FF7 : certain enemy skills break the game

[Question]

I remember the game being a LOT harder when I was a kid, then again i wasnt optimizing everything at that time.

This time round, i started using enemy skill materia and it basically makes lots of magic and summons obsolete. For example, there is no reason whatsoever to use the Ifrit summon when you can get the beta enemy skill as early as right after you obtain the buggy (this assumes you dont grind like crazy to survive the midgar zolom right after leaving midgar). All you have to do is use big guard, laser it twice, and wait till he uses the skill, then kill him with one spell or summon after. It costs 35 MP and does more than twice the damage of the Ifrit summon. It also does either the same or more damage as a single target fire 3 spell.

Since most enemies have no elemental resistances/weaknesses, you can easily use beta to one shot almost any non-boss formation until the end of the whirlwind maze.

Trine has the same issue, for 20 mp it outdamages all other sources of lightning damage and allows you to one shot almost any non-boss formation till the end of the whirlwind maze.

The big guard skill also makes your party pretty much unkillable for obvious reasons (at least, for a large portion of the game), and invalidates three different support spells.

One thing i have to say though, its amazing how much more powerful magic is in general, especially if you are using the weaker double growth weapons to level up materia, since magic power isnt dependant on your weapon's attack power.

[nfitc1]

If you get Beta early then you can ride almost the first Disc with that. The Gi enemies absorb Fire and some others are resistant to it, but by then you can get Magic Breath or Aqua Lung which are just as powerful.

One thing i have to say though, its amazing how much more powerful magic is in general, especially if you are using the weaker double growth weapons to level up materia, since magic power isnt dependant on your weapon's attack power.

But most weapons increase your magic stat. Generally the stronger the weapon the better the bonus. Some don't, but it's the "hidden" way of keeping magic a viable attack strategy as you get stronger weapons.

[Question]

Depending on the weapons, yes, some do increase your magic, but theres no need to worry about that till the raid on junon because everything before that dies in 1 spell, so you may as well take advantage of the double AP growth weapons.

I forgot to add that part of the problem is that the difficulty level wasnt consistent. In many areas of the game, later enemies are easier than earlier ones. The soldier 2nd class at Junon are harder to kill than any non-scripted fight till you get to the underwater reactor for example, and a good portion of the underwater reactor enemies were easier than soldier 2nd class.

[Kefka]

I have similar memories of my earlier times with FF7. The first playthrough is usually the hardest because you don't know where to find most enemy skills, but once you do, a ton of possibilities open up. Possibilities that you simply don't have with normal spells. Beta, Aqua Lung, and Trine where already mentioned, but the most overpowered ones in my mind aren't even attack spells. To me, they are:

1) White Wind: You can learn it as soon as you get the Buggy (Zemzeletts in Junon area have it, but you need Cait Sith's Manipulate materia in order to learn it), and at that time in the game it is about as powerful as a Cure2 spell, albeit a bit more expensive at 34 MP. However, it does have 2 major advantages over Cure2: first, the number of times you can cast Cure2 on the entire party per battle is limited by the level of your All materia, and for most of disc 1, that usually won't be any higher than 2, maybe 3. With White Wind you have a healing spell for the entire team that can be cast an infinite amount of times, as long as you have enough MP. Second, it also cures almost all status ailments! The only normal spell capable of doing that is Esuna, but it takes quite long to learn that one (I usually get it near the end of disc 2), and White Wind makes it obsolete from the get-go.

2) Angel's Whisper: this spell is basically Life2, Full Cure AND Esuna combined in one, but at only half the MP cost of either Full Cure or Life2! However, I guess the fact that you can only get it at the very end of the game makes this a moot point, but still... Life2 and Full Cure are also supposed to be end-game spells, so they shouldn't be outclassed like that...

3) Big Guard: Wall and Haste combined, and unlike either of them, the number of times you can cast it on the entire party is not limited by any All materia level. It's available at the same time as White Wind, long before you can buy even the standard Barrier and Magic Barrier spells! To top it off, it costs a little bit less than Wall. However, one might argue that Wall is overall better because the barriers last longer without haste. Still, I think it was a mistake to make a spell this powerful available so early in the game, would have been better if you got it near the end of disc 2.

4) Magic Hammer: Ethers just became completely obsolete? Free Magic recharge as long as your foe has MP left? With this, there's basically no more resource managing necessary in battle. Definitely needs to be nerved in some way. I'm thinking of the Magic Hammers in other FF games like FF5 or FF9 where it also damaged the enemy's MP, but didn't heal your own.

5) Bad Breath: thanks to this basically all green materia status spells become obsolete, especially since Bad Breath even has a higher success rate than most other status spells, if my memory serves right. It costs quite a lot of MP, but the ability to cripple most regular enemies and even some bosses makes it well worth the cost.

And those are just some of the overpowered enemy skills, with others like Magic Breath, Shadow Flare, and Pandora's Box deserving honorable mentions. But the best/worst part is: you get all of these spells for the price of just ONE materia slot! This makes it very hard for green materia spells to compete.

[Question]

After looking into the damage formulaes a bit more, it seems that regular magic spells are pretty underpowered in FF7. It is much easier to buff physical damage (some ultimate weapons let you hit 4x physical damage pretty easily), and 4x cut lets you hit 4 times.  Quadra magic is only a 2x damage buff and the most powerful single target spell (comet 2) only lets you deal about 32k damage in total, not taking into account enemy M DEF. You can use MP turbo to increase the damage by up to 50%, but that requires you to use at least 4 slots, to link quadra with comet and MP turbo with a second comet materia (or substitute one or more of the materia with master magic materia, but that takes forever to make). At that point, you may as well just cast knights of the round.

Not taking into account enemy skill materia, summons also start outdamaging regular damage spells as early as Kujata (Sleeping forest). Main problem is the 1/3rd damage penalty that linking magic materia with all materia has, and MP cost quickly becomes irrelevant once you can stock up a decent amount of tents or turbo ethers.

[Kaldarasha]

The  balance issue is because they haven't planed the materia system as it is right now. There are so many lose ends in this game. The Soldier class isn't well implemented and the Chocobo breeding isn't as they explained it (so I haven't seen any colored chocobos in the wilderness after I released one from my stable).
What we have is a polished up version of the setup system they used to test the job classes. It's very likely that enemyskills were meant for Red XIII (Cait Sith maybe too). The game would make even more sense with Job Class Materia,  becausre you would use the abilities of a Cetra or Cetras.

[Bosola]

What we have is a polished up version of the setup system they used to test the job classes. It's very likely that enemyskills were meant for Red XIII (Cait Sith maybe too). The game would make even more sense with Job Class Materia, because you would use the abilities of a Cetra or Cetras.

That's a really interesting idea: that the original plan was to have materia bound to archetypal character classes. Where did you hear that?