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Final Fantasy 7 Remake: Essential Things The Game Doesn't Tell You Straight Away – GameSpot

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake has a lot of moving parts and, as such, carefully dishes out information as and when it’s necessary. But if you’re familiar with the franchise, or RPGs as a whole, there may be specific things you’re looking for from the outset. As a result, you’ll probably be asking a lot of questions long before the game is ready to give you answers. We don’t want you sweating the small stuff instead of enjoying FF7, so here’s a bunch of spoiler-free heads-ups that’ll save you a bit of stress.

For more guides, check out our feature highlighting some essential tips to know as you play the game, as well as our PSA on why you shouldn’t skip side missions. Otherwise, you can read our FF7 Remake review.

What Moogle Medals Are For

Around Midgar you’ll often find destructible boxes, and you should make a point of smashing them. Firstly, because they’re puny and pathetic little wooden constructs that deserve to be crushed under the might of Cloud’s buster sword, but also because they can sometimes recover your MP and drop potions or antidotes. More importantly, they reward you with an item called Moogle Medals.

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You start getting Moogle Medals from the outset of the game, and you may find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out what to do with them. The game doesn’t actually tell you what they’re good for straight away, but don’t worry, a few chapters in, you’ll meet a character who will swap Moogle Medals for some special items.

We won’t spoil who this character is because, honestly, it’s an absolute delight, but we will say that you’ll come across the merchant in a side-quest. If you read our review, you’ll know that side-quests are well worth doing for their story and characterization contributions, but if you need more convincing, this is it. So, make sure to do them, kupo!

How You Get More Summons

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Whether it’s Guardian Forces, Aeons, or Espers, calling on gods and mythical beings to fight by your side is a key part of the Final Fantasy experience. You could do this in the original FF7 and, of course, you can also do it in the Remake. However, it can be easy to miss the detail on how exactly you acquire these summons, especially since it’s very different from the original and other entries in the franchise.

The first is part of the main story, as a character will gift you the Materia item that houses the beast–there’s no missing it. However, from that point on, things get a bit trickier. The next one you’ll get is in Chapter 6. You’ll spot the red Materia next to a big fan, but it’s maddeningly out of reach. Don’t worry about it, you’ll get there eventually. Continue on with the main mission and you’ll be able to use a lift to approach a ladder to the left hand side of the giant fans and grab it. Just make sure you don’t leave the area without getting it.

The rest of the summons are tied to a character you’ll meet shortly after. His name is Chadley, which, according to Urban Dictionary, is a name given to “a made-up boyfriend, often used to deceive others into thinking that you have a boyfriend so they will stop questioning you or making jokes about you.”

Anyway, this strange mashup of Chad and Bradley presents you with the opportunity to fight for summons’ allegiance. You may find that the first summon he pits you against is tricky, but don’t stress about trying to defeat it then and there; you’ll see Chadley a lot and you can take on the fight when you’re feeling a little more levelled up.

Further summons become available to battle by completing the little Battle Intel challenges that Chadley sets you. There are a total of five summons in the game and we won’t spoil which ones, and although there is a sixth, it’s exclusive to a premium version of the game, which is a bit rubbish if you ask me but whatever.

How Joint Materia Work (For You FF7 Newbies)

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Materia gives your characters a wealth of abilities to work with in battle. These range from the ability to cast fire, ice, wind, and lightning spells, manipulate time, create shells to protect allies, and restore their health. There are also a few that will grant you incredibly useful benefits that may not initially be clear. This is because they require a very specific setup before they actually take effect.

The biggest of these is Elemental, which will make it hurt much less when the enemy sets your ass on fire, tries to freeze you to death, or pulls some other magical nonsense to put an end to your adventure. Weapons and armor feature sockets that you place Materia into and there are two variants of sockets: single, isolated ones and joint ones. If you get a piece of armor with a joint slot and put the Elemental materia into one of those slots, the armor will give you resistance for the type of Materia you attach to it in the second slot.

