Society said:
:lol It is not horrible. It aims to mimic reality, and succeeds. The system also gives a positive moral lesson. I wish it would be used in a lot more games, the potential far exceeds the purpose in FF2.
Firstly, it depends on which version we're talking about here.
FFIIj NES was a mess of a game, and barely playable, even by standards back then. FFIIj Origins is a bit better balanced, but still hellishly broken and laborous. Playing it a second time will likely never cross my mind. As for FFIIj GBA, it seems to be the best version so far from what I've heard, but I have yet to play it myself.
But regardless, if you like that style of character development, you'll be happy to know that there are many other games that have used this method, only they do it
much, much better. Final Fantasy Legends, Romancing SaGa, SaGa Frontier, Chrono Cross, Morrowind, etc etc. They all have the same method of growth, skills increasing with use, health/vitality (or armor in Morrowind) increasing with damage taken, and so on.
And the reason I say they do it much better? Because they have a little thing called "balancing." FFIIj has never heard of the word, which is likely why you have HP in the thousands, and get handed a 4th character with a couple hundred HP; or why the best way to increase your HP is to hit yourself; or why you're late in the game, killing things in 1 hit, then next battle 10 steps later you get wiped out in a single turn; or why magic is hellishly underpowered compared to melee attacks in the end (mainly due to growth rate); or why the last boss is actually *easier* than most bosses thanks to a debuff & weak attack loop pattern he falls into halfway into the battle... I could go on, but you get the idea.
It really is the worst implementation of that growth style that I've ever seen.