Quote Originally Posted by WildRaubtier View Post
You're both losing sight of the original point - that is, Wolf Kanno is wrong about what customisation means. I'll just interject here with some proofs against his assertions.

Assume that once the option to learn a spell is available, all characters will be able to learn it instantly by grinding or so (this is unrealistic, yes, and incredibly so in 7's case). In 6, that means every character has every spell learnt and available at all times, no penalty, whenever you receive an esper that can teach that spell. In 7, however, this means you're actually FORCED to make ability decisions as early as you get Tifa (whose max ~2 materia slots at that point mean you're dropping half of Ice/Bolt/Fire/Cure).
Except you'll get plenty of gear to increase how much slots you have and since the main spells are all that matter(and are easy to obtain even in the beginning of the game), by the time you get to Junon your party is pretty set, only command materia will really set characters apart and between Steal, Enemy Skill, Sense, and Deathblow, you don't really have good options there either. Not to mention that Enemy Skill materia will largely diminish customization options if you pursue it because it easily replaces magic materia. In VI, the espers are given to you piece meal and several of your starting espers are not terribly useful so teaching everyone magic is kind of a mute point since Cait Sith is largely useless at this part of the game as well as your party largely being limited for the first half of the game due to story restrictions, so teaching every character every spell doesn't even become practical until you get the airship which is a good 15 hours into the game.

The issue with the argument is both of you are using the start of VII (limited options and gear) as the basis against the end game of VI (all espers available, all characters available, practical leveling points), when the truth is VI's esper system is pretty limited for awhile. Let's not forget the stat bonuses espers give and how the WoR espers give the better ones so you're kind of discouraged to seriously level until late in the game after you get everyone back and acquired all of the Espers if you're going for some serious applications of the system.

Additionally, Master Materias simply grant access to all the stated abilities - they have limited/poor connectivity to support materias. The grind to get master materias is a lot more punishing, too.
That's a load of bull, All Materia still works on magic materia, Quad still works on everything that was applicable to begin with, Elemental will literally make your character invincible. Sure Sneak attack and final attack don't work but they are pretty unnecessary for most things in the game anyway. The Master Command bug is pretty lethal. It's far from limited or poor, of anything it's improved since you don't have to deal with the "tough decisions". I'll give you leveling it is more time consuming but it's Acquisition is far more game breaking.


Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you.
This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.

For example:
Levels still matter for those fight if you want to make it easier, and technically neither WEAPON is actually all that hard; you don't need terribly complex materia configurations to beat them, hell I've beaten Ruby with four materia and it wasn't even a real challenge. If we're going to use superbosses as justification for overdeveloped and largely unnecessary customization systems then the GBA version of VI gives you the Dragon's Den with 18 bosses that actually require you to utilize the customization system fully. Any boss battle let alone a series of them that makes spamming Quick not feel like total cheese are some pretty nasty bosses in my book. It is the only part of the game that I feel fully warrants the need for every character to know every spell.