Final Fantasy VII: Overrated?

[Egami]

I found the stat bonuses to be mostly insignificant. If they had been a 10 or 20% increase/decrease each then it may have had an effect but as it stood I didn't feel dissuaded with loading any of my characters up with any sort of magic.

The point is that they have an impact on your status and the more magic and summons you load on a character, the weaker it gets. You also have a limited number of slots for materia per character, something that prevents you from overloading a character with all magic and summons.

Compare that with how things are on the two previous games, where you can have a character with all the white and black magic and even summons available at any time without suffering any penalties. Want to have Sabin with Ultima, Flare, Meteo, all Cures, Fires, Bolts, Ice, etc in VI? Just get him to learn it from the Espers and he can carry as much magic as you want him to without this detracting from his stats. Not mention that after he learns the spells from the Espers he does not needs to keep it but can pass it along and still retain as many spells as you want him to. Unlike in VII where you must keep the materia on the character despite the fact that you have mastered it.

In V things are quite similar, a Mimic can use all the white and black spells you have learned and the summons you have at any time. Or if you use the Suppin (normal) class, you can access all the abilities of your mastered classes at any time and even a couple of skills, again without significant penalties to your stats.

I would say that the materia system in VII puts on you more limitations than the system in VI and about the same if not more than the system in V. That the enemies are less challenging is besides the point and quite frankly, something that not everyone would agree with.

I bought the vast minority of my materia. Most of it was quite literally lying on the ground. The REALLY powerful ones like KOTOR and Mime require lengthy sidequests, yes, but there are plenty of relatively broken materia like the ones I mentioned such that you don't have to touch those to obliterate everything beyond the game's uber bosses.

Some are on the ground in several places, others require defeating bosses (i.e. Bahamut, Shiva) and other require doing side quests (i.e. Leviatan) or completing certain missions within specific parameters (i.e. Ultima, Phoenix). That is hardly different from the way you find Espers in VI and Jobs in V, the latter of which you get from crystals, something that you must obtain to advance the plot.

I didn't comment on that at all.

But I did and the point is to compare and contrast the systems of each.