For anyone following the series, I made some changes to better handle this challenge! Aerith: Swapped out Magnify for Magic Focus lined to Fire and Ice Swapped out Lightning And Wind for Fire Swapped out Magnify for MP Absorption Swapped out Ice for Healing Swapped out MP Absorption for Magnify Swapped out MP Up for Precision Defense Focus Tifa: Swapped out Petrify for Fire linked to Magnify Swapped out Magnify for Magic Focus Swapped out Hp Absorption for Swiftcast Swapped out Poison and Petrify for Fire linked to MP Absorption Swapped out ATB Stagger for Healing Swapped out Steadfast Block for Magnify linked to Healing Yuffie: Swapped out Magic Focus for Revival Swapped out Subversion for Barrier Swapped out Warding for Magnify Swapped Steal for Precision Defense Focus

Other guides out there take 30+ minutes and can still fail while others require reaction time to take down Sephiroth. Yours is not only faster but doesn't need much skill making it the best of both worlds! I got my clear in less than nine minutes! Thank you so much for this amazing guide! I hope you get bigger so you can get review copies which should lead you to getting out ACTUALLY good guides for us early because this video needs way more views than it has

Thank you! This guide was amazing.. took a lot of tries but finally prevailed! Looking forward to your legendary guides

Hey mate thanks for the great guide, I just made a couple of adjustments that saved my ass, as I just kept getting the worst RNG. I swapped our the cure of Tifa for Cleansing so that I could use Esuna and/or Resist with Gilgamesh to stop toad and Resist with Sephiroth so that he couldn't silence Aerith. And also on Tifa I also swapped out the Precision Defense for a Revival, so that if Yuffie got killed I could revive her. Doing these swaps finally let me clear hit despite all the bad RNG I kept getting. Thanks heaps again mate.

I’ve been trying this for a week straight with the Tifa Dive Kick strat and I only made it up to Gilgamesh and died. I used this strat on my first try and blitz through all rounds. This is a great set up. THANK YOU

Managed it second try with this guide. Thank you so much! Had been trying a slightly more defensive variation of this with barrett as dedicated support and spent 3-4 hours doing it. Getting mashed by Sephiroth every time. The dual characters having fire is a game changer.

There needs to be a way for you to select certain rounds in the VR missions. I'd be fun to fight Sephiroth if we didn't need to do a whole gauntlet beforehand.

Wowww this is a great breakdown, love this guide. Explained the “Too bad, so sad” technique really well. Odin was a real pain in the ass because he kills my party with Zantetsuken.. and you sound so confident when you get the rounds in the bag! Good work!! Subscribed!

Literally beat this a couple of hours ago because of this guide. Appreciate it man!

This strategy worked! Thank you so much as this will help to cheese some hard chapter fights too I'm sure. It was still tough doing Sephiroth as he binded my Yuffie before barrier. Lessons learned and I prioritised that over haste to survive octoslash. I used the failed first run to assess him at least. Thanks again for making a handy setup that makes magic easy to exploit!

Thanks for this guide! It helped tremendously. I tweaked a few things for myself. Took about 6 tries with the bs randomness of Sephiroth's shadowy chains even with Tifa as the leader and Gilgamesh turning me to a frog. But finally got the set up , then he shadow chained Aerith and Yuffie and with Tifa I was able to cast manawall before he chained her followed by his octoslash. After that used prayer to heal and just went to town spamming fire, ice and lightning when he changed affinities. The brumal spam build still works after the latest update, it helped me get through most of the brutal challenges.

Hands down this guide is amazing, it took me a bit because I kept struggling to parry Sephiroth's shadoey chains but eventually got it, great video, easy to follow and utilise, concise and great explanations

Took me 3 tries (Sephiroth spamming shadowy chains was the bane of my existence) but I managed to do it !! Thanks so much for this guide !! Now I have to do the legendary battles

I have been working on this for DAYS NOW...THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!!

