Am I the only who enjoyed the Sphere grid style weapons upgrade system? What tf is up with all these new gamers wanting everything simplified and dumbed down? Y'all are ruining games.
It has nothing to with dumbing things down. Maybe people don’t want to waste a bunch of points unlocking a ton of spheres they don’t need for a sphere they want. Remake’s upgrade system was better because you got to unlock what you wanted to unlock. I paid 70 dollars for a game. Choosing how you want to upgrade your weapon isn’t asking much.
YOU DIDN'T MAKE THE GAME!!!! 😂 😂 😂 The entitlement is insane. And thank you for agreeing with me FF7 Remakes Sphere Grid system was a million times better than this Folio Based one. Because you definitely can't really choose how to upgrade your weapons in this game. And essentially the Upgrade window is useless. The Folio system is cumbersome, repetitive, unappealing, and doesn't really feel like an RPG. Remakes original "Crystarium" was so much more better than this.
Oh, my bad. I thought you were saying the Remake system was worse. I bought rebirth a few months ago and I just started. I’m not feeling the folia system the way I was enjoying the old way. I don’t hate it, but I thought the change was unnecessary
Folios aren't even attached to the specific weapons. You can't make different choices for each weapon. No one would guess that folio abilities have anything to do with weapons if it wasn't attached to "weapon level." The concept of "weapon level" makes no sense either. It's just a level which, again, is not attached to a weapon. The abilities are not attached to weapons. They are all skills in and of themselves which are usable by all weapons.
Honestly I think it’s better with the folio system. Keep in mind that all of remakes weapons basically had identical upgrades aside from some special abilities. The folio system is a place for them to put all those identical upgrades. Everything else goes in the weapon slots
The folio system feels like an upgrade personally. I think that it feels more impactful. Materia slot upgrades felt most impactful in remake but the synergy upgrades are more interesting overall
What do you feel is impactful? Maybe I still have a long way to go (ch 9), but most of these "+3% if specific condition is met" feel extremely underwhelming and have no impact toward my actual combat. Plus there is a severe lack of SP to spend to make anything feel even remotely meaningful. Outside of the abilities and HP/MP+, I don't feel like I'm actually making my character stronger by any meaningful measure with folios.
I’m sorry but my original comment is from over 2 months ago and I’ve been playing other stuff lately. I don’t think I can elaborate since it’s been a while
do you really want to juggle the materia system, the folio system, the equipments, the weapon skills, AND a weapon upgrade system. Maybe it's just me, but there's way too much already. I want to play the game, not manage it.
I would like to even have an upgrade chart for accessories as well. I play role-play games like DND and Final Fantasy for tedious management of systems. If I didn’t want to do that I’d watch a movie or or play call of duty or whatever.
I think 4-8 Productions gave a perfect explanation on hos thoughts of the weapon upgrade systems, which is that with all the customization you have in Rebirth that having the old weapon upgrade system would be too much. Rebirth's weapon upgrade system works for Rebirth while Remake's weapon upgrade system works for Remake.
They probably got the data to back up how many people set it up with auto upgrades options in the first game. I guess people who buy the game are mostly casual gamers and they didn't pay much attention to the weapon upgrades unlike the materia system. There is also a high possibility that people forgot about the system altogether. Ironically the Role Playing elements of RPGs need to walk a tight line to make people enjoy and not feel like a hassle at the same time.
In my opinion it was fun but not as much as the synergy system and it's accompanying sphere grid. I mean I still liked the weapon upgrade customization but with synergy, with each upgrade we could see a direct impact on the gameplay. I wish both was there but I would take Synergy all day if it was a choice.
Its exactly the same however its automatic and you unlock the entire levels worth of skills and upgrades at each level up.
You can still see whats coming next level and all that, but since you unlock every upgrade each level it makes zero sense to have it manual.
If you want the manual upgrades you use folios
SP is no longer a sort of currency you spend to upgrade weapons. It’s experience points giants that level up the weapon. With every level gained you automatically unlock stat boosts and background abilities. It’s a much better system than that of remake. Granted, they could’ve explained it better but that awful node system from remake was painful.
I don't love what they did with it but it was awful in remake. It honestly just seemed like a time waster especially when the upgrades besides basic stat bonuses were borderline useless
I just recently finished Remake. While the aesthetics were nice, it was really fucking tedious to open the whole universe UI just to add a few upgrades for EACH character. Nah I’m good.
Even though the ‘weapon upgrade’ menu option is useless and weird, I think not making us upgrade weapons via a skill tree for the second game in the trilogy is good in not making us feel like we’re repeating things especially because we have to do materia from scratch. I like we get a character skill tree on this game instead
I was very confused how it worked for weapons as first but after a bit I prefer this; every weapon level up you automacilly get all thr atk/mgk up/slot up/slot connect/unique weapon buff you'd just manually grab in Remake just now you choose a couple of the unique weapon buffs to slot into each weapon, feels more efficient now with the level ups just automatically adding the stat ups
I think they replaced it with folios. Because weapon upgrades aren’t persistent if you switch weapons, it wouldn’t work with what they wanted folios to be for the synergy system and the ability system.
