You have the basic levels unlocked initially, and the intermediate books were all sold in stores, it was the high level ones that were only found in loot. Which, again, "leveling up arts you already have" is appreciably different from "your arts are entirely determined by the random drops you obtain" which is what people are commenting on.
Fair enough, but I still think this is not that different from rare swords or axes or clothes from previous games. The "normal" Blades (or generic ones) will probably have all the necessary Arts and all and maybe the rare Blades will share the same Arts but with more power, or maybe they'll have some special Art that it's not important or necessary to the main game at all, and they'll unlock some optional Hearts to Hearts mini quest. Just extra juice for people that wants to explore every nook and cranny and fight all living creatures they find, and not just follow the plot until the final boss.
In the end, I understand now that some people call this "gacha" because the weapons has human shapes and maybe will unlock some secondary stories, but I'd still wouldn't call it that way as I see it very misleading.
MonolithSoft always tries new and different ways to manage weapons, arts, magic and they way we find and upgrade them, but I have a hard time believing they were thinking in Gacha games while they were developing this game. They were just making some changes to the systems they used in the past, IMO.
