A Final Fantasy themed piece? Let alone one on the most popular one among fans? VII, you say? Oh yes! With the game having an an official on Nintendo and Microsoft consoles for the first time since the games launch, I felt this would be a fantastic time give what Id consider my most important tips, and in many ways some of the things I do in the game to get the most out of it. A few things I should note before this piece goes any further. These will not be some newbie tips that you could look up on any YouTube video, these will be very particular things I’ve done in throughout the years to not only make the game fun but also give you the best chance of being a powerhouse! Now I’am expecting a few of you are from my Twitter where I have posted numerous screenshots and tidbits of my current play through, for you guys, I will try to have some juicy stuff for you to.
Don’t use Summons
Yes, I am going there. Summons are cool, Flashy, and do a decent amount of damage early on in the game. Here is the kicker though. Your health suffers. HP is a big deal, if you don’t have a lot attacks that hurt will hurt more, and suddenly random encounters become a dice roll of life and death. Now it’s easy for me to say you take a health hit, but let me make that a bit easier to understand, you will take anywhere from a 2% hit to your health, to as high as a 15% hit to your health per summon. It’s not to say there are not ways around the penalty, many players will use HP Plus to cover up the HP loss, but here is the thing about that. ANY OTHER MATERIA COULD GO THERE. Anything serve more utility long run wise. You are better off waiting to use summons, or just not using most of them at all. A majority of Summons are Elemental based, meaning that their use is solely based on the boss, which instantly reduces their effectiveness. The last thing any player wants to do is use a summon and gamble on whether or not the Boss will negate or just straight ABSORB the damage for healing.
IF YOU MUST use Summons, use Any of the Bahamut’s(preferably just Bahamut zero), Hades, Phoenix, and/or Knights of the round. They offer the most utility, and in many cases the most damage of any other summons. Basically they are worth the hit to HP you will suffer for equipping them. Plus, you run no risk of boss resisting or straight up healing from your attack.
Know your tools
Surprisingly enough, VII offers the players A LOT of ways to play the game while not stopping you from being a klutz and selling away perfectly good pieces of gear.While not all gear is hoard worthy there are some particular pieces worth keeping. The first is special weapons, there are numerous weapons for every character, but what some players may not know is that a handful of them give more AP (Ability Points needed to level material) when used. Most common are double growth weapons for each character, these are good for the first 2/3rd s of the game, and there are TWO triple growth weapons though Id only really recommend 1 one of them (Clouds Apocalypse is the best, and Cids Scimitar which only has TWO slots on it). If you find these kind of weapons keep them, if you decide to level up your skills at any point before reaching the third disc , having them will make your life SO MUCH EASIER. (There is also a double growth armor in Bone Village that is a must grab because you can buy one for everyone on your team)
When it comes to weapons the obvious answer is to always pick the strongest ones but then you get odd examples of weapons that are stronger than what you have but have some sort of condition on them. Generally speaking , avoid them unless you are planning some goofy setup that really takes advantage of it. And i will certainly avoid high power weapons with NO slots, i’d rather have a weapon with no growth and some slots, rather than lose all my slots.
As a small side note. Don’t sell Accessories, I know many of you will scoff at the idea as many of you will stand by Ribbon being the best item, and I’d be inclined to agree with you. My reasoning is that most players will only have 1, MAYBE 2 depending on if they notice. So assuming that detail it may be wiser to keep them on the off chance you want to reduce Damage, or just absorb it. In any case, you lose nothing by holding on to them. So why throw them away?
Taste a bit of everything
When comes to starting the game try to have sets for your characters that way you will have a fairly consistent kit but outside of that try everything and start trying to get AP on things at the first chance you have. The fact is, the earlier you start the sooner you will have them mastered or much more useful (Seriously use every ALL you find, there’s no time when Something = All isn’t useful). Understandably I imagine some of you are questioning the notion of all three characters having a base load out of spells, especially when magic sap HP as well, here is the thing. you don’t feel the much burn as much with plain magic than you would having 2 or even 3 summons equip to each character. Now often time the truly cautious players will have a set of spells for every single character whether they are on the team all the time or not. I won’t deny it, that has never been something I have sought out to do but I can’t fault the effort. Just remember you only get AP for characters in the party, thankfully the game is kind of enough to keep benched characters a bit in step with the rest of the s
Materia every player should use:
Counter: let’s be real, this materia is a must, lets really put some thought about this depending on how many levels you have into it you will counter upwards of 5 different attacks per battle that’s a lot of damage you wouldn’t be doing otherwise. This is almost a requirement for anyone
Added Cut: This was one I never thought about till I finally got my hands on it and realized just how absurd this skill is. Whenever you would use the command you linked to it you will get an addition attack added to it.
Mug+added cut
any magic spell (nothing healing related)+added cut
Deathblow + added cut
Added Effect: This is so good, so this works by linking it to a status like spell in your weapon and you can get some nasty effects from poisoning your foes (added effect + Bio) to straight out insta killing them (added effect + destruct). The utility is such a godsend Id recommend it to anyone who wants some dirty setups
Slotted in Weapon: Added Effect + Hades (Super stuns)
(Dblow+ added cut) and (added effect + destruct)
Given that added effect is roughly 25 percent, this could be devastating paired with Vincent and one of his max accuracy weapons this is two chances at instant killing something. Really good and effective.
Enemy Skill: Some players think its a lot of hassle to grab these skills but done right you are literally holding on to skills that you otherwise would have to wait till later to have. Utility wise you have Big Guard (Which provides Wall AND Reflect), and White Wind which heals most status effects and heals the party the same amount as the casters current hp. Even if you were to put aside those two giant skills, you have a large amount of super powered skills. Beta, Trine, Aqualung, Magic Breath,and Bad Breath, every single one of these skills can make quick work of many if not ALL encounters throughout most of your journey. A small issue is that despite this being such a great tool, having one for each player is a bit of trial, there are a small assortment of skills that can be permanently missed (Trine and Shadowflare come to mind) due to the few times those skills are ever actually seen in game. So if you do decide to have Enemy skill per player, Id suggest sticking to the two utility ones and a few of the others, as those can be obtained whenever you wish to track them down.
These are just a small sample of some of the great combinations you can do, Final Fantasy VII is absolutely fantastic, for the sake of not going into spoilers, I left out any materia that’s super late game to ensure no one feels they were spoiled. If anything this stuff you are able to find within the first half of the game and without context so that’s a plus. So, grab your controllers, your Switches and a large snack and get to playing Final Fantasy VII, the world needs you!