The Shrine

Beyond the collection of Elixirs and Megalixirs, I find a lot of RPGs do not require the consumables that they give you - buying them is generally a waste of precious money. Particularly cure potions. Some franchises like Xenoblade have done away with them entirely.

I am currently playing FF7, FF8, and FFX all alongside one another. I use consumables very differently in each of them.

1. Final Fantasy 7 - aside from the occasional soft potion, if I get a Potion, an antidote, or anything, it goes into the inventory and is never used. I don’t recall ever buying any either despite wide availability. I’ll note that money is valuable in FF7, you’ll be able to usually buy the stuff you need, but there’s always accessories, materia, Gold Saucer currency, and other aspirational items (like Gold Saucer unlimited pass) you might want but can’t afford; using additional funds on consumables hurts your ability to get all the stuff you want. Rather, I acquire everything from battle drops, boxes, and theft (which I really use to see if enemies carry something of value, it’s otherwise a pointless skill since half the enemies carry nothing and most of the other half carry useless garbage that you can steal on an RNG*0.25 rate or something). One of the main reasons why I don’t use consumables is because magic is WAY better at doing the task: why spend money to heal 100 hp per potion when you can use a basic spell and heal 650 hp to all party members? FF7 also overloads players with MP, and it is easily replenished at one of the frequent beds/inns in the game. Since materia can be traded around, FF7 - aside from having characters with obscenely high MP as is, it’s actually multiple characters with obscenely high no to burn through. Another factor is magic is basically worthless to use for attacking, spells are rarely better than weapons and limit breaks; magic is useful for healing, though... and summoning during boss fights, but even then you can often only summon a creature once per battle (the game limits how often you can summon each creature depending on its materia level). You have hours worth of curing you can do with magic alone. No dungeon is particularly long either... well, they are, but encounter rates in FF7 are very low. In short, consumables are expensive and aren’t required in FF7.

As a tip for FF7 - if playing and wondering what to put in your materia slots (on weapons and armbands), white magic and summoning materia, almost all of the other materia is useless.

2. Final Fantasy 8 - changed it up a bit. Consumables have multiple uses since they can all be used for crafting/refining to magic as well as their effects. That is essentially how I used them all. Unlike FF7, I use them semi-regularly for their purposes - magic itself is a consumable, and while it is very easy to come by via refining (or drawing, if you’re a sorry sap), consumable cure potions are just as easy to come by since FF8’s income is salary based, and it’s rare to be short on money after the opening section of the game; no cash grinding in FF8! Unlike FF7, I dump most of my money into consumables. Consumables are a great source of crafting material (FF8 has two main crafting systems, one for making weapons, and another for making items and magic - and unlike say, Dragon Quest 8, the crafting system of FF8 is quick and painless). Junctioning is FF8’s alternative for equipment. Rather than getting equipment for a random set of stats, you instead junction magic to your stats to bulk them up - and it goes for effect stats and elemental resistance, etc... Usage of items in FF8 is not overly common, though, if you are as into character building as I am, you are probably so powerful that non-boss enemies don’t do enough damage. Much of the time, I turn random battles off (which you can do with a skill in game, or an actual menu option in the FF8 HD remaster). FF8 is one of the few RPGs that really changes up the typical enemy kill grind. Though, killing/carding enemies is still required to gain AP for gaining skills, there are a few hundred skills to learn in FF8. In short, I buy LOTS of consumables in FF8, but primarily use them for crafting material.

3. Final Fantasy X - I frequently stock up and frequently use consumables. The reason is the regular enemies are tougher in this game than others, and magic is not as powerful as other games. Yuna’s ability to heal 700 hp is not going to cut it. There are potions that heal 1000, and Al Behd potions can heal 1000 to everyone plus clear several status ailments. Consumables in FFX are simply kickass, and that’s why I use a lot in this game. Also, on the Switch version they’ve added extra menu options with touch screen gestures, so if playing in handheld mode you have access to “heal all via magic” and “heal all via items” which makes using potions to heal everyone a very painless task (as opposed to the original version of Final Fantasy II on SNES that kicked you out of the menu each time you used ONE potion).. I have found myself restocking on 0 to 99 basic potions multiple times. Using consumables is also not rare in battle. Unlike other RPGs, money in FFX is not so precious that you need to save every penny to get the next set of equipment. In FFX most equipment is acquired from random enemy drops, and Rikku has a customize skill to build it up using items dropped in battle or stolen - and Stealing is actually useful in FFX, it is 100% on the first attempt (sometimes you get 2 or 3X of an item in one Steal attempt), something like 50-100% on the second, and so on. You can steal multiple times from all enemies; I generally have my two thieves (Rikku and Kimahri) steal from every enemy every battle. In short, FFX is one of the few RPGs I have ever come across where I regularly use consumable items.

In short:
FFX - I use them frequently for their effects. Magic is insufficient to handle healing alone.
FF8 - I use every single one I get for refining/crafting, and semi-occasionally for their effects.
FF7 - They collect virtual dust in my inventory as an over abundance of magic points serves the purpose.

HP Potions last until you get to mana
Ether is valuable until your mana pool is too large for it to matter between dungeons
Elixirs are for when you have end game mana needs and spells take 1/3 of your maxed out mana bar.

Rule is pretty universal for all RPGs that I've played heh

That's true. Most games function more or less like FF7: consumables are available for the course of the game but are useless after the beginning. FF8 only keeps them valuable by making all consumables multi-purpose, so in FF8's case, they're not really consumables so much as crafting material. FFX is exceptional in how it makes consumables valuable, that is some excellent balancing.

Later games, like the Xenoblade Chronicles series, do away with consumables. Xenoblade expands on FFX's drop/Rikku custom system by making it far more robust. Also, instead of customizing permanent skills, the player crafts skill gems that can be junctioned to weapons and armour like materia traded around too. Instead of leveling it up, though, you craft new and improved gems as the game progresses. It's not surprising that Xenoblade has some of these systems from the FF series, though; much of the team worked on FF7, 8, and X - and Tetsuya Takahashi was one of the leading designers at Squaresoft.