For my tastes I hate the GBA versions on 1&2 because all the extras makes them stray to far from the original feeling of the game. Especially FF1 GBA sure the INT stat works in that version and every spell and weapon type but they screwed it over in other ways. For instance in FF1 the Black Wizard was the only character that could cast Flare/NUKE and the White Wizard was the only one that could cast Holy/Fade but in DoS any class can use a item that casts those in battle ie Judgment Staff etc. Whats more is that instead of balancing the game to where magic and physicals are the same strength in battle but in different ways DoS FF1 added even more powerful weapons for the Knights to outclass the Mages magic in that case they should have added the spell Ultima to FF1 DoS and make it ignore def and have a effect where it does 3x damage to all enemy types etc.


In all honesty Magic that causes big explosions and actually costs the user energy to cast should always do more damage than physicals no matter what.
Logically field sized fire bombs and Thunderstorms as well as radioactive high heat blasts of non-elemental energy would be more effective than stupid idiotic sword slices.