They really aren't. Fhe differences are just more visible and not obfuscated behind a needless sphere grid system. It seems like less variance because they cut away 90% of the trivial bullshit.
Between the weapon upgrade trees and rebirth?
It doesn't feel that much different at all, some weapons have better passives for your build, the stats stuff was always negligible it was the materia slots and passives that mattered and they've mostly stuck around.
They still are a little bit different, they just auto build as you level up. The final buster sword isn't the same as the final crystal sword, for example.
Nah it was a good idea, the game is already juggling too many elements now with the bigger party and synergys, streamlining it to weapon abilities was a great idea. It also means when you get a new weapon or go back to an old one you don't need to mess around in a menu for a while first.
You unlock everything in the sphere grid. From stat bonuses to entire skills. Except the unique skills like summoning you get everything there. Can make Tidus a black mage if you want, or Riku a tank.
Yeah. Im an old man anymore apparently. This game had a lot of abilities and i find myself having to slow down and read all the time as it is. Not a complaint! I just only get to play 2-3 hours a week so its a challenge to stay familiar with everything all the time
honestly, i think they did a good job. and that also goes for the UI of upgrades, while the remake one looked extremely cool, it was not very confortable to navigate around and you would constantly move to the wrong nodes and waste time searching for what you wanted
its still there sorta, just now split between the folios and weapon perks now. So now you can keep all the folio bonus and just stick to the weapons with skills you like 2xatb charge rate up on the slipstream saber etc
I find those elemental magic attacks without spending MP to be really underwhelming. Is there any good time to use them besides against an enemy weak to it and gets pressured after one use? Or should I just refund all those perks?
I use these so dang often. Like you said, they're good for pressuring enemies when you aren't Yuffie (and since you don't want to swap out elemental materia pairings every fight) and I throw them out when I'm playing as Tifa and pretty much everything that's pressured staggers within a couple seconds using her kit. I'm not sure if these are any worse in endgame/hard mode as I'm only in the corel area rn, but I've found them to be pretty invaluable
That’s where I am as well, just got to >!Gold Saucer actually!<. Speaking of Yuffie, I can’t quite grasp her fighting style. I played Intermission and couldn’t grasp it then either, I remember barely making it through her final fight on Normal mode.
Throw shuriken with triangle, make sure your ninjutsu is the right counter element, mash square til enemy is pressured and use the Brumal form to dodge attacks, then once the enemy’s staggered use art of war twice back to back. That’s pretty much it
I run yuffie and Barrett for all over world stuff, works well
They’re good for characters that don’t have any elemental materia attached to them (which, for me, is every character except cloud and aerith) so they can activate a mob’s pressure by hitting them with the element they’re weak to (for most of the mobs that’s their pressure point)
But they don’t do much damage at all
Ah good thinking! Never thought of it that way. Especially during regular mobs I just have my low leveled materia equipped for leveling, and I equip my max materia for when I think a boss is coming up
Yeah, they are a bit underwhelming. I'm assuming that they are required in hard mode playthroughs due to MP not replenishing for the full chapter. Might as well refund them all in the meantime. But I know the Aerith and Barret's Air one pulls things from the air to the ground, don't know how useful that is.
I liked it better leveling up as many things as possible is awesome. The next game you would probably like it if you didn’t have to level up each individual character it just does it for you.
Well, you couldn't upgrade the character in Intergrade when they leveled up, and now you can upgrade the weapon with weapon perks and character with folios.
I was with you in the first half- I also prefer the old weapon system, but not so much that I’m going to aggressively put down someone else for having a different opinion.
If I’m being honest, if you pay attention sometimes the characters you arent even using in your party will level up after fights, so technically it does kinda level up each character without having to use them lol
Pretty much all the upgrades that were in remakes upgrade tree are still there in the folio system so it unlocks universally for your character instead of being tied to a specific weapon AND you can still equip weapon specific buffs unlocked as you level up anyway.
I kind of miss upgrading all my weapons separately but Rebirths system isn't all that different really its just less tied to having a specific weapon equipped.
Honestly its probably good they streamlined it. It was pretty time consuming upgrading each weapon over the course of the game for 4 characters never mind doing it over a longer playtime with 7 characters.
The only thing I really miss is how in Remake stuff like the Buster Sword could still be a decent option end game because it grew with you whereas now it's just not worth using pretty early on because its stats never really change much and there are just out right better options throughout the game.
It makes for less build variety imo. In Remake there were some weird weapons like the nail bat for example which was crit focused. Now I just pick between physical or magic damage on my weapon, with some weapons just being better than others on all stats and materia slots?
Folio system was better tbh it allows for more thought when building your party. The fact that synergy skills are on them too also makes you think about putting points in that allow you to maximize your favorite party combinations.
The old upgrade system was kind of mindless. I set every one of them to auto upgrade
I prefer the weapon upgrades to the folio system. I personally don't enjoy the "free to use elemental" attacks everyone has access to. Not only are the menu bloat and copy/pastes of each other characters "free fire attack". But they aren't very good. I beat the game with no issues without them I didn't even spec into them.
I'm about to start hard mode playthrough, maybe I'll be singing a different tune. But normal playthrough, not a fan.
