Tips for fighting

[Shau]

This is one of the games where I don't know how to fight.

Playing as Tifa vs. 2 Ghosts. They appear and disappear. Tifa has 2 attack buttons, I don't really know what they are doing. X seems to be the way to get some ATB.

In the time I get Tifas ATB to 2 bars, the first bars of Cloud and Barret are 70% filled. I get hit by spells, by attacks, I don't really know what I'm doing in the battlefield.

There are 2 actions I'm confident in doing the correct thing:
Low hp? -> Casting vita if available. Dead? -> using phoenix feather

The rest of the battle is simply confusing for me. I can't even tell if a summon is useful or not.

I've tried fighting leviatan and lost. I have no idea if my lvl is high enough to beat it or if I have to grind more. Attacks deal like 2-5 damage, leviatan is teleporting around the map, keeps hitting me and my team for 400-1500 damage. What am I supposed to do? dodge, block, eat the damage? It didn't look like blocking or dodgeing work.

I don't understand how to increase the shock bar. It used to be easy in FF13, however, in FF7Remake, I don't see any way of controling it.

Tifa has like 8 different abilities, but I keep finding myself simply chosing 1 random one without knowing what to do. I can't remember a single boss fight that was fun fighting.


My question: How do you approch such a boss? Materia doesn't split when you get it to max lvl. Thus, there is only 1 materia that allows me to negate elemental damage if combined with an elemental materia. Grinding and farming seems to be quite difficult, as monsters respawn rarely.

[-|Nur|-]

The "y" attack is better for building ATB with the likes of Tifa. Guarding reduces damage rather significantly, so it's not useless. Dodging is essential against many types of attacks, but it needs to be timed right.

Increasing the stagger counter is best when the enemy is under "pressure" (it says so); there are usually specific conditions for pressuring the enemy. Specific attacks, like Cloud's Focused Thrust (which you should put under a shortcut) and Barret's Focused Shot, are very effective at increasing the counter.

[-|Nur|-]

It sounds like you need to put more effort into learning the abilities rather than just spamming them. Some are good for putting pressure on the enemy, some for building stagger (every ability that says "focused") and some for damage (starshower, triple slash, maximum fury, ray of judgment, braver). Some are more situational but extremely useful, like counterstance (use it when an enemy is about to hit you) and Aeris's Arcane Ward, which doubles any magic cast from within the ward. Even something like Fleeting Familiar can be a reliable way to build up the stagger counter during long battles.

Edit: Also note that Tifa's "y" attack (which you can level up twice with her first ATB ability) and True Strike increase the stagger percentage of a staggered enemy.

[Xengre]

Which 2 ghosts do you mean? Are you talking about the normal ghost mobs in the trainyard? I'm drawing a blank here at the moment. IIRC they shift between weak to physical and magic so you have to use the right type of damage.

If you are ever struggling with ATB of teammates in a harder fight while elemental magic + Magnify is almost always the best option against rash mobs in harder fights (primary bosses) Haste + Magnify is almost always the best option. This is because of a few reasons. Haste dramatically improves ATB gain for AI characters without swapping to them (also true in Yuffie's story). Enemies almost exclusively target the controlled character so unless you are doing a ton of consistent long duration swapping only one character will usually get attacked so you don't need Magnify + Wall or Restore as using it just on the one character is almost always enough. Further, Prayer (which outclasses Restore when mastered anyways) is automatically AoE and its a very good idea to have it on two characters (almost always Aerith when available and then Tifa or Barrett for whichever has the better magic stat... I often put it on Barrett if Aerith isn't available since it means he will be in party and I have him build for hybrid and tanky which leaves him with a solid magic stat and he not only tends to have ATB to spare unlike Tifa but has the fastest ATB burst buildup in the game... I also put Chakra on him for cheaper huge self heals). I'd classify Haste + Magnify as borderline overpowered even. Try it if you haven't.

Summons are, unfortunately, typically not useful like in the original FF7 game. They're underpowered as ATB character actions are often more effective uses of your ATB bar. A slight exception is Carbuncle if you are losing (or want a free full heal/revive on hard) as Carbuncle is small and thus works in any map due to size while also being a total reset with its auto-life and full party heal (excluding MP). You just summon it and then play not using any more ATB on it. It will cast random unreliable but still beneficial buffs on you, too.

