I know where the ribbons are, and I know they aren't directly in your path to sephiroth if you know exactly which path to take the first time you play the game. That's why I said you "normally come across one of them", as in, if you have no idea where the ribbons are, as well as no idea exactly which path to take to get out of a dungeon, *chances are high* that you will bump into one of the three ribbons and/or added effect materia, and chances are also high that you have bought at least one white cape thorough the game. Even if you didn't, you get one from a mandatory boss fight. Therefore, you are *likely* to have enough tools to efficiently take down sephiroth when you *know* what he's gonna throw at you.

Now, my point is that Akaneko found Sephiroth to be much easier this time than when he was 11 years old because he (or she) now is much smarter, and therefore able to analyze sephiroth's attack patterns much easier and faster, has a firmer understanding on how to use the tools he or she has found over the course of the game, and has more experience in fighting RPG bosses in general (RPG bosses aren't always 100% different). This is what made the sephiroth fight easier this time around, not his (or hers) equipment, materia, or levels. This is especially true because the statistics that were posted in the first post are actually very average and it is evident that the player didn't do a lot of exploring or minigames.

tl;dr: as i said earlier, games are easier these days because you're smarter. It was the same way when we were young. I often ran into instances where older people complained that the games I thought were hard (or fairly difficult) actually were too easy.