I remember it being a real pain in the first game when going for the plat and would hate a tedious grind again due to lacking information. Anyone with the platinum got me on this one?
Going for the platinum, is there any materia I should specifically hone in on leveling up in advance?
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Idk what "lacking info" means. If it means the game not really telling you how to do certain things it only tells you the basic necessities of how to play not necessarily the secrets behind the scenes. If you mean people incorporating a straight forward guide, it's not that easy as there is a ton of stuff to digest.
If you found the previous game tedious to platinum, you should be warned that this one is much more tedious as it is much more difficult and takes a lot longer to do.
In terms of what materia to max out. A lot of materia should be considered leveling up because you never know when a certain one comes in handy. Almost all of chadleys materia is worth leveling up. If it doesn't have a use in hard mode, do not put effort into it (such as Item Economizer). Ones you should consider investing time into are:
Multiple copies of the same magic materia particularly healing and elemental
Any and all copies of support materia as the number for them is finite (except warding)
7 of HP UP, MP UP, Steadfast block, Precision Defense
I guess what I meant was what’ll be optimal to have maxed out in a hard mode run. I’m not sure if this is like the last game in terms of what I’ll need but I know if I need to run it again in those challenge fights in hard mode then some materia are gonna be a must. Sort of like how with the final set of fights in the first game are much easier with a maxed out fire materia with the one that imbued your weapon with that element yk? What I’m trying to ask for is just materia that SHOULD be grinded out in advance for certain sequences in hard mode.
What you want maxed out is entirely up to your playstyle. The build itself doesn't matter too much even on hard mode except for certain specific encounters. Skill matters more in this game because even if you believe you have the best setup possible (which in some cases you probably do) in won't mean anything if you don't know how to use your setups properly.
If you made it a point to assess every new enemy you see (which is highly encouraged for the first playthrough btw) then you can look up the enemy intel for bosses before you actually fight them and adjust accordingly.
The 3 bullet points I made above just cover the essentials that will make everyones lives easier, anything else on top of that is optional. The list of potential materia that may be viable is so extensive because of the number of strategies one could take so I won't list all that I think are crucial. The optional stuff I'm referring to are some complete and magic materia. Things like VIT UP, SPR UP, and reraise materia are nice but not really required as the buffs gained from the former 2 aren't the greatest and with reraise I found trivial in this case as it costs quite a bit of MP for a situation you probably are trying to avoid anyway.
Since hard mode doesn't allow you to use items it's important you mitigate damage taken and deal as much damage as you can. In this case, maxing out elemental, HP and MP absorption materia is a must as well since they can be your source of healing and MP regeneration. If you know the chapter ends with a boss fight (chapter 2 for example), then you know you can go all out on MP if necessary because each chapter restores all your HP and MP back to normal. Chocobo stops still replenish your MP so you don't have to worry about MP mitigation whenever you're in the open world, only in dungeons or dungeon like areas where there are only benches which ofc only restore HP like the last game.
List of potential materia that could be useful in hard mode which are not limited to these (this list includes materia that only have one level so keep that in mind and also materia that is locked behind some extensive side content, keep that in mind as well):
- ATB Boost
- Limit Siphon
- Enemy Skill
- First Strike
- Darkside
- Magic Focus
- Magic Efficiency
- Binding (mostly if you want to get some breathing room on bosses that are susceptible to this)
- Swiftcast
- Fire/Ice and Lightning/Wind
- Magnify
Any materia that requires a lot of AP to level up particularly any support materia, use AP up linked to that.
Manuscripts are the only thing you need to be concerned about getting on hard mode. Most are locked behind sidequests (you will have to do them all) and enemy intel bosses in each region as well as the final VR challenges post game. The minigames, and odd jobs are not necessary if you already done them. Coliseum and underground fights can be done on any difficulty if available so those are not required as well.