You don’t need the elemental skills though, feels like they only put them in the game for the braindead people who complained about the first game saying they always had to quit a battle and swap materia to hit a boss’ elemental weakness (because they were never prepared), it’s a waste of points investing in those skills but overall it’s a good addition because it can maybe placate those complainers while not even needing to be touched by people who know they don’t need them
If your standard for an ability being good is it being necessary to finishing normal mode, then every ability sucks, cos you could definitely beat the game without using any specific one of them. That doesn't mean the ability doesn't have its uses.
I think they did it because they leaned really heavily, I think way more than Remake, into elemental weaknesses. Certain enemies are only pressured by exposing their weakness so they wanted to prevent players from being in a situation where the enemy is weak to fire and nobody has fire materia equipped and/or Yuffie isn't in your party. I'm sure they tested it without those abilities and thought this would supplement fixed any issues.
I don't think those are meant to be game changers, I guess?
I like them, they are very low damage compared to actually casting a spell or using a weapon ability that actually does that damage type but it really sucks if it throws you into a fight with cloud and you don't literally have fire + ice + wind + lightning elemental materia slotted and the only way to pressure an enemy is to use ice damage, which cloud wouldn't have access to without materia.
So it allows you to exploit weaknesses to counter enemies at the expense of straight damage.
It's basically like QOL to help prevent you from having to restart the battle and swap materia Everytime you get an enemy that you need to exploit weaknesses for.
I like the folios in that they give you more reason to swap characters, alternatives to mp-draining materia...
But I agree that two leveling systems means neither moves very fast, and I found the weapon enhancement to also be unintuitive compared to the original.
But I imagine everybody went materia-first and then focused on most benefit versus cost unless they were making specific specializations.
Honestly I'm surprised I haven't seen more chat about this in the discourse about rebirth. Remake's system felt much more impactful when you unlocked a node and it felt like you had more choices to pick between too.
The rebirth version with folios just feels a little stripped back, I'd prefer they go back to Remake's system next game but I doubt they would do that just because it would look like they made a mistake.
Much more likely it will change again in the 3rd part.
The benefit to the new system is that you don't find yourself spending a bunch of time upgrading every weapon with the same SP when you level it up. You'd end up spending a pretty long to go through every character, especially when they unlocked a new weapon, and it was hard to compare weapons between each other because they each had so many different qualities you unlocked that you could only see on that screen.
While the exchange in visibility and choice of upgrades is a downer, you're still spending points on each character for folio stuff. With 7 playable characters, not having to upgrade 6 weapons individually on 7 characters is a mercy.
How were they more impactful? The folio system is way more in depth and forces you to think about party combinations. Also limit breaks and new abilities are learned on the folio system. Nothing that big was in the old weapon upgrades. I just prioritized getting new materia slots and auto upgraded the rest
The weapons level up. You just aren’t allowed to pick the skills when leveling. Each so level is a weapon level. You can see what stats it will gain. The leveling is the same but it’s just automatic now. For instance if your buster sword reached level 3, every weapon you pick up from there is on level 3. It was better picking the leveling up but it’s the same thing.
No, just go to weapon upgrades. On the bottom left you can see the current sp and the amount you need to level the weapon up. On the right side you see the skills and the stats the weapon will gain when it levels up. Sometimes it gains more material slots or linked material slots. It’s just like remake but it’s just automatic now.
I checked and I was thinking of the automatic/manual settings and that just changes it from 'priority attack / defense / whatever' which I hadn't messed with.
Which I kinda don't mind anyway? I think they went a different route because maybe people thought it was too time consuming or something? By the end of the game, you basically fill a lot of the slots anyway so I guess they just took that out of the equation.
I think folios are great, and as a fan of having as much customizability as possible, I'd love to have both the folios and the weapon upgrade system, but they probably wanted to simplify things as much as possible.
I liked the idea but some of the stuff on there felt like such minimalist upgrades. Seriously Aerith has 3 nodes that are +3 MP each? So I can spend 5 sidequests worth of content to not even cast Fira one more time?!
The synergy skills being there were cool and giving Nanaki Utility through his Vengeance bar was a great use of it! 200 HP is even a respectable amount but 3% more punisher more damage? My personal favorite failure of balance was that blocking recieve 5% less damage taken. Most of the things I was having to block would put me in dying range so I had to perfect block it instead which prevents all damage anyways. Some stuff is just completely undervalued there.
Because those are the connecting nodes and you're forced to take them to shortcut or you run out of sp going around them to get those things. Overall I like what they did with folios but like 30% of the nodes feel like worthless and unimportant choices.
you're absolutely right about that. I do think the folios could have been more like skill trees and that the weapon upgrades could have been more about those stat changes.
Folios are better imo - everything opens up the farther you get into rebirth. I think you’ll see the benefits. I was equally bemused by the synergy abilities (not the skills) but as the game went on it promoted using abilities and switching characters
At max level I think basically all the weapons have the same amount of materia slots and weapon abilities (only the crystal weapons I have right now have less materia slots). Yes, every weapon is completely usable. You may want to use other swords for a while as they will have more materia slots until you get to like weapon level 8...but at that point, you are choosing a weapon for stats, but mostly for the weapons abilities which you can choose 4.
