Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Remake Boss Guide (All Bosses)

Final Fantasy 7 (VII) Remake contains 31 boss fights. Final Fantasy VII Remake Boss Guide will walk you through the best tactics to defeat all bosses in the game, including hard difficulty boss strategies. They are listed in chronological story order below.

Boss #1 – Scorpion Sentinel

• Chapter: 1
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Its stagger gauge does not fill while its force field is deployed

The Scorpion Sentinel is the first boss in the game and is actually one of the tougher ones. To begin with, you should use your Lightning magic to attack it since it’s weak towards that element. It will soon envelop itself in a shield, so you need to take out its Field Generator. It’s best to do this from range with Fire magic or Barret’s attacks since if you get close he’ll hit you with Tail Swipe and Scorpion Strikes.

When the Sentinel’s health hits 75% , it will jump to the wall and attack from range with electric attacks. Use Barret’s Overcharge to do good damage to him along with Cloud’s Fire and he’ll soon jump back down and begin the next phase. Just make sure to avoid the EM Field attack by keeping distance.

Once it’s back on the ground, keep attacking it up close in Cloud’s Punisher Mode, holding to Guard and then counterattack when necessary. Use Focused Thrust and Focused Shot to build its Stagger meter, and once its Staggered hit it with your strongest attacks to do considerable damage.

When it hits half health, it will start using its Tail Laser attack. If this hits you, it will really hurt so the safest option is to run for the debris in the area and hide behind it. You won’t get hurt this way and you can use the waiting time to heal up if necessary. Once the attack is over, then you can pop out and continue the assault with the same tactics as earlier.

As it gets down to 25%, it will start to rotate its attacks more frequently. It likes to launch missiles at you, and it’s actually better to just block them with and take reduced damage than try and dodge them by running since you’ll almost certainly get hit anyway and suffer more damage. It’s still best to use Barret in this situation because of his range keeping you out of harm’s way.

Keep attacking while you can and aim to Stagger it. When its HP gets very low it will start to auto-repair. so aim for both legs to take it down for good. If it grabs you, quickly press or to switch to your other character and attack so it doesn’t finish the grapple animation.

Hard Difficulty Tips: The good news is that Scorpion Sentinel is actually one of the few bosses which is easier on Hard than it is on Normal. That’s because you now have access to all the end-game weapons and Materia whereas on your first run you just had the bare minimum. However, be mindful that this is your first serious test of whether you’ve got to grips with Hard Mode and the huge jump in damage that bosses can do to you. Remember that healing is always your priority if your health dips into the red, so stick Magnify-Cure on Cloud so that he can heal Barret at the same time too.

Have both characters with Elemental-Lightning on so that your attacks do extra damage to the boss and Stagger it quicker. Then unleash Triple Slash and Maximum Fury on it and it’ll go down surprisingly quickly. You can also use a few Thundaga spells to really hurt it if you have plenty of excess MP, but remain mindful of how much you have left and the fact you’ll need some for the short section after this boss.

Boss #2 – Roche Motorbike Boss

• Chapter: 4

Roche has much more health than the previous soldiers during the bike mini game and possesses a series of attacks that you have to continually dodge to avoid damage, such as waves generated by his swords, or large lightning bolts that strike the ground directly in front of you. When you can get beside him he will also swing his sword at you, even while you are attacking him. Make sure you use your ranged special with + to deal large chunks of damage if he is farther away from you. Continue whacking at him and avoiding his attacks until he runs out of health, then this section will end.

Hard Difficulty Tips: This is the easiest boss on Hard Mode…because you can skip it! As soon as Chapter 4 starts and you’re on the bike, press > Skip Bike Minigame.

Boss #3 – Roche

• Chapter: 4
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: —
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Elixir
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Elixir
• Assess Info: Hitting him with physical strikes and blocking his attacks will eventually make him easier to interrupt.

Roche starts off by using an Elixir on you to restore your HP and MP to the maximum (except on hard difficulty). It’s nice someone in this game wants a fair fight! This fight is more of a duel than other boss battles, and there will be more of these to come down the line. This means fewer, if any, wide AoE attacks and targeting distant targets and more learning attacks and how to dodge them.

As such, you’re far better off using Punisher Mode for this fight and all future duels. The smaller arena means your reduced speed won’t matter as much and most importantly, holding to Guard will automatically counterattack any physical damage you receive from his Plunge and Combustion Sword attacks. Even better, he will Stagger quicker from physical attacks (which are stronger in Punisher Mode) and from Guarding. Use your ATB charges to hit him with Focused Thrust when he’s ‘Pressured’ or your strongest Fire magic (his weakness) to build his Stagger bar. Once he’s Staggered, hit him with your strongest physical attacks, Triple Slash and hopefully your Limit Break if it builds up.

This is another easy one; just remember to not get too greedy with physical attacks as he’ll retaliate quickly, and remember to heal and keep your Guard up at all times. Dodge his magic attacks with . The more health he loses, the more aggressive he gets, but you can still block all of his attacks.

Hard Difficulty Tips: This is the first battle where the brilliance of Counterstance comes into play, a weapon ability picked up from the Twin Stinger weapon. You’ll see in this fight how overpowered it is when used correctly. Firstly, make sure you have Elemental-Fire Materia on your weapon to give you an extra edge against him, and it’s also worth having a Time Materia so you can cast Haste on yourself for quicker ATB.

Then when you see ‘Plunge’ appear above his head or he’s going to strike you with a physical attack, quickly select Counterstance (it’s worth having it on a shortcut) and you’ll not only block the attack but deal a huge counter that takes off a large chunk of life and boost the Stagger bar.

Since Roche replenished your MP, you also have some leeway to hit him with a couple of Firagas (especially when he’s Staggered) which again does huge damage. With these tactics, you should destroy Roche with ease.

Boss #4 – Enigmatic Spectre

• Chapter: 4
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Physical, Magic, Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Normally, attacks have only a slight effect on its stagger gauge, but the gauge fills more quickly after it has been interrupted.

The Enigmatic Spectre will spawn many gray spectres to aid it in combat. You can actually ignore those gray spectres and focus just on the Enigmatic Spectre by fighting it in mid-air. The gray spectres won’t hit you much while fighting the Enigmatic Spectre in mid-air. Or you can destroy the gray spectres to pressure the Enigmatic Spectre which helps build its stagger quicker, either method works. You’re also not going at this fight alone, Tifa is with you. It’s best to use Tifa to increase the Stagger bar of the Enigmatic Spectre (goes faster than using Cloud). Buff Tifa twice with her Unbridled Strength ability which makes her deal more damage. The Enigmatic Spectre has 2 dangerous attacks – a black hole it creates on the floor which you can’t outrun if you get near it, and from the air it will rain down projectiles that can deal a lot of damage.

You can ignore the gray spectres and just use Tifa to fight the Enigmatic Spectre until it gets staggered. Make sure Tifa has been buffed twice with Unbridled Strength before it goes into Stagger, and have 2 ATB bars ready. Buffing Tifa with Unbridled Strength upgrades her attacks from Whirling Strike to Omnistrike > Rise and Fall. Use two attacks when it’s staggered (Rise and Fall + Omnistrike further improves Stagger damage %). Then just attack normally. On the first stagger you won’t be able to kill it. Repeat a 2nd time to stagger it again and it will go down very quick the second time around. It’s not weak against any particular element, it’s not worth casting spells here.

If the Spectre traps one of your characters in a whirlwind, quickly switch to the other character to attack it.

Hard Difficulty Tips: When the fight starts, switch to Tifa right away and only play as her the entire fight. Buff her twice with Unbridled Strength to upgrade her attack to Rise and Fall, then attack only the boss in mid-air, completely ignoring the gray Spectres on the ground. Have Rise and Fall attack and 2 ATB bars ready before it goes into stagger. Then unleash   Rise and Fall > Omnistrike > True Stike (1 ATB) > True Strike (1 ATB). These 4 moves will increase the stagger damage from 160% to 265% and deals a lot of damage in the process. You can’t kill it in a single stagger. Stagger it a 2nd time and repeat these 4 moves and it will die.

Boss #5 – Crab Warden

• Chapter: 5
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: Stop
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Metal Knuckles (Weapon)
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Molotov Cocktail
• Assess Info: Crippling its parts significantly fills its stagger gauge.

This is the first real boss fight where your task should be to cripple a number of appendages before you attack the main body. The focus in the early part of the battle is to take out the four legs and this is best done with your strongest Thunder magic and physical attacks. If Cloud and Tifa are up close slashing away at the legs, the Warden will be busy trying to hit them with its flamethrower and thunder attacks, so it’s a wise move to hang back with Barret and chip away with long-range attacks, healing Cloud and Tifa when you need to.

Destroying each leg significantly builds the Stagger bar, so after 2-3 legs are down, it will enter Stagger and expose the Generator, which is the boss’ real weak spot. Focus all your strongest attacks (especially Thundara) on this while you can to deal huge damage.

When it gears up to use its missile attacks, hide behind the various crates and debris around the map to shield yourself. It will also do an attack where it electrocutes the rails, so make sure you’re in betwen the rails or you’ll get hurt. Once the legs are gone, it will bring out two Auxiliary Weapons which you should again target to expose the Generator for one final assault.

If you get the chance to summon Ifrit, make sure you do it! He deals really good, consistent damage to aid you and if possible, use Radiant Plume on the Generator during Stagger to take off a massive chunk of life. Also focus on wiping out the Slug-Ray enemies as soon as possible so you can get back to focusing on the Warden.

