Eden from FF8 useless? Not hardly! The normal maximum damage you can kick with anything in that game is 9999. Eden is capable of kicking 40,000 plus damage!
The long animation is to allow you to max out Boost, thus increasing the damage.
Well admittedly he was powerful but the way I see it, I could hit with a sword that was doing 8000 damage in a matter of seconds. If I used a limitbreak then multiply that by 10. Real time was the problem there since I could do more damge in shorter time. I've not played any others so I don't know if it's still a problem with FF games.
