Is the materia system the best battle/leveling system in the entire JRPG genre?

Personally, I think it is. I mean yes, Final Fantasy 7 had an awesome story and memorable characters and all that but to be honest materia is what made that game. It was so simple, so genius. Its no wonder that nobody has been able to match that system of skill-leveling since.

Some might say the job system of the earlier Final Fantasies is where its at but I don't think so. When I think Sakaguchi I think materia. I just hope he make a system that magical one more time...

What about you?

Umm... It was kinda fun I guess, but I wasn't amazed by it to the point where I think it is the best ever. I can't say a system that makes almost every character interchangable when it comes to magic is the best way to go.AtomicTangerine

I see what you mean, but isn't there something to be said for being able to take along only the characters you like? Barret, Cloud, and Vincent never left my party...the rest of the crew? Meh.

meh i never really liked it, the job system from FFT will always be my favorite

Eh, it was okay for the time, but it isn't memorable enough in my book. I think the Sphere Grid was a great step, but if they had something like that, but something that wasn't nearly as open to full exploitation, that'd be a much stronger overall system.

It had three very huge flaws in it. First they made each character pretty much pointless. With a press of a couple of buttons, you can swap everything two characters have. The only difference between characters were their limit breaks, and some of them were rather similar.

Second, it let every character do everything. Why decide if you want a fighter, a healer, an offensive spellcaster, etc., when you can have everyone do everything? You tend to find a few key materia and give it to everyone in your party, making everyone capable of doing the same useful actions. There's no incentive of trying to master weaker skills when everyone can have the most powerful of each type of action at all times?

Third, it was too prone to abusive combos if you knew what you were doing, which shattered all the difficulty of the game unless you intentionally didn't use your best setups.

It had potential, but it's not even the best FF system. Heck, I think the way FF5's system made you carefully pick your skills and jobs to compliment each other was a lot better crafted, as did FF10's system where each character had an identity and actual strengths and weaknesses.

Second, it let every character do everything. Why decide if you want a fighter, a healer, an offensive spellcaster, etc., when you can have everyone do everything? You tend to find a few key materia and give it to everyone in your party, making everyone capable of doing the same useful actions. There's no incentive of trying to master weaker skills when everyone can have the most powerful of each type of action at all times?

Third, it was too prone to abusive combos if you knew what you were doing, which shattered all the difficulty of the game unless you intentionally didn't use your best setups.

argianas

Totally agree. I think FF12 is probs the best overall.

The job system is the best, followed by systems like Chrono Trigger.

Crap like Materia, Sphere Grid and whatever that god awful checkerboard in FF12 was called are horrible creations that reduce gameplay to picking "Attack" repeatedly.

So tired of skill systems that allow every character to have every skill. It has the depth of a spoon.

When you've leveled all the way up and all is said and done, and the only difference in who you bring with you to that final, all-to-easy boss fight is what the character looks like, then something is probably wrong with the leveling system.syztem

The junction system didn't only use attacks... you needed to draw spells and junction them to GFs to maximize your characters' strength.

While I agree with most of the above points regarding flaws in the way FFVII implimented the materia concept, the materia system itself is far and away my favorite ability system out of any of Square's games. The sole reason for this is that in order to earn new abilities you have to discover them within the game world itself, as opposed to being able to aquire them simply by beating enough enemies. That is something I've felt all the other FFs missed, the knowledge that discovery is what matters when it comes to gaining abilities.Ectomy

You mean except for finding the jobs themselves in FF5, finding a heap of optional espers or even some abilities in FF6, finding about a third of the GFs that were optional in FF8, all the skills in FF9 were on items that you obviously had to hunt down, so on and so forth.