Towards the end of Chapter 1, during the flashback sequence in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, you will face a boss in the Nibel Region, the Materia Guardian. This boss fight will have you controlling both Cloud and Sephiroth, and while it may be kind of a tutorial boss, you can still lose here if you’re too complacent.

All of Materia Guardian’s Attacks¶

The following list is all of the attacks you will see during the Materia Guardian boss fight.

• Claw Swipe: The Materia Guardian will swipe at one of your characters with its front claw, dealing minor damage to that character, if you don’t block or dodge.

• Mucous Jet: The boss will fire a jet of liquid from its front horn, that it will then do a sweep across the arena. This attack does moderate damage, but you can block it to lessen that.

• Dual Tail Lash: The Materia Guardian will do a backflip, trying to hit you with its tails. It will do moderate damage, but it can be blocked.

• Leaping Crush: Unblockable. The boss will leap at one of your characters and if you don’t avoid it completely, it will be followed up by Hellish Pounding. The leap does slightly more than minor damage, but the Hellish Pounding will deal some major damage to that character.

• Mucous Discharge: It will shoot a glob of its mucous at you, which seems to be easily avoidable.

• Horn Rush: The boss will charge at a character, with its head lowered a bit. It will continually swing its head back and forth while charging. You can try to move out of the way, or simply block the attack.

• Seizing Claw: Unblockable. The Guardian will target one of your characters and attempt to grab them with its claw. If the character is grabbed, then they won’t be able to do anything. However, use the other character to destroy the leg, freeing the character and pressuring the boss.

• Stonefall: Happens during the second phase, where the Materia Guardian climbs onto the ceiling. If you leave it alone, it can use Stonefall to drop a bunch of boulders on a character.

• Trine: Occurs during the third phase, where the boss plants itself on the ruined pipes. It will first absorb some mako and after doing this for a few seconds, it will then begin charging Trine. It will then unleash an electrified projectile towards one character, which deals heavy damage should it hit.

Materia Guardian Strategies¶

Even if you’ve played Remake, don’t be surprised if you take a fair amount of damage with this boss, since Rebirth plays differently to its prequel. The boss will have a fair amount of different attacks in its first phase, where it remains planted firmly on the ground. Most of the attacks can be blocked, although you will need to dodge out of the way of both Leaping Crush and Seizing Claw. These are both unblockable, which has a red triangle with an exclamation point in front of the move’s name, signifying it is unblockable.

At around 60-70% HP remaining, the second phase of the battle will begin. The Materia Guardian will start climbing onto the ceiling of the cave, where it typically does either of the Mucous moves, or it will use Stonefall. If you target the boss here, you will notice you can focus on one of its legs. Should you have Sephiroth hit one of these legs with Fire, then it will break and inflict the pressured status, as well as knock the Guardian to the ground. For the brief moment that it’s pressured, you should use Cloud’s Focused Thrust to build up the stagger gauge much more proficiently.

Once you get the boss’ health to about 30-40%, then it will go into its final phase. The Materia Guardian will jump onto some broken pipes and begin absorbing mako. At this point, you will see a tutorial for Synergy Abilities (different from Synergy Skills, despite the similar name). These are powerful abilities that require you to build up some synergy, located below the ATB gauges. Double Helix is the name of the Synergy Ability and doing it here will cause the Materia Guardian to fall back into the main arena.

If it does this again, though, it will gather the mako like previously mentioned, then unleash Trine as its big special attack. Depending on how you do, you might have filled Cloud’s limit gauge around this point. It should be noted that Synergy Abilities have an extra perk to them, as they typically buff the characters in some way. For Double Helix, Cloud’s Limit level will increase, granting him the use of an additional Limit Break (Sephiroth gets unlimited MP for a short period), Ascension.

With the Materia Guardian defeated, watch the following cutscenes, then the game will put you at the Nibel Mako Reactor.

Nibel Mako Reactor¶

Go inside the reactor and straight to the elevator, taking it down to the next area. Head for the double doors, then slide down the ladder and check out the busted door at the end for some scenes. Sephiroth will tell you to shut off some valve, which is right outside of the door you just entered. Hold both L2 and R2 when the prompts appear until you shut the valve completely. Return to the room for more scenes, then you will appear back at the inn in Nibelheim.

Return to Nibelheim¶

Run downstairs once you have control, where the mayor mentions that Sephiroth is headed for Shinra Manor. Exit the inn to find some townspeople heading towards the mansion, so follow them. Upon making it to the mansion, opt to go inside, then look in the room off to the west. There is an elevator at the far end, leading to the basement. Go through the open doorway and into the library to find Sephiroth, which will trigger some more scenes.

Once you regain control, head back towards the village to find that it is burning. Your movements will be slow here, so you’ll have to limp down the stairs and go the only way you can. That path will end up getting blocked, so backtrack a little bit to find a new door that opens for you. The path from here is pretty linear, so keep following the path until you reach your mother’s house. Some scenes will follow, then you’ll be forced to use L2 and R2 to crawl along the ground. More scenes will occur when you reach the end, then you will be back in Kalm.

Here, simply go up to the roof for some conversation with Tifa, then return to your room. This will finally bring an end to Chapter 1, where you will wake up from your sleep and Chapter 2 will finally begin.