Yuffie Kisaragi, one of the most beloved FFVII characters, is finally back. Introduced in the DLC for Final Fantasy VII Remake, the Wutai ninja stars in her own mini-episode. While she may not be rubbing shoulders with the rest of the cast just yet, she’s a lot of fun to play on her own. In fact, Yuffie has by far the best combat FFVIIR has to offer.

Aside from a versatile kit of attacks and abilities, Yuffie is capable of true aerial combat, which is a first for the game. She can continuously attack without ever needing to touch the ground. Not only does this make fighting as Yuffie super fun, but also adds to a plethora of options to experiment.

In our ultimate combat guide for the Yuffie episode of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, we break down everything the spunky shinobi has to offer.

Yuffie’s Basic Attacks

Both of Yuffie’s basic attacks act as a foundation for her varied and flexible playstyle. Mastering both is key to mastering her playstyle and maximize her potential. Both attacks have a few variations and depend on whether she’s holding her massive Shuriken or not.

Square Attack

While holding her weapon, Yuffie can perform a simple 4-hit combo when tapping the Square button. It’s not particularly high damaging but can be used to start off her offense or to finish off a low-health enemy quickly.

By holding down Square, Yuffie will leap backward while slashing at her target in an arc. This attack allows you to gain some space in order to heal up or use ranged attacks.

When Yuffie’s Shuriken is sent towards an enemy, she gains access to a ranged magic attack. By tapping Square, she can deal successive damage that can be imbued with different elements (more on that later). Holding down Square will launch the target, sending it flying towards Yuffie.

Triangle Attack

Triangle is primarily used to send the Shuriken flying towards an enemy. The weapon will twirl around, dealing damage to the target for roughly 10 seconds. Pressing Triangle a second time will make Yuffie teleport towards her Shuriken, which then allows her to perform an aerial combo by spamming Square.

Learning the rhythm of these two attacks and their variations will enable you to perform some fundamental combos with Yuffie.

Combos

Both of the following combos are essential to deal continuous damage and taking advantage of Yuffie’s aerial capabilities.

Hold Square > Triangle > Hold Square > Repeat

A nice basic combo that juggles the target while allowing you to keep your distance from other enemies.

Triangle > Triangle > 3x Square > Repeat

Yuffie’s main aerial bread-and-butter combo. You can repeatedly use this on multiple targets that are airborne.

Yuffie’s Block Parry

Yuffie has a unique block mechanic called Precision Defense. After successfully using a Perfect Block, she’ll negate all of the damage of the attack. At the same time, she’ll receive a buff depending on the weapon she’s using.

• 4-Point Shuriken: Fills the ATB gauge
• Boomerang: Casts Barrier on Yuffie
• Steel Reaper: Casts Regen on Yuffie

If you didn’t feel like mastering Perfect Block was important in FFVII Remake, then you’ll want to learn it in INTERmission.

Yuffie’s Skills & Abilities

Now that we’ve got Yuffie’s basic attacks out of the way, time to look at the meat and potatoes of her kit. Yuffie has two abilities at the start of the game.

Windstorm

Yuffie unleashes an area-of-effect (AOE) gust of wind that affects foes around her. It deals damage and brings them in closer to Yuffie. While the damage isn’t that impressive on its own, it opens up plenty of possibilities for starting combos and doing big damage.

To maximize its damage, you should use Windstorm when your Shuriken is on a target as it deals far more damage that way.

Art of War

This ability is a multi-hitting melee skill that deals progressively more damage. You want to primarily use it when you want to put enemies in a Pressure state or when they’re Staggered. Like Windstorm, Art of War is at its best when your Shuriken is out.

Elemental Ninjutsu

Yuffie receives this ability from 4-Point Shuriken. You use the command menu to cycle between four elements, Fire, Ice, Wind, and Lightning. After selecting an element, you can activate the ability to imbue Yuffie’s magic attack stance with elemental damage. This skill alone makes it so that Yuffie doesn’t need to build magic Materia as the damage from her ranged attack is quite potent.

Pro tip: Make a command shortcut for Lightning. The most common type of enemy in the INTERmission DLC is mechanical so lightning damage should be your go-to.

Brumal Form

Yuffie receives this ability from Boomerang. This ability acts as a teleport dodge that gives Yuffie incredible mobility. Thanks to its low ATB cost, it’s practically spammable. binding this to a command shortcut will enable you to perform quick dodges both on the ground and in the air while doing combos.

Banishment

Yuffie’s most damaging ability is received from Steel Reaper. This ability is a massive AOE attack that does big damage. It can also be leveled up by using whole bars of ATB. After using 6 commands that take up 1 whole ATB bar, Banishment can reach level 3 which is its maximum. Reaching its level cap causes Banishment to deal incredible amounts of damage. What’s more, it can also be imbued with elemental damage from Elemental Ninjutsu.

Cactuar Caper

Yuffie receives this ability from Cacstar. There’s not much to say about this ability. Upon activation, the Cactuar-inspired weapon starts running around the battlefield dealing damage to enemies at will. It’s nice to add an extra ability to your arsenal but doesn’t add much to her overall kit.

Bloodbath

Yuffie’s Limit Break is surprisingly one of her least useful abilities. It’s fairly weak when compared to Cloud’s and Tifa’s. What’s more, is that Yuffie only has access to one Limit Break.

Windstorm: Gust of wind that damages and launches back to her -> use when Shuriken is out to deal big damage

Sonon Commands

Despite being a separate character, Sonon can’t be directly controlled. Instead, you can only issue commands for him to perform. For this reason, it’s best to look at him as an extension to Yuffie’s ability set.

Sonon unlocks abilities by using them on foes. The best place to max out his kit is by doing the VR training in Chapter 2.

Twirling Lunge

A spinning AOE attack that’s best used to increase the opponent’s Stagger.

Swirling Storm

Another AOE attack that does a significant amount of damage.

Fighting Spirit

Makes Sonon focus on a single target. Great for getting some help finishing off a particular target.

Incite

One of his most useful abilities. Incite is similar to casting Provoke, which effectively taunts enemies towards him. Great for bunching up targets as well as keeping them off Yuffie.

Dance of the Dragon

Sonon’s Limit Break which acts similarly to Yuffie’s. Not particularly impressive on its own.

Synergy System

The Yuffie Episode party really starts once you begin using Synergy. This allows Yuffie and Sonon to perform attacks in sync, allowing for big damage. You activate Synergy by pressing L2. It’s best to use it when both Sonon and Yuffie have ATB available. 

While Synrgeized, Sonon will mimic what Yuffie does, even Elemental Ninjutsu. This is great for tacking on more elemental damage, especially during boss fights. The downside is that Sonon won’t build ATB much slower while Synergy is active.

Synergize Art of War

Art of War isn’t much on its own but when in Synergy it does crazy damage, especially when a target is Staggered.

Synergize Windstorm

Aside from doing more damage, the Synergy version of Windstorm increases Stagger percentage as well as pulls in foes even closer.

Synergize Limit Break

The big kaboom! On their own, Yuffie and Sonon’s Limit Breaks aren’t that great. When they both have them on deck and are Synergized, though, they can deal massive damage, especially to Staggered foes.