Materia

I think you can easily separate your favorite thing from the best thing. My favorite band ever is Styx, but are they the best band that has ever played music? No, they aren't. My favorite football team is the Dallas Cowboys, and that certainly proves that point. My favorite Final Fantasy is 10, but we all know that 7 is the greatest role playing game ever made, and I think the nucleus of that awesomeness is the materia system.

Think about where role playing games were in the mid 90's. Patience was mandatory, grinding, trial and error, the life of an RPG fan before the Playstation was a frustrating one. I was one of those kids, obsessed with 8 and 16-bit fantasy adventures, and even though they showed my developing brain no mercy whatsoever, I knew how much more satisfying they were compared to Contra and NBA Jam. I was playing Phantasy Star 4, and Secret of Mana, getting my ass kicked but also experiencing the first game generation that was really presenting novel-complex stories. FF7 definitely expanded the idea that a game's narrative can be long, detailed, and rich, but Square also gave us a different type of difficulty. FF7 is hard, and if you take on all the optional challenges, extremely hard, but what the materia system offered gave the player unprecedented control over their team to tackle these difficult tasks.

Ruby weapon is as hard as any boss fight in any game. However, getting tentacle raped by Ruby inspired creativity instead of pity. You reloaded your save, then tooled around with your materia set-up before challenging the boss again. While the materia system has been directly ripped off by a few, it has been subtly copied by dozens. The control you have in modern RPG's, the complete customization and extremely detailed party building minutia that you have these days are, in my mind, a direct result of the Playstation Final Fantasy revolution. You may have a different Final Fantasy that you call your favorite, but when it comes to sheer importance and impact on the gaming industry, FF7 will forever be the greatest.

Look familiar?