Final Fantasy VII Beginner's Guide: Tips Before You Start

Final Fantasy VII is pushing thirty and it's still one of the easiest classic RPGs to get into. The ports on Switch, PlayStation, PC, and mobile all play like the 1997 original, which means the same old systems are waiting to trip up anyone used to modern games. Things like save points, tight gil, and a Limit menu a lot of players never even open. None of it is hard once you know it exists. A little prep turns the Midgar opening from kind of a slog into a genuinely good time.

Choosing Your Starting Party

The story picks your team at first

Here's the thing that surprises most new players: you don't choose anyone for the first several hours. The bombing mission opens with Cloud on his own, and Barret tags along almost immediately. Tifa signs on for the second reactor run. Aeris (spelled Aerith in the Remake and most newer releases) picks Cloud up after a bad fall drops him into a church garden. Red XIII shows up at Shinra headquarters near the end of the Midgar section, and he even joins with a Fire materia already socketed.

So by the time Midgar wraps up you've met five playable characters and picked exactly zero of them. That's normal. The real question is what to do once the choice opens up.

When you actually get a say

You receive the PHS in Kalm, the first town after Midgar. From then on you can swap party members at any save point, or out on the world map whenever you feel like it. Three characters fight at a time, and everyone else waits on the bench with their gear and materia still equipped (that last bit matters, more on it later). Cloud stays in the leader slot for most of the game, but the other two seats are yours to fill.

Who does what

Quick rundown of the early crew:

• Cloud - the all-rounder. Solid attack, decent magic, and he starts with Ice and Lightning already on his Buster Sword, so he can exploit elemental weaknesses from minute one.
• Barret - your tank. Big HP pool, and his gun-arm is a long range weapon, which unlocks a sneaky-good trick with the back row (below).
• Tifa - fast fists, hits hard in chains. Her later Limit Breaks turn into slot reels you time with button presses, which some players love and some find stressful. Your call.
• Aeris - squishy, but the best magic user you'll have for a long while. Hand her the healing and let Cloud and Barret swing. The game knows it too, since she's the only character who joins standing in the back row.
• Red XIII - balanced, quick, hits respectably. Kind of a jack of all trades early on.

For a first run, Cloud, Barret, and Tifa is a fine default since it's what the game hands you. Swapping Aeris in for boss fights gives you a dedicated healer, and that's usually worth a bench spot.

Rows matter more than you'd think

Front row means full physical damage dealt and taken. Back row means you take less physical damage, but your normal attacks hit softer too. The catch: long range weapons ignore the penalty completely. Barret's gun-arms (and later Vincent's guns and Yuffie's shuriken) hit at full power from the back row.

So the classic early move is to shove Barret in the back row and let him shoot from safety. He takes way less damage and loses nothing. Limit Breaks also ignore row entirely, so front-row attackers don't even lose limit damage if you retreat them for a tough fight.

Understanding the Limit Break System

How the gauge works

Every character has a Limit gauge that fills as they take hits. When it's full, their Attack command gets replaced by a flashing Limit command. Use it, or ignore it and cast spells and items instead, the gauge sits there waiting either way. One detail people miss: the gauge doesn't empty after battle. It carries over between fights, which means you can bank someone's limit on a trash mob and walk into a boss with it ready.

How new Limit Breaks unlock

Each character has four Limit levels with (usually) two breaks per level. The game never tells you the unlock rules, so here they are:

1. Second break of a level - use the first break of that level a bunch of times. Cloud needs 8 uses to turn Braver into Cross-Slash, then 7 and 6 at the higher levels. Barret needs 9, then 8, then 6. Aeris is the cheapest at 8, 6, and 5.
2. Next level - the character has to rack up kills personally, meaning they land the final blow. The counts are cumulative: Cloud needs 120 total kills for level 2 and 320 total for level 3. Barret and Aeris need 80 then 160, Tifa 96 then 192, Red XIII 72 then 144.

That "personally" part is the gotcha. Enemies finished off by teammates don't count, so if you're working on someone's limits, let them take the last swing.

