Set materia to your weapons and armor from the Materia & Equipment tab in the main menu. Some materia will allow you to use unique combat abilities, while others can link up to other materia to produce some interesting effects.
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Materia (マテリア, Materia?) is a type of equipment in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Much like the original Final Fantasy VII, materia provides one of the game's core gameplay mechanics, as it grants party members abilities in battle.
Mechanics[]
Materia on the field.
Materia slots into equipment and is visible in certain weapon models. Some allow the use of special abilities, like magic and command abilities, when the attacker's ATB gauge fills up, while others boost party members passively.
A separate slot exists specifically for summoning materia. These cannot be linked with other materia, and each party only has one.
Materia are upgraded by earning AP from winning battles. They do not spawn new copies when mastered.
Materia have a small effect on party member attributes, as some grant moderate boosts to attributes.
Types[]
| Color | Icon | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green |  |
Magic | Used to cast spells, including damaging, healing, and status-inducing spells. |
| Yellow |  |
Command | Allows the use of extra commands in battle such as Steal and Chakra. |
| Blue |  |
Support | Can be linked to other materia in order to enhance their effects. |
| Purple |  |
Complete | Increasing attributes and gives auto-abilities. |
| Red |  |
Summoning | Used to summon creatures to aid in battle. Only one can be used per character. |
Behind the scenes[]
Maxed out materia do not spawn fresh copies of themselves like in Final Fantasy VII. This was done to better balance the game's difficulty so the player can't have lots of the same best materia. The other reason was that in the original game materia allowed full party customization, but this ended up making players give everyone the same set. The developers wanted to avoid this with the remake. Each character is limited to holding one summoning materia so players would not agonize over whether to bring a summon (as summoning is not always available) or to constantly change it based on what they would be fighting.[1]
Etymology[]
Materia means "matter" or "substance" in Latin, Spanish, and Italian; it also means "subject" in Italian and Spanish, and is the root of Portuguese "Matéria".