LogFAQs > #972614441

All the way from FF1 through 9 in my playthroughs, this is a problem i've had in most games. If I have to spend like, 7 mp to do equal or lesser damage as a character normally attacking one target, and my character has 50-100 mp, and ethers are kinda rare, then I just don't even bother. Getting Fira which does decent damage but costs 22 mp while I only have 100 total also makes that basically unusable.

Unless I'm getting to the point that my character is clearing the entire field with a cast like that which dramatically speeds up battle time, or they have enough MP that I can spam without much fear, I'll just not bother using magic at all. They aren't contributing much and then have no resources if a situation happens where I actually want them to do something - so most of the time they just do nothing. An unfortunate position most FF games have had.

For some examples - I thought magic was garbage in FF7 generally - but Enemy Skill was super good with things like Matra Magic, Trine, and Beta sweeping fields for reasonable MP costs for when you have them. In FF6, Strago Magus's Aqua Breath was super good while regular magic was not much use until late game.

Quina's Aqua Breath is good but, but just like regular magic, the MP cost makes it a bit out of reach.