Not to brag, but the first time I played FF7 was at a friends house, and at the time, I had only played one single RPG in my life and that was FF5 (and back then I hadn't even completed it). Without a tutorial, just the (inrestrospect very incomplete) oral explanation from my friend who was stuck on the turks in the midgar underground. I looked at the materia and his equipment for a little while and reorganized some stuff, then beat the boss on my second try after that. Took me perhaps 30-60 minutes.
Maybe I'm just good at logic, but I never had any real problems understanding the materia system. I would rate the junction system in FF8 as a much more complex system to get into, and I must admit that for half of my first playthrough, i just auto-junctioned with attack stats.
Reply With Quote