Nope, her stats suck ass too, especially when you try to naturally max her out and you notice that she just gets a +1 growth in everything while everyone else excels post Level 70. Rosa's only virtue of being in the final 5 is being Cecil and Kain's love interest and being the only good white mage there because Cecil sucks at studying and Rydia "forgot" White Magic. That's really her only claim to fame. Especially in the After Years compared to Porom. Lower Spir and MP, but she's a better attacker? Why would I use her as an attacker? Other people can equip Bows, so... *shrug* Even Porom can learn Dualcast in TAY and Rosa can't.
The only way to stat max her actually decently in via a few playthroughs in the DS version. And even in that version, she is always the most difficult character to stat max because of similar issues. Outside of that, if the party is malleable in end-game, I just take her out. Porom has a higher Spir than she does at the cost of just one Spd at even just Lv 70.
But hey man, Cecil leaves Rosa behind cuz she's sick in the interlude because he ain't got time for that.
At least Aeris is useful because she was basically planned as a Geomancer and that's what she does with her limit breaks and she was a more useful white mage based on a raw magic stat. Though to be fair, stats are completely negligible in FF7 anyway (especially since it's easy and E. Skill can break the game).
It isn't just that Rosa's a shitty character. Her stats are just weird.
At least Vanille was a great debuffer and black mage, and Lightning was all-around balanced (and even then, I didn't even use her and stuck to a party of Fang/Vanille/Hope until very last post-game when Hope's vitality deficiencies were a bit of a hindrance).
Yeah but you know I don't analyze stuff like stat growths. In FF4 proper she was free to suck as she pleased because she was a White Mage and Lord knows nobody else could pick up her slack.
Actually, that's a problem I have with the Paladin class in FF4. It's sort of a huge let-down compared to Dark Knight, which can shoot gosh darn HP powered sword beams. Paladin just has level 2 white magic. Where's its sword beams? This is why I prefered Agrias and Orlandeau's take on the class.
Then again, in 4DS Paladin Cecil with Darkness and Focus x4 dealt more damage than even Rydia with her broken Bahamut spell. Which was good, since Proto-Babil had OHKO Party wide attacks for his BASIC moves!
But my point was just that, as far as character goes in the story, Rosa is just bland. When you have women in this series like, I dunno, all the women in Dirge of Cerberus, Rosa sorta pales. She's like a character from Mystic Quest. You can't really hate her for being flat when you know there are women who out and out suck. Well, I mean, you can hate her for being flat, especially since Porom and Rydia have much more personality than her, but at least she's not offensively bad.