Quote Originally Posted by Laddy View Post
the weakest one of the entire bunch.
I'm not sure what that means.
My opinion is that the ability to plan ahead by use of systems like Materia, Licenses, or Spheres, what-have-you far outranks any one character's natural abilities. These Paradigm Shift abilities, no matter how useful they may seem individually, to me at least, would not seem to be able to hold their own against any inhabitant of the Planet when properly affixed with Materia. I think even Marlene could win a battle against Lightning if only by the use of materia. Of course, if you remove this aspect entirely, that's a different story. No materia means no augmented statistics (aside from that which can be attained by use of Sources which, let's face it, is not the most efficient way to gain stats), no magic, and no special abilities aside from the character's own LIMIT Breaks (which only Cloud's group seems able to use... aside from that one kid in the training hall...). No Paradigm Shift means Lightning has to choose one mode to fight in throughout the battle. I don't know what the outcome would be then.