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I'll go with FF4. When I am looking at a fight using black magic only makes sense if the MP cost of the spell is less than the MP I would have to spend to heal the extra damage I take by duking it out with melee weapons. FF4 was one of the few games that actually made spending the MP in random encounters worth it.
https://youtu.be/-5TMMP4uOYE
The guitarist
Lulu without a doubt... she was the first useful BM ever in the series... before her, managing enough MP to keep up with the brawlers was near impossible unless you wanted to spend mad loads of Gil on the most expensive Recovery items in the series (MP Recovery items)... no, until Lulu, Black Mages were completely useless, especially early game...
You are definitely, definitely wrong about black mages being useless until Lulu. Right now I'm playing V and had 0 trouble maintaining MP. My black mage in V is actually the strongest one on my team.
Before that with IX, similar thing there and IX out of most Final Fantasys there is never really a problem with keeping enough MP because the game gives you way too much Ethers. I mean way too much.