The incredible douchbaggery of Cloud and Friends

[Sephiroth]

The point the OP is making is that Cloud and the Player only know they are justified due to hindsight, and there was no in-game evidence to justify their actions. The party doesn't know about Holy until the Huge Materia quest is over, no one knew that Meteor couldn't be destroyed by the Big Materia, so there really is no justification for stopping Shin-Ra when Cloud and Co. never had any plan on how to get past Sephiroth's barrier to confront him.

The party never had a plan nor any knowledge within the game to justify their actions. Shin-Ra was the one being proactive while the party basically got in their way because they didn't really know what else to do, and it's only hindsight that clears them of being stupid and it all just ends up being bad writing on Square's part.

There are plenty of points to defend the writing of this game but the two of us are exact opposites so you would not actually care about it anyway (just like you claim Sephiroth is flat when I can easily write page over page about multiple layers of this character). And yes, whether people like it or not, Cloud and co. did use some Materia sometimes but that does not change the fact that the heroes knew that multiple usage of Materia would harm the planet even more. And that was implied as well as stated, even easier to understand after Square explained it once more how the description of Materia is meant after its been lead a bit ambigious in the game (so whether people bring in the word "retconning" or not will not change that sometimes things are not even retconned but just need some clearer explanation - actually it would have been okay enough even without it). Using Materia does not actually just summon and manifest planet's energy by the body of the caller using the Materia, the Cetra's knowledge, as tool to make use of the planet's power. In "reality", when using Materia the user drains the planet's energy as well. Now imagine that being done whenever Shinra makes use of Great Materia. It is not perfect considering Materia is the super-useful equipment stuff in-game but that's how double-edged things are. You can win good stuff from it but eventually it backfires. Cloud and co. did well in getting the great deal of Great Materia to hide it from Shinra. Acting like they wanted to get a Materia from a train, a materia from a submarine, a materia from a rocket and a materia from a fort for no reason will not change that they did it so ShinRa could not use it, harm the planet, et cetera. The view of "but I rather accept the smaller problem" is absolutely pointless as that is exactly what those themes are about. Humans cannot just always burn ressources thinking "uh, pff, we need it now, it is gonna help, we surely can handle it later". There are people who want to find a way more efficient way. And giving Materia to a power-hungry energy company that harms the planet as well is not the solution.

Really the only thing that speaks against it is "we can still use the stuff in-game" but that is why in AC they stick to not using Materia anyway. As mentioned in my first reply, I am relatively sure that there would be Materia included for a sequel, whenever that could happen - but that would be a storytelling problem for that sequel then and not for FFVII-1. Call their own limited usage of materia hypocritical if you want. I could justify that as well but that would be a bit unfair because I would somewhat gloss over the argument why they have to protect Materia from others and since I am fair I won't. For them I at least know that their ultimate goal is to protect the planet, not to use much more Greater Materia, Ultimate Destructive Magics or Mako Reactors to suck out the last bit of life. There are three sides to fight each other. With one we have a good end in sight. With the other two, we have THE end in sight. And thinking "but the guys had no plan so they should have given it to bad ending 2 instead of bad ending 1 because bad ending 2 is at least delayed" is quite troublesome. If we live in a world where there is absolutely no other way, maybe then I can agree with you about that. But the fact that after that they still had the will to fight they clearly haven't given up all hope. They gave up hope the moment they defeated Sephiroth and Meteor started to destroy Midgar and when they thought only the planet can decide now (and if someone wants to be very picky even that can be called some sort of hope). Whether you ignore what the story is about now (just like many do that either call it bad or are upset anytime someone tells them they have forgotten this and that official stuff - something that is not exclusive to FFVII of course) is up to you. I just want to bring in what is important.

If you will, this is actually a very realistic and important thing.

No hard feelings. My last two gil here.