Summon selection

[Inner Sight]

How do I specify which summon I want?

Like say I have one character holding Ifrit's materia, and one character holding Shiva's. Is there anything I need to do to specifically pick Shiva to summon?

So far in battle I never have a selection of summons to pull out. One character can just summon theirs while the others cannot.

[Xelane]

Your options for summoning are based on who you are controlling. If Cloud has Ifrit equipped and Tifa has Shiva, you have to be controlling Cloud to summon Ifrit or Tifa for Shiva.

You also can only summon once in a battle.

And also some summons (particularly larger ones) cannot be summoned in some battles (For example, some summons will not work in the fight against the Hunstman mini-boss near the start of the game.

[Inner Sight]

that ain't it. cloud has Shiva. Aerith has chocobo. I always control cloud, but it's always chocobo.

[Mako]

Nope. The above answer is correct. Characters can only use equiped summons. If Aerith has chocobo she is the only one who can spend ATB bar segment to summon chocobo. You dont have to be controlling her directly, with LT/RT you can give commands to other characters.

Pay attention to who actually gets summon command. When sommon gauge is filled every character with equiped summon materia in your party can summon, but only if their summon isnt too big for current location. If Cloud doesnt get summon command this just means Ifrit needs more space to be summoned.

[Xengre]

As the prior mentioned, bar simply not having enough ATB to even summon them to begin with, the fighting location must be physically large enough to summon larger summons like Ifrit and Shiva. Choco/Mog requires a much smaller area. This is a huge reason why Bahamut and Levaithan don't get a lot of practical use in the game due to needing massive locations.

[Inner Sight]

Ohhh. Maybe it's the size thing then.

When I said "it's always Chocobo" I meant the chocobo was the only one available to summon.

I guess a smart move then would be to have a small, medium, and large size summon available for different sized areas. Though honestly there probably aren't many small areas with enemies tough enough to warrant the use of a summon.

Anyway, thank you! I think I understand now.