Stagger is key.

Also

Grind any area you can quickly respawn enemies in. When you get to Wall Market grind the arena and then just coast through the rest of the game.

Are you using your materia in a good way? Have you upgraded your weapons?

As someone just getting back into gaming, who heavily played all the previous games excluding XIII, I m def finding this game harder. I got into JRPG's and not action RPG's, and this learning skill for staggering and blocking has def been a lot harder than I expected.

And I've just been in the adjusting the difficulty settings myself.

Assess -> read, look at what enemies are weak to. Abuse that Some enemies are easy to guess, others take a bit of work. Some of them are easy to pressure, others just take a beating. A lot of enemies will have warnings when they are about to do something, and you just need to move out of the way. or block.

Ff7Remake isn't an easy game, so don't feel defeated just yet. My recommendation, apart from what others have suggested, is to invest in healing materia instead of potions. When I played I had healing materia on all my characters. Might need to find a place to grind to get the gil, but once you're outfitted you can put that money into other things as you progress.

I'm working on the same game atm 😅

You can get the enemy skill "beta" from the midgarsormr worm when you first go by.

Enemy Skills are well worth learning. Big Guard from the Beach Plugs is great. Casts guard, magic guard and haste iirc.

So tempted to do another playthrough! Really really wish they'd just done a remasters to the standard of the remake but without all the new stuff! Those graphics with the gameplay of the OG would have been an absolute dream!

Steal a "Right Arm" from the bombs on the Corel rope bridge and use them to One-Shot Dyne.

Conversely, using tranqs/sadness on everyone reduces their damage taken by a lot - at the cost of a slower limit charge up.

Slow works on Demons Gate

Elixir will instantly kill the Gi boss in Cosmo Canyon

Gravity or the Laser Eskill will instantly kill the icicles on disc 2, and is also very effective against the train fight enemies when Cid is leader.

Deathblow (on the ground at Gongaga) + Added Cut(In the great glacier snowy area - go right repeatedly from the start area, then up that hill in the top right when you come to the crossroads area. Look for it on the ground when the path is making you go northwest) makes a great combo and is available much earlier than Double Cut

Speaking of Deathblow, it misses a lot but if an enemy has Stop on it, it cannot evade. Added effect + stop can do this easily, or Clouds Cross Slash is another easy way to apply it.

Sephiroth always uses the same moves in the same order. Bring Destruct materia, as he will always start with Wall.

If you get a game over against the final Sephiroth fight, isn't there a checkpoint for the fight and you can open the menu to change your builds. No need to start the whole gauntlet over?

I hear you about not comparing games too directly but I think when you’re focusing in on combat or hard fights it makes more sense to compare those elements to other games for that specific discussion

People don’t typically talk a lot about builds here that I see but some days I’m only scrolling by. I welcome it, post whatever you think is helpful and doesn’t take much of your time. People will see it, people will find it in search.

We still have lots of people who haven’t done all of Hard Mode or even played Rebirth and we have people who are waiting for Part 3 so there are plenty who will benefit still

I took the same approach for my first playthrough, running on Easy. I wanted to make sure I could focus more on having fun and soaking it all in as opposed to worrying about if I had the right materia for certain mobs and bosses.

I also knew I'd be running through Hard Mode after, I was going to face the punishment sooner or later anyways, lol.

All in all, some areas not as good as others, but all things considered, a fantastic game.

Coming from a Final Fantasy N00B, I’m envious you’re on easy 🤣 I know I can switch it but that’s not my style now that I’m towards the end of the game. I can’t for the life of me understand how someone could play on a higher difficulty than normal! Amazing game nonetheless..

Mini games are good to me but I seem to be a very patient 30 year old compared to most on see on reddit. I am find taking my time completing the game because we're gonna have to wait few years for the next one so why rush to finish it. But glad you enjoyed the game too

I agree the flying in cosmo canyon was quite bad. Never touching that mini game again after getting all the rewards.

"Didnt find the situps hard " the one thing i was gonna ask about i completly dropped the game cause i want to get that done and out so no tips huh 🫠

For real! If it wasn’t for his guides, getting the plat would’ve torn my sanity to shreds!

I just have the battle sim left. Other than following the Optinoob stuff, any recommendations?