Here is my advice for Levaithan. Equip a gun on Barrett. Control Barrett. Make sure Barrett has Chakra materia as leveled as possible and equipped and build him for tanky/physical dmg weapons, armor, accessories. Throw on several HP Plus if its too early so you can get your HP as high as possible. Also put Magnify + Haste if you can fit on him (else put it on someone else as it will at least slightly speed up the battle even if the AI can't always maintain it constantly). Your main focus is having Barrett sit far away from the other two characters and away from the boss. Due to the enemy targeting "controlled player" tip I mentioned prior it will mostly ignore Tifa and Cloud who are in melee range at it. Barrett has absurd HP (easily hits 9999 even in NG even without maxing HP Plus materia) plus high defensive stats and has skills that further reduce dmg he takes, dmg allies takes, and recovers some of the health he loses when damaged automatically and is also a prime candidate for Chakra as it recovers a portion of his missing massive health pool. Less time healing = more time dealing dps. Less time traveling because you have a range basic attack via gun = more DPS. Just spam your special attack, normal attack, and when you don't need to heal your ranged DPS skills. When the other two have ATB up you can setup some damage burst as necessary but they're less important. You can do this at low level for an easy win.

You mean the stagger bar? You increase it with skills that cause stagger (read the skill descriptions or check the character's wiki pages and abilities section for a breakdown, esp tifas as there are a ton of nuances... just google "FF7 remake tifa" if you want). Tifa builds stagger the best and is also the key source of over dmg bonus, though Cloud and others have abilities that can increase stagger some a well. I'd focus on Tifa's ability to increase dmg bonus and her staggering, personally, but she has more than that I just don't primarily play her and thus mainly use her as an efficiency enhancement support. You could probably even just YouTube a Tifa guide if you really want an easy breakdown that is visual and audio based.

Elemental materia there are two in the game but the 2nd is only in NG+ iirc. The 2nd is also virtually worthless though because as mentioned the AI targets almost exclusively the controlled character so put it on the character you will control and use it only defensively with an element (the attack elemental usage of it is pretty weak and far inferior to offensive magic, except lightning on robots due to however they programmed robot defenses it makes an immense difference). They also did only one magnify, period, for balance reasons as well but there are only two real proper uses for it as I mentioned above, Fire/Ice/Lightning/Aero + Magnify or Haste + Magnify. Restore + Magnify is pointless, esp in hard mode since you only recover MP exclusively at the end of the chapter > next chapter reset aside from MP Absorb materia (benches only recover HP in hard, items are unusuable and literally worthless so spam what you got in normal before you get to hard if you want). Plus Pray seriously outclasses restore despite the 2 ATB cost if you know what you are doing.

Don't grind or farm tbh. Its not necessary in NG. Try different approach, instead. When you beat the game you will unlock a bonus for all difficulties where you gain 3x Exp, 3x AP, 3x Gil growth... and you can pick chapter select (and even leave mid chapter to pick another) and difficulty at any time from that point on. Then you can easily max materia, level, and farm hundreds of thousands of gil non-issue in the simulator near the end of the game in one of the final chapters (or gil in the garage assault at Shinra HQ, just restart after the garage section and after saving).

[-|Nur|-]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Don't grind or farm tbh. Its not necessary in NG. Try different approach, instead. When you beat the game you will unlock a bonus for all difficulties where you gain 3x Exp, 3x AP, 3x Gil growth... and you can pick chapter select (and even leave mid chapter to pick another) and difficulty at any time from that point on. Then you can easily max materia, level, and farm hundreds of thousands of gil non-issue in the simulator near the end of the game in one of the final chapters (or gil in the garage assault at Shinra HQ, just restart after the garage section and after saving).

Well, if you're gonna start a Hard Mode playthrough after finishing the game, you can just start it from the beginning, everything will level up really fast, so there's NEVER any need to grind or farm in this game.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by -|Nur|-:

Originally posted by Xengre:

Don't grind or farm tbh. Its not necessary in NG. Try different approach, instead. When you beat the game you will unlock a bonus for all difficulties where you gain 3x Exp, 3x AP, 3x Gil growth... and you can pick chapter select (and even leave mid chapter to pick another) and difficulty at any time from that point on. Then you can easily max materia, level, and farm hundreds of thousands of gil non-issue in the simulator near the end of the game in one of the final chapters (or gil in the garage assault at Shinra HQ, just restart after the garage section and after saving).

Well, if you're gonna start a Hard Mode playthrough after finishing the game, you can just start it from the beginning, everything will level up really fast, so there's NEVER any need to grind or farm in this game.

Yeah, if you aren't fishing specifically for weapon upgrades or trying to rush the simulator extra fights then what you say is very true since earlier on is easier if doing a full playthrough anyways.