For example, if you have one slot with Elemental and it’s attached to another slot with Fire equipped, any time an enemy tries to set you ablaze, the damage taken from the fire attack will be halved. As the game progresses, enemies become very aggressive and can bust out high-damage spells, so this is essential to know. Alternatively, if you slot it into a joint slot on a weapon, your attacks will be imbued with that element.

The Magnify materia works in the same way, except instead granting you resistance, it casts the attached spell to multiple targets. So, if you have Magnify attached to the healing materia, it will cure multiple characters instead of just one. It also works the same way for offensive spells, but it’s important to note that the primary target receives the bulk of the damage, and those around them get a reduced amount. Again, this is super useful, but you only really learn this information through experimentation.

The Importantance Of Spell Timing

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Like the last few mainline entries in the series, FF7 Remake is a far more active and dynamic game when it comes to combat. Unlike the old days, when characters were rooted in position and would be forced to watch in horror as the enemy unleashed ridiculous attacks and killed their friends around them, characters in the Remake can run rings around their enemies if they choose to.

However, that also means that the hit and miss system is a little more dynamic. Although the Remake doesn’t make a big deal about it, opting to let you learn through experience, it’s actually really easy to fire off a spell and completely whiff it. Timing is key in Remake’s combat model, so you need to watch your enemies closely and use spells when they aren’t wildly darting around the battlefield, so that you can be sure that it’ll travel and land properly.

Another major consideration that will force you to be careful with the timing of attacks is that an enemy can interrupt you. If you’re casting a spell and the startup animation is long, your opponent could fire off a quicker attack and stuff whatever you’re doing. Given that you’re spending precious resources to use your special abilities, getting mugged off like this will hurt your HP and your ego.

Even worse is if you poorly time one of Tifa’s specials or Cloud’s Limit Break and the enemy is just out of reach, in which case watching them just nonchalantly walk away from your badass, super damaging, cinematic super move will make you question whether you’re cut out for this mission at all. Pick your moments!

How To Really Punish With Punisher Mode

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Alright, time for a few quick tips. These will be simple, but they’re crucial to know and can be either missed or not properly understood. Cloud’s unique ability is Punisher mode, which gives him quicker, more powerful attacks but with mobility as the trade-off. The other thing that the Punisher mode allows you to do is respond to an incoming melee attack with a counter. So, if you’re facing an enemy that is getting all up in your extremely gelled pointy blond hair and trying to slap you about, activate that Punisher mode and start blocking to show them what happens when they try to mess with a former-SOLDIER with pencil-thin arms that can still haul around a sword the size of a camper van.

How Tempest Works (Not Like The Shakespeare Play)

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Aeirth’s unique ability is called Tempest. She fires a crystal at her target that can be charged up for a more powerful effect. However, it’s pretty tricky to use as it has some situational application. This is because the crystal actually takes a bit of time to do its thing after Aerith sends it out.

When you hit triangle, the crystal travels to the target point and, if it connects, it will do a small amount of damage. Then it takes a couple of seconds to build some power and explodes, dishing out damage to whoever and whatever is hanging around. It’s more of an area-of-effect spell than a direct attack thing, so you’ll need to plan carefully when using it. The longer you hold the triangle button down, the more powerful the explosion will be when it happens.

The best times to use this is when you’ve hit an enemy with a spell that locks down their movement, they’ve been staggered and thus are unable to get out of the way, or are being absolutely pummelled by one of your teammates and thus can’t do anything but take your deadly crystals to the face.

The True Reward Of Weapon Proficiency

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At the start of the game, your party members have limited access to weapons, however, you’ll eventually be able to purchase new ones or find them in the world. Each one has a cool look and can be levelled up to become a devastating tool of destruction, as well as bolster your character’s core attributes. Another major addition each offers is a new combat ability.

Each weapon has a special action that you can execute when it is equipped. However, if you look at it on the weapon select menu, you’ll notice there’s a little bar that shows your proficiency in its special action. As you put the weapon to use, that bar will fill and, eventually, the associated character will gain that ability, which can be used whether or not you have the weapon equipped.