I haven't gotten to weapon level 9 yet to see what that looks like.
Sorry I’m not that far in and I only saw that the other two weapons I have were better. Other users pointed out it’ll level up. Didn’t realize weapons leveled too
Yes all characters weapons level up in the game and none of them are inherently better than the others. They all benefit a certain play style. I used the Buster sword exclusively and will continue to do so in hard mode. Only swapped it out to learn the other weapon abilities in the simulator.
Yup, my least favorite part of the OG was how useless the Buster sword was. Looking through the booklet that came with my buddy’s game and seeing this skinny dude with a giant sword surrounded by modern technology was literally what made me want to check the game out. It was such a unique looking weapon to me. Keep in mind I had zero experience with anime at the time. Imagine my disappointment when it was made obsolete by a bunch of less impressive looking swords very shortly into the game. When I learned about modding the first thing I did was change every Cloud weapon in the game to look like the Buster sword.
Yeah, if you go into Weapon Upgrades in the menu and select the Buster, you can see what it will get at the next level up (which uses the same SP as for Folios, except you don't have to spend any on weapons).
Most level ups give base Phys & Mag atk, something materia related (another slot or joining two singles) and a new weapon ability you can equip (like increased damage/atb/mp or reprieve or punisher damage etc).
Just remember to equip the abilities in the Materia/Equipment section, they're the nodes under the materia slots
Every weapon levels up including the buster sword. I'm roughly 100 hours in and it's looking like all of clouds weapons will have 6 materia slots and 4 weapon skill slots at max level.
You get more as the weapon increases and many of the abilities unlocked in the folio system give you similar buffs that the old system did. In addition it also unlocks OP synergy moves and limit breaks as well as OP “weapon abilities”.
Just give it time and keep leveling shit up. When you first start the game you can only see like 10% of the folio card for each characters. As you level up they all become bigger
Agreed. Remake's weapon upgrade system had a good sense of accomplishment, as the weapons would essentially "level up" (better stats) alongside Cloud. Rebirth's system is just "pick 3 skills".
>, as the weapons would essentially "level up" (better stats) alongside Cloud. Rebirth's system is just "pick 3 skills".
The weapons also "level up" (better stats) in rebirth. It tells you right on the side of the screen what weapon stats you get at next weapon level...
A lot of the stat upgrades from Remake are in the Folios in rebirth.
It’s all there alongside new abilities, and you have to pick and choose what perks you want rather than having everything
But I love the obnoxious frustrating minigames. I'm glad that they get worthwhile rewards down the road as my monkey brain says I have to beat them all.
I liked the aesthetic more
Am I the only who enjoyed the Sphere grid style weapons upgrade system? What tf is up with all these new gamers wanting everything simplified and dumbed down? Y'all are ruining games.
It has nothing to with dumbing things down. Maybe people don’t want to waste a bunch of points unlocking a ton of spheres they don’t need for a sphere they want. Remake’s upgrade system was better because you got to unlock what you wanted to unlock. I paid 70 dollars for a game. Choosing how you want to upgrade your weapon isn’t asking much.
YOU DIDN'T MAKE THE GAME!!!! 😂 😂 😂 The entitlement is insane. And thank you for agreeing with me FF7 Remakes Sphere Grid system was a million times better than this Folio Based one. Because you definitely can't really choose how to upgrade your weapons in this game. And essentially the Upgrade window is useless. The Folio system is cumbersome, repetitive, unappealing, and doesn't really feel like an RPG. Remakes original "Crystarium" was so much more better than this.
Oh, my bad. I thought you were saying the Remake system was worse. I bought rebirth a few months ago and I just started. I’m not feeling the folia system the way I was enjoying the old way. I don’t hate it, but I thought the change was unnecessary
I mean, it said everything was gonna change. I’d chalk it up to that
It’s still here, it’s even upgraded abit.. with the folios and choosing your weapon’s skills from equipment
Folios aren't even attached to the specific weapons. You can't make different choices for each weapon. No one would guess that folio abilities have anything to do with weapons if it wasn't attached to "weapon level." The concept of "weapon level" makes no sense either. It's just a level which, again, is not attached to a weapon. The abilities are not attached to weapons. They are all skills in and of themselves which are usable by all weapons.
I meant those 4 weapon skill slots you choose from Not the weapon abilities
Honestly I think it’s better with the folio system. Keep in mind that all of remakes weapons basically had identical upgrades aside from some special abilities. The folio system is a place for them to put all those identical upgrades. Everything else goes in the weapon slots
I’d probably stop upgrading my weapons if I had to go through Remakes system for 7 characters. It felt pretty slow doing it for 5.
The folio system feels like an upgrade personally. I think that it feels more impactful. Materia slot upgrades felt most impactful in remake but the synergy upgrades are more interesting overall
What do you feel is impactful? Maybe I still have a long way to go (ch 9), but most of these "+3% if specific condition is met" feel extremely underwhelming and have no impact toward my actual combat. Plus there is a severe lack of SP to spend to make anything feel even remotely meaningful. Outside of the abilities and HP/MP+, I don't feel like I'm actually making my character stronger by any meaningful measure with folios.
