Final Fantasy VII: Overrated?

[Egami]

I was way too underleveled to beat Emerald and Ruby but by stacking up on HP Pluses, Mimic, and KOTR the entire thing was effortless.

Obtaining Mime and KOTR is hardly effortless, you have to spend some time raising chocobos to get them and even then, the location of KOTR is not even hinted at in the game or the map. Sure, having Mime and KOTR makes the battle against the weapons easier but still, a mere one star KOTR with one Mime won’t really do, especially if you are underleveled.

Many strong summons didn't require that kind of work. I remember quite a lot of materia (Bahamut ZERO anyone?) being in easily obtained places as long as you paid attention. Worse yet these summons didn't require leveling to be strong at all.

Well, how much leveling did you need to do for Ultima, Flare or Holy to be strong in V and VI? Not much. In VII, while a summon is strong right off the bat, they require leveling to get stronger and for you to be able to use them more than once per battle.

As I pointed out previously, materias of any type are obtained in different ways in VII, ways that are very much the same as in the previous games. Some are easy to find and some are hard. It is like that with everything in any game.

FFV the summons weren't as powerful, yet in most cases (let's exclude KOTR) where just as difficult if not more so to find (without a strategy guides help I would've never found Ramuh a summon that isn't even worth much).

Yet, some people actually complain a lot (about XII in particular) because some FFs make you rely on a strategy guide to find some things; something which is seen by many as a cheap trick done to sell the guide. All games (V, VI and VII) have things that are hard to find and others that are easy. Just as you get many materias easily in VII, so too you get many Espers easily in VI (Magitek Factory comes to mind) and classes in V.

The real strengths came in leveling your classes, (Ranger, Monk, Magic Swordsman) which required time, thought for combinations, and when it comes down to it, either knowledge of the game already so you know what you get when you level, or a guide of some sort.

All of which can as easily be said about VII. You need to level up the materias to get the spells you need and equip the materia you want to level up and combine then in different ways, all of which requires thought for combinations. You are free to say that V requires more strategy and what not, but really that is something rather subjective and not really on point.

In FFVII you where rewarded for just, paying, attention. As for VI, I found that game broken, but not until the World of Ruin, and even then everything required some sort of work. Even Altima weapon because you had to level it by killing monsters (Offer+Genji Glove+Altima Weapon+2nd most powerful weapon=Win).

In every FF all things require some work. Materias in VII do not come mastered and with all their abilities enabled, you have to spend time to level them up before you get to use them fully and with summons you must level them up to make them more powerful and to be able to use them several times per battle.

You also forget about Master Materia which offers only benefits. All magic on Barret with no consequences. In comparison to your earlier example; sure you can remove the materia and Barret doesn't have them anymore whereas Sabin retains it but lets be serious here... Who uses Sabin as a mage? Hell, I would argue restricting him to magic is a handicap for the player.

Feel free to change Sabin for any other character . I just used him as an example because he was the first one to come to mind.

As far as the Master Materia goes, granted, it does offer only benefits, but how easy is to get it? It certainly is not something you obtain by following the main course of the game. It involves quite a bit of effort and time to get your hands on it and by the point you get it, I would say that it isn’t that relevant. I mean, if you are able to beat Emerald weapon without it, or if you already have all summons mastered (for example), what advantage does it really adds? By that point you are not going to be using Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuth or any other summon with the exception of the most powerful ones nor will you be using Ice, Fire or Bolt in place of more powerful magic.

The thing I've noticed about VII's though, is that in all my games I end up using Enemy Skill materia exclusively and stop using magic all together.

The Enemy Skill materia while useful does not comes with all skills in it. You have to not only have it equipped but also must face some particular enemies and endure one of their special attacks in order to learn that skill. Add to that the fact that even if you learn an ability like Aqualung from a monster, it is not passed down to all your Enemy Skill materias but only to the ones you have equipped and if the skill hits a single target, your chances of learning the skill get lower. If you don’t know where and from whom you obtain the different skills, chances are that you will miss quite a few, something that will eventually lead you to balance things out between magic and Enemy Skills, especially when some Enemy Skills like Magic Breath actually heal some enemies.

In my current file I just got Time and Barrier materia and I haven't touched them. Why would I neglect such powerful materia? Cause I have Mighty Guard which casts Haste, Shell, and Protect on my whole party in one round. Saving me anywhere from two to four slots. The thing makes magic materia obsolete imo.

What you are pointing out is simply an alternative way of going around things, hardly a problem with the game itself. Different ways of going about things are found in nearly all FFs. As I pointed out above, in order to obtain such skills as Big Guard, you have to face specific monsters and be lucky that they use the skill and you have the Enemy Skill materia equipped. But what if you don’t and missed the monster that gives you that skill or you simply don’t know that you can have it? That happens to a lot of people and instead they use the Time and Barrier materias.

My problem with the battle system overall in VII is that its really cool in the beginning where you are quite restricted. Yet due to overpowered materia, Limit Breaks, and equipment, the whole system falls apart. It offers strategy but the game lacks challenge to ever need to use it as well as overpowered abilities and options that makes forming intricate strategies a waste of time.

Well I agree on some points with you here. The game, the enemies in particular, is quite easy and lacks challenge. This lack of challenge probably ends up hindering the potential of the materia system. However, I don’t see this lack of challenge as something that emerges from the materia system itself but more from the overall difficulty of the enemies you face. Given the wide range of possibilities that the materia system gives, I think that they should have made the enemies or at least the bosses in such a way that their stats vary depending on your level or even on what sort of materias you have equipped, very much like the attack “Aire Tam Storm” of Emerald Weapon, which does damage based on how much materia you have equipped; or they could simply just make the enemies a bit harder than they are. Hopefully if they do a remake the difficulty of the game will be increased.

Anyway, good post Wolf Kanno. Nice to see more intelligent points raised about the game

Getting jobs in FFV isn’t the exact equivalent of getting powerful material in FFVII. Most of them have to be leveled up significantly to get their best abilities and some that have cool abilities are pretty useless in and of themselves (hunter, for example). Materia usually gets progressively more powerful as it levels up as well but unlike FFV where you can only level one job at a time any materia you have equipped levels up at the same rate which makes any sort of planning irrelevant.

Just as some jobs in V are useless in and of themselves until you get their cool abilities, so too some materias are useless until you level them up and are able to use them in battle (Ultima, FullCure, etc).

The materia system is very much the same job system of V broken down into smaller pieces. The materia system just grants you the ability to make up your own class by allowing you to assign materias pertaining to different jobs to a single character. Both systems have their limitations. In V, while a black mage is limited to black magic, at level 1 he can use Fire, Ice and Bolt on their first level and as he levels up, the three spells level up at the same time and he can use Fire 2, Ice 2 and Bolt 2 and so on. In VII, while I can use Fire, Ice and Bolt from the get go if I equip their materias, if my Ice materia levels up I can use Ice 2, but it doesn’t follows that I can also use Fire 2 and Bolt 2. I need to level up each materia individually and all materias need different amounts of AP to level up, very much like the jobs in V. On top of that, unlike in V, where your black mage can target all enemies with a given spell right away, in VII you must assign an All materia to a particular magic materia in order to be able to hit all enemies with it and this materia must also be leveled up individually if you want to be able to do this more than once per battle. So again, while I may be able to hit all enemies with my Ice materia, it doesn't follows that I can do it with my Fire materia.

So, while in V you can only level up one job at a time, all the abilities of that particular job level up at the same rate, very much as the materias that you equip your characters with do.