The black blade always was a black blade. If it is destroyed, you don’t turn a weapon into a black blade, you reforge a new black blade.
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But what about the other magic properties? Are Bladebound Magi barred from ever having special weapon abilities other than the 10 listed out of the 80-ish in the system?
You can temporarily add them with spells or abilities of you or your allies, but you can't permanently craft them onto the sword.
Magus, Black Blade: Can I use Craft Magic Arms and Armor to increase my blade's enhancement bonus?
No, nor can you use that feat to add other properties (such as flaming) to the black blade. You can use your arcane pool to temporarily add abilities to your black blade.
Off the top of my head:
-Gnomes get an additional 10 properties they can add with alternate FCB.-There are arcana to add an additional 11 properties as choices
-Bless Equipment (from an ally) has 5 properties available
There's some duplication in those abilities, and I'm sure there are tons more I didn't immediately think of.
Almost seems like you'd get more out of playing a normal Magus with the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat.
I mean, it still costs you money. And you don't have a black blade. The arcane pool properties, especially when you take into account the options arcana can add, are some of the most generally useful. And you don't have to have the same ones every time. You may want flaming and frost against one enemy, but change to frost and shock when fighting a fire elemental. You may indeed miss out on a property that would be super-helpful for your particular campaign; that is true.
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It just seems the more I look into the Bladebound the more it looks unfinished or at least not thought through in regards to the customisability that usually makes Pathfinder stand out next to other systems.
Different kind of cutomization. If you have a crafted +5 holy, speed shortsword then that's it. You'll never be able to put different properties on it. Great if that's what you want, but if you're fighting something neutral that holy isn't doing you any good.
And don't discount the discount! That +5 holy, speed shortsword is over 200,000 gp.
The blackblade is also an intelligent item that always matches the players alignment. It also gains more languages and skill points as it levels up. By 20th level it has +11 in Knowledge Arcane and knows common and 4 other languages. It also communicates through telepathy. It also has several abilities not available to other weapons. The black blade is also free and does not count against the characters WBL, that means the magus can end up with more magic items then other characters. When you factor in just the INT of a 20th level blackblade it is worth at least 62,315 gold. That is a little less than the combined value of a +6 belt and a +6 headband.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of the other enchantments are going to be worthless for a magus. Without the ability to channel energy a Grayflame enchantment is of no use to a magus. The Guided enchantment would actually make the weapon worse for a Magus.
Almost seems like you'd get more out of playing a normal Magus with the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat.
That will really depend on how convenient crafting is in your specific campaign. The Black Blade is a good archetype, but it's also true that a regular magus can achieve similar or even better results in given scenarios with bought, looted or crafted weapons.
If you really want more options for weapon properties on a black blade with a bladebound magus, you might consider a dip in occultist (Transmutation as one of the implements for the Legacy Weapon base power) or spell warrior skald (even though the Enhance Weapons weapon song overlaps a bit with the arcane pool). Occultist uses Int, so it might be a better choice.
The normal Magus cannot teleport his magic weapon to his hand from a mile away by spending a point of arcane pool. Nor can a normal magus spend points from his arcane pool to convert all his damage into energy damage including force and sonic damage. Being able to do force damage negates the need to use Ghost Touch because the weapon is already doing full damage to an incorporeal creature. Sonic Resistance is extremely rare, so that make that even more valuable. Nor can the normal magus gain spell resistance 22 or above by spending a point form their arcane pool.
Other than agile what enchantment is going to be that valuable to a bladebound magus that they cannot already get through spending points from their arcane pool?
Also, since the maximum bonus is capped at +10 and the magus will want a good enchantment bonus to hit having other enchantments will prevent him from adding other with his arcane pool. If I have a +5 Holy Keen sword, I can only add +2 more in enchantments. That means I cannot add Speed or Vorpal to the weapon.