Who knew that Cloud Strife was a part-timer Ghostbuster? In Final Fantasy 7 Remake, you’ll be tasked with bringing down a lot of monsters, but one of the creepiest is Ghoul. This spirit appears near the end of Chapter 10 and attempts to kill Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa when they attempt to turn the power on. While not the final boss of Chapter 10, Ghoul can prove tricky if you haven’t focused heavily on using offensive magic spells with Aerith.
How to Beat Ghoul
To beat Ghoul you will want to have a solid balance of physical and magic-based attacks. This is because Ghoul will occasionally become immune to one or another, forcing you to switch playstyles. When the battle begins, Ghoul will be damageable by physical strikes so rush him with Cloud and Tifa. The boss has two close-range attacks, a downward slash and launching fire up in a straight line. Both of which are easily telegraphed by Ghoul raising its hand up in the air. You can dodge these by just rolling to the side, so always try to keep to Ghoul’s side.
You want to watch out for the Piercing Scream attack, as this Area of Effect (AOE) move will stun anyone stuck by it. When the words appear on his body, quickly run away and try to get behind cover with your melee fighters. Ghoul will then begin to switch between its Incorporeality, form and physical one. When it becomes more transparent and begins to glow red that means you can only damage Ghoul with magic attacks. This boss is weak to fire so use Cloud or Tifa to cast Fira while you assume control of Aerith and pelt it with magic attacks.
If you do enough damage then Ghoul will be knocked back into physical form. This gives you a small damage window to use Cloud and Tifa to barrage it with attacks. We found that Aerith’s Ray of Judgement is especially good at knocking Ghoul out of Incorporeality. After hitting 50% health, a short cutscene will play and Ghoul will gain a few new attacks. The most noticeable is Telekinesis, which lets it move objects in the environment around. These don’t do a lot of damage, but it will force you to run through a maze of junk to reach this geist.
It will also try to grab one of your Party Members when in Incorporeality, removing them from the fight until Ghoul is stunned. Because of this, you’ll want to keep your distance from Ghoul when it’s in Incorporeality so you don’t get grabbed. Keep repeating this process of stunning it into reality so Cloud and Tifa can attack this spirit. Additionally, Ghoul will swipe at the player when in Incorporeality, dealing around 200 damage a hit and applying the Silence debuff. This move is very dangerous against Aerith, so if Ghoul charges at you just run away so you aren’t locked out of your spells!
If you’re diligent about switching to spells when Ghoul enters Incorporeality then you should be golden. Just make sure to play defensively when Ghoul is in this form so you don’t end up removed from combat or Silenced. The last thing you want is your healer unable to repair any wounds!
