotguns, pistols, the only mildly interesting weapons being bows and throwing knives.

But as you gain access to the crafting system, they diversify greatly.

Lenz - a bow that is actually a grenade launcher, on impact the arrow itself does minor damage but detonates after a delay and covers a fairly large AOE.

Zarr - looks like a 18th century ships cannon, switches between two fire modes, cannon fires a cluster grenade and barrage where it acts as a shotgun.

Javlok - a speargun. Not a gun that shoots spears, it's a gun that is thrown like a spear.

Angstrum - pistol that allows you to carpet bomb areas.

Atomos - shoots a beam that chains to nearby enemies,

 

[Strangelove_77]

I love when weapons get upgraded aesthetically as well as mechanically. Bioshock immediately comes to mind. All the guns start out like average standard guns and by the end they get really cool and sci-fi looking.

 

[Mochi]

I find fusing personas to be very satisfying and addictive, especially in Persona 4.

Age of Empires II unit and building upgrades were always satisfying too.

 

[AzureFlame]

Resident Evil 4
Monster Hunter series
Souls series

 

[Zephy]

I love it when games give you a great sense of progression throughout the story. Prototype and Saints Row IV are great examples of that. It works best when you start as a nobody and end up as a demigod.

I especially love upgrades that enhance your traversal abilities (huge jumps, grappling hooks, flying...) or allow you to strike several enemies at once.

Games with poor skill trees are really disappointing to me. FFXV was an example of that for me, when I looked at the skill tree after starting the game, I was like "That's it ? Where's all the cool stuff ?" Only the ability to attack mid-air was really game-changing, everything else felt like baby steps.

 

[CarthOhNoes]

Games with poor skill trees are really disappointing to me. FFXV was an example of that for me, when I looked at the skill tree after starting the game, I was like "That's it ? Where's all the cool stuff ?" Only the ability to attack mid-air was really game-changing, everything else felt like baby steps.

Click to shrink...

Agreed. The best skill trees are the ones where you want EVERYTHING because it all looks amazing. I hate it when you're forced to buy crap filler skills to get the good stuff. Dishonoured 2 has great ones. Everything looks awesome and gives you options.

 

[Bio]

Devil May Cry 1, God of War: Ghost of Sparta and Zone of the Enders: Second Runner

 

[shotgunbob04]

Metroid series as a whole. Being able to revisit an old part of the map and finally reach that area you couldn't quite get to before is such a satisfying feeling. Weapon upgrades are great too—taking out certain enemies in half the time is a great joy and makes you feel like more of a badass.

Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Prime are two great examples that I've played.

 

[Melchiah]

Weapon variety:
Bloodborne, Resistance and Unreal Tournament series

Weapon / gear / power upgrades:
Bloodborne, Let It Die, and Dead Island

 

[Magic Mushroom]

For weapons, few games come close to having as many weapons that are just plain cool as Bloodborne (with Old Hunters DLC).

Like just going through some of the weapons individually, we have...

• A saw that becomes a meat cleaver
• Ivy's whip sword
• A giant pizza cutter
• A sword where the sheath is a bigger sword
• A hammer with a miniature furnace attached
• A katana that covers itself in the user's blood
• A gunblade
• A glowing magic sword that shoots lasers
• A giant wheel haunted by the souls of the people it crushed
• A cannon
• The severed arm of Cthulhu
• Magic tentacles you can use by becoming Cthulhu
• A Morningstar that becomes a gigantic bloody Morningstar when you stab it into your own chest

Click to shrink...

This so much. Coolest weapons in gaming.

 

[Unguided]

One of my favorites is Kingdoms of Amalur:Reckoning. Some of the best combat and variety of weapons to mess with. Oh yeah, fatalities too!

Click to shrink...

KoA is definitely worth a buy when it goes on sale. Not the best game but a solid bargain bin title that does a great job of making the player feel like a badass after unlocking the higher skill levels.

 

[RetroGiant]

Ive only played the first borderlands, how did the weapon variety and uniqueness fair towards the last games?

 

[Enzo88]

I think RE4 is still unbeaten in terms of "feeling" the improvement in your weapons.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

InFamous series.

Parasite Eve (best weapon progression system eva!).

 

[lt519]

You got it right OP, Ratchet and Clank.

 

[B33]

Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando

 

[langgi]

Dishonored. Collecting runes and use them to unlock more power is one of the big reasons this game is so fun and satisfying.

 

[BasilZero]

The Ratchet and Clank series.

Also I found amusement in upgrading my weapons and finding weapons to compare in Borderlands.

 

[iosef]

RE4
Castlevanias generally
Metroid -- not for variety, but for satisfaction at what can be achieved with said upgrades

 

[Sanctuary]

Resident Evil 4
Dark Souls

Click to shrink...

+Dragon's Dogma.

 

[Black Knight]

SoulsBorne series
Metroid Prime trilogy (more like abilities)
Ratchet & Clank (so much creativity!)

That's what comes to my mind right now.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Ratchet and Clank 2 and on, and the recent Wolfensteins provide upgrades for weapons/abilities/actions through basic use or challenges directly related to whatever you like using.

Arkham games after the first make the core Batman feel appropriately powerful, and upgrades just expand on that.

 

[Falchion]

I love Saints Row 2 where completing chains of the side missions unlocks cool stuff like the dual pistols or the pimp cain shotgun. Plus you become immune to stuff like fire damage.

 

[Bugy52]

Elders Scrolls Online has a pretty good set of skill trees to choose from and use, theres a pretty incredible level of customization considering you can pull from any of them.

 

[Palas]

Monster Hunter enables what I find one of the most fun things in gaming: hybrid playstyles. Sure, this here's a hammer, but you don't play it quite like the other hammers because it has a status effect added to it. Variety in playstyles even within the same weapon tree is fantastic and really satisfying, so I'll go with it.