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Except you can by end game and you keep forgetting that teaching magic is not the only system in VI. You still have stat boost and relics to contend with and in the regard VII is even more liberal since you can just keep making stuff like Double Cut and W-Magic materia for your party whereas in VI, there is only one Offering/Master's Scroll and one Gem Box/Soul of Thamasa so overall you're more restricted in abilities in VI than VII is especially since Master Materia will get you more than just teaching every spell and free up most of your slots for other things.
You’re comparing abilities to accessories now, though. But to be fair, many of VII’s Materia orbs have the same function as accessories.
That said, if we’re comparing actual equipped accessories to each other then there’s no deep customization here. Accessories and unique equipment are in tons of games. Having one of something like the Gem Box is par for the course in RPGing.
And no, the player is not more restricted in abilities than in VII – at least not in the short term. Again, in VI you can have every character learn every spell on the spot.
Let me illustrate my point: Whether or not you’re playing the game with foreknowledge of every piece of equipment and every enemy formation, there’s no reason to not just equip Ramuh and have at least your active party learning Thunder 1. Especially since one of the upcoming major dungeons involves enemies weak to Thunder. Even if you walk into the MagiTek Research Facility with 1 character knowing Thunder, you can just swap out Espers and have them all start knowing it. At that point, you will never again have to make a decision about what to have and what to give up regarding that spell.
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Likewise farming stat boosts allow the user to max out most of your parties stats wheres as in VI you only have as many chances as you have from your current level until Lv. 99, making it far more limited especially since the best stat boosts don't appear until the second half of the game.
This isn’t an argument about VII, but I want to point something out as it relates to VI: Stats are not important in VII as in other games, for the reason that everyone is more or less homogenized in their specialties. I posted this way earlier in the thread, but VII is not about stats so much as it is about playing with different Materia combos. If the stats for Cloud and Barret differed so significantly, the crux of the Materia system becomes moot – and that is being able to toy around with your party however you like. The Magic Materia themselves have stat changing side-effects, so that’s that. (They probably don’t have enough of an effect, however, but VII’s what it is).
So VI is thus a lot more reliant on character stats. Fine. The thing is, again, that this isn’t unique to most other RPGs. You have about 80-90 choices about how to boost each character’s stats through the game. You can max out certain numbers, or have them be jacks of all trades, or whatever you like. This is no different than selecting HP, Strength, or Magic boosts when you level up in Mario RPG.
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So by end game in VI, I'm still differentiating my party through the use of limited relics and limited high end equipment that alter skills, defenses and strengths of my party. Whereas in VII, I can have a party that has all the same skills, magics, summons, stats, can all do max damage with ultimate weapons, and the only thing to distinguish them is armor
Stop attacking VII. This is about VI.
Equipment is equipment. Every game has equipment that does different things. VI does it as successfully as any of them. No more and no less.
Regardless of what VII does to break itself, in VI you will have a party that has largely the same skills outside of equipment and accessories. There’s no reason, no reason whatsoever, to not swap Espers among the characters once they’ve polished one off.
And no, managing stat boosts doesn’t count because swapping Espers doesn’t cost anything. If you watch your EXP gain, you can just give every character the proper boost for your determined builds as they level up. I'll give you that this is a form of long-term customization for specializations, but in the short-term your characters can still do everything currently available (barring equipment, which is par for the course in games) -- and there's still nothing they can't do once they've become more specialized.
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but considering there is little value in giving characters different attributes with these cause if a combo is good and VII allows me to get all the materia I need for it at no cost except my time, then I don't see why I should bother. Did I mention Master Materia is at no cost except my time?
You’ve missed the point.
Master Materia is an endgame ability, which you need substantial foreknowledge to achieve.