Hard Difficulty Tips: For this fight, there is very little to add except equip Cloud and Tifa with Elemental-Thunder to boost their attacks, and make sure you use Magnify-Cure to keep everyone topped up. A couple of Thundagas will do huge damage to the legs and the Generator, so if you can afford it then use them. This boss marks the end of the chapter so there’s nothing after it to save MP for.

Boss #6 – Airbuster

• Chapter: 7
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Stop
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Titanium Bangle
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: AI Programming Core
• Assess Info: Lightning attacks rapidly fill its stagger gauge.

Airbuster is a unique boss in FF7 Remake in that you can in some ways determine how difficult the battle will be. After the scene in the Reactor 5 Core, you’ll have to work your way through a number of security rooms before the fight. In these rooms, you can obtain keycards and use them on consoles to remove certain parts of the Airbuster. There’s a choice of three options: M-Units, AI Cores and Big Bomber Shells. The former only grants you items, whereas the AI Cores slows the boss down and limits his stun attacks and removing the bombs reduces the number of times he can use powerful explosives.

Whilst it’s tempting to get the items, they’re actually disappointing and just more of the same items you can pick up everywhere. Who needs one more Ether when you can stop a potentially lethal attack? You get 6 keycards in total, and the first has to be used on an M-Unit, but the other five are left to choice. It’s up to you which you choose, but the Big Bomber Shells can cause far more damage in one hit and the Airbuster’s movement range is fairly limited anyway so it’s perhaps best to get rid of as many Shells as possible.

You should have picked up the best attacking Materia in the game, Elemental, in Chapter 6, so you will now see how effective it is. For this fight, stick it on Barret linked with Thunder as keeping your distance is the best tactic thanks to Airbuster’s propensity to stun those who are in close range. His bullets will do more damage and increase the Stagger further.

Since your party is split initially, this works to your advantage. Always switch to the characters who are behind Airbuster as it’ll be concentrating its attacks on the ones in front of him. When it’s occupied with one character, hit it with your strongest Lightning Magic (the more characters with this, the better) until it’s stunned and then wail on it with your strongest ATB abilities like Triple Slash.

The fight gets trickier in the second part; Airbuster will retreat down the gangway and charge up its Tankbuster laser. Don’t try and be a hero now, get out of the way! You’ll almost certainly die if hit by this so just retreat down the sides of the T-shape and use the time to heal or hit him with more Magic. This is where Barret comes into his own, as he can keep targeting Airbuster with his enhanced Elemental attacks and whittling down its health. It will then split off its arms which will fire arcs of electricity at you, so target those individually straight away to stop these attacks and significantly boost the Stagger bar.

Airbuster will continue to use Tankbuster periodically, so just keep an eye out and get out of the way. As long as you dodge this attack or quickly get a Phoenix Down and heal on a dead ally, you can continue using the tried and tested methods from earlier in the fight. Once it’s very low on health, it’ll fire off the Big Bomber attack (if you got rid of as many shells as possible with the keycards, it should only be able to use this once) and likely cause significant damage, so make sure you use any ATB remaining to heal. Survive this and finish it off for good.

Hard Difficulty Tips: This time, there’s very little to add on Hard Mode except the obvious fact that Airbuster’s attacks hit harder and both Tankbuster/Big Bomber will almost certainly kill you. Its higher HP will be offset by the fact that you can use Elemental-Lightning on both Cloud and Barret to deal lots of damage quickly. Not only that, but again this fight is at the end of the chapter so if you’ve been wise with your MP you can hammer him with Thundagas to really cause some hurt. Always be mindful of your health and pop a Magnify-Cure if needs be. Barret’s Maximum Fury will easily take out the hands and should be your ATB ability of choice in this fight whenever available and you’re not healing.

Boss #7 – Reno

• Chapter: 8
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Lightning, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Silence, Slow, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Ether
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Ether
• Assess Info: Magic and lightning attacks have only a slight effect on his stagger gauge.

Just like Roche in Chapter 4, this is another ‘duel’ battle. What worked for Roche will work here. Always be in Punisher Mode when you can, holding to Guard and hit him with your counterattack. Offensive magic is fairly useless in this fight so don’t bother with it.

Block, counter and hit him with Focused Thrust when your ATB charges up in order to build Stagger, then switch to Triple Slash when he’s in Stagger to do good damage. After about half his health is gone he’ll throw out some EM Mines which give off electricity and will stun you if you get hit. Make these your immediate priority and do your best to keep your eye on Reno at the same time and dodge his lunges.

Hard Difficulty Tips: For this one, equip Elemental-Lightning on your armor (not weapon) as his electrified security baton deals Lightning damage, which will be halved (or even immune in the highly unlikely event you’ve leveled it up).  This fight is even easier on Hard since your Elemental Materia will be either Level 2 or MAX, meaning his Lightning attacks can’t damage you and may even heal you. Plus you have the most overpowered ability in the game, Counterstance! Use it whenever you have your ATB charged and time it right to deliver crushing blows to him.

Boss #8 – Shiva (VR Mission)

• Chapter: 8
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances: Physical
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Sleep, Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: Ice
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

It might be intimidating taking on a summon, but this fight is really easy. Put your strongest Fire Magic on Aerith and with her high Magic stat and large MP pool, you have the capacity to deal constant heavy damage and Stagger Shiva quickly. Just keep using your strongest fire magic on her. Use Elemental Materia connected to Ice Materia on Cloud’s armor (not weapon) to protect you from Shiva’s Blizzard attacks and wail on her with Focused Thrusts and Triple Slashes. When she summons ice crystals, it’s best to just Guard and take the damage on the chin because dodging it with is almost impossible and will lead to you taking more damage and being stunned.

Most importantly, summon Ifrit once the purple bar fills up! He will destroy Shiva with his attacks, so save your ATB charges for those. If the fight is still going on by the time Ifrit’s bar runs out, then his Limit Break, Hellfire, will take off more than a quarter of her health, which should be enough to win you the fight.

When low on health, she has a chance of using her own Limit Break, Diamond Dust, which can really hurt you, so when you see the name of the ability show up above her head, pop a healing spell or two so you can withstand the damage.

Hard Difficulty Tips: You won’t need to fight Shiva again in Chadley’s VR headset, but you will need to defeat her in Round 1 of the Pride and Joy gauntlet challenge in Chapter 17. As per the Pride and Joy Boss Guide, make sure two characters have Elemental-Ice on their armor and that Cloud & Tifa have a Headband equipped to prevent against Sleep. This is because on Hard, she uses Sleep a lot and all of her attacks use Ice. This way, it’s almost impossible to die and you never need to heal and can focus on attacking her to whittle down her health as she likes to heal frequently.

Boss #9 – Rude

• Chapter: 8
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Wind
• Lesser Resistances: Fire
• Greater Resistances: Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Silence, Slow, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Mega-Potion
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Mega-Potion
• Assess Info: Wind attacks rapidly fill his stagger gauge

This is another ‘duel’ fight, but this time you can’t just stand and block hoping to counter. Rude hits a lot harder than Reno, so he’ll knock you flat on your back. Instead, you’re going to want to dodge his lunges to the side with , then get a quick combo in before dodging again. Meanwhile, have your Wind Materia on Aerith, who is really the key to this fight. Rude will be so preoccupied with Cloud that she can cast Aero/Aerora almost freely (whilst stopping to heal if needs be) and Stagger him. Then unleash your Triple Slash and Punisher combos.

After the cutsene where his glasses break, he’ll use an attack where he punches the ground with his fist and emit a shockwave which can stun you, so it’s best to hang back and dodge backwards. When very low on health, he’ll crouch on the ground and emit a golden glow. Don’t attack him now or he’ll unleash a powerful counter on you, so just hang back and be patient, peppering him with more Aero until he goes down.

Hard Difficulty Tips: The answer should be obvious by now…Counterstance! This will wreck Rude just as it did Roche and Reno. Not only that, but you can put Elemental-Wind on Cloud to give your attacks an extra edge, whilst Aerith can stand back and hit him with Aeroga. Once again, this is the last fight of the chapter so no need to manage your MP, just make sure you leave enough to Cure/Raise in a pinch.

Boss #10 – Fat Chocobo (VR Mission)

• Chapter: 9
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: Physical
• Greater Resistances: Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

Fat Chocobo is the easiest of the summon battles. Although it doesn’t have weaknesses, it has the longest Stagger period in the game. In fact, if you want to get Staggering Feat out of the way, this is your best bet. Use physical attacks and your Stagger-building abilities like Focused Thrust and Focused Strike to build its bar, then when in Stagger switch to Tifa and use her abilities (preferably with a higher Chi level) to increase his percentage to 300% or more.

Fat Chocobo poses little threat. Its Wark ability tosses random objects at you which are super easy to dodge, Boom will see it pop into the air and come down with an AoE attack so just roll backwards out of the way, and Roly Poly is a move where it’ll zip around while rolling and again you can dodge to the side.

The Moogle will float around Fat Chocobo and occasionally summon phantom Bombs, Cactuars and Tonberries to the battle. Thankfully, they only have a tiny fraction of the HP of the real ones, but they should still be the priority as they can overwhelm you. A Triple Slash should wipe them out and then you can get back to whittling down Fat Chocobo’s health.

Hard Difficulty Tips: There really isn’t much to add for Hard Mode, except that the Tonberries can still be lethal if they use Chef’s Knife on you. Kill them quick! Other than that, your more powerful abilities like Tifa’s True Strike can raise the Stagger bar by 30% with every use and Cloud’s Blade Burst will deal substantial damage.