You pick which level is live

Open the menu, choose Limit, and you can set which level is active. Only the breaks from that level show up in battle, and newly unlocked levels don't select themselves. Lower levels are weaker but come around sooner, higher ones hit like trucks but take longer to charge.

The sleeper pick is Aeris. Her level 1 Healing Wind heals the whole party for half of everyone's max HP, which for a while is better than anything her later levels do for keeping people alive. Parking her on level 1 for boss fights is completely legit. Cloud's Cross-Slash over Braver is an easy upgrade too.

Fury and Sadness

Two cheap items mess with the gauge. A Hyper (100 gil) puts a character in Fury, which fills the gauge twice as fast but makes their regular attacks miss more. A Tranquilizer does the opposite, slowing the gauge but reducing damage taken. Fury is great for a dedicated limit-unlocking session. For general play, the accuracy drop gets old fast, so most of the time you can skip both.

If you do want to grind kills early, the Sector 4 train tunnel during the second reactor mission has a stretch where battles keep coming back to back until you decide to walk away. Weak enemies, fast resets, easy gauge fills.

The odd ones out

Cait Sith gets exactly two breaks his whole life, Dice and then Slots after 40 kills. Vincent has one break per level (40 kills for level 2, 96 for level 3), but his limits transform him into a monster you don't control, which is either cool or a liability depending on the fight. Level 4 breaks like Omnislash come from rare items and require every other break learned first. That's late-game stuff, so don't sweat it on a first playthrough.

Managing Your Inventory Early

Gil is tight in Midgar and the shops are tiny, so knowing the prices helps. Both the Sector 7 and Sector 5 shops charge the same:

| Item | Cost | What it does | |---|---|---| | Potion | 50 gil | Restores a chunk of HP for one character | | Phoenix Down | 300 gil | Revives one KO'd character | | Antidote | 80 gil | Cures poison | | Tent | 500 gil | Fully restores HP and MP for everyone | | Hyper / Tranquilizer | 100 gil each | Fury / Sadness |

The basic magic materia (Fire, Ice, Lightning) runs 600 gil, and Restore costs 750.

Buy Restore first

750 gil stings when potions cost 50. Buy it anyway. Restore gives you Cure, your first real healing spell, and it only gets better as it levels up. Pair it with an All materia (more on that in a second) and one cast of Cure patches up the whole party. It's the best purchase available in Midgar, full stop.

Tents are the best value in the game

A 500 gil Tent fully restores HP and MP for all three party members, no inn required. The catch is you can only use them at save points and on the world map. Buy one or two as soon as the Sector 5 shop opens and keep them coming. Compared to chugging potions, it's not even close.

One warning on Ethers: the Midgar and Kalm shops don't sell them at all, and once places do stock them they run 1,500 gil a pop. Ethers you find in chests are precious. Don't burn them on random encounters.

Materia rules to live by

Never sell materia. Ever. Spare weapons and bangles, sure, sell those once everyone's upgraded. But several materia are one of a kind or don't come back for many hours, and selling the wrong one genuinely hurts later.

The big freebie people walk past is the All materia in the Beginner's Hall, the building east of the item shop in Sector 7 (weapon shop on the ground floor, inn upstairs). Sit through Cloud's tutorial, grab the All, and open the chest that appears for an Ether. That's the first All in the whole game, it costs nothing, and pairing it with Restore or an attack spell doubles its value instantly.

Also remember that benched characters keep whatever's socketed in their gear. Before swapping someone out through the PHS, hop into the Materia menu and pull the good stuff off them. Nine times out of ten that's where your missing Restore went.

Gear is mostly about the slots

Early weapons and armor matter less for their raw stats and more for their materia slots, especially linked slots, since linking is how you pair things like Restore + All. Cloud's Buster Sword has two linked slots, which is honestly solid for the first act. A new sword with one unlinked slot is usually a downgrade no matter what the attack number says. Check the slots before you check the stats.

