A Very Handy Tip That Final Fantasy 7 Remake Doesn’t Tell You

Not even before you get halfway through the game, your stocks of materia will get real high. And while the game has a couple of sorting options to make swapping out the elemental tools and assists you need, they don’t fix Final Fantasy 7 Remake‘s bigger UX problem: it’s still one giant list. Fortunately, there’s a helpful tip the game doesn’t tell you about.

Materia is generally sorted by type first, and in the initial stages of the game this is totally fine. You don’t get stocks of support and HP Up/MP Up/Luck Up materia until much later in the game, and Square Enix were decent enough to let you scroll to the bottom of the list from the up (simply by pushing up on the D-Pad or left stick).

But when you’re 15, 20 or 25 hours in, you’ll have a ton of materia to sort through. It becomes tricky when you rely on certain combinations, and you’ve just picked up a new weapon and … it’s got one less materia slot than what you were previously carrying.

Sorting by type and the materia most recently acquired isn’t the fastest solution either, but there is a trick that the UI doesn’t tell you about.

If you press left or right on the D-pad, you’ll immediately skip one page forward or backward down your materia list. It’s pretty instant – there’s no annoying menu transition – and it’s much faster than pushing in the stick to change how your materia list is sorted. Throughout my playthrough, and especially in those moments where you’re restarting a battle and completely changing your party’s loadout, this was by far and away the fastest way to get what you need.

It’s so helpful that I can’t understand why Square didn’t have a simple button at the bottom of the screen helping players. It’s far more useful than prioritising by equipped gear or changing the default sort. Some players might discover this of their own volition, but there are also some who won’t.

So if you’re finding digging through your bag of materia a right pain, start smashing sideways on your D-pad. It’ll make management a hell of a lot easier, especially when you’re swapping out your entire party’s loadout all at once.


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