Boss #11 – Hell House

• Chapter: 9
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Magic
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Silence, Slow, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Fuzzy Wuzzy
• Rare Items Dropped: Mr. Cuddlesworth
• Stealable Items: Mr. Cuddlesworth
• Assess Info: When it shifts barriers, hit it with the opposing element, such as ice to fire or lightning to wind, to rapidly fill its stagger gauge. When God House Mode is active, attacks will be less effective at filling the gauge, but for a short time after this mode ends, it will be much easier to stagger.

Welcome to by far your toughest test yet, even on Easy/Normal. On lower difficulties, this is the first boss where brute force, button mashing and your strongest abilities won’t get you through. You need to adapt since Hell House is practically resistant to all physical attacks for a lot of the fight. Be sure to equip Poison Materia and cast your strongest Poison magic (Bioga if you have a Level 3 Poison Materia). It will take out a quarter of the Hell House’s health in one use. While the poison is active you keep shooting the house with Aerith’s default attacks for added damage.

This contest is almost like a Pokemon battle on steroids. Hell House will cycle through the four main elements (as shown by the color of the house’s windows). Red = Fire, White = Ice, Blue = Lightning, Green = Wind. So first thing’s first, make sure you have one of each of the four basic Magic Materia spread across your characters. When the House’s windows are a specific color, it will absorb all damage of that element and be weak to the opposite (Ice hurts Fir / Fire huts Ice / Lightning hurts Wind / Wind hurts Lightning). Intermittently, it will fly high up into the stands of the Colosseum and unleash Chair Salvo, which rains chairs down on you that can really hurt if you’re not Guarding. You can try dodge rolling around, but if you misjudge and get hit then you’ll be hurt badly. It’ll also spit out stuffed toys which might look cute but really aren’t…they’re bombs. Stay away!

You’ll only want to attack with Aerith in this fight. Cloud does hardly any damage against this boss and is better used as a support character for healing (Pray Materia and Healing Materia on Cloud). Make sure you have Revival Materia equipped, too.

Hell House chooses a random element to begin the battle with, but it seems to be Fire 75-80% of the time. Therefore, if you want to get a headstart in this battle, it’s best to equip Elemental-Ice on Aerith’s weapon. Alternatively, you can equip Elemental and any of the four elements to your armor and protect yourself from at least 1 of the 4 different elements. However, if you don’t like to deal with all the elemental stuff just stick with Poison Materia.

After you’ve chipped away about a quarter of its health, a small cutscene will play and the House’s head and arms will emerge. Your summon will be just about ready. DO NOT SUMMON IFRIT OR SHIVA! Chocobo and Moogle is the only summon worth calling in this fight. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have Ifrit or Shiva and the House has red or white windows respectively. All their powerful attacks will just heal it. Yes, there’s a chance for the opposite to happen and they can do great damage but Barrier Shift can happen at any time and you can’t control your summons. Chocobo and Moogle’s neutral element won’t have this problem.

Once the transformation happens, physical attacks will do more damage, but it gains a nasty attack called Hospitality where it will swallow your character through the front door and do regular damage before it spits you out and causes a lot of health to be lost. This is likely to be Cloud since Aerith shouldn’t be anywhere near Hell House, and the good news is she can still heal Cloud even if he’s inside the house.

The annoying part of this fight hasn’t even begun yet (we warned you this was tough!). Once it approaches half health, it will use a move called God House Mode where it will stop the elemental shifting and instead be covered by a massive shield and take basically no damage while it flies around the room. Cloud is basically useless here as his attacks up close will do nothing and he can’t target aerially. Attack with Aerith’s regular attack (which works from range) and use Cloud as the healer. Eventually, that will bring Hell House back down to the floor and then is your real chance to cause some damage.

It might take a couple of rounds of God House Mode to Stagger it, but when you do, Punisher Mode and Triple Slash will knock off a good chunk of its health, while using Tempest with Aerith is also a decent way of dealing damage.

One Stagger assault will likely initiate the third and final phase of this fight, which is basically Hell House swapping between the first two phases. It will Barrier Shift between elements far more frequently and hit harder, and every now and then God House Mode will kick in too. It also likes to use a souped-up version of Chair Salvo called Heavensward, which adds rockets to the chairs it throws at you. Oh, and it also brings in an attack called Hellbound where it jumps onto you for massive damage. It’s tricky to dodge so if you have high health it’s best to just Guard and take it on the chin and heal. Told you this fight was fun!

This battle really is a war of attrition, as you’ll have to keep your health up while also being aware of what phase the House is in and act accordingly. The latter part of the fight is more about reactions to Hell House’s shifting phases and adapting since the general strategy remains the same. If you’re holding on to Ethers and Turbo Ethers, then this is the fight to use them as there are very few fights where you’ll need to rely on magic and MP as much as this one. This is one of the hardest boss fights in the game and the biggest challenge for a while, so if you topple it breathe a sigh of relief.

Hard Difficulty Tips: You might have found Hard Mode a bit of a breeze so far. Wondering what all the fuss is about, maybe? A couple of little challenges but nothing ‘Hard’? Well, welcome to Hell…House. This guy is one of the few main tests on Hard (although a few bosses later can give you more trouble). Take all of the above, ramp its damage output up considerably, extend its HP pool exponentially and then just for the icing on the cake, throw in a sprinkle of Tonberries on top.

The most essential thing for hard is you MUST have two Revival Materia equipped (one for each character). Otherwise the fight is near impossible. If one of your characters goes down, you immediately revive them with the other. Also cast Biogo (Level 3 Poison Materia) as it takes down a quarter of the house’s health in one use (it ignores all the elemental stuff going on). Using Bahamut as a summon works well as he does non-elemental ranged homing attacks.

Make sure you got Prayer Materia on each character. It lets you heal the entire group for 2 ATB. And of course give each character a maxed out Healing Materia (can couple it with Magnify Materia to heal both characters at once). For Aerith you’ll mainly want to use her Ability “Ray of Judgment” from her Mythril Rod weapon when the house doesn’t have its white shield up. This deals it massive damage.

The strategy remains the same as Easy/Normal, except you’ll have to heal much more and deal with the Tonberries. They should be your priority as if they get near you, they’ll hit you with Chef’s Knife and instantly kill you no matter how much HP you have. As soon as Hell House spits out the 3 Tonberries, switch to Cloud and stand to their side. Then use Punisher Mode to kill all 3 Tonberries in one combo. This way you’ll have killed them before they have a chance to stand up and attack you! Alternatively, Aerith’s Tempest attack (hold ) kills the Tonberries pretty much instantly. If they do insta-kill you, immediately use Revival with the other character.

At about 25% health hit will summon a Sweeper and Cutter to the fight. Ignore them! Instead, run away and dodge the Hell House. It will sooner or later smash into the Cutter/Sweeper and hurt them massively. Yes, the Hell House will damage those enemies for you. About 3 hits from the boss should kill the Cutter/Sweeper without any input from you. After that it won’t spawn any more Cutters or Sweepers.

Boss #12 – Abzu

• Chapter: 10
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances: Ice
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Slow, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Phoenix Down
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Turbo Ether
• Assess Info: Magic attacks have only a slight effect on its stagger gauge, and ice attacks have no effect on the gauge at all.

After the nightmare of Hell House, this is a nice easy one and is also a more physical battle to boot as magic has little effect on his Stagger bar. Abzu is weak to Fire, so load your three characters with Fire Materia, equip Elemental-Fire on Cloud and make sure one character can summon Ifrit. If you have Star Pendants, equip those to your characters as Abzu likes to use Poison frequently, or if you only have one then put Cleansing on Aerith and use Esuna to remove it when applicable or just use your Antidotes.

This will be a physical battle, which is handy as you have Cloud and Tifa in your team. The tried and tested method works well here; Cloud in Punisher Mode and Tifa building Stagger with Aerith on healing duties and chipping in with normal attacks or Fire spells on the Horn when she can. Knocking out the Horn will induce Pressured status, so this is a good time to hit Abzu’s main body with the Focused abilities. Bring in Ifrit as soon as you can and divert all ATB to him, with Crimson Drive and Radiant Plume doing far more damage than your normal attacks without the MP cost of Firaga.

Abzu will jump into the sewer to douse the flames, giving you a respite to heal or charge the ATB. There are only three attacks to really be wary of. For Pounce, Abzu will cling to the wall and prepare the attack. Dodge this by running away (not rolling) otherwise he’ll have you in Bound status and deal consistent damage until another character breaks him off. Backwater Blast can deal big damage but is far easier to dodge; just run as far away from the sewer grate to the left as possible and the sewage water will miss you. Finally, he uses Backwash Spout which creates poisonous whirlpools around the floor. Just avoid running into these and they’ll soon disappear.

After he hits half health, he’ll cast Enrage on himself and his attacks will do more damage but the strategy remains the same. Keep exploiting his weakness, use your Limit Breaks where possible and he’ll go down in no time.

Hard Difficulty Tips: There’s nothing to add for Hard Mode this time, except equip Elemental-Fire to both Cloud and Aerith (or Tifa) to pack an extra punch. Aerith can also use Firaga on the Horn to really hurt him. Just be mindful that this boss fight is at the beginning of the chapter this time so you’ve got your whole journey through the sewers to preserve your MP for! No more bosses though, so you can run from battles going forward.

Boss #13 – Ghoul

• Chapter: 11
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Silence, Slow, Stop, Magic, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Subversion Materia
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Turbo Ether
• Assess Info: Switches between physical and ghostly forms. Neither magic attacks against the physical form nor physical attacks against the ghostly form have any effect on its stagger gauge. Use magic attacks against the ghostly form to rapidly fill its stagger gauge.

