Final Fantasy 7 Remake guide: Scorpion Sentinel boss fight

The Scorpion Sentinel is the first boss you’ll face in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. This giant robot will test the combat skills you’ve picked up so far. But it’s also forgiving, offering you plenty of time to heal or drop back when you make a mistake.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to defeat the Scorpion Sentinel in the “Set The Charge” mission within “Chapter 1 – The Destruction of Mako Reactor 1” of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Scorpion Sentinel’s Battle Intel and weaknesses

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

When you reach the Scorpion Sentinel, you won’t yet have Assess, an ability that lets you scout an enemy’s weaknesses. So Cloud and Barret will just tell you what abilities are most effective. Use Barret’s lightning spells on the Scorpion Sentinel to deal a lot of bonus damage to the boss.

How to beat the Scorpion Sentinel

The Scorpion Sentinel is big and powerful. When it hits you, it hits you hard. Many of its abilities are tough to dodge, so you’ll need to take advantage of your various potions and spells to keep your squad alive.

Switch off of bound characters

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

This is the first fight where one of your characters may get bound. This happens when the boss grabs your current character, holds them in place, and attacks them.

Swap to a character who you aren’t currently controlling and attack the the Scorpion Sentinel, which will help free the Bound hero.

Run from attacks that target you

The Scorpion Sentinel has several abilities that lock on and target your characters — like those that send a missile barrage at whoever it’s targeting. Avoiding hits from rockets is a serious challenge, but your best bet is to press R3 to remove your Lock On Sentinel and start running in one direction or another.

Later in the fight, debris will fall from the sky and the Scorpion Sentinel will charge up Tail Laser. Cloud and Barret will both shout to hide behind cover, and you should stop what you’re doing and run to safety.

Stay behind, but watch for tail attacks

Because he needs to fight up close to the boss, Cloud is in much more danger than Barret during this fight. Have Cloud attack from the tail end of the Scorpion Sentinel, which will help him avoid getting interrupted by the boss’ swings.

Cloud isn’t immune from danger in that position, though. Watch for the Scorpion Sentinel boss to occasionally use tail-based attacks and deal damage behind it. Scorpion Strikes is a dangerous ability for allies behind the Scorpion, as is the EM Field ability. Watch out for both of them.

Focus on the weak points

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

After you deplete a fifth of the Scorpion Sentinel’s health bar, the boss will jump to another platform and activate a barrier. You need to attack the Field Generator under the tail, to lower the shield. The game is trying to teach you to focus on weak points when they show up, which is something you’ll need to do for the rest of Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

Barret is great for holding the boss’ attention with a constant stream of bullets, so use Cloud to pummel the generator with Punisher Mode (hit the Triangle button) or abilities.

Toward the end of the fight, the boss enters a frenzy state. You could kill it normally by attacking anywhere on its body, but you should focus on the left and right legs. Crippling these weak points will temporarily stun the boss.

Heal regularly, but avoid Cure

You’re going to get hit a lot in the Scorpion Sentinel fight, and that’s OK. You can use your ATB to use potions or cast healing spells, but we had more success focusing on items. You should have plenty of potions at this point, so save Barret’s MP for his lightning spells.

If Barret’s magic starts to run low, use Ether to restore it.

After the boss goes into its frenzy mode, you’ll take it down for good. But the boss has one final attack, aimed at the Mako reactor. What’s going on here? Escape the reactor and venture further into the story to find out.