Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth can be a difficult journey, with tough battles and complex puzzles awaiting keen players. While any challenge can be solved with some deep thought and reflection, those looking to get a head start on their adventures may like some gameplay tips to speed the race through Nibelheim, Corel, The Gold Saucer, and beyond.
There’s so much to see and do in Rebirth, with plenty of main quests, side quests, fetch quests, mini-games, and more to indulge in. It’s got a rapid clip of story beats, and plenty of distractions on the way, so it’s hard to know what to tackle, and how best to approach the game.
To that end, here’s a bunch of spoiler-free gameplay tips to ensure you’re making the most of your time with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
This guide was prepared with an early review code provided by Square Enix.
Table of Contents
1. Take your time in the opening levels
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is not a linear game. Once you complete its opening moments, you’ll enter a much wider open world, with massive biomes available to explore and plenty of intel to uncover. While the story moves at a rapid pace, it’s best to take your time in these opening spaces, and explore as widely as possible.
For one thing, the game’s opening areas are incredibly pretty – but for another thing, you’ll be able to level up easier if you’ve taken the time to gather intel, strengthened your materia, and improved each of your fighters.
You will also reach a certain point in the game where you can’t actually return to these open plains, so it’s best to explore them as they appear, to ensure you’re best prepared for your upcoming battles.
2. You can fast travel through certain locations
It might have been a dialogue box or conversation I missed, but Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth seemingly doesn’t make a big deal about its fast travel system – to the point where you may not realise you can fast travel through certain locations, like the massive open plains of Junon and Corel.
Don’t waste time running across the entire map – if you need to get between areas fast, you can call up the main map, and fast travel to a range of destinations, including major cities.
3. Level up all your companions equally
As you journey in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, you’ll gain experience points for each of your main companions. While it’s tempting to focus only on your favourites and always take them with you on your journey, Rebirth forces you to change up your party on multiple occasions.
Sometimes, you will need to control alternate parties or play as characters other than Cloud – so it’s best to ensure everyone in your crew gets equal attention, and that you’re consistently investing their experience points into good skills (free MP spells, extra HP, extra damage, and extra defence) by visiting Maghnata Automat machines in each village.
4. Do plenty of side quests for emotional levity
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth gets fairly dark in parts, but luckily there is an answer to this tension in the form of lovely little side quests. While it’s not essential, Rebirth does encourage you to spend time off the beaten path. Taking on side quests is a great way to inject the story with a lighter heart.
As you travel, keep ticking off story quests, but make time to grab those side quests from village noticeboards, and explore everything they have to offer. There’s some real gems in the bunch, and they’re well worth playing through.
5. Master Queen’s Blood with these tips
Queen’s Blood is a new mini-game introduced in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and it’s an absolute pain to master, as the hands-on tutorial is fairly light on detail, and it doesn’t cover key strategy. While it’s not so much an issue in the early part of the game, you will hit a particular segment in the story where mastering Queen’s Blood is essential.
My first tip is this: when you first encounter a game of Queen’s Blood and opportunity to play against other players, you should take it. These encounters will help to hone your skills, and will also let you gather handy cards to fit into your deck. The standard deck is well-stacked for strategy, but having more powerful, high value cards up your sleeve can help you pull off wicked moves.
As for how to actually play Queen’s Blood, you first need to know one thing: final scores are calculated line-by-line, so it’s best to focus on your card placement in each row, and ensure you block your enemy from gaining an early advantage.
Here’s a few quick tips that should help along the way:
- Focus on your side of the playing board first, and ensure your enemy doesn’t start claiming those middle cards slots. If they start moving into your territory, consider giving up the match – it may be too late to recover your play.
- Sometimes, you’ll need to sacrifice rows to ensure you maintain a winning advantage in other rows.
- An equal score in a row will mean no points for either side – and you should consider this a key strategy in levelling the playing field.
- Ensure you have a good mix of one and two peg cards in your hand. Three peg cards are less valuable and can only be deployed in rarer circumstances, so feel free to ignore them if they don’t align with your strategy.
- Only deploy high-scoring monsters when you know you can win your chosen row. Otherwise, you may waste their value total.
Keep these in mind, and you’ll get the hang of Queen’s Blood eventually.
6. Use Assess to find enemy weakness, or use your eyes
In battle, you can typically use the Assess ability to gain insight into the weaknesses of your enemies – but this does waste valuable opportunities for special attacks. Rather than casting Assess, it’s usually better to use your eyes and judgement. For example, if you see a metal-based enemy, their weakness is usually electricity. Green, grassy enemies hate fire. Enemies with icicles hate fire.
I mention this as there’s a specific battle towards the end of the game where colour is an important factor in victory – so keep it in mind. While you can certainly use Assess for trickier enemies, sometimes logic will do just as well.
7. The perfect party formula is Cloud + Healing + Range
You can choose whoever you’d like to take into battle in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth – but your party should be balanced. For the best results, I’d recommend going with Cloud, plus Aerith and Barret/Yuffie depending on your preferences.
My reasoning for this is: you need Cloud for his attack power, you need Aerith for her healing Limit, and you need Barret or Yuffie for their ranged attacks. You’ll often be fighting flying enemies, so at least one person on your party needs to be able to reach them.
Tifa is great. Everybody loves Tifa. But in my time with the game, I found her a less dynamic fighter than the rest, as she’s largely limited to ground-based moves, and her strength doesn’t make up the difference. Sorry, Tifa.
8. Constantly check the power of your acquired weapons
You’ll often stumble across new weapons as you journey in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It’s a good idea to check their power as you find them, as they’ll often be more powerful than your current equipment. While changing out Cloud’s iconic Buster Sword does feel disappointing, it’s necessary to ensure you’ve got the best weapons on board, and you’re making the most of your potential.
9. Follow the birds for hidden secrets
As you run through the open areas of Junon, Corel, and beyond, you’ll often see strange, magical birds flying around. While they’re very cute, that’s not their only purpose – if you follow them, they’ll reveal hidden discoveries on your map, including special treasures.
While you’ll often find these birds in the process of completing one quest or another, let them distract you. Sometimes, you can find very high level items if you pay attention to where they’re flying.
10. Save your gil for healing potions
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has a ramping difficulty curve, with endgame battles being fairly long and arduous. To survive, you will need healing potions – a lot of them. And you can only get healing potions if you save your gil.
In my time with Rebirth, I never found a particularly compelling need to spend all my gil. Most purchasable equipment, weapons, and items can be found for free by doing side quests and exploring, so there’s no real need to burn cash.
Instead, you should save it for purchasing Hi-Potions, Mega-Potions, and Giga-Potions for later in the game. In the pinch of battle, they’ll save you a bunch of time, and help you fight on.
11. Pace yourself
This harkens back to my first tip: take your time. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a much larger and more robust game than its predecessor, with plenty more side quests and activities to enjoy. It’s also emotionally deeper, higher-staked, and infinitely more stressful if you’re rushing to the end of the game.
While it’s tempting to blast through the entire story in preparation for the conclusion of the modern Final Fantasy 7 trilogy, there’s still a long time to wait until this chapter. Take your time with Rebirth. Savour every moment. Make sure you enjoy the journey before it’s over.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches for PS5 on 29 February 2024.