The new mechanic here is that Ghoul switches between a physical and ghostly form. Magic does very little against the physical form (Blue), and physical attacks do barely a scratch against the ghostly form (Red). On Easy/Normal difficulty you can deal 9999 damage by using an Elixir on him.

This is another boss weak to Fire, so the exact same set-up works as it did for Abzu. He starts off the battle by launching chairs at you, just block it to reduce the damage. If you have Echo Mists, it’s best to use them in this battle as he likes to casts Silence and if he’s in ghostly form and you have no Magic, you can’t lay a glove on him. Pelt him with spells in ghostly form and his Stagger bar will fill rapidly, and he’ll always be in physical form when Staggered so you can use your powerful abilities and hopefully a Limit Break.

Later in the fight, he’ll do a crafty attack where he grabs a party member and leaves them in Bound status. Don’t attack the Ghoul holding him! Instead, look to the opposite side of the room where you’ll see another Ghoul floating. This is actually the real Ghoul, so hit him with a few attacks and the ‘fake’ one will release your party member.

Luckily, you should have just picked up Aerith’s Mythril Rod which brings with it by far her best offensive ability, Ray of Judgement. This will build up an enemy’s Stagger % rapidly while they’re in that state, and it absolutely murders Ghoul’s health in this instance. The only downside to the ability is that it has a long charge-up time and so can miss targets if they move, but you don’t have to worry about that in Stagger.

As his health lowers, he will send up purple pillars of flame around the arena and teleport around, but these are easy to dodge and you can keep locked onto him and avoid the furniture he’s slamming around. Keep exploiting his weaknesses and you’ll persevere.

Hard Difficulty Tips: Your greatest challenge here is that this chapter has another boss to come at the end, who happens to be one of the tougher ones. So for this fight, you have to carefully manage your MP against a boss who can only be damaged by magic half the time. Thanks, developers!

This just means you have to play the patient game. Don’t ignore magic by any means; there are plenty of crates in the Train Graveyard to smash and hopefully get Mako shards, but don’t go too crazy as you’ll be very grateful for close to max MP for the next boss. Luckily, you can have Elemental-Fire on both Cloud and Tifa to hammer home your advantage when he is in his physical form. Use the downtime during his ghostly form to heal or hit him with just a couple of Firagas.

Boss #14 – Eligor

• Chapter: 11
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Ice
• Lesser Resistances: Physical
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Silence, Sleep, Slow, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Echo Mist
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Bladed Staff (Weapon)
• Assess Info: When it is in the air, hit it with wind attacks to rapidly fill its stagger gauge. Unleash a leaping attack to knock it down to the ground.

If Hell House was the hardest boss yet, then Eligor is the most frustrating. He hits fairly hard and can induce a number of detrimental effects such as Silence and Sleep. Of these, Sleep is more annoying so equip your characters with as many Headbands as you have. Make sure one of your trio brings the Shiva summon along too.

The first thing you want to equip for this fight is the Steal Materia. In a nod to the original game, Eligor is the only enemy in FF7 Remake with a unique weapon you can steal; Aerith’s Bladed Staff. Whoever is your Thief should be using the Steal command whenever they have a charged ATB until you’re successful. You’ll also want Elemental-Ice on Cloud and make sure a couple of your team have both high level Ice and Wind Materia.

Eligor is one of the few bosses that is not immune to Poison and Stop. So be sure to have those two Spells equipped. Always refresh Poison on him (ideally you’ll have a MAX Poison Materia and use your strongest poison spell). The “Stop” Spell is useful when Eligor is flying in the air.

As mentioned previously, Eligor is really frustrating. He’s resistant to physical attacks anyway, but to make matters worse if you hit the wheels of his chariot then attacks will just bounce off. You have to hit his front or preferably the back, where his frontal AoE attack can’t hit you. Just to make things more annoying, he likes to take off and fly around the arena so Cloud and Tifa can’t hit him except with Magic.

When he’s on the ground, dodge his Piercing Gaze lasers and charge attacks. Use Cloud’s Punisher Mode supported by Tifa’s punches and Aerith’s Ice magic. When he takes to the sky, change roles and have Aerith attack him (since she’s the only ranged fighter) and have Cloud and Tifa on healing and Ice magic duties (Wind magic is a good alternative while he’s flying). Aim to build the Stagger gauge as quickly as possible to bring him down where he’s vulnerable to Cloud and Tifa, and hopefully you can bring Shiva into the fray and hit him with her ice-based attacks. If he stays flying around too long, he’ll use his Javelin Bolts attack which will rain spears down on you. To dodge these, hide behind the shipping container he dropped on the map.

During the latter stages of the fight, you’ll finally be able to attack his chariot’s wheels. Do so and you’ll quickly build the Stagger gauge and do some good damage. The key really is to get him down onto the ground as quickly as possible where all three of your characters can cause him trouble.

Hard Difficulty Tips: Just to make things even more annoying on Hard, Eligor now likes to cast Reflect so your Ice and Wind spells do nothing and you can’t use Cure to heal (he used reflect on Normal but only on himself, now he uses it on you too which blocks your Cure healing Materia). Reflect is the blue icon you get under your health bar when he starts flying, as long as that’s active your Cure spell won’t heal anyone. You can use Chakra or Pray Materia instead to heal since they count as abilities and not magic. The Poison and Stop Spells are your best friend here. Always refresh your strongest Poison Magic on him and cast Stop when he’s in the air. When he stands still in mid-air for a moment, use your strongest ice magic with all 3 characters to bring up his stagger bar quickly. Once staggered, he falls back to the ground and is less risky to deal with and the Reflect ailment will soon go away. Surviving this sequence is the toughest part of the fight.

It’s crucial you bring him down to the ground as quickly as possible otherwise his Javelins will wreck you. This isn’t a fun fight at all and just ends up becoming a test of patience, but if you’ve saved enough MP throughout the chapter you should be able to stagger him quickly with ice spells.

Boss #15 – Reno & Rude

• Chapter: 12
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: None (Reno) / Wind (Rude)
• Lesser Resistances: None (Reno) / Fire (Rude)
• Greater Resistances: Lightning, Proportional Damage (Reno) / Proportional Damage (Rude)
• Immunities: Silence, Slow, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Ether (Reno) / Mega-Potion (Rude)
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Ether (Reno) / Mega-Potion (Rude)
• Assess Info: Magic and lightning attacks have only slight effects on his stagger gauge (Reno) / Wind attacks quickly fill his stagger gauge (Rude)

Reno and Rude are back, except this time they’re together and are slightly stronger than last time. It’s worth noting these two are not immune to poison, so use your strongest poison Materia to deal continuous damage. Reno moves about quicker than before, whilst Rude deals more damage. Reno has a particularly annoying attack called Pyramid which locks the character in. To get out of it, switch to another character and attack it until it breaks.

You’ll start off against Reno whilst Rude makes bombing runs in his helicopter. Try to keep to the sides of the platform to avoid it and concentrate on Reno. Have Elemental-Lightning on armor to negate many of his attacks and use the old Punisher-counterattack combo, using your ATB for Focus attacks and Triple Slash/Unbridled Strength until he’s Staggered.

Once you pummel him in Stagger and take off 1/3 of his health, you’ll have to shoot the helicopter with Barret. It’ll crash and Rude will join the fray, meaning you’ll have to contend with both of them. As always when up against multiple foes, it’s best to take one of them out first. Rude joins the fight at half health, which makes him quick to kill. He is weak to Wind and is quicker to stagger and kill than Reno. He jumps around less than Reno which makes him an easier target, too. If you’ve already built up a Limit Break with one or two characters, now is the time to use it! If you have summons available, use those too (avoid Ifrit as Rude has resistance to Fire). An Aeroga will knock him down for a moment, which presents a perfect opening for a Limit Break which should take down most of his health. Once he’s down, Reno will be an easy target for you.

Hard Difficulty Tips: It’s our old friend Counterstance again. In this fight, since you have two characters in close proximity meleeing you, you’re almost guaranteed to successfully counter with it with every use. This should make this fight a formality. It is also worth, for this fight only (as generally he has the worst Magic stat), making Barret the healer as he’s the range fighter and doesn’t have to get involved up close with the others.

Boss #16 – Failed Experiment

• Chapter: 13
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Ice
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Sleep
• Immunities: Poison, Slow, Stop, Berserk, Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: Lightning
• Items Dropped: Mythril Claws (Tifa Weapon)
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Poison Materia
• Assess Info: Ice spells rapidly fills its stagger gauge, while melee attacks have only a slight effect on it, and long-range and other elements attacks have no effect.

Note: You can steal Poison Materia from this boss (must use Steal Materia to get it).

Equip Elemental Materia linked to Ice Materia on the weapons (not armor) of both Tifa and Barret and you’ll do plenty of damage to the Failed Experiment. This boss likes to use poison attacks in the later part of the fight, it’s good to equip the Star Pendant accessory which makes you immune to Poison.

To begin with, you’ll have to fight a bunch of Unknown Entities but they go down with regular attacks punctuated by Starshower and Maximum Fury. Eventually, Failed Experiment will appear so turn all attention to him and try your best to ignore the other Entities he summons with Rally unless they’re directly on top of you.

Focus on hitting his Appendages with Barret, who is the best character to control during this fight. Use Overcharge and then regular attacks/Maximum Fury until they both break, at which point his heart will be visible. Use this opportunity to hit a few Blizzagas on it and your ice-infused weapons to wreck havoc. Summon Shiva when you can, too.

