In the original Final Fantasy VII, players didn’t receive their first summon until after they left Midgar, but the game was filled with secret and powerful summon materia for players to find and use. (Remember Knights of Round and how insanely difficult that was to get?) With Final Fantasy VII Remake drastically expanding the Midgar chapter into a full game, it’s now possible to get summons like Shiva and Ifrit before leaving the steel city. But did you know you can also get the Bahamut summon materia, bringing the legendary dragon into your party. It can be a huge help with hard mode, so here’s how to get your hands on the Final Fantasy VII Remake Bahamut summon.
How to Get the Final Fantasy VII Remake Bahamut Summon
The Bahamut summon is obtained by defeating the beast in Chadley’s VR battles. To unlock this one, you’ll need to complete the first 19 of Chadley’s Battle Intel Reports. After that, you can select the fight with Bahamut, and once you beat it, the summon materia will be yours. Focus on completing the Battle Intel Reports early in the game, because some can take a while to do. Here are some tips:
Battle Intel Report Tips
While many of the Battle Intel Reports are straightforward to complete, some are a little bit more tricky to figure out. Here are some tips to help you finish all 19 and unlock the Bahamut fight (which is the 20th and final task).
Assess Everything – Once you get the Assess materia, make sure you use it on every single enemy you come across. By having monsters already assessed, it will complete the various Monster Bio reports as they come up automatically.
Exploit Weaknesses – You are required to exploit the elemental weaknesses of multiple different enemies, so use the proper elemental magic when you can.
Use Unique Abilities on Staggered Enemies – This was a weird one to figure out. “Unique abilities” are the characters’ Triangle attacks, not the moves you use ATB charges to do, so to complete this one, you need to stagger an enemy and then use Triangle attacks from any character on them to fill the ATB gauge. Make sure your ATB gauge isn’t completely full so the unique ability can fill it and add to the counter.
How to Increase the Stagger Damage Bonus – One report requires you to increase the Stagger Damage Bonus to 200% (it starts at 160% by default) but the game never clearly tells you how to increase it! Certain moves will make it go up incrementally. The easiest way I found to do this was by using Tifa’s Triangle special ability over and over on a staggered foe. This move increases the percentage, and if you use it on an enemy with a long stagger timer, you can easily hit 200% by the end of it and complete this report.
Acquire Weapon Abilities – Even if you find a favorite weapon, make sure you switch to the other weapons in order to acquire the unique weapon abilities. You’ll need all of them for one of the reports.
Master All Magic Materia – Start this one early, because it’s going to take some time. You need to master all 12 types of magic materia (the green ones). Materia gains levels via AP, which you get just from finishing battles. The one that will probably take longest is the Revive materia, but you can pair it in a linked slot with the AP Up materia (gotten by finishing 3000 steps with the pedometer materia found outside Aerith’s house) to make this go faster. Hard mode also gives 3x AP if you still haven’t mastered all of the magic materia by the time you beat the game.
Everything else is pretty straightforward and easy to do. Once you finish the first 19, the Bahamut VR battle will unlock the next time you talk to Chadley. Beating that will give you the Bahamut summon materia and complete the 20th Battle Intel Report for you. Enjoy the most powerful summon in the game!
