Heh, sure, if you want to gimp Maria to death you can do that.

I think what people really dislike about the game is that it punishes you for trying to make your characters demigods. Take FFVII, the "most popular" game in the series. If you want to, you can give your characters every last spell, summon and command in the game, and you won't be horribly penalized for it. Sure, you'll get some minor stat penalties, but you can just max your stats using sources and materia anyway so it doesn't matter. If you spend long enough at it, all of your characters can be tough enough to take out Sephiroth alone.

In FFII, things don't work that way. If you want to be a good black mage, you have to forfeit white magic, vitality and attack. Not so much because raising those lowers your intelligence (and in DoS it definitely won't...) but because to level yourself as a melee fighter, you have to neglect levelling magic, which can be a pain in and of itself. Other than that, believe it or not, you will actually be penalized for equippming weapons and armor. All weapons and armor lower agility, intelligence and soul. Basically it boils down to having to be very selective about what you do and don't level.

I think this is what frustrates people about this game so much. You can't just breeze right through it and equip the best weapons, armor and spells on everyone. You actually have to sit down and think about what you're doing or you'll cripple yourself.

That and the hero isn't some whiney emo boy with a gigantic sword who wants to talk about his feels for 5 hours of cinema sequences.