As his health dwindles, he’ll start picking up Unknown Entities and throwing them at your characters. It’s quite tough to dodge these as Barret isn’t very nimble, but do your best to run from it and keep the pressure on. Keep repeating the cycle of breaking the Appendages and going for the heart to Stagger him and you’ll win in no time. Remember this boss is weak to Ice, so use whatever MP you can spare to cast your strongest ice magic. As soon as your limit breaks are ready, use those too and they’ll deal significant damage.

If he ever uses Plasma Discharge (you can see him gather blue energy and releasing it), get behind one of the containers quick! This move does a ton of damage and he’ll spray balls of energy everywhere, the only way to not get hit by this is to hide behind containers. On Normal and above it’s absolutely crucial you have Revival Materia equipped with each character.

Hard Difficulty Tips: There’s absolutely no difference to this fight on Hard, except he’ll take longer to kill and if you get hit by a thrown Entity you’ll take a lot more damage. Just be mindful of your HP and follow the same strategies as above to win, just make sure to keep on the move so you aren’t swarmed. Using Manawall (from the Barrier Materia) will help keep the damage down from his attacks. Having Revival Materia on both characters is an absolute must, as the boss strikes very hard and you might get knocked out a lot.

Boss #17 – Leviathan

• Chapter: 14
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: Ice, Magic
• Greater Resistances: Fire, Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

This boss is more annoying than difficult, as he likes to take to the skies and fly around so you can’t hit him with your melee characters. Use a team of Cloud, Barret and Aerith if you can so that you have two ranged attackers. In the first phase he’ll mostly be at ground level so you can hit him with your strongest abilities with Cloud and Barret, who both should have Elemental Materia + Lightning Materia linked to it.

His main attacks on the ground are Briny Bellow, which are thin beams you can dodge by rolling, and the more tricky Briny Barrage which are water spheres fired at you. It’s best to just stand and Guard against these than try and outrun them.

After he’s taken a chunk of damage, he’ll take to the skies and use Tidal Roar which are large water spouts that emerge from the floor. Obviously, stay out of them! Occasionally he’ll use Tail Whip where he’ll dive from the sky and whip his tail in a circle, which is again better to just Guard.

While he’s in the sky, focus on attacking him with Barret and Aerith, hitting his Dorsal Fin to bring him down. He’ll also start counting down to his Limit Break, Tidal Wave. If this hits, you’ll take huge damage and it’s unavoidable so the only counter is to Stagger it first, have Planet Protection ready to go or to have Manawall on as many characters as possible. After his health gets low, he’ll continue his assault from the ground and the same strategies as the beginning of the fight will see you through.

Hard Difficulty Tips: The tactics remain the same on Hard. Since this is a VR battle and MP consumption doesn’t matter, use all your characters to cast Thundagas during the aerial phase to bring him down quicker, too.

Boss #18 – Abzu & Shoats

• Chapter: 14
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire
• Lesser Resistances: Ice
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Slow, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Phoenix Down
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Turbo Ether
• Assess Info: Magic attacks have only a slight effect on its stagger gauge, and ice attacks have no effect on the gauge at all.

This fight is almost exactly the same as the previous Abzu encounter, so employ the same strategies as above. The only difference this time is that Abzu will bring in Abzu Shoats with him and use Blackwater Blast / Blackwater Deluge far more frequently. It’s still easy to dodge so be mindful of it and continue with the Fire-based assault. Don’t forget Ifrit! Take out the Shoats ASAP as they can be annoying and make targeting difficult. Triple Slash is the best way of dealing with them.

Hard Difficulty Tips: Same as before. Employ Elemental Materia linked with Fire Materia on weapons and keep an eye on healing and this will be a breeze. Blast it with Fire Magic and when your Limit Breaks and Summon are charged unleash those for heavy damage. Equip Star Pendant Accessory to be immune to its poison attacks.

Boss #19 – Valkyrie

• Chapter: 15
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning, Wind
• Lesser Resistances: Stop
• Greater Resistances: Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Cog Bangle
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Melee, lightning and wind attacks rapidly fill its stagger gauge, but long-range and magic attacks have only a slight effect.

The first time you encounter Valkyrie, you have to make a dash for the next metal shelter in between bursts of fire. Then, carry on and you’ll come to a cutscene after which you have to run towards the screen dodging more bullets. Then the battle will start for real.

Valkyrie is a medium-difficulty fight as long as you know when to exploit it. To begin with, have Elemental-Wind on Barret and Elemental-Lightning on Cloud, with another MAX of each Materia on Tifa. When it’s in the air in the beginning, use Barret and hit it with Overcharge, regular attacks and Maximum Fury, supplemented with Aeroga spells from Cloud and Tifa. You should be able to Stagger it quite early this way, dealing some good damage and bringing it in closer so your two close-range characters can join the fray with their physical abilities.

The next phase will then start, which is when this battle really gets going. It spits out a drone which flies around the battlefield firing a laser at you, which does hefty damage. Make it your priority to take it out immediately. Once that’s dealt with, move back to using Barret to whittle down Valkyrie’s health. Your opportunity to attack with the other characters comes after it uses Drill Dive, which is fairly easy to dodge by running away. It will get stuck in the ground momentarily after using this attack, so close the distance and get a good few hits in before retreating. Doing melee damage to it increases its stagger bar significantly (especially Cloud’s Punisher mode increases it more than anything else).

Its main attacks as it flies around are Mark 98 Rotary Cannons and Mark 99 Anti-Fiend Artillery, both of which are best to Guard against than try and dodge. Stagger it again to bring it down to the ground and start the final phase.

This final stage is where Valkyrie can be tough. It likes to drop to the ground and spin its arms rapidly, whizzing around the battlefield like a spinning top. Do your best to dodge this as when it comes to a stop, you have a brief window to get some good hits in.

Most annoyingly, Valkyrie will cover itself in a shield which blocks practically any damage. The key to this part is the huge blue vertical laser which appears on the battlefield. The trick is to lure the Valkyrie close to you and briefly stand in the laser, it will then flash brightly which means it’s about to fire. Quickly run away and if you’re lucky and Valkyrie was close enough, it will get hit by the laser instead and break the shield, causing the Stagger bar to fill significantly.

Repeat this step if the shield goes back up and you’ll eventually Stagger it. Hopefully by now you’ll have your Limit Breaks ready and can end the fight quickly.

Hard Difficulty Tips: Valkyrie’s Lightning attacks can be brutal on Hard, so it might be worth putting your Elemental-Lightning on Cloud’s armor instead of weapon to reduce the damage (but keep Elemental-Wind on Barret’s weapon for the early advantage).

The laser attack in the final phase will almost certainly kill you if it hits, so you’ll have to get your timing right when you try and lure the Valkyrie into it. This might be a good time to have Manawall on all three characters to reduce any possible hits. Other than that, make sure you take the drone out instantly and use the debris around the battlefield to protect you from attacks rather than trying to Guard or dodge.

Boss #20 – Specimen H0512 (Noxious Expulsion)

• Chapter: 16
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Slow, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Talisman
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: Timeworn Talisman
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

This is a really easy boss battle, which is a good thing because they’re about to get a lot tougher. Specimen H0512 is strong but moves slowly so you can damage it from distance with Barret without having to worry about being interrupted. You should be targeting the Left Claw first as knocking that out will Pressure him and go a long way to putting him in Stagger.

The main things you need to watch out for are its minions, the little cockroach-type things with one eyeball. Make those your priority otherwise they’ll niggle at you. Triple Slash them to oblivion and get back to working on Specimen.

The more health it loses, the more aggressive it gets. It’ll start swinging for you more frequently, which works perfectly if you’re in Punisher Mode. Counterattack it to death, chipping in with Maximum Fury and Starshower from Barret and Tifa, remembering to always go for the Claw first if it’s out, then the main body. Keep this up and as long as you remember to wipe out the minions instantly as they’re spawned, this will be one of your easiest fights in a long time. Hit, dodge behind him, hit again, win.

Hard Difficulty Tips: There’s nothing else to add on Hard Mode except it might be best to put your Magnify-Cure on Barret since he’s the only character who won’t be up close and susceptible to Specimen’s physical attacks. As long as you kill the minions fast, Barret will barely take damage.

Boss #21 – Brain Pod

• Chapter: 17
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Stop
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Hazardrous Material
• Rare Items Dropped: Antidote
• Stealable Items: Antidote
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

This is more of a mini-boss than a boss and should cause you barely any trouble. It’s weak to Lightning so have Elemental-Lightning on Cloud and just go to town on it with your strongest Punisher Mode attacks and abilities. If needs be, have Barret cast Thundaga on it to damage it further. About halfway through the fight, it will split into multiple copies of itself but they’ll have small health. It will poison you so it’s a good idea to equip ‘Star Pendant’ accessory which makes you immune to poisoning. Just use Triple Slash and Maximum Fury to wipe out the smaller brain pods.

Hard Mode Tips: Have Elemental-Lightning on both Cloud and Barret and lay waste. For once you shouldn’t even have to break a sweat, especially if you picked up Gotterdammerung from Pride and Joy. Start with a Limit Break and you’ll have taken off half its health already!

Boss #22 – Swordipede

• Chapter: 17
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Stop
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Force Bracelet
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

Swordipede is unique in this game in that it will swap between your two split parties. The first half will be against Barret and Cloud, and the second against Tifa and Aerith (with Red XIII chipping in). The second phase with Tifa and Aerith is by far the harder one so equip those two with your best gear. Put both your Elemental-Lightning combinations on armor of Tifa & Aerith to protect from its deadliest attack, Live Wire (which uses lightning element).

