How to Stagger Enemies in FF7 Remake

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Staggering is a way to leave enemies vulnerable in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Learning how to stagger enemies will allow you to deal far more damage and make fights easier. This guide will walk you through how to stagger enemies in FF7.

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How to Stagger Enemies in FF7 Remake

There are a few different things you’ll need to do to stagger enemies, including exploiting weaknesses, dealing high damage, and even chopping off pieces of the enemy. Staggering enemies is only relevant for tougher enemies and is not relevant for instant kill enemies.

When enemies become staggered, they become vulnerable to attacks for a short period of time. During the stagger is a great time to use powerful attacks to do serious damage. The first step to staggering enemies is to “Pressure” them by quickly dealing lots of damage. Some enemies have specific conditions or weaknesses that must be met before they become staggered.

Exploiting Weaknesses

Each enemy you encounter will have some sort of weakness you can exploit. Using Assess Materia on someone like Cloud so you always have it available is a smart choice. This will tell you how to fight each enemy type, their weaknesses, and how you can build the stagger gauge. One example of a weakness is Guard Dogs being weak to magic.

Attacking with your character’s unique abilities, by hitting the triangle button, will fill up your ATB bar while the enemy is staggered. You can also fill up your limit gauge, which allows you to do insane damage. The key to learning how to stagger is to learn each enemy type’s weaknesses. Once you master it, enemy counters will become much easier.

How to Stagger To 200% in FF7 Remake

In the game, there is a Battle Intel Report 12 called “The Stagger Effect Part 3”, which requires players to get the Stagger damage to 200%. To do that, you should use Tifa to increase the stagger gauge. Her triangle ability increases the Stagger gauge by 5% and adding Unbridled Strength will increase it another 20% per attack.

You can perform this technique on the Ghost enemy in the Battle Colosseum, or against the Fat Chocobo in the VR Combat Simulator. The latter is probably more efficient since the meter stays active for quite a while. Unbridled Strength is not even necessary against this enemy.

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Cole Andrews
Cole is a lifelong PC gamer who loves FPS, RPG, and MMO games. The first PC game that got him hooked was the Counter-Strike beta in 1999. He has thousands of hours in all of the old-school Blizzard games like Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.