Bosses in Final Fantasy 7 Remake are intense. Instead of turn-based battles, you’ll have to guard, dodge, and unleash the right magic to overcome these titanic (and cinematic) foes. Skipping the tutorial boss in Chapter 1 — which is also pretty hard — the rest of the bosses are true tests of your skill. Here we’ll provide tips and tricks to help you defeat the first three bosses in the game.
Old enemies like the Airbuster make a return, and new enemies like Roche get introduced in these early chapters. The Airbuster is an especially challenging boss that you’ll have to beat under a time limit. Each boss battle has a different feel, and a different set of weaknesses for you to take advantage of.
Grab your Buster Sword and prepare for battle. Here’s how to handle the first three major boss battles of FF7R.
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Roche
- Chapter 4 – Weakness: Fire
Dodge his special attacks, and use Punisher Mode to counter his melee attacks. You’ll know he’s about to unleash a melee attack when he rears back with his sword. If an ability title appears, he’s about to unleash a magic attack — that’s when you’ll want to dodge.
Take your time, and Roche isn’t too tough. If you’re low on health and need to recharge your ATB but don’t want to risk attacking him, use the Punisher Mode guard-counter. Cloud starts with Fire Materia, so use that magic to fill his stagger gauge.
Crab Warden
- Chapter 5 – Weakness: Thunder
The massive Crab Warden is weak to lightning, but you don’t want to focus on the body. Instead, aim for the legs. Use Thunder on the legs and use Punisher Mode to rapidly rip them apart. Destroy two legs to Stagger the Crab Warden boss faster.
Once all four legs are destroyed, the pilot will reveal himself behind an armored hatch. Use magic attacks to get through the armor and take him out, which reveals the weak point on the Crab Warden. Attacking the weak point generator causes much, much more damage than usual.
The Crab Warden uses long-range attacks, missile barrages, and unblockable charges that will plow through your characters. Keep moving and use dodge to avoid his incoming attacks — I recommend giving Heal to Barret and Cloud to keep your team’s HP high.
After destroying two legs, the Crab Warden will summon a pair of extra auxiliary guns, and will attempt to charge the rail lines. Quickly move off the rail lines and stand on the solid ground between! After a short time, the rails will explode with electricity. That’s the Crab Warden’s deadliest attack.
The Crab Warden will also start to spawn drones. Use Aero or Thunder to quickly destroy the drones before they can cause any problems, or just use them as fodder to build your ADP meter.
Airbuster
- Chapter 7 – Weakness: Thunder
The Airbuster is an incredibly powerful robot — and once again, it has a weakness to Thunder, but it’s much less effective this time around. Before going into this fight, you can select to remove certain upgrade units from the machine — I recommend removing all the AI Cores you can. You can remove 5 upgrades, and the AI Cores make it attack much slower.
The battle begins with Cloud on one side, while your allies are on the other. Don’t play around here — this is a real fight, so keep your characters healthy with Cure, and refill MP with ethers. Use them before you desperately need them. Barrier will also help in this fight. I highly recommend equipping Auto-Cure on one of your allies, too.
Fight for long enough, and the Airbuster will move down the catwalk, allowing all your characters to attack it together. It will begin to charge a massive chest beam — when it begins to glow, run away and take cover on the sides of the catwalk.
After absorbing a certain amount of damage, the Airbuster will independently launch its fists, splitting them off from the core. To Stagger the boss much faster, target those fists and break them. They’re weaker, and go down pretty fast if you focus your Thunder and abilities. Watch out for the finger-laser attack — it will stun.
Save your Limit Breaks and Summon until later in the battle. Just focus on doing as much damage as you can while the boss is Staggered. Keep using Thunder, and putting up Barrier on your weakest character / player-character. Staying alive is the most important thing, and it’s easy to let your party slowly lose HP until they’re all low. Keep using Cure or Hi-Potions so at least one (or two) of your characters are healthy! Auto-Cure won’t last very long in this fight.
At about 50% health, the Airbuster will smash the arena and begin flying. It swaps attacks, launching waves of EM Mines and barraging the catwalk with bombs. Mostly, it stays far back. While it’s away, use Barret’s Overcharge blast and Thunder to weaken it. The boss will periodically float back toward the catwalk, giving you an opening to rebuild your ATB and do damage. I recommend saving your Summons and your Limit Break for this stage of the fight — even if Staggering the Airbuster in this phase is much more difficult.
Keep whittling the Airbuster down, using Hi-Potions and Ethers when you need them, and you’ll eventually win this tough battle. There’s a 20 minute time-limit, but you won’t need more than 10 minutes to win.
That’s all the major boss battles for the first 1/3rd of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Check back soon for even more big boss guides!
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