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.

• Dodge has invulnerability frames now, though it's pretty tight and there's recovery time so it shouldn't be spammed.

• Generally for combat, block is reliable but doesn't cancel attack animations so you need to pick between block or attack, but blocked attacks do generate ATB to help compensate. Dodge will cancel some attack animations if you need something quick or if an attack is unblockable. Timed blocks (pressing block as an attack lands) has the limitations of both, but negates damage and adds stagger so it's very powerful when you can land it.

• Pressing select during combat will bring up enemy info, including weaknesses if you've used assess on them before.

• Some characters can have a separate set of ability shortcuts based on being in the air. If you want to try using them and need to get a character airborne:
  • Cloud: Dodge then press and hold the attack button.
  • Tifa: Use an offensive synergy skill
  • Yuffie: Press her special character action button while her throwing star is out and she'll be airborne while teleporting to it.

• Once a character is airborne, they can stay up there indefinitely as long as they're always either attacking or dodging. This is also good if you want to attack flying enemies as Tifa, who doesn't have a normal ranged attack.

• Menu options to be aware of:
  • Gameplay → Combo targeting. This defaults to Fixed, which means once you start a combo, every other attack in the combo chain will be locked to the same target. It can be changed to free, which lets you swap targets mid combo by tilting the stick towards them.
  • Camera → Lock On. By default, tilting the right stick while locked on swaps the target. You can change this to the D-pad, which lets you swing the camera around freely while staying locked on to whatever you're attacking.