This fight is killing me. I can get through the first 4 rounds just fine (minus the occasional rng BS from Gilgamesh), but I’m just not getting through Sephiroth’s shadowy chains. The bad rng luck in this fight has been insane. Even when the first part goes according to plan and I get the barrier off with everyone’s health topped off before he does his triple death move, he’ll still break free from the fire spam attacks afterwards and shadowy chain Yuffie mid-brumal form animation and it’s over from there… I think I’ve lost to Virtual Sephiroth about 20 times now 🫠 Edit: Finally did it!! After everything going wrong over and over, I cleared Sephiroth without ever getting shadowy chained lol… thanks so much for the guide! Would have never done this on my own

Omg, i tried every strat there was. This worked after the 3rd try on sephiroth. God bless you!

FINALLY!! Beat this damn challenge!! Totally used your method but I did not have all the gears you had haha I was hindered with roughly 3 maybe 4 materia slots shy compared to you and I had to adapt one of your commenters by making Tifa lead and using two magnify on yuffie with both haste and barrier materia…. I either got lucky with sephie not doing shadowy chains as early enough or something but damn I screamed like a little girl and was jumping up for joy so much my spouse had to tell me to calm down cause it was after 10pm haha…. I am so relieved!! I can finally sleep tonight and not be playing this challenge in my dreams making me restless… the sense of satisfaction from this win… I cannot even begin to express my gratitude to you and your commenters! Thank you so much!!

This guide is the way! After the first set of firaga’s connected on sephy, fight was a wrap! Thank you bro, got my gotterdamerung!🥳😤🔥

Wow, i was seriously considering giving up on platinum due to this challenge. It took me a couple of hours to finally get it right. Thanks a lot for the help!

Finally beat this tonight, thanks for the help

Thank you … finally beat this ridiculous challenge. I made one change to this build - I switched Precision Defense for Auto-Unique. Lost a little AI defense, but it allowed Aeroth to automatically teleport back to the Arcane Ward so you launch two firaga and further the stun lock

Thank you! Beat it using this guide. The only slight change I made on Virtual Sephiroth was immediately casting Firaga and avoiding the Shadow Octoslash BS altogether.

Ok I think i figured out a tweak to your strat that made Gilgamesh and Sephiroth much more consistent. Instead of having yuffie haste herself, have tifa do it. Give tifa the chocoking's cape and have her lead the party. Then first three fights, she should immediately haste yuffy, then normal setup. For Sephiroth, before hasting, run away and try to pull his agro away from the other two. If you can pull off a perfect parry of pretty much any of attacks, thatly buy you enough time to cast haste. Then, switch to yuffie first to atb boost and cast manawall for safety (in parallel, you can try to have aerith pull out atb ward, you might get lucky). Then you should be able to survive his octoslash / and get your first firaga out. The key thing with the Sephiroth fight is to make it to the point where you are hitting him with alternating firagas because he takes long enough to recover from that for you to stun block him to death. If you only have one person casting firaga, he wont be stun blockable. It seems like it might be possible to do this without needing to set up arcane ward but i could be wrong about that. To make room for the haste materia with Tifa, i moved her heal to yuffie. To make room on yuffie for heal and magnify, i got rid of ATB Skill materia and it didnt impact the build at all from what i could tell.

Thank you SOO much dude! I use your guide and your build and manage to overcome this challenge. Although it did take me a couple tries. :)

Thank you for the strategy, I finally beat it after multiple tries. I beat this challenge with no Genji Gloves as I haven’t started hard mode yet instead I used Enhanced Phychic’s Charm on Aerith and had Tifa as lead with Chocoking’s Cape open up the round against Sephy with Starshower to give the others time to set up and avoided bit chained. Other changes was put barrier on Tifa, and luck up and auto-unique ability on Aerith to have her always cast in her ward and luck up for crit damage in place of fire+magic focus. Thanks again for helping everyone

Dude you are a lifesaver, honestly tysm for this, ive been stuck on these challenges for WEEKS and your guides helped me through most of then, and everything is so well explained and easy to understand and the strat used is broken, thanks again.

Awesome guide! After studying the video a bit, I was able to replicate and 1st time made it!

Yay, i did it!! Thanks, man! Subscribed

Man!!! I applaud you!! 👏 Your walk-through is TOP NOTCH!!! Im already subscribed to you! 😊

Just want to say thank you again for opening my eye to this handy build. It also helped me build a similar set to destroy quetzacotl and marlboro for the genji glove. This could make some hard chapter runs a lot easier for the quests folios

Thank you for this guide!! Just finished it!!!!

