FF7's Beginner's Hall(General Info Dude) - LN1's Words

-How to save?
Stand on a save point, open the menu, choose the Save option, save on either Slot 1 or Slot 2, and save on one of the three files available to you on either slot.
-How to heal your allies?
Target them with curative magic(like Cure) or throw curative items(like Potions) at them.
-Curative Magic?
Cure and subsequently stronger curative spells restore the HP of their targets. Since it is a magic spell, it ignores rows, but is affected by MBarrier.
-Weapons and armor?
Your weapon is what you attack with. Different weapons have different attack powers, hit rates(from pretty low to 255% perfect accuracy), and materia slots. Armor is what defends you. Different armors have different defense rates, affect differently either your physical or magic defense(note that the PS1 version had a bug that made magic defense from armor useless), have different Materia slots, give different effects like absorbing an element or better evasion, and some can only be equipped by certain characters.
-How to apply Materia?
See episode 13.5
-Effective ways to use Materia?
Oh boy can we talk about this. But let's limit ourselves to simple things. Magic Materia linked with All gives you the ability to hit multiple targets on one side of the battlefield. A later Materia can give your weapon an element or make your armor protect you from it. Linking your desired Magic Materia of the element you want to exploit elemental weaknesses or protect you from elemental attacks is a fair combo. Plenty more.
-How to form your battle party?
Choose your party members when you can, organize the order you want(although it's kinda arbitrary), and put them on the desired row, be it front or back. Front row takes full damage from physicals but also deals full damage physicals. Back row takes half damage from physicals but also deals half damage physicals.
-How to check your status?
Your menu should very well tell you your status outside of battle. In-battle there are some tricks like targetting a Remedy(heals many bad statuses) item to see what statuses your party has. There are also many visual cues to them.
-About Limit status?
Your Limit charges up the more you take damage. When your Limit bar is full, your Attack command gets replaced with a Limit command and you can unleash your Limit Break. The Limit bar is emptied if the character loses all HP, no matter how full it was.
-Other things to watch for?
Don't take away the FF7 Disc until you are told to change it.