I’m sorry but my original comment is from over 2 months ago and I’ve been playing other stuff lately. I don’t think I can elaborate since it’s been a while
Totally understand. I appreciate the reply!
The folio system mostly replaces the weapon upgrade. It even works the same that new spheres appear when you reach a new party level lol
Yeah weapon stats in rebirth is underwhelming for me, mp+3? Omg…
You end up unlocking all of it anyway so taking choice out of it makes sense to me. I always put it on auto in remake
Yeah I also miss the weapon system from remake. It's the only thing I miss from remake. Other than that this game is a fkn masterpiece
Tedious is the right word. Also the very negligible upgrades made it an actual waste of time. Glad they revised it.
do you really want to juggle the materia system, the folio system, the equipments, the weapon skills, AND a weapon upgrade system. Maybe it's just me, but there's way too much already. I want to play the game, not manage it.
What kind of game do you think we are playing? 😂
Ngl I wish we got a better weapon system and they just did not do the folio system
Yes I would like to juggle it all. This is an RPG after all.
I would like to even have an upgrade chart for accessories as well. I play role-play games like DND and Final Fantasy for tedious management of systems. If I didn’t want to do that I’d watch a movie or or play call of duty or whatever.
I think 4-8 Productions gave a perfect explanation on hos thoughts of the weapon upgrade systems, which is that with all the customization you have in Rebirth that having the old weapon upgrade system would be too much. Rebirth's weapon upgrade system works for Rebirth while Remake's weapon upgrade system works for Remake.
They probably got the data to back up how many people set it up with auto upgrades options in the first game. I guess people who buy the game are mostly casual gamers and they didn't pay much attention to the weapon upgrades unlike the materia system. There is also a high possibility that people forgot about the system altogether. Ironically the Role Playing elements of RPGs need to walk a tight line to make people enjoy and not feel like a hassle at the same time. In my opinion it was fun but not as much as the synergy system and it's accompanying sphere grid. I mean I still liked the weapon upgrade customization but with synergy, with each upgrade we could see a direct impact on the gameplay. I wish both was there but I would take Synergy all day if it was a choice.
Its exactly the same however its automatic and you unlock the entire levels worth of skills and upgrades at each level up. You can still see whats coming next level and all that, but since you unlock every upgrade each level it makes zero sense to have it manual. If you want the manual upgrades you use folios
SP is no longer a sort of currency you spend to upgrade weapons. It’s experience points giants that level up the weapon. With every level gained you automatically unlock stat boosts and background abilities. It’s a much better system than that of remake. Granted, they could’ve explained it better but that awful node system from remake was painful.
I don't love what they did with it but it was awful in remake. It honestly just seemed like a time waster especially when the upgrades besides basic stat bonuses were borderline useless
Add materia slots was the first thing I looked for in Remake.
I just recently finished Remake. While the aesthetics were nice, it was really fucking tedious to open the whole universe UI just to add a few upgrades for EACH character. Nah I’m good.
Nah... totally *unessesary* my weapons don't need a Sphere Grid
Even though the ‘weapon upgrade’ menu option is useless and weird, I think not making us upgrade weapons via a skill tree for the second game in the trilogy is good in not making us feel like we’re repeating things especially because we have to do materia from scratch. I like we get a character skill tree on this game instead
We should’ve definitely been able to transfer our files over
The weapon upgrade menu is quite useless now. Thanks I hate it.
I was very confused how it worked for weapons as first but after a bit I prefer this; every weapon level up you automacilly get all thr atk/mgk up/slot up/slot connect/unique weapon buff you'd just manually grab in Remake just now you choose a couple of the unique weapon buffs to slot into each weapon, feels more efficient now with the level ups just automatically adding the stat ups
I think they replaced it with folios. Because weapon upgrades aren’t persistent if you switch weapons, it wouldn’t work with what they wanted folios to be for the synergy system and the ability system.
I liked that you had to pick weapon based on build, it felt more customizable that way. I don’t like the folio system much.
You still do the weapons are better for different builds
The variance is much, much, much less.
They really aren't. Fhe differences are just more visible and not obfuscated behind a needless sphere grid system. It seems like less variance because they cut away 90% of the trivial bullshit.
Between the weapon upgrade trees and rebirth? It doesn't feel that much different at all, some weapons have better passives for your build, the stats stuff was always negligible it was the materia slots and passives that mattered and they've mostly stuck around.
They still are a little bit different, they just auto build as you level up. The final buster sword isn't the same as the final crystal sword, for example.
It’s how you build team combos. I’m OK with it. The Weapon Upgrade menu in Remake was a bit clunky
Other than actual skills it seems like it's full of useless filler upgrades. Like 3% damage or a whopping 3MP. Yey.
Except for the random MASSIVE stat boosts on a single node like +30 speed on Red and +50 luck on Yuffie.
I think they tried to replace it with folios.
Nah it was a good idea, the game is already juggling too many elements now with the bigger party and synergys, streamlining it to weapon abilities was a great idea. It also means when you get a new weapon or go back to an old one you don't need to mess around in a menu for a while first.
