If you’re playing the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, then read on – here’s a little guide about tips, tricks, advice, protips, everything in the kitchen sink to help you maximize your stroll around Midgard. No BS clickbait here – these are all LEGIT. Here’s the rundown. 7 Tips for FF7! Yeah, I hate to say it but this fall under “things I wish I knew”…
1 Don’t grind too much
2 Assess your enemies – literally!
3 You can “miss” some items and events!
4 Ready to Steal
5 Save often
6 Bring in the Elements
7 Finish sidequests before proceeding
Bonus tip: Combat and Customization
Don’t Grind too much
Arguably the most “human” protip on your first FF7 Remake playthrough – You don’t want to overlevel. Personally, I feel a little challenge is a great addition to the game. But, there is a more practical reason “this won’t be the only time you play through it”…
Even if you don’t read the above, trust me when I say you shouldn’t grind your way past your first FF7 Remake playthrough. For many reasons – you don’t wanna ignore this tip!
Assess your enemies – literally!
You get the Assess materia very early on in the game – and for good reason. Enemies in FF7R are wildly varied in the strategies and weaknesses needed to employ to efficiently beat them.
Assess does just that – it tells you exactly how best to deal with enemies. Elemental weaknesses and what specific strategies are effective against them. You also get information on what they drop or what you can Steal from them (more on this later!)
You also gather battle intel for Chadley – which unlocks more materia.
You can freely check enemy information (so you don’t Assess again) during a fight by pressing the touchpad in battle while targeting them.
I can’t stress this piece of advice enough – Assess enemies and gain valuable tips on defeating them! Among other useful tidbits!
You can “miss” some items and events!
There’s a lot of things you can “miss”. While there are only very few things you can totally miss out on, there are a lot of “value moves” you can skip out if you’re not particularly exploratory…
A non spoiler example would be an HP Up or Deadly Dodge materia in Ch2 – while you can get these materias freely later on, having them earlier certainly helps (plus saves you a chunk of Gil – materia ain’t cheap early on!) . Likewise, things like armor and weapons that you can get earlier than usual – again mostly a gil saving thing.
Stealing is related to this (I talk about it in the next segment). You might have not stolen an item from a boss you can’t easily revisit…
ALWAYS DO SIDEQUESTS FIRST – I guess this warrants a mention here since I talk about “missable events”. I’ll talk about it more as my final tip in this writeup but TLDR: Green quest markers should be prioritized over blue ones (as they can “disappear” for some time).
Take this tip to heart, be careful about things you can miss, as it’s the most painful to regret on… I’ll post a spoiler free walkthrough which highlights these things you can accidentally skip on, as well as “value moves”.
Ready to Steal
At Chapter 9, you get the Steal materia. Don’t worry, you don’t need to carry it around always, BUT YOU DO WANT IT ON CERTAIN FIGHTS.
How do you know when you want to steal or what item you’ll expect to get? Assess the enemy! So don’t miss out on great loot because you didn’t steal. It’s a low investment of one materia slot.
Even some “not impossible to farm, but rare” items are obtainable via stealing.
This is a potentially salty tip to ignore – Stealing helps you get some powerful and rare items, so make sure to know when and where you need it!
Save often
Earlier, I talked about missable things and stealable items you might miss. How do you prevent this? Well, SAVE OFTEN!
Missed a steal from a boss? Missed a sidequest by accidentally going on the main scenario? Missed an item, chest, or story event/discovery? Wouldn’t happen if you SAVE OFTEN!
While the game does come with a continue system that you can forcefully trigger if you want to backtrack – call me old school if I feel much better simply saving and loading.
This advice applies to all games, I suppose – so please for the love of god SAVE OFTEN. It’s worth mentioning again as an important tip for FF7R given the many time and event sensitive things you can do.
Bring in the Elements
Always, ALWAYS pack the entire elemental spell suite by default (even if it’s spread across your party). The basic elements are Fire, Ice, Thunder and Wind. Of these four, the Wind Materia is the only one initially locked behind a quest (Chadley battle intel).
You never want to be caught with your pants down (or worse, with your Materia unequipped) when you really need it. Don’t be afraid to bring all four always – and only remove / customize your loadout when facing a difficult encounter.
Some enemies in this game are a hassle without abusing weakpoints – and I highlight the need to bring the elements always because if you ignore this tip, there’s actually NOTHING you can do in battle to fix it!
Finish sidequests before proceeding
I wrote about this briefly in the “missable events” chunk above, but it’s worth mentioning again in case you glazed over it.
Prioritize sidequests over main scenario quests. Sidequests are green (and to a lesser extent discoveries which are purple). Often, sidequests can be “missed” for quite some time if you aren’t careful – once you progress past a certain point in your main scenario, some sidequests cannot be undertaken again for a while (or ever), so be vigilant!
There’s no loss (and much reward) for doing these sidequests and discoveries – all while enhancing and maximizing your FF7 Remake experience – this tip is all upside!
Bonus tip: combat and customization
This tip is essential for your success in FF7R. The good ‘ol saying know your enemy and know yourself is weirdly super applicable in this game.
It might be about staggering, pressuring, abusing elemental or strategic weak points – knowing your enemy is the first step. Assess is your best friend. Study what their moveset looks like and COUNTER IT!
How to counter it? Knowing yourself (or your parties capabilities) is the other half of the equation. Weapon/armor, upgrades, materia setup… Changing it up to tailor fit a certain challenging fight is not only rewarding, but sometimes borderline mandatory. Whether you want to customize your party loadout for quick farming, beating a very specific boss, or whatever goal you want – there are certainly things to tweak to improve your success rate and efficiency!
Experiment with all the skills, abilities and synergies – get creative!
While you might want to avoid certain extremely cheesy things (Elemental Materia on defense against certain monsters), you can customize how “strong” you want to feel playing through the game.
Knowing and practicing the various skills and synergies is well rewarded in this game. It turns fights from being a “hassle” or “impossible”, to “appropriate” or downright easy. ASSESSING YOUR ENEMIES IS THE FIRST STEP!
I’ll be making guides about party setups and such in the near future!
In closing
Quickly scroll to one of the tips:
1 Don’t grind too much
2 Assess your enemies – literally!
3 You can “miss” some items and events!
4 Ready to Steal
5 Save often
6 Bring in the Elements
7 Finish sidequests before proceeding
Bonus tip: Combat and Customization
Well that’s about it for our FF7 Remake Tips Guide – if you have any more to add, feel free to comment! What else do you think new or curious players should know about?
