Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

• Most of the gameplay tips from Final Fantasy VII Remake still apply.

• There is an upgrade weapon screen in the menu, but weapons upgrade automatically. The only thing you have control of is weapon skills.

• Materia equipped to back-liners get AP, but only if they are available, so open world yes, locked party areas and arenas no.

• The chapter select is even more feature-filled than Remake's was, so don't worry too much about missing anything.

• Auto-Cast and Auto-Weapon Ability use the ATB/MP, but Synergy does not.

• The reward for Queen's blood is more Queen's blood (and some fun scenes). It is never required for story, and mechanically only one piece of Chocobo gear and one minor accessory are locked behind it.

• Items can't be used in hard mode or most of the hardest challenges, so the item related materia are super powerful.

• Synergy skills are super useful. For example, Tifa relies on synergy skills to attack airborne opponents.

• If you forget what synergy skills do, holding block and pressing the map button (touchpad) brings up a more in depth explanation for that character.

• Holding block and changing characters teleports the new character to attack your target.

• The pacing is a lot better if you don't worry about optimizing materia until you get into a combat that actually needs it.

• There are "synergy abilities", which you need to charge up synergy points to use, and "synergy skills", which you can use whenever. Make an effort early on to incorporate synergy skills into your combat rhythm, they can actually be pretty useful. IIRC you can hit R1 + touchpad (or the equivalent on PC) during combat to remind yourself which skills are available based on who's in your party at the time.

• There are a ton of mini-games. Don't push yourself to complete every minigame the first time you see it or you might burn out. In fact, some can't be fully completed until one of the later chapters.