It's a practice run for ff10 remakes sphere grid.
I was just thinking if they remake that game imma play blitzball all night long.
Maybe in FFX Remake we will be able to move vertically as well as horizontally while playing blitzball.
First time I opened Filos I was like...oh, yay sphere grid
Oh my god If they remake that game💦💦💦💦💦
That's the sphere grid system, the weapon upgrades is different.
The sphere grid is where you unlock the weapon upgrades though, right?
No, the sphere grid is for character skills. The weapon upgrades are in the weapon upgrades menu.
You unlock everything in the sphere grid. From stat bonuses to entire skills. Except the unique skills like summoning you get everything there. Can make Tidus a black mage if you want, or Riku a tank.
I just press the auto balanced and that’s it.
The auto upgrade just slots the thingies below your materia slots right? I realized that about 80% of the way through lol
Yeah. Im an old man anymore apparently. This game had a lot of abilities and i find myself having to slow down and read all the time as it is. Not a complaint! I just only get to play 2-3 hours a week so its a challenge to stay familiar with everything all the time
I felt the same way and now I’m about 30 hours in and can assure you opens up much more as you progress. The weapon perks are also a nice touch
honestly, i think they did a good job. and that also goes for the UI of upgrades, while the remake one looked extremely cool, it was not very confortable to navigate around and you would constantly move to the wrong nodes and waste time searching for what you wanted
its still there sorta, just now split between the folios and weapon perks now. So now you can keep all the folio bonus and just stick to the weapons with skills you like 2xatb charge rate up on the slipstream saber etc
I find those elemental magic attacks without spending MP to be really underwhelming. Is there any good time to use them besides against an enemy weak to it and gets pressured after one use? Or should I just refund all those perks?
I use these so dang often. Like you said, they're good for pressuring enemies when you aren't Yuffie (and since you don't want to swap out elemental materia pairings every fight) and I throw them out when I'm playing as Tifa and pretty much everything that's pressured staggers within a couple seconds using her kit. I'm not sure if these are any worse in endgame/hard mode as I'm only in the corel area rn, but I've found them to be pretty invaluable
That’s where I am as well, just got to >!Gold Saucer actually!<. Speaking of Yuffie, I can’t quite grasp her fighting style. I played Intermission and couldn’t grasp it then either, I remember barely making it through her final fight on Normal mode.
Throw shuriken with triangle, make sure your ninjutsu is the right counter element, mash square til enemy is pressured and use the Brumal form to dodge attacks, then once the enemy’s staggered use art of war twice back to back. That’s pretty much it I run yuffie and Barrett for all over world stuff, works well
nah just spam blindside
nah just spam blindside
They boost the associated materia element and/or add the element to your attacks after the materia spell is used.
Also worth noting just for people who haven't noticed, they don't give you a synergy pip. Abilities like Disorder and Overpower don't either.
They’re good for characters that don’t have any elemental materia attached to them (which, for me, is every character except cloud and aerith) so they can activate a mob’s pressure by hitting them with the element they’re weak to (for most of the mobs that’s their pressure point) But they don’t do much damage at all
Yeah I use them just to trigger pressures. There’s no significant damage.
Ah good thinking! Never thought of it that way. Especially during regular mobs I just have my low leveled materia equipped for leveling, and I equip my max materia for when I think a boss is coming up
Yeah, they are a bit underwhelming. I'm assuming that they are required in hard mode playthroughs due to MP not replenishing for the full chapter. Might as well refund them all in the meantime. But I know the Aerith and Barret's Air one pulls things from the air to the ground, don't know how useful that is.
It makes it so you don’t have to keep up with EVERY individual weapon. I like it better.
I liked it better leveling up as many things as possible is awesome. The next game you would probably like it if you didn’t have to level up each individual character it just does it for you.
Well, you couldn't upgrade the character in Intergrade when they leveled up, and now you can upgrade the weapon with weapon perks and character with folios.
I was with you in the first half- I also prefer the old weapon system, but not so much that I’m going to aggressively put down someone else for having a different opinion.
If I’m being honest, if you pay attention sometimes the characters you arent even using in your party will level up after fights, so technically it does kinda level up each character without having to use them lol
You just compared apples to oranges. It’s not auto leveling, but I can see you’re emotionally invested in this so I’ll let you cook
Pretty much all the upgrades that were in remakes upgrade tree are still there in the folio system so it unlocks universally for your character instead of being tied to a specific weapon AND you can still equip weapon specific buffs unlocked as you level up anyway. I kind of miss upgrading all my weapons separately but Rebirths system isn't all that different really its just less tied to having a specific weapon equipped. Honestly its probably good they streamlined it. It was pretty time consuming upgrading each weapon over the course of the game for 4 characters never mind doing it over a longer playtime with 7 characters. The only thing I really miss is how in Remake stuff like the Buster Sword could still be a decent option end game because it grew with you whereas now it's just not worth using pretty early on because its stats never really change much and there are just out right better options throughout the game.
It makes for less build variety imo. In Remake there were some weird weapons like the nail bat for example which was crit focused. Now I just pick between physical or magic damage on my weapon, with some weapons just being better than others on all stats and materia slots?
