Kalm Street Item Vendor has Steal Materia for 500 gil, and two card game boosters for 500 gil x2
You only start with 2000 so might as well make use of it
That first sword upgrade being 3k while you only have 2k was the bane of my existence for a little while. Ended up getting the card boosters and Steal instead, then when I got 3k a couple hours later I went back and got the sword. They kinda dangle it in front of you at the beginning.
The story problem the party has early on is that they have basically no money, and the game actually makes you feel that via gameplay by having a weapon upgrade that you just barely can't afford in the first shop, then making it inaccessible for an hour or so before you can try again and maybe barely scrape enough together by then.
Took the day off, had a lot to do and ended up not actually starting the game until like 7 PM. Then played for 8 straight hours. Gotdamn, can't remember the last time I played anything for that long in a row, or even more than like, 3.
Game is very good and it's making me Feel Things in a way that Remake never really did. It still has a fair amount of slow parts and things that seem designed to waste time, but not as much so as the first game. Mythril Mines went on waaaaay too long and I hope that isn't gonna be the case much more. Part one had some excessively long dungeons that really killed the buzz.
The open world stuff is great, there's almost too much to do. The side quests mostly seem to actually have a point. They borrowed elements from Assassin's Creed, Elden Ring, and especially Pokemon Legends: Arceus of all things. At some point I had to make a decision on how much free time I actually had to be spending hours in the Kalm Region, and elected to leave most of it unfinished and continue the story.
Probably just gonna run the story the first time and maybe do everything on a second run if the game is worth it, and it seems to be so far.