Magic materia suck

It's been a while since my last thread on this subject.

Magic materia, except for a limited amount of time at the beginning of the game, largely suck in this game. I would rather have one mastered Enemy Skill materia than all of those useless green orbs.

You can get Beta, Trine, Big Guard, and White Wind in disc 1... and then of what use is Cure, Barrier, or the elemental materia?

Ultima also blows. Magic Breath is an underrated Enemy Skill with half the MP cost and nearly as much damage... and you get it earlier in the game.

There are some magic materia which are worthwhile. Revive and Manipulate come to mind. Comet (for a short time), Contain, and Shield aren't completely worthless. The rest can pretty much be tossed overboard sometime near the end of disc 1 and wouldn't be missed very much.

Discuss the awesomeness of Enemy Skills and how much magic materia suck.

The ONLY magic materia I really used was Restore, which was the only way for me to survive the looong leveling in the Junon forests. I agree, Ultima just cost way too much MP. As soon as I got Beta from the Zolom, which was always before entering Junon, the game was pretty much over.

Unfortunately FF7 does not utlise its system as good as it could, but a difficulty mod I am making will address this :)

restore led to regen and time/death + added effect was nice, magic in general for VII and VIII both overall was pretty crappy, and in VI it was good but not great

Both runs of FFVII, I made full use of plenty of little green materias! D: I suppose I it may have been different had I explored Enemy Skills, but a super magic-bloated Cait Sith was the biggest overall hitter of my main party. :/

If I ever play FFVII again in the far away future, I'll try to play the Raistlin way~! xD

Heh.

I love have a wide selection - so I just get all I can and use it as much as I can. I think that Square wanted you to have alternatives (seeing as each attack looks different aswell) So I just alternate between using magic and E.Skills - I sometimes use items as well if I have them ("Swift Bolt" for example - it's the same as one of the "Bolt" attacks, but it's just a change of paste for me.)

Oh, and Ultima is not the same as Magic Breath - I do like Magic Breath, but Ultima always did more damage for me.

Well, I for one liked this way better over the systems used in ANY FF older than VII. I do not say younger, because the magic systems from 1-6 were solid.

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Originally Posted by MJN SEIFER

Oh, and Ultima is not the same as Magic Breath - I do like Magic Breath, but Ultima always did more damage for me.

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Ultima does do a bit more damage... for twice the MP and is found much later in the game. I wasn't saying Ultima did less damage; I was saying it was less useful for less time. Ultima does crap damage for when you get it in the game for a bunch of MP.

Ultima is the ultimate magic though and it does ignore magic defence. Magical breath and other attacks don't and can be a liability against monsters with attribute defences. Magical breath is an attribute (elemental) based attack.

I just found almost all offensive magic useless since it didn't do the damage regular attacks did.

Magic materia can be linked with Elemental materia for specific defenses and attacks, as well as with Counter and other materia for specific automated actions and reactions. If you're just using the Fire materia to cast Fire, you're not taking full advantage of FFVII's mechanics.

Not necessary if youre 4x cutting for 9999 w/o it.

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Originally Posted by Kawaii Ryûkishi

Magic materia can be linked with Elemental materia for specific defenses and attacks, as well as with Counter and other materia for specific automated actions and reactions. If you're just using the Fire materia to cast Fire, you're not taking full advantage of FFVII's mechanics.

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I certainly concede that magic materia, especially early on, has additional benefits outside of simply casting it. I still would prefer Enemy Skills to those, though.

One of E. Skills greatest strengths is you get up to 24 skills on a single materia. This is matched only by the master materia, which you get much later.

There's no point at which I don't use magic materia (except when Yuffie's involved!), but I always save a slot for E. Skills, since there are so many useful ones.

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Originally Posted by Raistlin

Magic materia, except for a limited amount of time at the beginning of the game, largely suck in this game. I would rather have one mastered Enemy Skill materia than all of those useless green orbs.

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Agreed.

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You can get Beta, Trine, Big Guard, and White Wind in disc 1... and then of what use is Cure, Barrier, or the elemental materia?

