The difficulty in Final Fantasy 7 Remake is pretty innocuous, for the most part. But every now and again you’ll run into a fight that’s deceptively hard. And one meeting deep in the the underbelly of Don Corneo’s pit of depravity can be especially tough.
There’s no major story spoilers here, but obviously I’ll be talking about a fight and offering some guidance. Some people won’t have gotten up to this part yet, or you’ll still be waiting for the game to unlock digitally, or you’ll want to remain totally unspoiled and you’ve clicked through to here for whatever reason.
So, full warning in advance. There are no story or plot spoilers below, but if you want to remain completely unspoiled, then click out now.
Right then. Let’s talk about the fight.
After running around doing some errands while Aerith gets dolled up for the audition – which, no spoiler there, since that’s part of the original Final Fantasy 7 as well – Chocobo Sam will tell Cloud to head on over to Don Corneo’s Colosseum. You’ve already the champion of the Colosseum at this point, although that entire story line is one of the best parts of the game, so I won’t say much more.
Anyway, once that’s over you can head to the Colosseum and grind out a series of free battles for gil, experience and just practice. But after Sam offers a suggestion, you’ll be able to take part in a special fight.
It seems innocuous at first: you’re against two flaming Bombs. How hard could they be?
As it turns out, incredibly difficult. The Bombs have a string of abilities that make them a tough opponent. Their flamethrowers do decent damage, making it hard to stay at close range permanently, and it’s also possible to make the fight worse if you attack them at the wrong time. However, they don’t have any weaknesses or vulnerabilities to ice the way you think they might. They’ve got a decent amount of HP too – just over 7000 a piece – so it’s not a fight you can just button mash, especially since there’s no Aerith or Tifa to back you up.
Making life more tricky is their ability to interrupt anything you do. Their basic abilities, Inflame and Swell, have an initial knockback if you try and attack through it, and the bombs will actually get bigger if you attack them while Inflame is active. To make matters worse, they also have a short-ranged charge attack (which knocks you back) and Fireball, a fairly damaging grenade-type blast that puts Cloud on his ass.
So you need to attack at certain times – but you can’t always attack them whenever you want. And to make matters worse, even if you do whittle the Bombs down to a decent health, but you can’t finish the job quickly, they can also self-detonate, which will definitely knock Cloud out if he’s nearby.
So, what do you do?
The trick here is to Dark Souls the fight a little, waiting patiently out of the range of the Bombs’ Inflame; there’s no point taking damage if you don’t have to. Once that finishes, you can dodge in and start building up your ATB meter. You can also use that opportunity to back off and just save the ATB charge for some spells if you want, but if you’re rolling with Hardedge as the sword, you won’t be getting that much magic damage in.
Patience is really the cornerstone of this fight, more so than most fights up to this stage. Focused Thrust straight after an Inflame is your best way to build some stagger, but make sure you switch modes and get your block up straight away. The Bombs have a thrust attack that’s not listed as an ability, and they’ll only use it if you’re hanging around for long enough in close range. You can also, if you’re especially cautious, use a two-star Barrier materia so you can get Manaward up, halving the damage you take from all of the Bombs’ attacks.
Once you’ve got some ATB charge up, it’s a good idea to hold the charge until the Bombs go to use a Fireball. If you can sneak your strongest spell in before the Fireball launches, the Bombs will take a huge amount of stagger damage. You’ll run the risk of losing a ton of HP because of the animation delay, but taking the hit isn’t all bad: it’ll help charge your limit break, which is the fastest way to take out a Bomb once they’re staggered. You’ll need to make sure you focus on one Bomb for the entirety of the fight, although equipping something like Magnify can still help – not because of the damage it deals, but because it can buy you a bit of extra time.
Having ATB Boost or First Strike equipped is useful, but this fight is more about patience than any particular positioning or loadout, as was the case with the Venomantis trio. The Steadfast Block materia is worth equipping if you’ve got a spare slot though: you’ll be blocking more than usual, and if you can continue earning ATB charges while you’re blocking, it’ll make the fight go a bit quicker (depending on how much you levelled it up beforehand).
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/04/final-fantasy-7-remake-venomantis-fight-guide/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/04/final-fantasy-7-remake-venomantis-fight-1-410×231.jpg” title=”How To Beat One Of Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s Most Annoying Fights, The Venomantis Trio” excerpt=”Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a trip back in time, and just like RPGs of old, there’s some fights that will catch you completely by surprise. The first ten hours of the game are largely a cakewalk, but one of the side missions upon sector 5, a job clearing out a nearby graveyard, is astonishingly hard. The insectoids always close the distance, interrupt your spells constantly, and frustratingly of all, love putting Cloud and Aerith to sleep.”]
You can also use items if you’re really stretched, but most of the items you’ll have collected to this point will all have some kind of fire damage that the Bombs are immune to. So it’s best to just be patient, make sure you stay on your feet as much as possible, and you’ll eventually get a nice amount of XP, gil, AP and a molotov cocktail for your troubles.
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