That proficiency bar fills up really slowly, but if you pay attention to the little bit of text below the bar, it’ll tell you how you can speed up the process. Trust me when I say it’s worth spending a bit of time grinding whenever you get a new weapon so you can max out that bar as quickly as possible. You’ll want to do it with random enemy mobs that you’re familiar with, as you’ll need to switch to the specific character you’re working on to fulfill the objective and it’s easier if you know there won’t be any surprises.

Some weapons are designed to present a different style of play for the associated user, and this style may not vibe with the way you want to play them, so it’s best to earn your proficiency in low-stakes battles. You don’t want to be facing a boss with weapons that don’t let you play your characters the way you’ve specced them out to be.

There’s A New Game Plus Of Sorts

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As previously mentioned in this article, and in the FF7 Remake review, you should do all the side-quests you can. They enhance the story and often give you some valuable items. However, if you’d rather focus on getting the main campaign finished, but don’t want to miss out on anything, you’ll be happy to hear that you can come back and tie up loose ends.

FF7 has a new game plus of sorts. It’s actually a chapter select that pops up after you’ve completed the story and lets you drop in and out of different parts of the game while keeping your experience, items, and loadouts. The thing to know, however, is that you’ll start at the beginning of the chapter, so you may need to spend a bit of time replaying chunks to get to the bit you need.

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Ask Andy: How can you tell whether a startup is a good place to work? When is it safe to disclose a mental-health challenge to coworkers?

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As a software developer who would like to work for a startup, what should I look for in a company so that I know it’s legit? If I am putting a lot of work into a product, I want to know that at minimum it’s for a legitimate company and founder—not just another person with an overdone app idea that knows nothing about the tech world. Sarah C.

If you’re learning the startup game, the best bet here is to go later-stage. Focus on a pre-IPO company that is growing quickly, has raised money from blue-chip investors, and is getting positive buzz in the market that it will go public within the next two years.

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Then, don’t believe any of it.

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Network your way into three of the company’s team members on LinkedIn or through your network. Have three virtual or IRL coffees. Have them tell you about the culture: If they’re learning; if the company’s really growing; and most importantly, whether or not they respect and, ideally, admire the leadership.

Keep looking until you find this vetted opportunity.

That’s a systematic, rational approach. But that’s not the only way to go. You could throw it all out the window.

Find a company where you believe in the mission. One where you fall in love with the product or service. You might already be a high LTV customer or a power user. Check your credit card statement and your app home screen to source ideas. Your passion for the mission will make it work for you for some time, even if the company doesn’t work in the long run.

However you get there, once you’re inside for a year or two, you’ll be learning.

You may have to switch horses. That’s okay.

When you do, you’ll know more people, you’ll have more insight, and the path on what to pick next will be clearer. Heck, you might even notice an inflection point and meet a cofounder that leads to you starting a company yourself.

It’s like dating.

You probably won’t marry your first love—but you might. If you don’t, your judgment will iteratively improve. And the good news is unlike a marriage, you can change out your partner every few years. (What I’ve found, though, is that the most successful people professionally, and those who generate the most wealth, have more like 5- to 10-year runs.)

Trust your intuition. Follow your heart on the mission or product. Then, don’t trust yourself.  Study the market. Use the product.  And do at least three off-list references outside of who you interview with. Read every single Glassdoor entry.

And then jump!

You’ll be fine.

Do you think you could have shared your mental health conditions publicly BEFORE you were professionally successful, and still have been successful? Or was the fact that you had already achieved professional success what allowed you to be open? Zack

No, I don’t think I could have shared before we succeeded. I wouldn’t have had the courage to, and I feared it might be career-limiting.

Then again, it was almost seven years ago that I had my I-can’t-deny-this-any-longer moment with my Bonobos colleagues and investors. As of today, I think it’s becoming more possible to be candid about mental health. I hope we can move to a world where I could have been more open, sooner, at least selectively with my leadership team and board.

