Upgrading Weapons
In conjunction with Materia, upgrading the weapons that your characters use is the other big way you define how effective they are in combat. Initially, it seemed reminiscent of Final Fantasy X’s labyrinthine Sphere Grid, but it’s actually pretty straightforward.
While the build possibilities that the different weapons represent are interesting, there isn’t any real reason to experiment with them once you understand how it all works. Cloud is always going to be a better physical attacker than a magic-user (because of his base stat distribution), so why build him as a mage?
Maybe I’m just not imaginative enough, but the upgrade path of the iconic Buster Blade that Cloud begins with was more than sufficient to deal with the game’s toughest challenges. You only really need to swap to a new weapon to learn its associated special ability, and the entires system felt like it was kind of half-baked.
