Embarking on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s sprawling adventure can feel overwhelming, but mastering a few key beginner tips will give you the edge needed to thrive. From exploiting enemy weaknesses with Assess Materia to unlocking powerful Synergy abilities and exploring at your own pace, these essential strategies will transform your journey into an unforgettable experience on both PC and PlayStation.
Some fights can be tough and some of the side content can be annoying, but it’s important to think of Rebirth as a marathon, rather than a sprint. With all there is to do, we gathered up some tips that we wish we knew when starting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
Whether you’re coming straight from Final Fantasy 7 Remake or if you played it on launch (four years ago!), these tips will help you figure out how to get your groove in Rebirth.
Diversify your party
Diversify your party to maximize your effectiveness in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Each character brings unique weapons, abilities, and elemental magic to the table, so equipping a variety of Materia and rotating party members in battle allows you to exploit enemy weaknesses and adapt to different combat scenarios. This approach not only helps in staggering foes more efficiently but also ensures you can utilize powerful Synergy skills and Limit Breaks strategically. Keeping a balanced team with different elemental coverage and weapon proficiencies is key to overcoming tougher enemies and making the most of the game’s combat system.
Right away, you’ll want to set your party to have at least one character who can easily attack airborne enemies. Barret will make quick work of flying enemies early on, and Yuffie can too (once she joins your party). Aerith can also help with flying foes, but Yuffie and Barret do a significantly better job on the offensive front. You can also launch Cloud and Tifa up to the sky using specific abilities, though it’s just easier to simply have a character that can handle the airborne stuff quickly.
There’s also several parts of the game where you have to play as specific characters, so you definitely won’t want to keep anyone on the bench too much. The more you play with everyone in your party, the better you’ll be at knowing how they work.
Keep switching party members in battle, too
Switching party members frequently during battle in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is highly recommended to maximize combat efficiency. You can swap between any of the three active party members at any time, allowing you to adapt to different enemy types and situations quickly. This tactic helps you take down enemies faster and keeps your team’s ATB gauges charging efficiently, as the characters not controlled still perform basic actions but fill their ATB more slowly. Additionally, using character-specific abilities at the right moments by switching can significantly enhance your battle strategy. For example, Barret’s powerful Overcharge ability is ready at the start of every fight, so swapping to him early and often can give you an edge. Get used to cycling through your characters fluidly to maintain pressure on enemies and respond to the flow of battle effectively.
It may be tempting to just keep hacking and slashing as Cloud, but without specific materia, your party members aren’t very smart – they won’t use their special abilities on their own, so you need to swap and do it for them. Plus, switching to other party members helps charge their ATB gauge faster.
If you want to use powerful Synergy Abilities (which you should), you have to utilize your other party members and their skills first. After expending their ATB gauge numerous times, you’ll be able to unleash these strong skills that do lots of damage or offer helpful support.
Pick up everything, and actually use the crafting system
Picking up everything you find and actively using the crafting system in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is essential for a smooth journey. As you explore the vast open world, gather all materials you come across-these are key to crafting useful items like potions, armor, and accessories without spending Gil. The Item Transmuter, given early in the game, allows you to craft a wide variety of consumables and gear, and crafting each new item grants craftsmanship experience, unlocking more recipes and better equipment. Regularly crafting items not only keeps your inventory manageable but also strengthens your party by providing powerful healing items and upgrades that are crucial for tougher battles. Neglecting this system means missing out on valuable resources and enhancements, so make it a habit to pick up and craft everything to maximize your effectiveness in the game.
It’s easy to ignore your item transmuter, the crafting system in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but there’s no harm in just picking up everything that you walk over and using it to craft extra gear and potions. Your inventory for resources is essentially unlimited. (You can carry 99 of any resource.)
You don’t have to go out of your way to find stuff, but you should get into the habit of picking every single resource you get, and crafting new items in the item transmuter.
Quite a few side quests will additionally force you to attain a certain crafting level in order to proceed, so staying on top of your crafting ensures you won’t get impeded by being underleveled.
Materia makes all the difference
Materia plays a crucial role in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, fundamentally shaping your combat strategy and character growth. Equipping and filling every Materia slot maximizes your AP gains and unlocks powerful spells, abilities, and passive boosts that can turn the tide of battle. The Assess Materia, in particular, is invaluable for revealing enemy weaknesses and stagger points, allowing you to exploit vulnerabilities effectively. Mastering Materia combinations and upgrading weapon proficiency alongside it will give you a significant advantage as you face tougher foes and explore the vast world of Rebirth.