Some entrepreneurs ask me when to tell their VCs about the mental-health challenge or mental-health diagnosis they wrestle with. I always say the same thing: at a breakfast meeting, four months after you’ve closed the round and hit your numbers. Nobody cares about your neurodivergence if you’re performing—and most VCs actually know enough to know that most founders have more going on than meets the eye.

With your team, I think it’s doable, even now. Perhaps especially now. The truth is, they know. They know you deal with stuff because they’re around you. And the vulnerability you share in disclosing will multiply their respect for you. More importantly, it’ll give those team members the space to reciprocally share their stuff with their colleagues, and potentially you as well, and bring their full selves to work.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

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Take-Two Buys Gearbox And Its New ‘Borderlands’ Game From Embracer

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If you’re a game developer owned by Embracer Group at this point, you are nervous about layoffs, shutdowns or game cancellations after the last few years. But now, there is a somewhat happy ending for one of them, Gearbox.

It’s just been announced that Take-Two, which owns GTA developer Rockstar, will purchase Gearbox for $460 million. This also includes the properties Gearbox owns, the Borderlands and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands franchises, Homeworld, Risk of Rain, Brothers in Arms and Duke Nukem. The report says Gearbox has six games in development, five sequels, including a new Borderlands game, the not-announced-but-definitely-happening Borderlands 4. Here’s Strauss Zelnick:

“Our acquisition of Gearbox is an exciting moment for Take-Two and will strengthen our industry-leading creative talent and portfolio of owned intellectual property, including the iconic Borderlands franchise,” said Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two. “This combination enhances the financial profile of our existing projects with Gearbox and unlocks the opportunity for us to drive increased long-term growth by leveraging the full resources of Take-Two across all of Gearbox’s exciting initiatives.”

Gearbox has been working with 2K and Take-Two for decades, so it was a logical place for them to land. This is, of course, not a great look for Embracer, who only purchased Gearbox three years ago. The price tag back then was “worth up to $1.3 billion” but there were a lot of strings attached to that where it’s not necessarily the case that selling for $$460 million netted them a ~$900 million loss.

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As for what this means for gamers, it would seem something like the Borderlands franchise is now on more stable ground, as it was hard to believe any project at Embracer is fully safe these days. Last year, Embracer quietly cancelled 29 different unannounced games and shut down seven studios in a six month period including Volition and Free Radical Design. That came with around 1,400 layoffs. More recently, Embracer laid off 97 people at Eidos in Janaury and cancelled a Deus Ex game.

Sufficed to say, those at Gearbox probably feel pretty good about this. And as for Take-Two, Borderlands is still a valuable IP, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderland was a surprise hit. There’s a new Homeworld game coming as well. In an era for multi-billion dollar acquisition, Gearbox for $460 million doesn’t seem that bad. That’s probably a third of what GTA 6 will sell on day one next year.

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What’s Brewing in the iPhone 16 Rumor Mill? AI, Action Buttons and More

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As the iPhone 15 settles into the market, the tech community is buzzing with anticipation for Apple’s next-generation handset, which is expected to be named “iPhone 16.”

We’ve heard whispers about the iPhone 16’s features, which are said to span from a new power-efficient display to larger screens, better zoom lenses, an action button and, perhaps not surprisingly, a suite of new gen-AI powered features.

Read more: Best iPhone of 2024

However, the iPhone 16 is still presumably six months away and nothing will be confirmed until Apple’s iPhone event in the fall. Still, these rumors could give us an idea of what to expect from the next iPhone.

Here are the most credible rumors for the iPhone 16.

Will the iPhone 16 fold?

Probably not. The newest rumors suggest Apple has been working on iPhone Flip models in two different sizes, though there have been difficulties in making the devices to Apple’s standards. The company may also be working on a folding tablet with a screen around the size of an iPad Mini. Even though virtually every major phone-maker — from Google to Oppo to OnePlus and Samsung — have launched their own bendable handsets, Apple has been characteristically quiet about whether there will ever be an iPhone Flip or an iPhone Fold.