I finally did it today! The first 4 was a breeze after a few tries, but I couldn’t get past Seph's chains until I watched Aethertruck's breakdown of his moves, I highly recommend it for others, he used another build, but I used this, and only needed the small push to get ahead of him long enough to set up, and then I could begin my aga spam, it was extremely satisfying to see his health drop below the threshold and realise I'd finally done it! Thanks again for an excellent guide!

I'm sure you just saved me quite a few hours. Thanks brother.

Alright, so I FINALLY beat this after 3 days lol. I kept getting hung up on Sephiroth, so I want to share my findings with those of you who may still be having trouble. So one of the reoccurring things I kept seeing others say in the comments here was to put Barrier and Magnify on Tifa so you have a second person who can cast barrier on the party for the Sephiroth fight if things go bad. Some people also put chocoking's cape on Tifa too to ensure casting it at the start of the fight. Another guy switched Tifa's magic from Fire to Lighting -- so you can still attack Sephiroth past his half-way point with magic with Tifa. **Edit* Also as Naztalgic says below, making Tifa the leader *before* the challenge starts increases the odds of Sephiroth initially targeting Tifa instead of Aerith. For Tifa I swapped out the Cure materia with Barrier. I ALSO swapped out Fire with Lightning for Tifa too across the board (except for the elemental = fire pairing of course). Precision Defense got swapped out with Revival materia on Tifa as well as her Fury Ring which got swapped with Prayer Materia Earrings, so she could still heal. Aerith's Enemy Skill got swapped with Revival materia and her Precision Defense got swapped out with Cleansing materia. I put the Cleansing on because it's useful to cast "Resist" on Yuffie during the Gilgamesh battle so he can't turn her into a frog or petrify her (VERY USEFUL). Yuffie's set-up I left 'as is'. So what I discovered was that I wasn't being aggressive enough with Sephiroth. I was so scared of having to go through the Whole Thing AGAIN that I tried to make sure everything was getting set-up perfectly during his fight. (Playing too defensively). Because of that I never really got the party to really gang up on him, and I kept losing. Don't get me wrong though, don't be reckless either... make sure you get Barrier cast on the party, are healed etc. But be aggressive and go for it! When I beat him it was after he bound everyone for the first time and did Octoslash. Aerith then healed everyone, Tifa got bound right away and I said 'screw it, let's go' and I just spammed Brumal Form and between just Aerith and Yuffie I brought Sephiroth all the way from full health into his second phase (with Firaga, then Blizzaga), which broke Tifa free. So being aggressive CAN win it for you and I believe it's a must. Once he goes into his second phase it's over. As for Gilgamesh, this is the strat I had to get through more consistently. At the start ATB boost for Aerith, switch immediately to Yuffie and run to the right (so Gilgamesh has less of a chance to hit you, make sure he's not following you) ATB boost and cast Haste, switch to Tifa and have Tifa run left and to the back of the arena to distract Gilgamesh. Have her run back and forth (in the back) and get his attention. Meanwhile (while controlling Tifa) have Aerith cast Resist on Yuffie (no more Petrify or Frog status), then have Aerith cast ATB Ward. Switch to Yuffie, keep building ATB and the fight is over. Thank you Naz for the guide and all of the help! You take so much time into reading everyones comments. It shows that you really care and want everyone to succeed. You're the goods!

I have to give major props to you. I spent about 5 hours with the brumal form with Barrett build with no luck. And I spent about another 5 hours with this build and I finally got it. Phew. So much RNG. It takes practice for sephiroth, the issue is you are fatigued by the time you get to sephi. He seems to piss off when you switch to aerith to block getting time for the atb ward. And don't forget to use the atb boost for yuffie before casting haste so you can get the barrier off right away. The entire battle takes place in the first 20 seconds, the rest is making sure not to f it up lol.

Thank you very much. Shadowy Chains is the real run killer. I won by playing it safe with Yuffie barrier until he stopped when he switched affinities and Blizzaga'd him to death with Aeris. One step closer to the Platinum. I hope the Legendaries aren't as hard as this lol.