Swordipede is difficult to hit with physical attacks as its electrified spines can interrupt your attacks and stun you. If you have a clear shot at the head with Cloud then go for it, but it’s actually best to use Barret or the first half. Use Overcharge, then regular attacks until you can unleash Maximum Fury and repeat the process. Only swap to Cloud if he can use an ATB ability on the head or you need to heal.

Once it moves over to the girls, just keep using the same strategy. Tifa can pummel the head while available and Aerith can use Tempest or her regular attack to deal damage. You’ll likely be hit more in this section as the circular platform you’re on is narrow, but to offset this you have the best healer (Aerith) with you so you can recover quickly.

Hard Mode Tips: There’s not much more to add, except to eqiup Tifa with Gotterdammerung to use her Limit Break straight away. The only thing you need to watch out for is not using too much MP. You’re going to need every last MP in the upcoming 3 boss battles.

Boss #23 – Jenova Dreamweaver

• Chapter: 17
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: Sleep, Magic
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Slow, Stop, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: Astral Cuff
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Once its health falls below a certain level, its stagger gauge cannot be filled.

Jenova can be one of the most annoying bosses since she counters almost every melee attack with a tentacle whip. However, there’s a trick to winning this battle easily…use Aerith! If you use her as party leader and hang back using her regular attack and Tempest, Jenova can’t hit her with her counter and for some reason doesn’t counter your AI partners often while they’re auto-attacking.

The main attack you’ll need to dodge is Black Light, which fires a direct ray of what looks like ink at your character. When you see this attack winding up, duck behind a pillar to avoid it. What you need to do is knock out both the Left and Right Tentacles to Stagger the main Dreamweaver body. Just focus on attacking one at a time with Aerith and using the strongest ATB abilities of Cloud and Tifa from the Command menu. Blade Burst and Starshower work well.

After Jenova goes down to half health, she’ll become immune to any attack and a ton of tentacles will pop up around the arena. Your task is to take all of these out before you can resume attacking her. You’ll have to take out about 30 of them, but Triple Slash will absolutely murder them. Just attack in Operator Mode to build up ATB then immediately Triple Slash.

Once they’re gone, resume the previous tactics, keeping your distance with Aerith and using ATB commands with Tifa and Cloud.

Hard Mode Tips: This fight is exactly the same on Hard except this time you can use Gotterdammerung if you beat Pride and Joy earlier in this chapter (highly recommended). Equip it on Cloud and immediately use his Ascension on one of Jenova’s tentacles to break it and then keep using it whenever available, preferably on the main body. If you save it for a Stagger then it will do insane damage.

One other tip is that this might be a rare occasion where it’s best to use a MAX Pray Materia on one of your characters (probably Aerith) instead of using Magnify-Cure. The reason being is that you have two bosses left almost immediately following this one, with the last one being arguably the toughest story boss in the game. You’ll want as close to maximum MP on Aerith for that as you can so if you can save usage of it now, take the opportunity.

Boss #24 – Darkstar & Rufus

• Chapter: 17
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: Lightning, Silence (Darkstar) / Poison, Magic, Fixed Damage (Rufus)
• Greater Resistances: None (Darkstar) / Sleep, Stop (Rufus)
• Immunities: Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage (Darkstar) / Silence, Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage (Rufus)
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info Darkstar: All attacks have only a slight effect on its stagger gauge until its link with Rufus is broken.
• Assess Info Rufus:  Standard physical and magic attacks have no effects on his stagger gauge. However, hitting him with a certain attack when his guard is down will instantly stagger him.

You’ll only have Cloud for this fight but you shouldn’t have any issues if you know what you’re doing. The first task is to take out Darkstar. To do this, use Punisher Mode, then use your Counterstance ability when you see ‘Whirlwhip’ appear above his head. Then use Blade Burst once you’ve built up your ATB. Taking him out will get rid of the connection between himself and Rufus, which also acts as a shield and powers up their attacks.

Rufus is a little trickier and the terribly unhelpful Assess blurb doesn’t give us much of a clue. Only using ‘a certain ability’ will Stagger him. Luckily, using powers of deduction, the only ability Cloud has had since the start that wouldn’t require any mastery of other abilities is Braver. Therefore, your aim should be to build ATB and use Braver whenever Rufus reloads.

He has two main attacks, Guns Akimbo and Bright Lights. Guard Guns Akimbo and dodge Bright Lights to the side. Then whenever he finishes these attacks and ‘Reload’ appears above his head, use Braver and hitting him will result in instant Stagger, letting you attack him in Punisher Mode. If you don’t have ATB then get some quick attacks in and roll away before he can counter. Never attack him outside of his Reload animation since he’ll just counter it right away and damage you.

That’s all there is to it. Wait for Reload, use Braver, use Punisher Mode during Stagger and repeat.

Hard Mode Tips: If you obtained Gotterdammerung from Pride and Joy earlier in Chapter 17 (highly recommended) then this is one of easiest boss fights in the game. As soon as you start, hit Darkstar with Ascension and it’ll lose half its health and be in Stagger or close to it. Finish it off with Punisher Mode attacks and a Triple Slash/Blade Burst.

Then turn your attention to Rufus, using the same method as above. Your Limit should be close to recharged by now, but save it for his Stagger. Hit him with Braver, then use Ascension and it’ll take off practically his entire life bar. If he isn’t dead then a couple more attacks will do it.

Boss #25 – The Arsenal

• Chapter: 17
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind
• Lesser Resistances: Stop
• Greater Resistances: —
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: While it runs an elemental defense protocol, attacks of those elements have only a slight effect.

Note: During the elevator cutscene after defeating Rufus hold when the button is displayed in the bottom left corner. This lets you change equipment before the Arsenal boss (especially helpful on hard difficulty to switch Gotterdammerung accessory from Cloud to Barret).

Arsenal is one of the hardest and most frustrating bosses in the game.

You can spend a good 15 minutes whittling its health down and finally coming so close to winning… only for a cheap unblockable move to wipe you out if you don’t do enough damage within a time limit. Anyway, more on that later. This battle also tests the limits of the lock-on system too, with so many moving parts it gets really fiddly. It might be best selecting all abilities from the Command Menu just for this fight rather than using shortcuts.

You only have Barret and Aerith for this battle, so it’s going to be fought from range. Red XIII will chip in with some melee damage up close, but you can’t control him so you’re left to his whims. Equip Elemental-Lightning to your armor (not weapons) since he likes to use electric attacks and frequently swaps his elemental resistances so you can’t gain an advantage with attacks.

The first thing you’ll need to do is take out the three Barrier Drones which are covering Arsenal. Use Overcharge/Maximum Fury in between regular attacks to take them down. With Aerith use Ray of Judgment. Focus on one at a time and they’ll be destroyed, at which point you can attack Arsenal.

Its attacks hit hard, so your best defense against its Saturation Fire barrage of bullets is the large pillars around the room. Arsenal is weaker to attacks from behind, so your best tactic is to draw fire with one character, then switch to the other and go behind it back and use your strongest abilities.

During this phase, its main attack alongside its normal bullet attacks will be Voltaic Discharge, which are electric circles on the floor. If you’re caught in these you’ll take a lot of damage, so as soon as you see one either roll away or run away as you only have a couple of seconds. These can hit you behind pillars too!

When it charges up Homing Laser, its arm (called Laser Cannon) will temporarily become a weak spot. You have about 10 seconds to deal as much damage as you can to this arm, so hit it with Maximum Fury/Ray of Judgment (again, be wary of the temperamental lock-on mechanic in this part, select your abilities/target manually) and if you do enough damage, the attack will be halted and you’ll significantly boost his Stagger bar. If not, get behind a pillar or you’ll lose the vast majority of your HP.

Keep hitting its weak point whenever you can and the second phase will start. It will start using its wheels and moving around, adding a Charge attack to its repertoire. Dodge sideways or get behind a pillar to avoid this.

At this point, it seems like you’re meant to destroy the wheels to Pressure the boss and put it in Stagger, but the wheels have a barrier on them which makes them resistant to almost anything. Therefore, it’s best to just carry on hitting the main body. As its health dwindles, it will use a combination of Firewall and Pulse Cannon more frequently. Firewall traps you between two lines of fire which you can only dodge if you pre-empt it, and then it charges a blue laser for between 5-10 seconds then fires it.

This laser will almost certainly kill you unless you’re at full health, so if you are trapped in the Firewall it’s probably better to roll out of it, even if you’ll take damage from the flames. Then, hide behind a pillar or other debris to avoid being hit by Pulse Cannon. After this attack, it will be Pressured so this is your chance to hit it with Focused Shot/Ray of Judgement to build that Stagger bar. If you can, save Barret’s Catastrophe Limit for the Stagger, or if the boss has less than 25% health then save it until the final phase.

The final phase is incredibly annoying. You’ll get a cutscene where Arsenal slams against the wall and threat level goes to critical. Now it won’t move and you’re trapped between two walls of flame as it charges its laser. Immediately hide behind the debris behind you to block the shot as it will decimate your party otherwise!

However, the boss will soon start charging the laser again and you’ll have no debris left to hide behind. You have to kill it before it attacks again. On Easy or Normal, this is doable by closing the distance and using your strongest attacks. Overcharge, Maximum Fury (with 2 ATB bars if you can), Aerith’s Ray of Judgement and hopefully you saved Barret’s Catastrophe Limit Break. This should be enough to finish the fight as you have about 30-45 seconds before the laser fires. Good luck, otherwise it’s back to the start!

