All of this stuff keeps making me wish I could hack the game into doing a solo campaign for the game. I mean, once you get into high eighties, low nineties, everything is still shit in comparison to any of the characters. Whatever it is, it gets curb-stomped. I actually think it's kinda funny how Queen Zeal, who's supposed to be Lavos' lackey, is harder to beat than he is. A one-on-one between Magus and her would be very meaningful, not to mention difficult, even if he had ** level or something.
I actually remember seeing on YouTube at one point this guy who hacked into CT and did a mano-e-mano thing between him and Lavos, and he actually did pretty good. Again, also hacked it to have max stats and a healthy supply of Elixirs, but I don't think he had to use them all that much. The Doom Sickle was pretty nuts on damage, especially since it was just one person, and since the game wouldn't normally be able to have only Magus on his own, it registered that the other two were "dead," which gave his a serious boost in damage. Kinda chaeting on that part, but meh.
As for the offense, yeah, she'd have a terrible time with that. In the DS, she gets a bow called the Venus Bow, which is a guaranteed 777 damage on each hit. As long as you kept her health up, you wouldn't have to worry too much about consistency, it would just be that the rate of damage would be amazingly sluggish. I hear you on that, at least. Magus can at least whip out a thousand damage (roughly) with a physical hit, and I've got his Dark Matter doing well over 3000 now. He would just fry Lavos, even if he's not at ** yet.
I do find it funny that Glenn is supposed to be Magus' rival. I can hardly get Glenn to do 1000 on a critical, even with the Masamune (II), whereas with Magus + Dreamreaper, his crits do anywhere from 3200-4000, with the x4 critical damage.
Even with that grade of equipment though, I still think that Crono is amazingly powerful, even compared to someone like Ayla, who does just as much, if not more, than Crono physically. He's like Magus backwards, but if you were to also give a hefty boost to his Magic as well, which I've done with just about all of the Magic Tabs/Capsules that I find. Crono's magic is right around the low nineties now, and he does over 6000 with Luminaire. Very scary damage. The only thing that Magus has had over him is that his Magic stats max out very early, long before even Lucca's, and that's kinda become a moot point now. As I said before though, he's just a touch faster than Crono, and even then I've seen Crono get the jump on him as well.
I think the reason why people find Magus so great is because of his significance in the storyline. Sure, he's still able to keep up with the rest of the crew in battle, but he's still not all that great in-game. Better fighters exist elsewhere, although he's still not all that bad. Not a team player, though. But with how big of a part he plays in the narrative part of the story, having him on your team is kinda gratifying. It would be like if you could have had Golbez on your team in FFIV, even if it's as late in the game as the end of the Giant of Babil. Magus comes in late himself, just about as late by scale as when Golbez's mind is freed, since by then it was perfectly canon to go and beat Lavos at that point (almost, actually, since you still have to resurrect Crono). His relation to Schala, who happens to be the character that everyone likes the most, simply adds more to his charm, and how he interacts with other characters makes him seem like so much more. He's an anti-hero, which really stands out from the rest of the group, and it makes the idea of having someone to add to the group's diversity all the more attractive.