Target that titan first because that earthen fury he activates makes it much harder than it has to be.

damn looking at this video its seems so easy i have finished all the stuff for the plat expect for all the fights now hope this method will work when i will be ready for that great video thank you

Thank you so much! I finally finished it!

Was lucky enough to build "firaga spam" before Sephiroth's first Shadowy Chains, allowing me to have all 3 characters available. Mission accomplished!... After almost a week trying! 😁 Thanks for these great videos!

Nice guide, I kinda miss the ultra overpowered materia combinations from the OG. But I can see how these new 'cheese' strategies kinda fit in this new style of gameplay. I love the gameplay in this game so much, is quite diverse. Playing with Barret feels like playing a sort-of paladin in a MMORPG, face tanking everything. Tifa feels like a Tekken character.. its great!! I managed to clear this one with a more traditional party because I couldnt process all the information needed to do this strat lol. I hope more people give Rebirth a try!!

I followed this guide and adjusted a bit and finally got through. I put barrier and magnify on tifa and use chocoking’s cape so she has 1 ATB when start then I can use barrier directly. Barrier is so important if you don’t use this, Sephiroth can kill you all in a second. Thanks for the guide, it helped a lot!

I used his video build i reccomend casting regen as early as possible in the sephiroth fight. Sometimes id run out of characters before i healed and this small adjustment helped my survivability for his first octoslash

I'm still having some trouble with Sephiroth, but I'm making progress. At least now, I see a clear path to beating this. I should have it beaten soon. Thanks!

Thanks! It worked with just a couple of tries!

I thought it was impossible, but I got it within multiple tries after watching your videos, so thanks to you!

I just cant avoid the Shadowy Chains on Sephiroth fight.... But I will keeping trying. Thanks for all videos, couldn't get here without them.

Finally did it after 3 days using mostly this guide. My few tweaks. I took off both precision defenses. Really not needed. You don't really need to block and AI does alright without it. Tifa had the choco thingy acc for the full ATB bar. She hits max damage without fury. I gave her barrier magnify and took off her heal. For aerith I took off her fire/ice magnify as you can easily do summons without magnify and put it on healing for her instead. I also put hp absorb on fire/ice. I put a revive on yuffie just in case but I didn't need it and had a magnify on her haste. All fights are easy up until Seph. For that, it does come down to a bit of luck as to who he binds first. If he binds yuffie, you're toast. I started by atb boost aerith and immediately switch to tifa and barrier, move to the left as you did then switch to yuffie, haste/magnify-atb- ward-arcane all at the same time on yuffie. That's the set up done. After he octoslashes, make sure aerith warps to atb/arcane (which is on top of one another) and heal. Switch to yuffie and go over to start brunel. As soon as one firaga hits, he's done for

This girl squad is so powerful, made these challenges really easy 👌

Thank you so much for this guide!! I have literally been stuck on this fucking bullshit, godforsaken challenge for 3 whole days!!! The RNG for Sephiroth almost broke me, but your guide finally saw me through!! Thanks once again!!

Huge thank you! No way I could win this without a cheese strat like this. They can kill me in 5 seconds of the battle start, so cheese is more than appropriate!

This was the only guide that worked for me. 4:19 clear time. I used lightning instead of fire on Tifa to not worry about fire affinity while keeping the heat on Sephiroth. I like that this build is aggressive and doesn’t let the bosses even get set up on you. With this build I was having a hard time with Titan and Bahamut, but if you focus on taking out Titan first it’s an easy clear since your spell casters won’t be threatened. Also, sometimes I found it advantageous to postpone arcane ward to land attacks early until there was a safe time to set the ward. Sephiroth simply melted with this build and approach. Thank you!!

