Final Fantasy 7 Remake: How to Beat the Sweeper

Everything in Final Fantasy 7 Remake flows in real-time, including combat and movement. That means boss battles work much differently than they did in the original, which was turn-based. This includes your fight with the Sweeper, a mini-boss that you’ll encounter early into the game’s demo and, presumably, the game’s full release.

Below, we go over everything you need to know about beating the Sweeper, including how to use Cloud and Barret in the battle and the boss’ attack patterns. 

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Guide: How to Beat the Sweeper

Beating the Sweeper in Final Fantasy 7 Remake is as easy as launching a ton of heavy attacks until it gets Staggered. This is much simpler than it sounds because you have plenty of different options to make it happen.

You can tell that you’re working towards Staggering an enemy as the Pressured bar under its regular health bar gradually fills up. Also, attacking a Staggered enemy will make your ATB bars fill up faster. This is important for unleashing more spells and abilities quicker.

It’s important to note that Cloud and Barret, the two playable characters at this point in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, have very different weapons and abilities. Cloud uses the Buster Sword, an oversized sword that can do tons of damage at close range. Barret uses his Gatling Gun arm, which works wonders when hitting distant targets.

You can swap between Cloud and Barret at any time by hitting “up” and “down” or “left” and “right” on the D-Pad. Holding “R2” and “L2” will allow you to issue commands to the character you aren’t currently controlling.

Cloud

As Cloud, you have a few options here.

You can hit “Triangle” to enter Punisher mode, which makes every strike a heavy attack that can gradually push the Sweeper into a Pressured state until you fully Stagger it. Once there, you can continually pummel the two-legged steel beast until it collapses.

Once at least one ATB bar fills up, you can hit “X” to command Cloud to use a variety of different abilities and spells. Your main spell at this point is Fire, which shoots a fireball that explodes and does a massive amount of damage to the Sweeper.

You can also spend your ATB bars on abilities like Braver and Focused Thrust. Braver sends you into the air for a leaping strike, whereas Focused Thrust makes you forcefully thrust your sword into the Sweeper’s gut.

Barret

As Barret, you can use your gun-arm to shred up the Sweeper in a variety of different ways.

The Triangle button activates your Overcharge, which is essentially the same thing as a focused shotgun blast from your gun-arm. It does a decent amount of damage and inflicts Pressured on foes. You can continuously hit Triangle to Charge up your gun-arm until Overcharge is ready.

You can cast Lightning to do tons of damage to the Sweeper (and all other robots), significantly increasing their Pressured state.

Focused Shot is one of Barret’s most powerful early abilities, and it almost immediately causes a Stagger. It only costs one ATB, so it’s worth using.

Sweeper Attacks

The Sweeper is mostly pretty easy to beat because it doesn’t hit very hard. It’ll intermittently shoot you with the two gigantic machine guns mounted to each of its hips, but you should be able to survive those without much worry.

You can press “Circle” to roll dodge or hold “R1” to block incoming machinegun fire. You can also press “X” and navigate to the Items menu to use a Potion if your health gets too low.

The one attack you should be wary of is the Sweeper’s jump. When the Sweeper is at low health, it will jump on the party member that you are currently controlling and put them into a Bound state. When your character goes into a Bound state, just use the D-Pad to swap them out.

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That’s our guide on how to take down the Sweeper in Final Fantasy 7 Remake! Follow these simple tips and you’ll get through the Sector 1 Reactor in no time. Stay tuned for more Final Fantasy 7 Remake guides once the game launches next month.