But back to VI: The issue I made of no-cost-but-time is towards FFVI’s gateway to having characters learn spells. In VII, for instance, you can grind in the Junon forests until the clock hits 99:99, but you’ll never have a team that can have all of the currently-available abilities at once (until you start wasting your life farming Master Materia duplication, at which point the game is largely over). In VI, the first four Espers you get can give each of your team everything currently-available if you put just a little bit time into it. Grinding is the gateway in VI, and the grinding isn’t even that intensive. So really it’s not that locked of a gateway. This has been my point since my first post in this thread.
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You know what's really funny about this? I've never done that, I always make my characters learn every spell on a Esper before switching out but largely cause I wanted them to bring something to the team, so again I would argue that you the player is making this worse for yourself cause I never really dealt with going to the Opera with everyone at least knowing Bolt. I chose to instead let the espers develop who my characters were in the party so I had two status units, one heavy offense, and one dedicated healer. This isn't about bad design, it's about choice.
Irrelevant. Everything is open to you. You’re just choosing not to take it. Wild named it earlier: you’re neglecting options, not making decisive choices (either short-term or long-term).
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In VII I could make one character a healer, another a mage, and the last a fighter or I could make them all into Red Mages, it's not bad design, it's player choice. Also not teaching characters magic in VI is akin to not giving Green materia to characters in VII, it limits the characters role but it's not weakening them. The issue here is that in VI the choice has long term consequences because you choices are often permanent whereas in VII it's far more forgiving and mostly transient.
Please, no. How can you argue this after four pages of back and forth?
There’s no choice with regards to Magic learning. None. Not teaching characters magic in VI is simply not filling out the checklist and not wasting your time. There is no weakening in VI, only staying the course or biting the bullet and grinding to give each character the rest of the free spells.
Not attaching Green Materia to your slots leaves the slots open for Yellow, Red, Purple, or Blue Materia. Not using Green Materia also lets you keep some extra Max HP and Str points. There is a small decision to be made every time a Materia is placed. If mushy Aeris isn't going to be casting Ice, remove the Ice Materia and let her keep the HP.
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Except you're wrong, because you're forgetting how linear progression works here so it's not like VI hands you all the best espers from the get go, and relics are also handed to you in a progressive manner that prevents you from customizing your characters exactly, besides teaching magic is not the whole system. Relics and stat boost play just as much of a part and so does equipment,
What are you even getting at? Linear progression…?
When you earn an Esper, every character can learn that Esper’s spells at no cost. Period. This is the truth.
Relics and stat boosts are not special. I was doing it in Wild ARMs a few months ago, which is about as numbers-getting-higher as a game gets.
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likewise, I could still be going into the North Crater with my party being able to use all the summons and use every command ability(I could even have a Master Magic as well since all I need are command materai and KoToR to beat Ruby) but W-Magic which in my mind is not different from every character knowing every spell in VI at Kefka's tower and in both scenarios at no cost but my time.
VII is basically over by the time the player reaches this level of broken, not to mention the hidden-ness of what you’ve mentioned.
This is not the same as every member of the party in VI being able to know Thunder, Thunder2, Poison, Cure, Regen, Cure2, Antdot, Scan, Sleep, Mute, Slow, Fire, Muddle, Imp, and Float by the time the player gets to the Magitek Facility.
When the player finishes the MagiTek facility, the player has the following abilities that every character can start learning:
Fire (from 3 Espers), Fire2 (from 2), Drain, Ice (2), Ice2 (2), Rasp, Osmose, Cure (2), Cure 2 (2), Remedy, Dispel, Safe (2), Shell (2), Thunder (2), Thunder2 (2), Bio, Break, Doom, Berserk, Vanish, Demi, Reflect, Haste, Warp, and Life.
Some of these are even learned at a clip of 20x. What is that, 2 fights? 3? There’s no downside to just stacking your team with everything at this point. Whether the player wants to is one thing. But there’s nothing in-game stopping him from doing so, like, for instance, a system that limits how much a character can know at a given point.