You should fill up your materia slots with different orbs, even if you don’t think you’ll really use them. An empty slot is a wasted slot, because all equipped material gains AP from battles, even if they go unused.
You’ll never know when you’ll need that extra Warding materia combined with Petrify materia to avoid Petrification. (This is me telling you that you will need that linked combo at a specific point in the game. When all of your party is petrified, you get a game over, so. take this advice.)
Use your Limit Break – or lose it
Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth are powerful special moves that grant your characters invincibility frames and can turn the tide of tough battles. Each party member starts with two Limit Breaks-a level one that requires one ATB charge and a more powerful level two that requires two ATB charges. Additionally, a new level three Limit Break becomes available later in the game after advancing your character’s Folio board. It’s crucial to use Limit Breaks strategically, saving them for challenging fights, staggered enemies, or moments when bosses unleash devastating attacks. However, don’t rely solely on Limit Breaks; combining them with Synergy Abilities and stagger-building strikes often yields better results. Mastering when and how to unleash your Limits can greatly enhance your combat effectiveness in Rebirth.
If your Limit Break bar fills up towards the end of the fight and you think, “Oh, I’ll save it for the next fight,” prepare to be disappointed. Your Limit Break bar will reset every fight, so there’s no holding your Limit Break for a boss fight or for the next one. Might as well use it while you can!
Limit Breaks give temporarily immunity, but Synergy Abilities don’t
Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth grant temporary immunity frames (iframes) during their execution, allowing characters to avoid damage for a short period. In contrast, Synergy Abilities, while powerful and capable of boosting Limit Break levels or providing buffs like unlimited MP, do not provide this temporary immunity. Players should therefore use Limit Breaks strategically for invulnerability moments, whereas Synergy Abilities focus more on offensive power and support effects without granting damage immunity.
During the cool little cutscene animation that plays when activating a Limit Break, that character will be completely immune to all incoming damage. This means you can also deploy your Limit Break at key moments to avoid devastating attacks.
However, despite the fact that Synergy Abilities also trigger a brief cutscene, they do not grant any type of immunity. Your characters can and will die during a Synergy Ability, if they don’t have much health and are standing in the way of an attack.
That said, you can’t really use summons to avoid damage either. The cutscene that plays during summoning freezes the entire battle temporarily during the cast, so you’re not necessarily avoiding any damage – just putting it off until after the vignette wraps.
Assess provides more information than just elemental weaknesses
The Assess materia in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth offers far more than just revealing enemies’ elemental weaknesses. When used, it uncovers a wealth of information about foes, including their resistances, vulnerabilities, and crucially, the specific tactics needed to stagger or pressure them effectively. This means Assess helps players understand not only which elemental attacks to use but also when to interrupt enemy moves or exploit unique behaviors to gain the upper hand in battle. Additionally, once an enemy is assessed, its details are permanently recorded, allowing quick reference in future encounters, making Assess an invaluable tool for mastering combat strategy beyond simple elemental exploitation.
Some enemies just straight up have no elemental weaknesses, which means you’ll have to stagger them by using other (often very specific) means. Maybe you have to attack a certain part of their body, or perform a counter at right time. Either way, yellow text on the left side of the Assess menu will provide you with information on how to stagger enemies.
Additionally, Assessing enemies in different areas will upgrade Chadley’s combat simulator, allowing you to unlock enemy skills that you can use in battle.
Prioritize Purple chests
Prioritize opening Purple chests in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as they often contain valuable items, gear, and resources that can significantly boost your party’s capabilities early on. These chests are usually hidden or placed in less obvious locations, so thorough exploration is key. Securing these rewards early can give you a crucial advantage by enhancing your equipment and stockpiling useful materials for crafting and combat. Make sure to keep an eye out for them as you explore each region to maximize your progress and readiness for tougher challenges ahead.
If you see a purple glowing chest in the distance, you should actively try to go to it. While yellow glowing chests contain gil or items, purple chests hold new weapons in it, making them necessary to grab if you want to unlock new abilities for characters.