So what do you do to block or evade Shadowy Chains? I have had Yuffie targeted first on all 3 attempts that have made it to that point before I can even begin setting up

Man, after 300 tutorials I saw, this was the only one I could do quickly, it was really worth it, this challenge was destroying my sanity hahaha hugs from Brazil +1

Some one mentioned. Use tifa as leader. So much "easier" at sephiroth. She will take the agro in the beginning so you have time to set everything up. Other wise good guide

After days and days of trying to beat this challenge I finally did last night! This morning I went on to do the cloud legendary challenge. About a half hour ago I booted it up to continue with the Barret challenge only to discover it hadn’t saved, so not only is the Cloud challenge not done but ALSO rulers of the outer worlds is not done.. and I have to do it again! Sephiroth is such garbage, it’s like 30% ‘skill’ and know how and 70% luck! It’s ridiculous, and I am not excited about having to do it again 😫

Made it to the end first try but I genuinely don’t see how sephiroth is possible. Barrier did not reduce the damage like it did for you and I know for sure I had it active. He killed two characters and put the last in critical. It’s insane that after carefully going through those first 4 rounds which are already insane you are left with a total rng fight. I think this is where I tap out of the platinum

Couldn’t done it without you❤

Phew this one was the hardest one for me with Sephiroth and his chains being such an RNG. Finally finished with this set of challenges now next to the solo ones!

What would improve this a LOT would be the ability to retry where we lost, in the same condition as we started it prior. The issue with making the player start the entire thing over, is it gets BORING. Once you can reliably beat rounds 1-4 it becomes a chore to get to every attempt at where you failed. Imagine a cutscene where you had to sit for 15 minutes, and pay perfect attention the entire time, or the cutscene would restart, in order to make every successive attempt. That's a deal breaker for me. I almosy didn't buy this due to the "restart the whole thing" slog of endgame content in Remake. To me, anything wirth doing is worth doing to completion, and the inverse is true to. The game actively encourages the player to constantly engage with the content padding, to add to playtime, and rebirth doubles down on it. Boss rushes that make you sit through tedious stuff you already did, over and over, for each chance to practice where you failed is a dealbreaker when there are other games to play that are actually fun. I can see why a lot of completionists skipped this game.

Managed to beat it with this strategy. Even if it's a cheezy tactic, it's still brutally hard, especially Gilgamesh and Sephiroth. Took me 2 days even with this strat. THANK YOU so much! :)

I’m having problems with aerith and tifa staying casting in the arcane ward is there any thing I can do to help that?

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for thisssss!! Took me like 3 tries but once u have the right spacing and rng then its a cakewalk lol

Took me long enough without every Materia maxed but I still managed to do this. Thanks a bunch! By the way, it would be great if you could add timestamps for each round! I had harder times trying to deal with some rounds more than others.

After several hours I finally came out victorious with Cloud, Red and Barret :)

THANK YOU SO MUCH. 🙏

Dude, hell yeah! Thank you so much for this guide. It helped so freaking much! Actually, all of your brutal challenge guides were extremely helpful. Now it's time to have some fun with the gotterdammerung on hard mode!

Would you recommend pulling like a healing and instead using something like fire and hp absorption on both aerith and tifa as magic dealers to constantly restore hp also? Wonder if that makes it slightly less onerous being in the red so often.

I swapped out Precision Block and Enemy Skill for Steadfast Block. Then Tifa's Healing for Time. I was able to do it this way. Some fights were lucky and some were not. Still, this is a great guide. I wish they'd have Gilgamesh and Virtual Sephiroth as separate fights. I'd actually like to try them out legit. I just don't want to go through a gauntlet everytime.

Thanks for ur guide! I did it finally! I played Tifa with Chocokings Cape and Barrier+Magnify right at the beginning against Gilgamesh and Sephiroth. Gilgamesh killed me a few times. And sometimes i was to stupid to set up correctly against the other opponents cause they interrupted me to much. And than my first fight against Sephiroth was quite hard..He chained yuffi first (but barrier saved me here!!!!!)..after this i was able to set up and roasted him..first try. One question: was this the hardest challenge ?? Thanks a lot for your very helpful strategy. :P

Good to note too: Seph will shadow chain - octaslash anyone hes bound, even if its just the 1 person, so pray he hits tifa or aerith and then just alternate keeping distance with the other two

Thanks for the video you helped me get through all the brutal challenges. You explained what was going on very well. I used Obinoobs strat for the legendary challenges I felt like I played better with his strategy but your videos were better explained. Thank you both. Now I just have to beat the game on hard mode. That is easier than these challenges right?

amazing video

How did you stop Kujata from stunning you? I always had to get away from him and he always wouldn't let me into Aerith's wards. I beat this challenge already, so I don't really need an answer, just curious. I won with Euphie, Nanaki, and Barret myself.

