Summon Spells

[JuzamDjinn]

I NEVER use these things, I just do not have the patience to sit through the animation. When magic spell, or in later game a simple "attack" will do just as much damage, and without the giant MP drain.

They are cool. I appriciate their presence, and enjoy their effect on the story. I just do not use them in battle.
Am I the only one who ignores this trademark characteristic of Final Fantasy?

[Xanatos]

Summons prove to be useful at first, but later on as characters develop you can deal the same if not more damage in less time. Animations do look amazing, but become tedious rather fast, it wouldn't be bad if there was an option to skip them, that never occurred to Square it seems.

Until they stop to be useful I use them, in other words, only for a small part of the game.

[loaf]

Summon animations are best for Regen.

[Heartless Angel]

They're nice early one, when they actually do more damage than your other abilities. Late game, I suually stop using them. Cept for Knights of the Round in VII. I also continue to use them late game in VIII, they make nice meatshields. Same goes for X.

[Dodie16]

I don't use them much either, well, except for in FF VIII. In that game, I relied on them pretty heavily, especially early on. ;P In the other games though, it's seldom that I use them. I honestly just never think of using them often in battle.

I like the idea of Loaf's regen trick! I'll have to try that out!

[Kurt Zisa]

Summons prove to be useful at first, but later on as characters develop you can deal the same if not more damage in less time. Animations do look amazing, but become tedious rather fast, it wouldn't be bad if there was an option to skip them, that never occurred to Square it seems.

Until they stop to be useful I use them, in other words, only for a small part of the game.

Same here.

Im gonna use X as an example here so....
When i started the game with Yuna i relied on her aeons to fight for her and the party (Bahamut especially) but the moment she learnt Firaga, Blizzaga etc they lost their use, pretty much, entirely. And besides you can always shorten their summoning sequence.

[SuperSabin]

Summoning = waste of time. Most of the time I'll find myself using magic for stat raisers, defense, or offense. As for the rest of the game, i'm dealing physical attacks.

[ZantetsukeN]

They are pretty useless in most FFs, but they aren't in VIII. Especially Eden, who can break the damage limit of 9999. They are very useful up until disc 3 I would say, and then they become useful again on disc 4.

In X they are quite useful up until about halfway through the game. Same for XIII. In the other games, they are kind of useless. None more so than XII I would say.

[Zidane77]

I NEVER use these things, I just do not have the patience to sit through the animation. When magic spell, or in later game a simple "attack" will do just as much damage, and without the giant MP drain.

They are cool. I appriciate their presence, and enjoy their effect on the story. I just do not use them in battle.
Am I the only one who ignores this trademark characteristic of Final Fantasy?

I thought they were very useful most of the game in FFX (until my characters became stronger than Magus Sisters). When i first played FFVIII i thought they were really useful, especially learnig abilities from them and taking damage from enemy attacks.
Didn't use them much in FFVII and almost nothing in FFXII, really sucked in that one.
IV,VI and IX i used sometimes, i was sometimes really effective.

Strong summons in IV,VI and there were alot of advantages using them in FFIX: Dagger's strongest attacks, regen and status changes from Carbuncle and Phoenix revive.
Phoenix is basically the only summon in VII i really rely on, combine master Phoenix with Final Attack materia, super effective and gives you second chance. So that one and GF's in VIII,X (super useful most of the time).