Yeah it was awsome

thats more fair then what khruschev said. it was a nice change in the final fantasy series, and you cant say it sucked and was awful, as it was one of the most popular in the series.

ff4 was my fav

my personal fav out of the ff games THEY ARE TALKING ABOU TREMAKEING IT JUST SO YOUS KNOW.... AFTER FF13 AND FF13VS THAT IS THEY WILL CONSIDER IT

While the idea of character-independent abilities in Final Fantasy have been around for a while now, dating back to Final Fantasy II, but its execution has usually been, for better or worse, flawed, and its implementation in Final Fantasy VII is no different.

Following the introduction of Espers in Final Fantasy VI, many of which would go on to become the ever-popular summons (although a number of them had been previously seen in Final Fantasy IV), the decision to make all abilities similar to Espers in Final Fantasy VII was not exactly a good way to go about it. Unlike Final Fantasy VI, where Espers could only be summoned once but the spells they granted were limited by only the user's MP, the usage of Materia in Final Fantasy VII as limited by the player's level of mastery over the given Materia as well as their MP pool, often to a single use on a freshly procured Materia, which fundamentally limited what a player could do with the Materia at hand; while this encouraged pre-planning, it also restricted the flexibility available to players greatly, forcing them to investing large amounts of time in-game to grinding and mastering their Materia, rather than forwarding the story and such.

While the idea of linking Materia together was and is innovative, its implementation was a bit short of perfect; by implementing a linear system of linkage, SQUARE severely limited what players could do with creative Materia linking, and while links are possible in Final Fantasy VII, a grid format, or even a three-dimensional method, would have added much depth to an otherwise flat system, where almost every high-end character is linked in nearly the same fashion.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy VII was a victim to SQUARE's success with the franchise as a whole; following the success of Final Fantasy VI, which garnered much critical acclaim for its Esper system, SQUARE's attempt to duplicate the system by modifying its fundamental flaws without keeping many of its strengths proved to be a difficult pill for some gamers, such as myself, to swallow. While the gameplay is by no means broken, it still sadly falls short of what came before it; by completely eliminating character-unique abilities aside from Limit Breaks, which were no more than differently animated attacks of superior power with the exception of Cait Sith, Aerith Gainsborough, Tifa Lockheart and Vincent Valentine, characters lacked the uniqueness of those in Final Fantasy VI, where characters such as Locke could steal while Leo could use gadgetry to do a number of things to enemies. Even though a similar critique can be leveled towards Final Fantasy VIII, which I prefer over Final Fantasy VII, the Limit Breaks for characters in Final Fantasy VIII were more innovative in their execution and variety than those in Final Fantasy VII; in the case of the latter, the general execution of the Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VII were generally limited to selecting the desired attack and watching it go, Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VIII showcased a number that required additional input to properly execute, while others gave players options otherwise unavailable outside of the Limit Break. However, that's mostly off-topic, so it should be addressed in another thread entirely.

"It's popular so it must be good" isn't exactly a bulletproof arguement in favor of materia. There is too much of that floating around; popularity is a function of marketing and marketability, not how good something actually is, dozens of games that are gems go unnoticed because dribble like the new final fantasy games blot them out.

This post was edited by Khrushchev on Jan 21 2009 02:57am

i didnt say it was perfect, but its not as shitty as you have described it by any means

each character had their own presets as for as spirit,vitality,...etc. so to optimize battle performance, there does require some skill, and materia doesnt just do good things, they act as double edged swords adding abilities and reducing statistics. so materia isn't SOOO simple but it still takes something away from the game

But isnt the whole story in FF7 build upon materia?

well comparing it to ff8's draw system, materia was good
the draw system made it more like: you can be strong if you spend an hour drawing 300 magics any time a good junction spell is available

but this is a materia debate, and i liked it when i was like 10
not so much anymore