Unlike the original Final Fantasy VII, the FF7 remake isn’t over once the credits roll. There’s a significant amount of the game that only opens up once you’ve beaten it, ranging from simple quality-of-life bonuses to brand-new battles. You can’t really say you’ve “finished” FF7 if you’ve only run through it once.
Final Fantasy VII Remake: Everything You Can Unlock Post Game
Your first major bonus for completing the game is opening up Chapter Select. This lets you go back and revisit any of the chapters of the game from their beginning, while retaining your characters’ current levels, equipment, materia, and gil.
This allows you to clean up any side quests and optional battles that you may have missed. One good example is Planet’s Protection, Aerith’s level 2 Limit Break, which is only available in Chapter 9 through a fight at Don Corneo’s Colosseum and is very easy to miss while you’re there. If you moved on past Chapter 9 without it, the only way to go back for it is the post-game Chapter Select.
You also receive double EXP and triple AP rewards as a bonus for game completion, so you can run back through some of the higher-yield sections of FF7 to grind for levels and SP.
If you don’t care for the biking mini-game, you can opt to skip it entirely when you replay FF7. It’s just automatically completed for you without a hassle. You’ll still want to play it if you’re working on the Biker Boy trophy, but after that, you can skip the mini-game without regret.
The big unlock, however, is Hard Mode. FF7 has a substantial amount of its trophy list locked behind a second run on Hard Mode, including two gold trophies and this game’s take on the traditional Final Fantasy ultimate-but-optional boss.
On Hard Mode, you cannot use items at all, resting on a bench no longer restores MP, and your enemies are both stronger and have dramatically different patterns. Since you’ve got the benefit of the post-game EXP/AP multiplier, your characters will quickly advance, but the lack of easy healing and mana restoration makes much of FF7 into a potentially grueling endurance challenge. It forces you to think outside of the box, avoid using magic unless absolutely necessary, and make use of many materia and abilities that you might ordinarily underrate. Mako shards from Shinra Boxes are suddenly worth their weight in gold, and absorption abilities like Soul Drain are now top tier.
You do get access to a few more items and fights on Hard Mode that aren’t available on any other difficulty, however, such as the rest of the Manuscripts. Each one you find is worth 10 extra SP, which is well worth your time. You can consult our guide on the issue to speed up the process, though you won’t complete your collection until you’ve nearly cleared Hard Mode.
By the end of the game, when you’ve beaten many of the game’s battles again, there are a couple of additional fights to face on Hard Mode. One is the final tier of challenges in the Shinra Battle Simulator in Chapter 17; the other becomes available in the same Simulator once you’ve cleared all the fights in Don Corneo’s Colosseum, all of Chadley’s battle intel reports, and all the other Simulator battles.
If you’re still working on your first run through the Final Fantasy 7 remake, check out our game hub for a few handy tips and articles, including:
- How to get the Gotterdammerung accessory
- Completing the “Secret Medicine” side quest
- Unlock the “Dancing Queen” trophy
If you’re really enjoying the Final Fantasy 7 remake, the good news is that it’s not necessarily over just because you’ve beaten it once. Take it on again in Hard Mode to pursue 100% completion, and let us know how it’s going for you on Twitter @PrimaGames.
