The combat in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is an action gamer’s dream. The mechanical depth is astounding, especially on characters like Tifa, Cloud, and Yuffie. Rebirth also expands on Remake’s systems, which is why these five combat tips will make you a better player from the get-go.
1. Make the Most of the Pressure and Stagger States
Enemy health bars, especially boss health bars, are thick in FF7 Rebirth. Regular attacks will only tickle almost every foe you face, but there are two statuses you must inflict to have tolerable boss fights: Pressured and Staggered. Normally, an enemy has two bars above their heads. The big one is their health, and the second one is their Stagger meter.
Regular attacks deal a bit of Stagger buildup, but if you exploit an enemy’s weakness or otherwise interrupt their flow, they enter the Pressured state, which effectively doubles the amount of Stagger buildup they gain. And when Staggered, enemies take a massive amount of additional damage. The Staggered state only lasts about ten seconds, so make the most of it. Save your ATB charges for your heavy attacks, use Synergy Abilities and Limit Breaks, and any other powerful attacks in your arsenal.
Be careful of one thing, though. Every boss in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has multiple phases, and each phase is health-gated, meaning that once a boss reaches a specific health value, they won’t take any more damage until the phase transition completes. In other words, if you use your Limit Break just before a phase change, it’s wasted. I always save my Limits for finishing a boss off and only use ATB abilities when their health is at or around 50%. You would be wise to do the same.
2. Assess Everything
The Assess Materia, which Cloud starts the game with, is probably the most powerful tool in all of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Using it costs a single ATB bar, but for that low price, you learn literally all of your enemy’s secrets. Their elemental weakness? Known. What puts them in Pressure? Understood. What attacks don’t work on them? Comprehended. You even get a breakdown of the rewards you’ll earn for beating the enemy, plus some in-game lore that expands your understanding of the game world.
There’s another practical reason to use Assess at every opportunity: the combat simulator. Returning from Remake, Chadley’s combat simulator now relies somewhat on you Assessing the monsters in every region you visit. Doing so unlocks new challenges, and let me tell you, the rewards for those challenges are well worth it. Most of the time, they’re hard-to-find Materia or leveled versions of more common Materia, saving you some grinding time.
3. Learn (and Learn to Use) Every ATB Ability
We have a whole guide on the best ATB abilities in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but the most important thing to know is that when you equip a new weapon, using its keyed ability increases your mastery of it. Mastering an ability adds it to that character’s move list permanently, and while a full menu of choices gets a bit cluttered, having access to some moves that are like small Limit Breaks that only cost a few ATB bars is a huge boon.
You do, of course, need ATB bars to use ATB abilities, and managing your party’s ATB is one of the most critical skills you can learn in the game. Sure, you can easily build the ATB bars of the character you control, but your two AI-controlled teammates aren’t nearly as good. Knowing how to best swap between each party member, build their meter, and use it intelligently is a skill you’ll spend most of your playthrough honing. I got pretty good at it, but sometimes still fell victim to an unfortunate lack of ATB at the exact wrong time.
4. Practice Each Character’s Gimmick
While it is technically possible to button-mash your way through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, using each character’s unique abilities makes the game so much better. Taking Cloud as an example, his Punisher mode and parry counterattack take him from “press attack to win” to a character with tons of nuance. Mastering swapping between his two modes, knowing when to counter and when to dodge, and so many other little details will make you an expert Cloud Strife player, which is good because you’ll spend a great deal of the game with him in your party.
Know also that a character’s “gimmick” can extend into their ATB commands as well. Tifa is (in)famous for being a fighting game character in an action RPG, and Rebirth leans even further into that fantasy. She has all the moves she had in Remake, plus several new options that will undoubtedly allow skilled Tifa players to extend their combos even further for even higher damage. She could already solo super bosses with no need for Materia or other outside assistance. I can’t wait to see what the pros do with her in this new title.
5. Collect a Materia Set for Each Character
I wish I’d taken this particular piece of advice, but now you can learn from my mistake: do your best to collect and level a full or mostly full set of Materia for each character in the game. There are a lot of moments in a playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth where you’ll be limited to a specific party. While you can more quickly transfer Materia from character to character via a particular menu, knowing they’re all equipped with a serviceable loadout will make progressing through the story, and the fights along the way, much more seamless.
Those are my five best combat tips for a smoother playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Not the most traditional set of strategies, but I know if I’d followed even two of these pieces of advice, I’d of had a much better time of it.
For more content on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, check out our guides hub for the game.
