This is it: the final chapter of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is also the toughest, pitting you and your team against some of their greatest challenges. Below is everything you need to know to make your way through Destiny’s Crossroads, survive the battles, and finish FF7 Remake.

Check out the rest of our Final Fantasy 7 Remake guides so you don’t miss a single secret or collectible. You can also read our FF7 Remake review.

Chapter 18 Walkthrough: Destiny’s Crossroads

You’ve got another motorcycle mini-game to contend with, this time with more enemies and more variety. The battles themselves are relatively straightforward, though: be sure to utilize Cloud’s guard ability to minimize incoming damage, and break to avoid bombs from helicopters. You’ll eventually take on a M.O.T.H. Unit, which will fling blades at you before getting electrically charged and coming in for closer fights, and some 3-C SOLDIERS, who have swords of their own. Just be sure to guard against their attacks to make it through.

Boss Fight: Motor Ball

The chase culminates in the battle with another robot boss. This one is pretty easy, since the high mobility of your motorcycle allows you to avoid all its attacks without much difficulty. Pull in alongside the boss and swing away, smashing its wheels. When Motor Ball lifts up on three wheels, hit the brakes and peel away so it can’t smash down on you, and guard when it readies its guns to avoid getting blasted.

Slash at the wheels until you destroy all six of them, staggering the boss. When that happens, attack it as much as you can; drive up its stagger percentage and use your Spinning Attack for big damage. The boss will eventually recover, adding new attacks to use against you. Repeat the process and keep going after the wheels, but keep an eye on them–eventually, some will be shielded, forcing you to pick other targets.

Generally, Motor Ball doesn’t throw anything at you that you can’t see coming. When it readies its flame spin move after being staggered, brake and stay clear until it’s all over. If the boss pulls ahead, reduce your speed a bit to avoid the electric bombs it drops on the highway ahead of you. As soon as you can, close the distance and attack its wheels again. Watch out for it to charge a big laser as well, which it’ll shoot at one side or the other; again, hit the brakes and head to the opposite side. When the boss pulls ahead and shoots the laser back at you, cut to one of the sides of the road to avoid it.

Keep hammering the boss and avoiding its attacks until you finally destroy it. It takes a while, but it never gets especially tough.

After winning, you’ll have a quick chance to heal up. Take it and stock up on any items you need. You’re going to need them.

Make sure all four members of your party are outfitted with Healing Materia and their best weapons that are as upgraded as you can get them. You’ll also want some big spells spread around your team–although keep one of each elemental spell Materia with Aerith, as you’ll want her fully outfitted later. Equip a strong Barrier Materia as well.

Boss Fight: Whisper Harbinger, Whisper Croceo, Whisper Rubrum, And Whisper Viridi

Once you’ve progressed through the destroyed highway a bit, you’ll face the giant arbiter of fate, the Whisper Harbinger. You don’t have to deal with the huge colossus directly, luckily–instead, you’ll fight three smaller Whisper bosses, called Croceo, Rubrum, and Viridi. Each has a different weapon, mirroring Barret, Cloud, and Tifa.

Contending with all three of the creatures is tough, but you only need to take down one of them right now. It’s your choice, but we had the easiest time focusing on Rubrum. Cloud can counter its Flurry attack with Punisher mode to do some damage–Guard your way through its other attacks, like Crimson Arc. Hammer away at the Rubrum with Punisher mode and ATB attacks to give it as much damage as you can; the more you pour on, the quicker you’ll pressure the Whisper and drive up its stagger meter. Guard as much as you can to avoid taking too much damage, while keeping yourself topped up with items and healing spells.

Hurt one of the Whispers enough and you’ll advance to the next section of the fight, where you’ll face the three Whispers again. In addition to their other moves, they sometimes like to use powerful spells like Firaga from Rubrum, Blizzaga from Viridi and Thundaga from Croceo. Follow up with the same approach, allowing your AI teammates to keep the other enemies busy while you focus on Rubrum. It’ll add a new attack, Sweep, to its moves, but you’ll still mostly want to guard as much as you can to avoid taking a lot of hits. Keep countering Rubrum and hitting it with your big ATB attacks to rack up damage, and you’ll eventually knock it out of the fight. The Harbinger will intercede again, opening up the path forward.

When you get to the end of the next pathway, you’ll take on Whisper Rubrum by itself. It’ll use the Temper attack to power itself up and become more aggressive, adding more swings to Flurry and Crimson Arc. Guard through them to land counterattacks with Punisher mode, then do as much damage as you can with ATB attacks. Your best bet with Rubrum is to duel your way through, but don’t be afraid to overwhelm the Whisper with attacks from your teammates. Just don’t use Fire magic, as the creature can absorb it. Stagger the boss and you can damage Rubrum can do some damage to the Harbinger.

With Rubrum down, you’ll fight Croceo and Viridi together. Pick one and go after it; Viridi is best attacked from behind while its attention is elsewhere, especially because the boss will protect itself with a shield. Watch out for Viridi’s Azure Plume attack, which will stun anybody caught in it. Like Rubrum, hit the Whisper to do as much damage as you can to stun it, then finish it off to do more damage to the Harbinger.

Croceo is next, but it’s probably the least of your problems. Watch out for its Amber Judgment attack, an orb that will track you, and Amber Whirl, a laser beam that cuts straight toward you and then out to the sides. Dodge the lasers as best you can, guard against Croceo’s shotgun Scatter attack, and use ATB attacks to knock the Whisper out and stagger it.

