Magic Materia vs. Enemy Skill

[Wolf Kanno]

So it's time to separate the Adults from the Children, which was your preferred method of using magic (not counting summons) did you bother collecting all the Enemy Skills in the game to reach godhood before Disc 1 was completed or did you use the Green Materia the game threw at you like the filthy peasant that you were. :colbert:

So which style did you prefer, did you stick to Green Materia Magic or did you take the plunge and collect the spells for the Enemy Skill Materia.

[Ayen]

There were enemy skills?

*sits at the kid's table*

[chionos]

I love the idea of Enemy Skill, but it's such a frustrating mixed bag most of the time. There are generally, in all the Final Fantasies with enemy skillls as an ability, one to maybe five good skills that you're actually going to use, and the rest are crap. I mean really just completely worthless. That said, Final Fantasy 7 actually had quite a few quality skills, and relatively few terrible ones. I don't know how many times Enemy Skill materia saved me at the arena. But I usually just use one of the four ES materias on a single character throughout the majority of the game, so it's never a huge focus or anything.

[VeloZer0]

I tend to use Enemy Skill materia a lot. Not only is it objectively better, it just feels cool to use attacks that you had to steal from enemies.

[Mirage]

I used both, you silly class warfarists

[Karifean]

Enemy Skill. I got to know the locations of most of them pretty soon after I got to know the game and since then I've always collected them. Makes everything a lot simpler.

[Sephiroth]

Big Guard.

[Uchu]

I think Enemy Skills are great and all, but completely ridiculous to collect since you have zero idea where they are or what has them. I have a 100% save that I worked hard at, but on a normal playthrough while I think the Enemy skills are cool, it's more than enough to stick with Green Materia.

[Fox]

I used Enemy Skills in levels, in that I got one skill that I used constantly until I got the next objectively better one, and magic the rest of the time.

LEVEL 1: Matra Magic.
LEVEL 2: Trine
LEVEL 3: Aqualung
LEVEL 4: Magic Breath

Aaaaand that's it!

[Mirage]

You don't really need to know all there is about enemy skill to make it worthwhile. You don't need to remember more than a few key skills for the materia to be more than worth its materia slot.

[Raistlin]

I used to make this topic all the time! Magic ateria is pretty useless after a certain point in disc 1, with some exceptions. Enemy Skills are where it's at. Sure, there's a lot of trash, but what is there obsoletes a lot of the Magic materia. Big Guard and White Wind for defensive magic, Trine and Aqualung for early offensive magic (and Beta if you can manage it), and then Magic Breath for later. I only wish you could get Pandora's Box and Angel Whisper earlier enough to be more useful.

[Mirage]

You can get beta once you have a fire ring from costa del sol, or if you bothered grinding an elemental materia to the point where it halves damage. Some of the most damaging attacks by the midgarzolom are also counter attacks, so you can poison it and let it get low on hp before starting to provoke it into using beta.
There's also Laser, which obsoletes gravity materia for the few times you can actually use that, and dragon force, and death force. You can also regain mp with magic hammer. Early in the game, you can also use Matra Magic, which is extremely low cost, AoE, and hits about as strongly as a tier 1.5 spell.


In either case, out of magic materia, regen+all is useful, and so is life 2.