Hard Mode Tips: This is by far one of the hardest bosses in the game. Remember during the cutscene you can hold to reassign the Gotterdammerung from Cloud to Barret. Not only can’t you use Cloud, but it’s the third in a row without a breather or a chance to recover MP. Hopefully you took our advice during Jenova and used Pray to heal instead of burning Aerith’s MP before this fight.

To begin with, equip Time Materia on Barret and Aerith. You MUST have Haste for the final section or else it will be hard to deal enough damage to Arsenal before he fires his second laser. Use Haste on both characters to charge their ATB faster for quicker usage of Maximum Fury/Ray of Judgement.

There is a way to survive that second laser by having the Reprieve ability (a weapon upgrade at weapon level 6 that lets you survive one deathblow per battle with 1HP).

Another thing you should have is Gotterdammerung (obtained by beating Pride and Joy on Hard in Chapter 17 Shinra Combat Simulator). It automatically recharges your Limit Breaks. Having regular Limit Breaks every couple of minutes is INCREDIBLY useful. Start off with Catastrophe on a Barrier Drone and it’ll nearly destroy it and give you a headstart, then try and use it throughout the fight when Arsenal is Pressured, or even better, Staggered. Remember, if Arsenal is close to entering the final phase it’s best to save it to finish it off quickly.

As for the fight in general, the same tactics apply except you have to be on the boil with healing and make sure you dodge any of Arsenal’s major attacks by using the pillars around the room. Most importantly, try and spot when he’s about to do Firewall and do your best to run out of the parallel tracks.

Boss #26 – Motor Ball

• Chapter: 18

Motor Ball is the large six-wheeled mech which attacks you at the end of the Bike Minigame. You start damaging it by attacking its wheels from the sides. When it flips up onto one set of wheels, slow down and move to the other side, as it will drop down hard onto the set of wheels to try and crush you. Once all six wheels are destroyed it will be Staggered and you can put some damage into the main body.

After it comes out of Stagger it will spin in a circle shooting flames around itself, so move away from it while it does this. It will then heal its wheels, and you need to repeat damaging them again.

This time, while you are beside it, it might start shooting a laser to the side, which you avoid in the same manner as avoiding its crush attack. After Staggering it for a second time it will move ahead and start shooting volleys of electrical orbs towards you, which you need to avoid until it moves back near you. The third time while damaging its wheels it will put a shield up around the wheels to force you to continually switch sides each time, but it won’t heal all six of the wheels.

If you don’t destroy it after the third Stagger, it will go forward again and launch more volleys at you. This time after every volley it will also launch a large orb back towards you that you need to avoid. Once you reduce its health to zero it will be destroyed.

Hard Difficulty Tips: Just like Roche in Chapter 4, you can skip this Bike Minigame and boss without penalty (Pause Menu > choose to skip Bike Mini-Game)!

Boss #27 – Whisper Harbinger / Whisper Bahamut

• Chapter: 18
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Unable to read.

The worst part about this fight is that it’s incredibly long and if you die at any point you have to go back to the beginning. It’s split up into a number of stages. Firstly, you’ll fight Whisper Rubrum, Whisper Viridi and Whisper Croceo as a trio while your party changes (although you’ll always have Cloud). Then you’ll fight them individually and deal damage to Whisper Harbinger through the proxy of the other Whispers. You don’t actually fight the Harbinger (big monster in background) directly or have to worry about any attacks from him. In the next stage, the three will all join together as Whisper Bahamut. Then you fight all three together again before a very short segment against Harbinger.

In the first stage against the three of them, try and take down the Whispers one at a time by focusing your attacks on one target before moving on. This stage is really easy; use Cloud’s Punisher Mode followed by either Triple Slash or Counterstance depending on if you’re feeling aggressive or want to be patient. The other characters can then chip in with their strongest abilities (Aerith can heal if you need). It’s a good idea to equip Steadfast Block on Cloud as the Whispers love to attack him physically, so this way you can reduce damage further and build ATB further for Triple Slashes/Counterstance. The other Whispers that you aren’t attacking tend to be preoccupied with your other party members so you shouldn’t have too much trouble tanking the one you’re focusing on as Cloud.

After dealing enough damage to the three, you’ll then fight each one individually with more powered up and faster attacks. It’s more of the same though, block and counter in Punisher Mode, then Triple Slash them to death. Once you defeat one of the Lesser Whispers, Whisper Harbinger will be Staggered but you deal damage to him by attacking the defeated Whisper. Deal as much damage as you can and part of his body will break off and that Whisper will vanish from the battlefield. If you aren’t quick enough you’ll have to defeat that Whisper again and finish the job (each Whisper is linked to a certain proportion of Harbinger’s health bar).

In the final phase, you’ll face off against Whisper Bahamut. However, this is much easier than the regular version in the VR simulator. He doesn’t have a lot of HP, so if you can save your summon (bringing your own version in for a Bahamut Derby is a cool spectacle!) and Limit Breaks for this part, you’ll already be halfway there.

He stays close to the ground and mainly swipes at you with his claws, plus fires energy beams and charges at you. He can still use his Grab attack too, so swap to another character and attack the hand to make him drop the grabbed character. He’ll likely cast Megaflare when his health starts to get low, but this won’t damage you nearly as much as the regular Bahamut’s attack. It’s still wise to fire off a quick Magnify-Curaga before and after it hits, while of course Manawall (Barrier Materia) will help.

Counterstance is the way to go here, since he loves to swipe his claws at Cloud very often. It will do a lot of damage and build the Stagger bar. If you Stagger him, you’re nearly done. Hit him with your hardest abilities supplemented with Tifa’s Rise and Fall to build the Stagger % and he’ll go down surprisingly fast.

After this, you have to face all three Whispers yet again. What worked earlier works here; just focus on one at a time using Cloud’s Steadfast Block followed by Triple Slash or Counterstance depending on how much HP you have and how aggressive you’re feeling. There’s no need to take too many risks, but if a Whisper is close to death it’s best to try finish him off than playing defensive.

As you Stagger each Whisper, Barret and Red XIII will hit Harbinger with their Limit Breaks automatically as you keep doing damage through them. After all three lesser Whispers are gone, you’ll need to deliver a tiny bit of damage to Harbinger (use magic or Aerith’s regular attack) to finish him off for good.

Hard Mode Tips: There’s not much to add on Hard except that this battle is surprisingly easier thanks to Gotterdammerung (accessory you got from beating Pride and Joy in Chapter 17 Battle Simulator). Ascension absolutely ruins the Whispers and Bahamut as they have no physical resistance, so pop it at the start of battle and then whenever it’s available throughout the battle to reduce their health significantly.

You might have to lean on Counterstance a little more than Triple Slash as it’s always good to play more defensively on Hard, but there’s little to worry about. Also try to limit your MP usage, so equip Pray if you’re struggling. It’s a long battle so you can be excused for using a few Magnify-Curaga casts, but you’ll want as much MP as you can for the final boss fight that’s coming right up after this!

Boss #28 – Sephiroth

• Chapter: 18
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: Fire, Ice, Electricity, Wind, Magic
• Greater Resistances: Fixed Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Unable to read.

This is the final story boss fight! Since this is the last battle, it goes without saying that you should burn all of your Elixirs, Turbo Ethers and any other curative items here. You certainly won’t need them on Hard (because Hard doesn’t let you use any items anyway).

For this fight, it’s worth sticking Elemental-Ice on Cloud’s armor (not weapon). Sephiroth uses all four types of elemental spells but seems to use Ice and Fire the most. If you’ve leveled up your Elemental Materia you will be resistant to the linked element or even absorb it.

You start off just with Cloud, but as the battle progresses two other characters join you (either Tifa+Barret or Aerith+Barret).

The first part of the fight with Cloud is all about countering. Have Steadfast Block Materia equipped and Punisher Mode, then block and counter Sephiroth’s attacks with a few hits of your own. Don’t get too greedy with attacking him though as he’ll just swipe at you with his sword and knock you over if you over-extend yourself.

As soon as you see Telluric Fury, use Counterstance. This will block the attack and deliver a good chunk of damage back at him and build Stagger. If you see him use the Scintilla ability, DO NOT ATTACK! This is his version of Counterstance, so if you attack him he’ll block it then hammer you. Roll backwards out of range until he uses the ability and it misses. It’s also best to evade or dodge Aeolian Onslaught as Counterstance doesn’t work against it.

Once he’s Staggered you’ve dealt him some good damage, the second character will join you. Sephiroth will get more aggressive and attack more regularly with elemental spells, but if you have Elemental Materia on your armor you should be able to negate 50% of those and continue using Counterstance against Telluric Fury to whittle his health down. You can see what element he will be using as he uses Elemental Infusion to give you a clue, so you can know whether you can withstand those attacks or whether you’ll have to dodge. He’ll also use an AoE attack called Hell’s Gate which is best avoided by dodging out of range.

When 50% of his health is gone, your third character appears and the main battle begins. All gloves are off as Sephiroth brings out the big guns (or rather, a single black wing) and starts using Octoslash.

At this point, it’s best to have Manawall and Haste on at least Cloud, but having it on all 3 characters is better if you can. Otherwise, Octoslash will pretty much kill anything it hits if they aren’t at full health (you’re locked in to taking 8 full slashes of Sephiroth’s Masamune – not good for your health even in the best of situations).

Once he gets down to about 15-20% of his health, he’ll start counting down from 10. As long as you keep playing aggressively and dealing him lots of damage, he shouldn’t reach 0. If you do let him go to 0, he summons a giant comet out of the sky to kill your entire team. Conclusion: don’t let it happen.

