Quote (Khrushchev @ Sun, 23 Nov 2008, 14:30)

Was probably the worst change the FF series has made, besides the whole girly main character thing. Materia was awful, it ruined the class balance, it made characters only worth as much as their materia slots, coupled with the very limited and crummy equipment system it made for awful character customization. It was also vastly overpowered and failed to provide adequate alternatives.

It was a marketing decisions basically, it took Espers from FF6 and dumbed them down as much as possible, and dumbed down the characters and equipment system just as much, which makes the game extremely easy to play but moreso makes into a bland and boring "everyone is great at everything" system which lets people who drool over Cloud and Vincent make full absurdly overpowered use of them without any consequence or fault.

But in hindsight, the entire game is sort of like that. "Here is a bunch of cliche stuff that everyone will probably find something cool about, it's all the same so just pick the things you think are coolest and we will make sequals about them and swim in the $$$". No color, no originality, no flare, no panache, just a big unorganized amalgam of things which the polls say are popular with the child to young adult demographics.

Quote (Khrushchev @ Sun, Nov 23 2008, 02:30pm)

Was probably the worst change the FF series has made, besides the whole girly main character thing. Materia was awful, it ruined the class balance, it made characters only worth as much as their materia slots, coupled with the very limited and crummy equipment system it made for awful character customization. It was also vastly overpowered and failed to provide adequate alternatives.

It was a marketing decisions basically, it took Espers from FF6 and dumbed them down as much as possible, and dumbed down the characters and equipment system just as much, which makes the game extremely easy to play but moreso makes into a bland and boring "everyone is great at everything" system which lets people who drool over Cloud and Vincent make full absurdly overpowered use of them without any consequence or fault.

But in hindsight, the entire game is sort of like that. "Here is a bunch of cliche stuff that everyone will probably find something cool about, it's all the same so just pick the things you think are coolest and we will make sequals about them and swim in the $$$". No color, no originality, no flare, no panache, just a big unorganized amalgam of things which the polls say are popular with the child to young adult demographics.