Saving at Save Points Wisely

The original FF7 has no autosave, and the ports don't add one worth relying on. In dungeons you can only save at save points, that glowing green question-mark shape floating around. Out on the world map you can save any time you like from the menu. Later in the game there's even a save point guy on your airship.

Save points are rest stops, not just checkpoints

Touching a save point gives you full menu access, PHS party swaps, and, the big one, Tents work there. A save point plus a Tent is a free full heal for the whole squad, which turns a long dungeon into a series of manageable hops. Get in the habit of pitching a Tent every single time you touch one. There's no downside.

Rotate your files

You get multiple save slots, so use at least two of them. Alternate between slot A and slot B as you go. FF7 rarely locks you in anywhere, but a save made five minutes before a boss you're under-leveled for feels a lot better with a fallback file a dungeon behind it.

Good save triggers: every save point you pass in a dungeon, right before jumping into a reactor, and before doing anything that looks like it might be a point of no return. In towns you generally can't save, so top up your files on the world map between stops.

One heads-up for the very end

The final dungeon, the Northern Cave, has no save points at all. You'll find a Save Crystal item in its first area, and using it plants a single save point, one time, wherever you're standing when you use it. Pick a spot a good way in, near where you actually want to checkpoint. People have dropped it at the entrance and regretted it.

Avoiding Early Game Mistakes

Don't shoot the scorpion's tail

The first boss, Guard Scorpion, has 800 HP and is weak to Bolt. Cloud's mid-fight advice is famously garbled: "Attack while its tail's up! It'll counterattack with its laser!" Two messages, a beat apart, and the first one reads like an order. It's not. When the tail goes up, every hit you land gets answered with Tail Laser smacking both of your characters.

So when the tail rises, heal, defend, or just wait it out. Cloud casting Bolt and Barret attacking from the back row gets you through comfortably. You can't flee this fight, by the way, so don't count on running.

Shop before the second reactor run

The Sector 7 weapon shop is the only place in the entire game that sells the Iron Bangle (160 gil), and the shop stops being reachable once the Sector 7 story wraps up. Buy one or two before the Mako Reactor 5 mission. There's also the Assault Gun for Barret at 350 gil, though Guard Scorpion drops it most of the time, so you might win one for free.

Grab the Enemy Skill materia before leaving Shinra HQ

During the escape from Shinra headquarters, after Red XIII joins in Hojo's lab, open the sample tank and take the Enemy Skill materia sitting in it. This one's missable, since the building doesn't stay open for sightseeing afterwards.

It's worth grabbing because Enemy Skill learns enemy moves when they're used on the wearer. One of the first you can pick up is Matra Magic from the Custom Sweepers roaming the grass just outside Midgar: 8 MP, hits every enemy on screen. That free little orb can carry you through a big chunk of the game. (There are three more copies later, in Junon's Respectable Inn, the Forgotten City, and from the Chocobo Sage, if you miss the first.)

Stop letting limits rot

If the gauge is flashing, use the thing. Limits are free damage or free healing, and hoarding them "for later" usually means they never fire at all. Especially in boss fights, where one Cross-Slash or Healing Wind swings the whole exchange.

And check the Limit menu every so often. New levels and new breaks don't equip themselves, so a character can sit on a stronger break for hours because you never opened the menu and set it.

The optional recruits are easy to walk past

Two more playable characters never announce themselves. Yuffie ambushes you in random fights in forested areas of the world map, and Vincent is asleep in a coffin in the basement of the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim. Neither gets a quest marker or a hint. It's entirely possible to finish the game without ever meeting them. Both are fun to have around, so keep an eye out.

Don't run from every fight

Fleeing is tempting in Midgar because random battles eat your MP. But kills feed your Limit levels and your character levels, and bosses like Air Buster punish a party that skipped every fight on the way. You don't need to grind, clearing the enemies you bump into naturally as you walk each area is plenty. Just don't sprint past all of them.

One last number to keep in your head: 750. That's the Restore materia's price in Sector 7, and it's the single best purchase you can make before the game starts asking real questions. Everything else in Midgar can wait.