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In VI, I can take Cyan, I can teach him every mage spell, level him with Valigarmande (+2 magic) for several levels to make his magic as strong as Terra or Relm, equip him with a Merit Award relic which would allow me to fully equip Cyan into mage-centric robes and Rods to boost his magic potential and negate his ability to use Bushido and I have now transformed him into a bonafide mage and likewise I could boost Relm's strength with Gilgamesh (+2 Strength), slap a Merit Award on her and transform her into a sword wielding knight decked out in full Genji Gear.
Completely absurd. Totally hidden. You don’t just “slap” a Merit Award on a character because that accessory is absolutely and totally buried in a mini-game that only shows up in the game’s second half. No player is building his party for this kind of make-up without already having a guide handy.
I’ll concede the Merit Award in and of itself as a tool available for interesting customization options, but to use this as an argument for why the game itself is deeply customizable as a rule rather than as an exception is too much of a stretch.
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The difference between these two scenarios is that in VI, my choices do in fact have consequences, I have limited stats raising capabilities, and I have actual one of kind skills like Dual Cast and Quad Slash that have to be mediated to the best candidate. If I don't teach Cyan magic, he isn't gimped, cause teaching magic isn't the only form of customization so it's not the same as saying you're not using materia in VII, or not using Junctions in VIII instead it's choosing not to use Magic Materia or not using the Magic command because I have other customization options. Not teaching Cyan magic but focusing on using Relics and stats boosts to build him into a speedier and hard hitting fighter while also gaining his Bushido skills is the same as restricting Cloud from using Magic Materia so I can use the slots to give him command materia and independent materia to raise his stats and abilities.
Not teaching Cyan magic is gimping him, though. There’s no cost to teaching him magic, and not teaching it to him leaves less room for contingency. Yes, the game is easy enough that you’re not going to find Cyan needing Thunder2 to get out of a jam, but there’s nothing stopping you from giving him that extra safety net either.
I’d argue that boosting Cyan’s fighter skills over his magic skills is not the same as giving Cloud Command over Magic Materia. Yes, it’s more of a long-term decision, but making Cyan a fighter is a natural inclination of the player given his equipment and unique skill set.
Turning Cyan into a dedicated mage would be undermining his natural abilities, too. Decking him out in Mage gear is, I guess, customization of this character, but really you’ve been forcing the issue much like turning Hope into a Commando in XIII. Technically customization, I’ll give you that, but the kind that’s only viable to someone who knows every nook and cranny beforehand. A new player would never make Cyan a mage in this way, and if he does it’s taken tons of time the majority of which Cyan can still learn every spell, utilize his sword techs, etc, until finally achieving the gimmick build the player’s been unintuitively inching towards for 30 hours.
Since every character has obvious strengths and weaknesses (which can be changed with the effort you’ve indicated), VI is less a game with an approachable, intuitive customization system and more one that has some customization options for players who are really, really determined to not follow the clear path the game has laid out.
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I agree that the unrestricted magic learning system could have been better implemented, but trying to prove this by comparing it to a system made years later on a more powerful system really doesn't prove anything cause you're arguing in hindsight and not historical context, I can argue that VI's customization is better than
FFII and IV's but that's just not a fair comparison cause VI was made years later and learned from its predecessors. My main point is that when you take in account every aspect of VI's customization options, it was pretty amazing at the time, and it still holds up better than some systems. Is it flawed? Hell yeah but what system isn't?
You can argue that VI’s customization is better than II or IV, but IV has no customization whatsoever and II is just an idiotic game to begin with. Compare it with its closest sibling, V. V’s Job System ensures that you can only carry certain abilities depending on your jobs, with the addition of 1 and only 1 carry-over ability.
The hardware power of the Playstation vs. the SNES has no effect on the systems being discussed. There’s no reason VI couldn’t have implemented a limit on number of spells characters can carry at a given time (think something like the SMT: Digital Devil Saga games).
And yes, if you take into account the scope of what VI was trying to accomplish it is impressive. But that doesn’t make its systems successful just because. It’s flawed, yeah, everything is flawed, yeah yeah yeah, but we’re here discussing why VI isn’t a deeply customizable RPG masterstroke like that review stated.