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Agreed.

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Ultima also blows. Magic Breath is an underrated Enemy Skill with half the MP cost and nearly as much damage... and you get it earlier in the game.

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Ultima does not blow. Not really. Maybe slightly. Where was Magic Breath... where has it ever been underrated? Whose rating system is being used? Magic Breath is like the best spell in the game.

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There are some magic materia which are worthwhile. Revive and Manipulate? come to mind. Comet (for a short time), Contain, and Shield aren't completely worthless.

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I'll agree that Command materia can be useful, but let's not call Manipulate a Magic materia. Did you mean Mystify? I love Comet and Contain.

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Discuss the awesomeness of Enemy Skills and how much magic materia suck.

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I still haven't been able to complete a single E.Skill materia.

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Originally Posted by Aerith's Knight

Well, I for one liked this way better over the systems used in ANY FF older than VII. I do not say younger, because the magic systems from 1-6 were solid.

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You've got the phrasing backwards. As "older" and "younger" refer to age, 1-6 would be older. --McNitpicky

I have absolutely no idea wtf I was thinking when I put Manipulate in there. Obviously some Enemy Skills need Manipulate to get, and I guess thinking about Enemy Skills just resulted in my fingers typing it.

Also, Ultima blows. It does suck for the time in the game you finally get it. If it cost less MP it might be usable, but as is there are far better alternatives.

I never cared for the E skill materia, but when I did bother with getting most of the stuff on it with my last playthrough it wasnt that bad. It was pretty bad at the end of the game though as was magic materia too so w/e. The only materia I was still using at the end of the game out of all of these would just be the revive and restore materias for life3 and regen.

The failure of VII's extreme multiple choice battle-style is most likely what led to future installments returning to character class battle mechanics.

True masters of materia use both to great effect.

My thoughts are pretty much in line with Kishi's. As for actual usage, sure, you will always find some magic that you prefer to use than others, that's inevitable. However, there are always some enemies that you can use green materia against to great effect.

EDIT: As for "nearly as much damage" - put Ultima alongside a 4x cast (or whatever it was, I forget) and then we'll talk. I can't remember if 4x cast works with enemy skill magic, however even if it does, if you ever find yourself in a position where you need quick damage regardless of the cost of the spell, then it would make sense to use the more powerful spell.

EDIT2: As for wanting a mastered enemy skills materia over the full set of magic materia - well, duh. That goes without saying. But mastering an enemy skill materia will require using the magic materia, and a buttload of time and information in order to pull off.

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Originally Posted by qwertysaur

True masters of materia use both to great effect.

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I see it as more of being a master is using the best ones, which involves not casting it hardly ever.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

EDIT: As for "nearly as much damage" - put Ultima alongside a 4x cast (or whatever it was, I forget) and then we'll talk. I can't remember if 4x cast works with enemy skill magic, however even if it does, if you ever find yourself in a position where you need quick damage regardless of the cost of the spell, then it would make sense to use the more powerful spell.

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Quadra Magic, and no, it doesn't. I would still prefer Comet to Ultima.

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EDIT2: As for wanting a mastered enemy skills materia over the full set of magic materia - well, duh. That goes without saying. But mastering an enemy skill materia will require using the magic materia, and a buttload of time and information in order to pull off.

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Every Enemy Skill, yeah, it takes a lot of time. The useful, relevant ones? Not so much. I don't give a crap about Chocobuckle, etc. Big Guard, White Wind, Trine, and Beta are all readily available on the first disc (Beta can be somewhat challenging to get, depending on your level) and are among the most useful Enemy Skills.

White Wind is godly :D

You can take out Icicles in one hit with Beta. :)

Enemy Skills are extremely useful. A little costly, but worth it. I was just never motivated enough.

The only "Bad" thing about Ultima is that you can't use it straight away, it's like Level 1 is nothing and Level 2 is Ultima, if that makes sense, on or two other materias do that (Full Cure is one).

Yeah, that always sucked, I gotta say. Why not just make it so that they're harder to get instead of making us wander around with them for eternity? :(