You’ll fight the three Whispers again in a moment. Repeat the process to do some damage to one and you’ll trigger the real next phase of the fight.

Boss Fight: Whisper Bahamut

When combined, Rubrum, Croceo, and Viridi become a lot more dangerous as Whisper Bahamut. The dragon is fast and carries a bunch of powerful moves, most of which are really difficult to dodge. Expect Bahamut to come after you right away with melee swipes, as well as a spinning attack where it barrels its whole body through you. Dodging those moves is pretty tough; flip to Punisher mode and guard to minimize your damage so you can at least strike back against Bahamut when it comes after you.

Quickly try to get Manaward barriers on your team to deal with Bahamut’s powerful attacks. Watch out for Bahamut’s Umbral Strikes attacks, where it throws two big explosive blasts at you. The first arcs in from the left, and the second from the right–if you dodge right and then left, you can often avoid them. Its Umbral Inferno hits you with a bunch of painful lasers, but running or dodging sideways can usually get you out of the line of fire of most of them. Flare Breath will knock you down, but if you can get around to the side or behind Bahamut, or dodge backward, you should be able to avoid it.

You’re going to take a lot of damage here, though. Keep Aerith on-hand to restore health with Tifa backing her up to keep your team going. Meanwhile, keep hitting Bahamut with ATB attacks from Cloud and Tifa whenever you charge them. Try to get your Manawards up before Bahamut uses Mega Flare, its ultimate attack. Do your best to keep your team topped up on health from items and spells so that the attack doesn’t wipe you out.

If you can keep up the damage, you should be able to knock Bahamut to the ground and pressure it. Use that opportunity to hit it with Focused Strike and Focused Thrust to push up its stagger meter as fast as you can.

Kill off Bahamut and the Whispers will separate again, but they’ll be a lot weaker. Focus on one and start pounding away to kill it, giving Barret an opportunity to attack the Whisper Harbinger. Repeat the process twice more to finish the giant creature.

Boss Fight: Sephiroth

The Whispers aren’t giving up–they’re now creating a version of Sephiroth to challenge Cloud. Like past one-on-one battles, this is more of a sword duel and you’ll need to rely on guarding and using Punisher counterattacks to beat Sephiroth, especially in the first part of the fight.

Some of Sephiroth’s attacks you should guard against for counterattacks to damage Sephiroth and increase his stagger, while you’ll need to dodge others. Stand your ground against standard melee strikes and Telluric Fury, although be sure to keep your guard up through the entire attack, because Sephiroth will hit you with multiple blows most of the time. When you see Sephiroth ready Aeolian Onslaught, dodge sideways, because the attack will juggle you into the air and Sephiroth’s movements make it ineffective for you to counter it. After countering, hit Sephiroth with some Punisher mode strikes to pressure him. He’ll sometimes ready powerful spells like Blizaga and Firaga–if you can hit him hard enough, you might be able to interrupt them, but it’s usually better to guard against them so you don’t take the full brunt of the magic.

Keep countering Sephiroth until you stagger him. Aerith will then join the battle, which shouldn’t really change your approach, but will give you more opportunities to do damage to Sephiroth. Get some Manaward barriers up if you can to cut the damage you take from Sephiroth’s spells and keep hitting him. You can also hit Sephiroth with some spells, especially when he’s charging magic of his own or preparing attacks, but try to conserve MP for later in the fight. Make sure to keep Cloud topped up on health as much as possible, because Sephiroth is going to hit you hard all the way through.

Keep landing counterattacks on Sephiroth to stagger him again. Tifa will join the fight next, but Sephiroth will become more powerful, using elemental magic for Infusions to amp up his moves and make them more effective. Pay attention to which element he uses, then hit him with the opposite spell–this is why you set up Aerith with all those spell Materia at the start of the chapter. When Sephiroth fires up Wind Infusion, blast him with Lightning magic; when he uses Lightning Infusion, he’ll be weak to Wind magic. You’ll do a lot of damage and push up his stagger meter if you can hit him with opposite spells.

Meanwhile, keep dueling Sephiroth with Cloud as much as you can, while using Tifa to alternately top off your health and hit Sephiroth with ATB attacks to push up his stagger meter. Countering Sephiroth and hitting him with opposite spells will put him down on one knee so you can deal some serious damage, but make sure to guard for the long haul with his wind-based sword strikes, and be careful of the lightning strikes with his Lightning Infusion, which will rain down around the battlefield.

As you damage Sephiroth more, he’ll pull out new attacks, like Shadow Flare, creating gravity wells around the battlefield that then explode. Try to stay out of them as much as you can; the same goes for his Heartless Angel attack, which will light up the floor red and decimate your team if they’re caught in it. When Sephiroth readies it, run for it.

By that point, however, Sephiroth should be close to finished. Keep up the pressure with everything you have left and take him down. When he’s done, you’ll have plenty of downtime as you watch Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s lengthy ending.

Congratulations! Finishing the game unlocks an additional challenge in Hard Mode, which also includes a Chapter Select menu that will let you jump around in the game. Defeating bosses and completing side-quests in Hard Mode will also earn you more Manuscripts, which will give you more SP to upgrade weapons for each character. Your experience point gain is doubled in Hard Mode, and AP is tripled, which should allow you to wrap up things like finishing Chadley’s Battle Intel objectives and earning his final summon, or clearing the optional Combat Simulator fights that now open up in Chapter 17.

We’ve also got more guides to help you find every single thing in FF7 Remake, a rundown of what’s going on with that ending, and a spoilery discussion from the GameSpot team covering everything about the game.