Just for the record, I first played FFVII when I was around 10-11 years old, and there had been nothing like it at all released in Australia before then. I managed to pick up the materia system easily enough for someone who was very young and had never played an RPG before.

I refuse to believe Kenshin knows what the developers had in mind when creating the game. However, all signs seem to point to them openingly marketing it to a wider demographic of players throughout more regions of the world. Though I can't say for sure since I came back to the previous Final Fantasies at a much older age, but I'd agree they got easier. Not to say that's a bad thing, at least for my first play through of VII it certainly wasn't.