Quote Originally Posted by Shougun View Post
I do want to note though that people mention big book of spells like that's a blue mage requirement but in the games where blue mages had big books often other jobs, usually multiple, had the same circumstance.
Not really. The initial BLU list in FFV had 30; every other spellcaster job had about 15 to 18 spells.

Similarly many other jobs also had gimmicky spells, like white mage reflect or casting raise on the dead. Blue mage was often wacky due to the pacing of their gimmicks and the large spread of seemingly unrelated effects with most skills having an effect beyond 'element + damage' (due to them taking monster skills).
I would not say that WHM had a gimmicky spell list. Cure and Raise reversing to do damage to/instantly kill Undead was an easy method of reducing the spell list by combining the anti-undead Dia line with the Cure spells, both of which were "holy" effects. Reflect was another defensive spell like Protect and Shell. The most gimmicky spell list of the traditional Mages was Time Mage (what with both random damage, fixed percentage damage spells and ATB influencing status effect spells) and even then those spells all followed at Space/Time theme. Blue Mage has always had weird 4th wall breaking spells.