There are also a few minigames that reward weapons, so keep your eye out on that prize list to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Most points in the open world can be used for fast travel
In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, most points of interest in the open world can be used for fast travel, making exploration and questing much more convenient. As you explore each region, you unlock fast travel options at various landmarks such as Chocobo Stops, Remnawave Towers, and other key locations. By opening the map and selecting these discovered points, you can instantly travel to them, often with the choice to arrive on foot or on your Chocobo mount. This system significantly reduces travel time across the large open-world areas, though some story sections temporarily disable fast travel. Additionally, fast travel between regions is unlocked through specific quests and by interacting with NPCs at Chocobo ranches, sometimes requiring a small fee. Utilizing these fast travel points early on is highly recommended to streamline your journey through the game’s expansive world.
After activating towers, interacting with ziplines, scanning lifesprings, and doing just about anything that gets marked on your map, you can actually fast travel back to these areas. It’s largely helpful if you need to backtrack content you skipped, but it’s not immediately apparent at first.
You can return back to old areas throughout the game
Throughout Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, you have the ability to return to previously visited regions, allowing you to revisit old areas for exploration, side quests, or resource gathering. Early on, you can backtrack on foot, such as traveling through the Mythril Mine to reach the Grasslands. Completing specific side quests, like “Stuck in a Rut,” unlocks faster travel options such as the Chocobo carriage service, enabling instant travel between regions like the Grasslands and Junon. As you progress, additional vehicles like the buggy and the airship become available, making it easier to traverse vast distances and revisit earlier locations. After finishing the game, the chapter select feature further allows you to return to any prior chapter and area to complete unfinished content.
While there are moments of the game where fast travel will be disabled, you’ll be able to continuously return to previous areas up until the beginning of chapter 13 – in which you’ll be told that you can’t return once you start the next part. Don’t worry about putting stuff off, as you’ll always be able to go back to it (until the aforementioned final part).
The world of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is huge, but we have your back if you need help. We have a rundown of side content rewards, a breakdown of the game’s length, and even an explainer on how to plan ahead for your Gold Saucer date.
What hidden strategies can give me an edge in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Hidden Strategies to Gain an Edge in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
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Master the Evade and Parry Mechanics: Dodging lets you avoid damage entirely, but blocking (R1) is safer and reduces damage while building ATB. Perfectly timed blocks can negate all damage and sometimes stagger enemies. Cloud can parry attacks to avoid damage and gain Punisher mode buffs, making him especially effective in combat.
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Utilize Cloud’s Ranged Evasion Attack: After evading, holding the attack button lets Cloud launch a ranged strike, useful against airborne enemies that were hard to hit in the original game. Cloud can also continue aerial combos by evading repeatedly or using abilities like Triple Slash.
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Exploit Enemy Weaknesses and Stagger: Use Assess Materia to reveal enemy weaknesses and the best ways to stagger them. Exploiting vulnerabilities with elemental spells or focused attacks (e.g., Focused Thrust for Cloud) rapidly fills the stagger bar, stunning enemies and allowing for heavy damage.
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Leverage Synergy Abilities: These powerful combined attacks require building synergy gauges by using specific abilities and spells. Switching between party members during battle helps fill these gauges faster. Timing synergy attacks when enemies are staggered or when buffs like unlimited MP are needed maximizes their impact.
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Frame Dodge with Synergy Skills: Certain synergy skills, like Slip and Slide, allow frame-perfect dodging of almost all attacks, greatly enhancing survivability and pressure in fights.
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Switch Characters Frequently: Cycling through characters in combat fills their ATB faster, enabling more frequent use of special abilities and synergy moves, which is crucial for efficient battles.
These hidden mechanics and strategies deepen combat complexity and reward players who master timing, character switching, and synergy management.
How can mastering evasion and parrying improve my combat efficiency
Mastering evasion and parrying in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth significantly boosts your combat efficiency by allowing you to avoid or completely negate incoming damage while creating openings for powerful counterattacks. Evasion helps you dodge attacks entirely, preserving your health and stamina, while parrying deflects enemy strikes using their momentum against them, often leaving foes off-balance and vulnerable to follow-up attacks. Unlike blocking, which absorbs some damage, parrying can nullify damage and frees your hands to counterattack immediately, increasing your offensive opportunities. Perfectly timed parries can stagger enemies, breaking their defense and enabling devastating combos. Additionally, effective evasion and parrying conserve your resources and stamina, letting you maintain pressure without risking heavy damage. This combination of defense and offense makes your combat more fluid, strategic, and rewarding.
