Well then maybe I was just too young and stupid to break it
I didn't even use online guides to break it, barely had the internet in 99 funny enough, but I would still say it's pretty broken if you really just look at the tools logically.
Well, the first time I played I certainly did not purposefully limit myself, and I definitely didn't break the game. Unless you really get into the online community, you don't really know that all of these weird abilities can be incredibly abused. So I have to disagree.
Not really, maybe if you simply limit yourself to only getting magic through Draw, but once you start getting the Refine abilities, the game snaps like a twig. Of anything, I would say it's the other way around, you have to purposely hold back to keep the system relevant.
I still think you really have to go out of your way to break it, even if it doesn't require much effort
It would take too long for me to dissect my issues with Materia, I think the main beefs I can say is that while it looks like it offers a bunch of options on paper, in reality most of the features it gives you are pointless so it's actually more limiting than you think, though I can say the same thing about the Relic System as well. For my FF Article series, I've been really thinking about this and how the approach to gameplay seriously changed from VI onward. For Junction, my issue is that it's way too easy to break and while a broken game can be fun, it loses it's novelty fairly quickly for me. I've never been a fan of God-Modes or using overpowered characters that trivialize the overall gameplay experience.
The main problem I had with material is that you really have to grind hard to make a lot of it really work. Throughout my VII play through, not one of my material got mastered. Whereas you can break Junction early on if you're smart enough or look up a guide
VII and VIII look too similar to me on my small monitor. Yeah, he didn't work on VII's, it was VIII's that he came up with the concept before being pushed onto FF Gaiden (FFIX). He didn't work on VII's because he was too busy working on FFTactics. Junction always starts off interesting to me and then gets less fun the further you get in, which is the same issue I had with Materia. Conceptually they are both cool but they lack proper pacing and balance, so it doesn't take long before the disabilities of the systems no longer factor in and it becomes overwhelmingly exploitative.
But he made VIII's as well In any case, I really feel it. Material didn't seem too balanced, honestly, while Junction is really good at giving you lots of short-term and long-term satisfaction
I believe he came up with the initial concept but was pulled from the development rather early to work on IX.
