By default, offensive Synergy Skills are set to square and triangle, whereas defensive skills map to X and circle. But you can also remap them at will. Get used to them early, and use them often.
Don’t Buy Weapons
It may be tempting to grind for enough Gil to buy the Sleek Sword from Kalm’s store for 3,000. But all weapons available for sale in stores can be found inside a purple chest in the game. In the case of the Sleek Sword, it’ll be at the Abandoned Dock in the Grasslands. If you’ve already got the sword, you’ll get a modest amount of Gil instead.
Generally speaking, if you’re thorough in your exploration, you should never need to buy any weapons.
Pay Attention to the “New” Dot
If you have a new Weapon Ability that you’ve yet to master on a character or a recently unlocked Synergy Skill or Synergy Ability, it’ll appear in your Command Menu with a little dot on the bottom-left of the rectangle. While easy to overlook, this is a universal indication that you should use this action ASAP and, in the case of Weapon Abilities, as often as possible.
Synergy Skills and Abilities will improve Cloud’s relationship with that character, and using a Weapon Ability more puts that character on the fast track to mastering it.
Swap Members in the Field If You’re Low on Healing
You can very quickly change your party members in the field by bringing up the command menu and pressing R1 and L1 to toggle between your three pre-made party makeups. This is a good way to quickly swap out a party member with low health or MP in favor of a fresh one and avoid having to use an item or healing spell.
Fully Equip Your Entire Team
Experience and AP apply to everyone in your wider team, even the members not in your active party — except for when certain characters get separated for story moments. Make sure that every character has whichever weapon has the most Materia slots and a decent piece of armor so they can help level up Materia with the AP accrued.
Those other party members can also still use Healing Materia between battles, which frees up MP for your active party members.
Visit the Grey Areas
As you explore every open-world section of the game, you’ll gradually unlock more pieces of Intel for Chadley. If you’ve completed everything available and there are still some grey areas on the map, be sure to explore them anyway on your Chocobo. More often than not, this is either an area where you can have your Chocobo dig for treasure, or it’s a Cache Location with some worthwhile loot.
Elemental Abilities Also Boost Materia Attacks
The main benefit of elemental ability Skill Cores in the Folios progression menu is to give characters access to elemental attacks even without the use of Materia, but it’s easy to overlook the little tidbit at the end of each node’s description explaining that learning these abilities also strengthens Materia spells of that same type.
Elemental Abilities Have Different Variations
Each character has access to a different elemental ability, and each variation comes with a unique “Effect” that should influence when and how you use them. Here’s a breakdown of the different Wind abilities that your starting party can unlock:
- Wind Current (Chain Attack) – Unlockable by Cloud, Red XIII
- Gale Impulse (Guaranteed Hit) – Unlockable by Barret, Tifa
- Jet Stream (Wide Range) – Unlockable by Aerith
Each of Tifa and Barret’s is a Guaranteed Hit, whereas Aerith’s all have a Wide Range. Cloud and Red XIII both get Chain Attack variations. It’s worth taking a close look at the animations and effects of each to integrate them into your combat flow more effectively.
Always Use Tifa During Stagger
Tifa is the only character who can increase the damage multiplier when an enemy is Staggered, and it’s all about her Chi levels and use of Unbridled Strength. Activating the buff once allows her to use Omnistrike with the triangle button and Rise and Fall if you use Unbridled Strength a second time.
Hitting Staggered foes with Rise and Fall, Omnistrike, and Whirling Uppercut increases the damage multiplier, so it’s useful to begin a Stagger phase with three levels of Chi for Tifa. Then you can dish out all three advanced techniques in quick succession. She also has Weapon Skills that can boost these maneuvers like Utterly Unbridled Strength which boosts attack power by 5% at Chi level 1 and 10% at Chi level 2.