He also uses Shadow Flare and Heartless Angel. For the former, large black energy balls will form on the ground around the arena and if you’re caught in one, you’ll take huge damage and probably die. For Heartless Angel, Sephiroth will float in mid-air and he’ll throw his sword down beneath him, creating a large circle of life. If you’re caught in this blast radius, you’ll also take huge damage. As soon as he uses this attack, run as far away to the other end of the platform as possible and wait it out.

Keep the pressure on him and use your Limits as soon as they are charged. With how much damage you’ll be taking, they should build fast. As long as you dodge the two main attacks in this phase, Punisher Mode and the usual Stagger Cycle supplemented with Limit Breaks will see you win. It’s probably best having one character focusing purely on healing (Cloud, or Aerith if she joins you) and reapplying Manawall/Haste at this stage (Barret or Tifa). If your ATB is full then just keep it that way so you’re ready whenever for an instant heal.

Hard Mode Tips: The first phase of this fight is purely trivial. Since you should have the Gotterdammerung accessory (from Pride & Joy boss in Chapter 17 Shinra Combat Simulator on hard) and start with a full Limit, use Ascension and it will instantly Stagger him, and then you can attack him in Punisher Mode.

Regardless of whether Aerith or Tifa join you, use them as support characters to refresh the Haste Buff (Time Materia). Barret should be equipped with Barrier Materia to cast Manawall on Cloud when he joins the fight. Try to keep Manawall refreshed on Cloud (it halves all physical + elemental damage received). If you happen to have two MAX Barrier Materia, assign one to Tifa or Aerith too (whoever joins you), thus you can draw from two character’s MP pools. If Aerith joins your party, have Magnify Materia + Healing Materia on her. If Tifa joins you instead, put it on Cloud and make him the healer instead.

Use Cloud’s Ascension Limit Break whenever you get a chance. Don’t wait for Stagger (unless it’s extremely close), just use it. With the amount of damage you take on Hard, it will build up extremely quickly so you can just keep using it over and over. The last hit adds about 75% to the stagger bar in one strike.

Other than that, tactics are pretty similar. As soon as any character’s health dips below 50%, throw a Magnify-healing spell out and make your utmost priority to Revive/Raise any dead characters (definitely have Revival Materia on all characters). Sephiroth likes to only focus on the character you are controlling, so a great tactic is to use one character, aggro him, then switch to another character and get some good hits in while he isn’t focused on that character. Obviously, the more party members you have alive, the easier this is.

As long as you know how to dodge the attacks in the final phase, both of which can kill you outright, you should get through this. Good luck!

Boss #29 – Bahamut

• Chapter: Battle Intel Report #20 (VR Mission Only)
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments:
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Fixed Damage, Proportional Damage
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical Data not available.

Bahamut is by far the hardest summon you’ll fight in VR. If you get close and try to use your melee abilities, he’ll grab you and headbutt you unless you can quickly swap to another character and deal enough damage so that he drops you. Another attack is Energy Slam where he’ll conjure a purple energy ball in his hand and then try and slam you with it. Dodge behind him if this is the case and keep on wailing in Punisher Mode. He also uses Tornado Charge where he will spin towards you and knock you over (easily dodged but very damaging if it lands) and an attack where he draws an aura in, trapping you in an AoE move that stuns. Hang back and be patient if he’s using this!

If you fight him in Chadley’s 20th VR Mission, go to Chapter 14 and use a team of Cloud, Tifa, Barret.
If you fight him in Chapter 17 Shinra Combat Simulator (Pride and Joy Challenge), use a team of Cloud, Aerith, Barret.

Make one character the designated caster. Cast Manawall on all characters and Haste on Cloud/Tifa so that they can use their Focused abilities to Stagger him. Manawall is an ABSOLUTE MUST and should be active at all times.

Keep in mind that he counts down from five and unless Staggered, will use Megaflare. This will do 9999 damage to all party members and kill you unless you have Manawall on a character. That’s why Manawall is so essential. Especially as he gets closer to finishing the countdown, make sure everyone is buffed with Manawall so that you only take 5000 damage instead of 9999.

Once this attack is done, he takes a good few second to cool down, so you have time to heal up and get a few physical attacks and abilities in. Then it’s a case of keeping up the assault and being mindful of his attacks. He’s luckily one of the few bosses who doesn’t change his approach if he loses health but instead hits hard so staying alive long enough rather than adapting becomes the tricky task.

Succeed and you’ll have the best summon in the game and can use this titan against enemies instead!

Hard Mode Tips (in rounds leading up to Pride and Joy boss): When you play the Chapter 17 Shinra Combat Simulator to fight Pride and Joy, Bahamut will appear in one of the rounds leading up to it. In this challenge he summons Ifrit to join him once he hits half health. Again, Megaflare will wipe you out unless you have Manawall enabled (it’s almost impossible to Stagger him this quickly on Hard). Luckily, thanks to now having access to Weapon Level 6, you have the Reprieve ability on certain weapons so equip these and if you haven’t died up to this point, you’ll still have 1HP left and you have chance to heal during the post-Megaflare cooldown.

It’s worth saving Cloud and Tifa’s Limit Breaks for Ifrit when he spawns. He can be a real menace and quickly turn the tide against you if you’re not careful, so taking him out is the top priority; Bahamut can wait. Luckily, he has fairly low HP, so one Ascension or Dolphin Flurry can wipe out half his HP bar, or kill him entirely if you’ve saved up both. Bahamut will then start counting down to another Megaflare, but he should be running fairly low on HP by this point and you should kill him with the tried and tested tactics before this happens.

Boss #30 – Malboro

• Chapter: 17 (Combat Simulator)
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: —
• Lesser Resistances: —
• Greater Resistances: Poison, Berserk
• Immunities: —
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Aim for their mouth when they use Bad Breath or Chow Down, as hitting them there will make them susceptible to staggering. Enemy skills (Bad Breath) can be learned from this monster!

This boss is only available on Hard Mode.

The best team for this VR challenge, of which Malboro is the fifth and last round, is Cloud, Tifa and Aerith. Cloud is obviously the strongest character, whilst Tifa is great for building Stagger and Aerith is the best healer. Don’t forget to equip at least one of your characters with the ‘Enemy Skill’ Materia so that you can learn Bad Breath, a skill needed for the Master of Mimicry trophy.

Malboro is surprisingly easy. In fact, the most annoying part about this fight is that you have to get hit by Bad Breath to learn the Enemy Skill. Just stand in front of the Malboro until it uses the attack and then heals up. Once that’s done, you can just attack it from behind as it only attacks out of its mouth with Bad Breath, Acid and Test Bite. Roll behind it and attack with Cloud. If it turns around and attacks you, then either try and roll around it to continue your assault or just swap to Tifa to go behind it while it’s engaged with Cloud, again using Focused Strike. Malboro can’t face both characters at once so hit it from both sides with a pincer movement, attacking it with the character who is behind until it turns around, then swap. Malboro has no weaknesses to magic, so Aerith should be your designated healer with Magnify-Cure and she should also have a maxed Cleansing Materia equipped so she can use Esuna on any character who does happen to be hit by Bad Breath. If you’re on top of the fight, you can use her to attack Malboro from afar with normal attacks or Ray of Judgment as it can only attack from up close, but her priority should always be to heal while the other two do the damage.

Boss #31 – Pride and Joy Prototype

• Chapter: 17 (Combat Simulator)
• Weaknesses / Status Ailments: Lightning
• Lesser Resistances: Fire, Fixed Damage
• Greater Resistances: Wind
• Immunities: Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Stop, Berserk, Proportional Damage
• Absorbed Elements: —
• Items Dropped: —
• Rare Items Dropped: —
• Stealable Items: —
• Assess Info: Tactical data not available.

This boss is only available on Hard Mode.

Set-up: For the entirety of the challenge, of which Pride and Joy Prototype is the last fight, a team of Cloud, Tifa and Aerith is highly recommended. A dedicated healer is essential (Aerith), whilst Cloud goes without saying and Tifa is great for increasing Stagger %, especially since the summons have the longest Stagger time of any enemy.

Cloud:
Weapon (Twin Stinger): Healing, Time, Barrier, MP Up, HP Up x2
Armour (Chain Bangle): Elemental-Ice, Revival, Steadfast Block
Accessory: Headband

Tifa:
Weapon (Sonic Strikers): Healing, MP Up, HP Up x2, Time, Barrier
Armour (Cog Bangle): Elemental-Ice, Revival
Accessory: Headband

Aerith:
Weapon (Reinforced Staff): Magic Up x2, MP Up x2, HP Up x2,
Armour (Rune Armlet): Magnify-Healing, Revival
Accessory: Circlet (alternatively: Healing Carcanet)

Make sure two characters have Elemental-Ice on their armor and Cloud & Tifa have a Headband equipped to prevent against Sleep for the Shiva fight.

Strategy: After getting through the summon gauntlet, Pride and Joy Prototype is a relief and actually quite easy. Similar to Malboro, the best bet is to get behind its legs and just keep attacking it to build the Stagger bar. It will intermittently expel jets of fire which will damage you, but not badly. Its most annoying attack is Catch, where it grabs one of your characters, leaving them unable to move, and eventually uses Brutal Tackle to slam them to the ground and instantly kill them. The only way to stop it is to attack its hand long enough so that it drops the character.

What makes this fight easy is that all of its attacks are close range, except Beam Cannon. Therefore, you can keep Aerith out of the way and healing regularly while Cloud and Tifa pound it with physical attacks up close. Even if one of them goes down, Aerith can Raise from afar with very little chance of being interrupted. This battle will take a while as it has high HP, but you have little to fear if you’re patient and top up your health.