For Sefiroth, why do you have wait for him to “chain” and octoslash? Can’t you firaga him to death in the beginning like the other strats?

THAAAANK YOU!

One thing I found out fighting this one with brumal form you must use the shortcut (L1 +x) if you go trough the menu it’s slightly slower which isn’t a problem in the 1st 4 rounds but it’s slow enough you can’t build fast enough before seph stunlocks you all. You can also get away with just using aerith as the sole dd and barret as a buffer. Anyhow thanks for the guide it helped me out with all of the brutal challenges I just hope se doesn’t 11 part 3 and nerf yuffie and tifa (especially since tifa is my new mage in 3 lol)

Your Seventh Seal strat worked first time, really enjoyed that. I've been trying this strat for Rules of the Outer Worlds, but not having any luck with Sephiroth. I've only fought him about 7 or 8 times so far, but he always binds Aerith first and almost immediately, i try to heal with Tifa or use barrier with Yuffie, but it does not seem to work out. I'm not sure what to do to increase my chances. Am I just having bad luck or is there any chance they changed Sephiroth in a patch?

Why use opening ATB if you have first strike and ATB boost? You already have 2 ATB at the beginning. No need for a small boost…or am I missing something?

Your guides have been incredible! I just beat the final brutal challenge. I have to ask, are the legendary challenges harder or easier??

Thank you for the guide. Took me 5ish tries given how the enemies reacted, etc. That said. I absolutely loath this end game garbage that Square has us go through to 100% the game.

May I know if ATB assist and Skill master are a must for Yuffie? Thanks!

Okay just need to master 8 fire materia and I can come back to this lol

Got it so damn cruel for them to put Sephiroth at the very end of this. Should have been his own challenge all together

The setup work almost perfectly for all bosses except sephiroth I had many trials where he just bind my characters I had to refer to other video to learn how to block his attack by pressing the command menu and timing the parry

After trying and failing with other methods over an over and getting nowhere, I can now consistently get to Sephiroth. Thank you. Now, beating Sephiroth, that's a different story, but progress has been made. Fucking Shadowy Chains...

Once again thank you so much for this guide! First try let's go!!!

Bro... I Thank you from the Bottom of My Heart 🙏

Sepiroth always kills me! Reached him 4x already always dies with octaslash 🤣

speed demon is given in story mode after junon, so you WILL have it.

Busted!!!

Does these challenges get used to what you do bc I get to sephiroth then die then load back in and now they doing other ish

There is a lot of RNG involved. It doesnt work as in the video but the materia and equiptment is a basis for when the RNG does go in your favour. 10% of the time, and even then you need the the ATB setup at key times.

I’ve literally spent 9 hours on this today. I can get to Sephiroth more times than not and I try to mimic your steps with him, but I cannot seem to get to the point that I can get the first Firaga off to slow him down after the binding attack. Taking a break before trying again.

I'm currently having a very hard time with the 2nd round with Bahamut and Titan and the furthest I got so far is round 4 with Gilgamesh and he just wipes me out right at the beginning. I seem to have no issues with the 1st round and 3rd round though. Will take a break for now. Been at it almost the whole day but haven't gotten over the hump just yet.

I forgot to Asses Virtual Sephiroth, so I had to do it again! Got to him assessed him after the set up and then he wouldn't shadow chain Yuffie and just killed her instead 😅 Atleast I got the Assess out of it 😂

Ah same result. Just immediately die randomly if one thing goes wrong. Gotta have a more beefy party imo. Ill try 3 more times though

Can anyone tell me why there's like zero content on advanced muscle coliseum?

Been on this for days.. the first four is a breeze, but for some reason he always recovers while I’m doing firagas, and chains yuffie. I think I’m too pre-occupied with trying to set up firagas.

I’m traumatized cuz of the challenges from the first game (remake). scared to even start this one . Looks much harder