In Final Fantasy 7: Remake, Cloud was usually alone or with just one or two other companions at a time. Aside from a few instances, mainly combat trails and VR missions, you never had to worry much about party management during the story. In Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, your crew starts out at five and only grows from there.
As was the case in the original and Remake, only three characters can be active in a fight at a time, one of which is the leader. While playing as Cloud is great fun, you will be doing yourself a disservice by not switching the party up and experimenting with different combinations. The game tells you that it can be done, but isn’t as informative on exactly how to do these things as, say, Chadly would be. Here’s how to change your party and set your party leader in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.
How to change your party and party leader
Changing your party is self-explanatory: You decide which set of three available characters will be the ones to fight in any given battle. The party leader is the character you will control at the start of battle by default, meaning you don’t have to always start as Cloud and rotate to someone else if you prefer playing as them.
Both of these can be changed by pausing the game while out of combat and going into the Combat Settings section. From here, press Square to edit your party by selecting one of your current members and replacing them with one in reserve.
To change your party leader, just hit Triangle on this screen and select one of your three current party members to label them as “Leader.” While you will still run around the world as Cloud (or occasionally other characters depending on context), as soon as a fight begins, you will take control of whomever you have selected to be the leader.