Quote Originally Posted by Astarica View Post
Pretty sure the base/ra/ga/ja is how they always were in Final Fantasy games, but you got limited space in English. For examle FF4 you can only fit 5 letters in there and even 'Boltaga' would be too long, let along 'Thundaga'. As pointed out there's no inherent meaning to these suffixes though it's also problematic with numbers, like you'd think Fire 2 is better than Fire 1, but they're not even the same type of spell (AE versus single target). Honestly it'd have made more sense just to have unique names.
This is all extremely true. As someone who's dabbled in ROMHacks of past Final Fantasy games, trying to get the proper names in is always a pain in the ass(Seriously, just look at Midgardsormr in FFVI. That's bastard!).

And, while I also agree that it would've been better to have different names, the problem comes that they're simply localizing what's being done by the JPN side. For example, I've heard that FFXI uses the suffixes to denote what each spell does. Fire is a ST spell, Fira is PBAOE and Firaga is an AOE, IIRC? That type of design WOULD work, if the localization team had any idea of what's coming next. But even right now, it's too confusing, since it'd be Fire, Firaga, Fire 2. Just as an example.

Overall, I think the current naming scheme works, but I'll admit it does lack the flavor I'd prefer from Final Fantasy.

(then again, as far as spell names go, Final Fantasy's generally been the least creative with them. They're all basically "Yeah, this is the second level of that spell you got at the beginning of the game. Enjoy!")