Prior rumors said Apple may not launch its own flexible screen device until 2025. Samsung hasn’t let phone fans forget it — by releasing an app that will let Apple phone owners experience a Z Fold-esque experience by placing two iPhones side-by-side.

iPhone 16 Pro models to get bigger screens?

Apple has maintained the two screen sizes for iPhone Pro models since 2020 when it launched the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro and the 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max. However, that’s rumored to change with the iPhone 16 Pro models, which might get bigger screens.

Display analyst Ross Young suggested earlier this year that the iPhone 16 Pro models will have larger screens, putting the sizes at 6.3 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro and 6.9 inches for the iPhone 16 Pro Max. That rumor was later corroborated by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who said the iPhone 16 Pro models could grow by “a couple tenths of an inch diagonally.”

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models are believed to be sticking with the current 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes. If the size increase is accurate, it would be yet another move from Apple to distinguish its Pro iPhone models from its regular ones.

iPhone 15 screen sizes

  • iPhone 15: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 15 Pro Max: 6.7 inches.

Rumored iPhone 16 screen sizes

  • iPhone 16: 6.1 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Plus: 6.7 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro: 6.3 inches.
  • iPhone 16 Pro Max: 6.9 inches.

iPhone 16 gets more AI tricks

One of the most salient selling points of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series and Google’s Pixel 8 lineup were each of their souped-up AI tips and tricks, and it wouldn’t be a major shock if Apple went in the same direction. Apple CEO Tim Cook has gone on the record this year confirming Apple sees “a huge opportunity for Apple with gen AI and AI.”

According to Gurman’s Power On newsletter, iOS 18 will feature generative AI technology that “should improve how both Siri and the Messages app can field questions and auto-complete sentences.”

A September report from the Information says Apple plans to use large language models, a crucial part of generative AI, to make Siri smarter. The report said this feature is expected to be released with an iPhone software update next year.

Read More: iPhone iOS 18: A Possible Big Leap In AI

iPhone 16 design: New action button?

In March, AppleInsider published a collection of photographs purportedly displaying 3D-printed dummy models of the rumored iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. The images revealed that the iPhone 16 may have a vertical camera stack as opposed to a diagonal one and an action button, similar the one on last year’s iPhone 15 Pro.

iPhone 16 gets more power-efficient display?

Another change that could make its way to iPhone 16 displays is greater power efficiency. Samsung Display is apparently developing a new material set, dubbed M14, specifically for Apple, according to a TheElec report, which says the new technology should arrive on iPhones launching next year. M14 will replace the blue fluorescent technology that’s used now with blue phosphorescence technology, creating an even more power-efficient screen than the current LTPO ones used on Pro models, the report says.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

iPhone 16 gets better zoom?

Both the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max could both have 5x telephoto lenses next year. According to Apple analyst Ming Chi Kuo, a tetraprism lens will make its way to both Pro models next year, as opposed to just the Pro Max model. Apple equipped the iPhone 15 Pro with a 12-megapixel 3x optical zoom, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 12-megapixel 5x optical zoom camera, which is the equivalent of 120mm lens on a full-frame camera.

If this rumor is true, it could mark a breakthrough in design. When Apple launched the 15 Pro Max with its 5x telephoto lens, it cited the phone’s bigger body as to why the Pro Max had it, but the Pro didn’t.

iPhone 16 processors: A18 chip for all models?

In a break with the past two years, all four iPhone 16 models will apparently get a next-generation Apple chipset, which will all receive A18 branding. According to a MacRumors report citing Jeff Pu, an executive analyst for Haitong International Securities, all four models will have an A18 series chip with Pro iPhone models getting an A18 Bionic Pro and base models getting a regular A18.

The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus currently have an A16 Bionic, which debuted on the 2022 iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, while the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max run on the A17 Pro processor. Pu says the A18 chip will be manufactured with TSMC’s cutting-edge 3 nanometer process.

Read more: Apple iPhone SE 4 Rumors: iPhone 14 Design, Face ID and More

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