FFVI Review Post

[Flying Arrow]

Except the lack of game balance largely makes VII's customization cosmetic, I don't even use Materia much anymore in playthroughs cause it's silly to reconfigure the party when I know I'm not really going to use them. Not to mention as I said before, Materia largely works like equipment in that you simply replace weak materia for stronger materia. If you are still using Fire and Ice materia for their tier 3 spells by Disc 3 for more than just laughs, then you really don't know what you're doing with the system. In VI you do permanently teach spells but most of them you'll probably never use and other will be useless. Yes I can teach everyone Fire Blizzard, and Thunder but I seriously doubt I'll still be using them by end game. Most of the end game spells have low learning rates, are restricted to usually one Esper, and there are better alternatives through relic and equipment combinations for several of the characters that teaching them is useless. Honestly the magic system's failing is kind of a moot criticism if you ask me.

Any garbage bin Materia you're leveling (and this is the argument) takes the place of something else in your team's Materia build. You can't level everything at once. So if you want to waste a slot beefing up Mystify, say goodbye to Steal, or Sense, or Deathblow, etc.

I don't think Sense or Deathblow are really a serious loss for the player. I mean we are talking abut a game where straight melee is often the most practical option in battles. This just comes back to the issue that the customization is fluff cause very few of the materia is worth using and that you're most likely to have one or two materia equipped for the sake of it. The Sense materia is a great example because it's utterly useless but chances are you do have someone equipped with one or both that are available before you leave Midgard largely cause you got free open slots that need to be plugged up unless you spent money on getting more of the Cure and basic elemental magic at which point I would point out you're not making the tough choices you keep talking about.

I mean there is no reason to not have the basic elemental materia on your party until they get useless around Disc 2. By then you've upgraded to Comet, Ultima and the plethroa of summons. The customization only really kicks in when you are dealing with rare one of a kind materia and you have to choose who gets it but this is a transient hang-up since mastering materia means you get a new one so potentially every character can be a clone of each other. The "customization" only happens for short periods of time but overall I am more likely to be looking at a party of Red Mages with a few command skills that differentiate them.

I get you have high-level knowledge of literally everything in every game, but none of this is the point (except I like where you admit the abilities in VI are useless, because they're so liberally distributed and basically do nothing of value. Yes, I agree the Esper system is dumb and sucks.).

Your argument is simply that because VI doesn't physically limit the player that the system is weak because you feel compelled to teach every character every spell because the game gives you the option to do so. So to me, this logic is akin to me saying that I can make all my characters in VII into clones with the materia system and the system sucks because of it and my reason is because that since the game gives me the option to do it, that I have to. The reality is that to me this is really more of the player's problem than the games design, it's like the people who hate on the License Board because you can teach every character every skill and use of every equipment.

It's not weak because of my compulsion (I don't have a compulsion to grind abilities for everyone anyway) it's weak because it gives everything and demands nearly nothing (besides grinding, which only takes up player time and leaves no mark on the actual game itself besides making characters better in small increments as a side-effect).

Giving all your characters the same abilities in VII is the player's choice, but they can't give everyone everything, which is what you can do in VI and which begins to happen naturally over the course of the game.

Yes and Crusader itself is most likely going to be gained at the final dungeon as well which makes it impractical to teach Meltdown to every character since it arrives so late. Meaning unless you take the time to grind, you are not going to be able to teach every spell to every character.

No, only most of the spells, and you can still add this one to the checklists at no cost (but player time and character strengthening).

Now you're just being dramatic, first off, you are pretty much at Zozo's entrance and past your time there by the time the game gives you access to your four espers. The average ABP you get in the WoB is 3 and that's when you reach the Sealed Cave about a good eight hours later, until then it's just 1 or 2 ABP per battle meaning that trying to teach all four of your party members every spell you have access to will take about 200 to 400 battles, considering stats only increase through espers and you're extremely limited at this point, you've just shot yourself in the foot cause you wasted about 20 levels to teach characters spells that will be easier to acquire later on. The average you get in the WoR is 4-5 so I wouldn't call that "liberally giving ABP" also bosses don't give that much ABP either until near the game's end. Yes there are APB grind points in both sections but depending on which version you are playing you are not likely to be bothering with this until WoR.

Fine, as you leave Zozo and head to Jidoor.

Anyway - the first Esper you get is Ramuh. The easiest spell to learn from Ramuh is learned at a clip of 10x. Say you learn 2 ABP per fight walking on the World Map. In 5 fights Locke will learn Thunder. In 5 more, Celes can learn it. 5 more, Cyan, etc. Yes, different things are learned at different rates, but the natural progression of the game let the members of your team learn the lion's share of what the Espers have to offer. I'd call this liberal. Not having at least two characters learn Thunder by around the time you set foot back in Jidoor I'd call neglect. What I wouldn't call it is customization.

Not to mention, the ultimate payoff (Master Materia) is much more demanding than about anything in VI. To get the Master Magic, for instance, you need to level up every green orb, including the one you only find in the game's final stage. Not only that, but say you don't stop the train in North Corel...

Yes it's true you can fail to get all the big Materia to get all the Master Materia but even then, it's not like you really need to be using every spell or ability master materia gives you. Also, despite what you may think, it's actually possible to permanently lose some of the espers in VI so it's not like they are a given either. Also since it's difficult to get consistently high ABP from Cauctaurs and Slagworms tend to use Sneeze before death to screw you out of their ABP, you are still looking at having to go through anywhere from 250-500 battles to teach everyone one end game spell like Re-Raise or Ultima, just like grinding to get copies of the unique endgame materia or Master Materia in VII is also impractical because of the huge grind. This grinding is suppose to detour you from teaching everyone every spell. Teaching every character magic in VI is like trying to get to level 99 in any RPG, just cause you can, doesn't mean the developers meant for you to do so.

In VI (I'm going to make one last comparison to VII, and not a value judgment of VII), every character's gateway to knowing everything is barred by grinding. Do the grinding (which isn't even that demanding), and you know everything. In VII, the gateway to knowing everything is... the game itself. As in, you literally cannot give someone every ability at once (barring the endgame secret Materias). It doesn't matter that Deathblow sucks or whatever is garbage, this argument is about what the game does and does not allow the player to do with/to his party over the course of the game.