Couldn't agree more with your title. Got the Platinum last year, and the combat simulator at the end is just BS. Congratulations on the Platinum :)

Congratulations on the plat! 😁

Use regular attacks to build up ATB. The character you control will build up faster than the other two. That character will also be the target of most enemy attacks, so it is often most effective to block or dodge with your control character while ordering another character to use an ability or spell, because most of your moves can be interrupted by enemy attacks.

Once you get the assess materia, use it on every new enemy. You will be rewarded for assessing and exploiting them (hitting them with the thing they are weak against) and it will make you better at the same time. Many enemies need to be staggered before you can deal real damage and some enemies require certain conditions to be met in order to be pressured. (Pressured means your attacks fill the stagger gauge.)

Each time you find a new weapon, equip it at least long enough to learn its unique ability. (You have to use the ability repeatedly to learn it.) Learn which attack abilities do high damage versus high stagger, which are fast and which are slow, which are better against one target or against a group, which are long range and which deal magic damage.

In general, Cloud is best at physical attack damage, Barret is best at surviving attacks, Tifa is best at staggering, and Aerith is best at magic. But your party frequently changes so adjust accordingly.

While the command menu is open, combat slows to the point that the game is almost paused. Take your time with this and use it to change your lock on target even for normal attacks. You can also assign shortcuts for each character.

A surprising amount of bosses are vulnerable to poison and stop.

Set to wait mode and it will really help you strategize and understand the engine.

When upgrading your weapon cores, more materia slots is always better, and you should always prioritize them. More materia means more options.

The combat system in this game is beautifully complex, like a game of Chess. You’ll get the hang of it soon with practice.

First, understand that the normal combat is often irrelevant, the most important thing is ATB. This is not FF XV or XVI, the tactical stuff is very important.  Especially in the end game you won't even beat normal enemies without using your ATB well.  Stagger is everything. Most bosses are designed with a lot of HP because they assume you will stagger them.   Always assess enemies to find out their strengths, weaknesses and how to pressure them. Some enemies are simply impossible to beat without assessing them. Find the correct mix of blocking and dodging. Both are usefull in different situations. You also need to understand what roles the characters have. Cloud can do everything, Barret is a tank/support, Tifa is a damage dealer who can stagger well, Aerith(a character you will meey later) is a mage.

B line the main story, set to easy if the fights become to difficult. I B lined the game on dynamic and the end got really hard. The last bosses are just a bit much without good materia.

I did all side content at first playthrough and got a bit burned out in Gongaga. Just continued with the story only, and by the time to go to the Forgotten Capital I wanted to do side quests again. My advice is to just take it easy. I don’t really know if turning to Normal is going to make a huge difference (I played Dynamic too) but maybe just finding some crazy and overpowered materia setups can make it more fun. Just make sure to make a well-balanced party or maybe write down your setups in a notebook so you don’t have to worry about builds every time you are forced to switch characters, this shit alone can burn you out lol.

Thank you, I think this is the gist of it, simply put! While reading all the replies I noted that I approached Rebirth more or less like Remake, progressing from one chapter to the next and with a mindset of doing all that there is at once, and not really "realizing" that the chapters work differently than in Remake, in which you have to play from A to B if you want to do the side stuff in a specific chapter.

The amount of content in the game is kind of overwhelming, and during one of the fiend fights I hit “restart from checkpoint” instead of “retry battle” without thinking and lost like 3 or 4 hours of exploration and completing activities on the map, and ended up taking a few months break despite being in chapter 12. Came back and did the main story and really enjoyed it. Now I hop on periodically to complete the other activities and work on the last few achievements I have left. I think going through the story once and then working on everything else is more manageable and worth doing.

Before Rebirth came out, this sub was a chorus of doing everything on the first playthrough. Having played Horizon, I warned people against. I advised exactly what you do: focus on the main story.

I was downvoted hard for it. Glad to see people have come to their senses.

I got burned out on normal, chapter 12. I decided to limit my play and set goals. Do this chapter. Complete these quests. Do these sidequests etc. Made it more enjoyable personally. Also make a decision when to grind, complete challenges and continue in hard mode. Again, as small goals .

Hope this helps.

That is true if you don’t mind getting a disappointing chapter 12 low affection experience