In experience, Final Fantasy VII and the huge materia was bit of an overwhelm. Also drawing, junctioning etc was a little overboard too. In VII the huge materia offered every spell, or command, or summon with just one materia for each color. In VIII however, you could overload your characters with GFs or take hours to where everyone has two or three GFs at a time. So both games had an easy trade materia or junctions between characters. Hope you have fun in Final Fantasy VIII to the original poster and all else who get to play this.