It doesn't matter who carries whatever materia... I know for example that giving Deathblow to Tifa when she has her final weapon and filling Barret's final weapon with Knights of the Round allow you to do crazy amounts of damage, but it's not really important or worth bothering to do. Just give whichever materia you want to level to whoever has a weapon with double or triple materia growth (only Cloud and Cid have one of these). Of course giving a certain type of materia to just one character is useful (for example, making a mage/healer, then making another character a physical beast, etc) because of the way equiping each materia alters your stats, but I never really bothered with that and still managed to beat the game without many problems.

As for which materia to look for, just keep an eye for chests, and if you miss any don't worry as most Materias you can buy anywhere, except for the summon materias (look for the location of these in the internet, there are too many and some of them are missable). Theres also a very useful materia that boosts your luck that's missable in the Temple of the Ancients (Disc 1). And then when you breed a Gold Chocobo you get access yo some of the most powerful materias in the game.

This post was edited by zarkadon on Aug 7 2011 02:11pm

What I did at the temple of the ancients, theres actually a Ribbon in there, its in of the hidden doors in the room shaped as a giant clock, right after disk 1 ends in the very beginning of disk 2, equip the Ribbon and go to gold saucer. Now do a few hours of that punching game in the arcade section and some hoops get enough points, then go duel in the arena with Ribbon equiped on say cloud, it wont effect your status from the handicaps then. After a few hours, you got omnislash at the beginning of Disk 2.

This post was edited by paradoxlol on Aug 8 2011 02:52pm

#1 game of all time =D

game is easy really its only near the end when you can learn some awesome materia combinations

cant miss vincents or cait siths or tifas because you can go back and get them lol just barrets if your a total idiot who runs past a chest right in front of you

yes uh actually tifas limit if from the piano. final wep is from wall market its called? i forget in that chest with the gun in the room