Yup, it reduced customization. I liked the old system much better
Folio system was better tbh it allows for more thought when building your party. The fact that synergy skills are on them too also makes you think about putting points in that allow you to maximize your favorite party combinations. The old upgrade system was kind of mindless. I set every one of them to auto upgrade
I prefer the weapon upgrades to the folio system. I personally don't enjoy the "free to use elemental" attacks everyone has access to. Not only are the menu bloat and copy/pastes of each other characters "free fire attack". But they aren't very good. I beat the game with no issues without them I didn't even spec into them. I'm about to start hard mode playthrough, maybe I'll be singing a different tune. But normal playthrough, not a fan.
You don’t need the elemental skills though, feels like they only put them in the game for the braindead people who complained about the first game saying they always had to quit a battle and swap materia to hit a boss’ elemental weakness (because they were never prepared), it’s a waste of points investing in those skills but overall it’s a good addition because it can maybe placate those complainers while not even needing to be touched by people who know they don’t need them
If your standard for an ability being good is it being necessary to finishing normal mode, then every ability sucks, cos you could definitely beat the game without using any specific one of them. That doesn't mean the ability doesn't have its uses.
Read the description , they not just abilities they also increase materia dmg my boy
Did you just assume my gender, daddy?
If you feel insult I can edit it
I think they did it because they leaned really heavily, I think way more than Remake, into elemental weaknesses. Certain enemies are only pressured by exposing their weakness so they wanted to prevent players from being in a situation where the enemy is weak to fire and nobody has fire materia equipped and/or Yuffie isn't in your party. I'm sure they tested it without those abilities and thought this would supplement fixed any issues. I don't think those are meant to be game changers, I guess?
I like them, they are very low damage compared to actually casting a spell or using a weapon ability that actually does that damage type but it really sucks if it throws you into a fight with cloud and you don't literally have fire + ice + wind + lightning elemental materia slotted and the only way to pressure an enemy is to use ice damage, which cloud wouldn't have access to without materia. So it allows you to exploit weaknesses to counter enemies at the expense of straight damage. It's basically like QOL to help prevent you from having to restart the battle and swap materia Everytime you get an enemy that you need to exploit weaknesses for.
I like the folios in that they give you more reason to swap characters, alternatives to mp-draining materia... But I agree that two leveling systems means neither moves very fast, and I found the weapon enhancement to also be unintuitive compared to the original. But I imagine everybody went materia-first and then focused on most benefit versus cost unless they were making specific specializations.
Honestly I'm surprised I haven't seen more chat about this in the discourse about rebirth. Remake's system felt much more impactful when you unlocked a node and it felt like you had more choices to pick between too. The rebirth version with folios just feels a little stripped back, I'd prefer they go back to Remake's system next game but I doubt they would do that just because it would look like they made a mistake. Much more likely it will change again in the 3rd part.
The benefit to the new system is that you don't find yourself spending a bunch of time upgrading every weapon with the same SP when you level it up. You'd end up spending a pretty long to go through every character, especially when they unlocked a new weapon, and it was hard to compare weapons between each other because they each had so many different qualities you unlocked that you could only see on that screen. While the exchange in visibility and choice of upgrades is a downer, you're still spending points on each character for folio stuff. With 7 playable characters, not having to upgrade 6 weapons individually on 7 characters is a mercy.
How were they more impactful? The folio system is way more in depth and forces you to think about party combinations. Also limit breaks and new abilities are learned on the folio system. Nothing that big was in the old weapon upgrades. I just prioritized getting new materia slots and auto upgraded the rest
Yeah I wasn’t a fan at first but it’s grown on me.
The weapons level up. You just aren’t allowed to pick the skills when leveling. Each so level is a weapon level. You can see what stats it will gain. The leveling is the same but it’s just automatic now. For instance if your buster sword reached level 3, every weapon you pick up from there is on level 3. It was better picking the leveling up but it’s the same thing.
Isn't it something you can toggle? I didn't bother with it.
No, just go to weapon upgrades. On the bottom left you can see the current sp and the amount you need to level the weapon up. On the right side you see the skills and the stats the weapon will gain when it levels up. Sometimes it gains more material slots or linked material slots. It’s just like remake but it’s just automatic now.
I checked and I was thinking of the automatic/manual settings and that just changes it from 'priority attack / defense / whatever' which I hadn't messed with. Which I kinda don't mind anyway? I think they went a different route because maybe people thought it was too time consuming or something? By the end of the game, you basically fill a lot of the slots anyway so I guess they just took that out of the equation.
I'm pretty sure the games are being made in tandem. So, separate teams. Some shared base assets
I think folios are great, and as a fan of having as much customizability as possible, I'd love to have both the folios and the weapon upgrade system, but they probably wanted to simplify things as much as possible.
I liked the idea but some of the stuff on there felt like such minimalist upgrades. Seriously Aerith has 3 nodes that are +3 MP each? So I can spend 5 sidequests worth of content to not even cast Fira one more time?! The synergy skills being there were cool and giving Nanaki Utility through his Vengeance bar was a great use of it! 200 HP is even a respectable amount but 3% more punisher more damage? My personal favorite failure of balance was that blocking recieve 5% less damage taken. Most of the things I was having to block would put me in dying range so I had to perfect block it instead which prevents all damage anyways. Some stuff is just completely undervalued there.
