Panzer Dragoon was also ridiculously rare and impossible to get a copy of, at least here.
Having played both, I thought the story was quite a lot different. Most of those games have the same general themes, just rehashed in a slightly different way. Some of the characters were similar (Terra and Aerith, Cloud/Zack and Celes, Kefka and Sephiroth, etc.), and both had a 'new age' sort of feel, but they had wildly varied means of getting to an end.
The graphics weren't great, but they were certainly endearing. I at least liked the way they flowed, and the cutscenes were pretty fun.
How did you not like Materia? To this day, I think it's one of my favorite customization methods, simply based on the thousands of possible combinations. Blew everything except the Job system games out of the water as far as FF goes.
The fanboys/girls do suck, though. I tend to not go gaga over the characters that are the general trend (cloud, aerith, sephiroth). I really like Nanaki, the Turks, everyone at the Golden Saucer, and Vincent (though people tend to love him).