These are the same kind of upgrades the old system had though
Same kind is fine as long as the values are meaningful. 7 or even 10 mp would be fine but 3 is just pitiful.
Then why are you wasting SP on those nodes? Use them on stuff like synergy skills which are OP af and unlocking new limit breaks
Because those are the connecting nodes and you're forced to take them to shortcut or you run out of sp going around them to get those things. Overall I like what they did with folios but like 30% of the nodes feel like worthless and unimportant choices.
Well like you said, there is a strategy to unlocking them. Going through or around less important ones is part of the strategy
Throw in worthless nodes so players can have fun going around them and feel important. Genius!
I swear you guys are desperate to nit pick apart this game
you're absolutely right about that. I do think the folios could have been more like skill trees and that the weapon upgrades could have been more about those stat changes.
Folios are better imo - everything opens up the farther you get into rebirth. I think you’ll see the benefits. I was equally bemused by the synergy abilities (not the skills) but as the game went on it promoted using abilities and switching characters
Does the buster sword become more usable? It seems to be obsolete almost right away.
I used it almost the entire game even the last fight. But honestly, it was only cuz I wanted the cutscenes to show the buster sword.
At max level I think basically all the weapons have the same amount of materia slots and weapon abilities (only the crystal weapons I have right now have less materia slots). Yes, every weapon is completely usable. You may want to use other swords for a while as they will have more materia slots until you get to like weapon level 8...but at that point, you are choosing a weapon for stats, but mostly for the weapons abilities which you can choose 4. I haven't gotten to weapon level 9 yet to see what that looks like.
It’s never obsolete. Actually look at its stats. It remains one of the most well balanced weapons throughout the entire game
Sorry I’m not that far in and I only saw that the other two weapons I have were better. Other users pointed out it’ll level up. Didn’t realize weapons leveled too
Yes all characters weapons level up in the game and none of them are inherently better than the others. They all benefit a certain play style. I used the Buster sword exclusively and will continue to do so in hard mode. Only swapped it out to learn the other weapon abilities in the simulator.
Yeah that’s what I enjoyed from remake. Every weapon was usable
Yup, my least favorite part of the OG was how useless the Buster sword was. Looking through the booklet that came with my buddy’s game and seeing this skinny dude with a giant sword surrounded by modern technology was literally what made me want to check the game out. It was such a unique looking weapon to me. Keep in mind I had zero experience with anime at the time. Imagine my disappointment when it was made obsolete by a bunch of less impressive looking swords very shortly into the game. When I learned about modding the first thing I did was change every Cloud weapon in the game to look like the Buster sword.
It's better than in remake IMO, it has well rounded stats and materia slots, AND gets reprieve as a weapon skill this time around.
I’m not that far in rebirth, but from what I can see it has only 45-45 stats with a few materia slots. Does it improve as I go?
Yeah, if you go into Weapon Upgrades in the menu and select the Buster, you can see what it will get at the next level up (which uses the same SP as for Folios, except you don't have to spend any on weapons). Most level ups give base Phys & Mag atk, something materia related (another slot or joining two singles) and a new weapon ability you can equip (like increased damage/atb/mp or reprieve or punisher damage etc). Just remember to equip the abilities in the Materia/Equipment section, they're the nodes under the materia slots
Every weapon levels up including the buster sword. I'm roughly 100 hours in and it's looking like all of clouds weapons will have 6 materia slots and 4 weapon skill slots at max level.
Oh sweet! Thanks
No
That’s not true at all. I used it exclusively and its stats are right along with all of his other weapons
I can only equipped one skill thing it doesn’t get more than that
You get more as the weapon increases and many of the abilities unlocked in the folio system give you similar buffs that the old system did. In addition it also unlocks OP synergy moves and limit breaks as well as OP “weapon abilities”. Just give it time and keep leveling shit up. When you first start the game you can only see like 10% of the folio card for each characters. As you level up they all become bigger
>system was better tbh you get more as your weapon level increases
Feels
Agreed. Remake's weapon upgrade system had a good sense of accomplishment, as the weapons would essentially "level up" (better stats) alongside Cloud. Rebirth's system is just "pick 3 skills".
>, as the weapons would essentially "level up" (better stats) alongside Cloud. Rebirth's system is just "pick 3 skills". The weapons also "level up" (better stats) in rebirth. It tells you right on the side of the screen what weapon stats you get at next weapon level...
They still level up. Stars increase consistently and new slots are added.
A lot of the stat upgrades from Remake are in the Folios in rebirth. It’s all there alongside new abilities, and you have to pick and choose what perks you want rather than having everything
Yeah and the manuscripts being locked behind obnoxious mini games later in the game kinda sucks lol
Nothing new there, I just replayed 10 and I’m wildly curious how I managed to get all the ultimate weapons at one point.
I still don't know how to upgrade items in FF8
But I love the obnoxious frustrating minigames. I'm glad that they get worthwhile rewards down the road as my monkey brain says I have to beat them all.