Final Fantasy V was the first appearance of Gilgamesh, who eventually became an interdimensional traveler throughout the series. Although he didn’t make an appearance in the original Final Fantasy VII, he does appear in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, as the superboss of the game. You will find him at the end of the Protorelic side quest that spans the length of the game. Complete all of those to gain access to Gilgamesh Island, where you’ll have to fight three battles against two summons each. Only then will you finally be able to finish your quarrel with Gilgamesh.

All of Gilgamesh’s Attacks¶

Gilgamesh will start out with just the naginata, but will add various other weapons throughout the course of the fight. First will be the Muramasa, second the Rune Axe, third the Banana Fan, fourth the Excalipoor, and lastly, the Excalibur. Each of these will give him new attacks

• Helmsplitter: Gilgamesh will jump up and do an overhead swing with his naginata.

• Retreating Swipe: He will jump away from you, while performing a sweeping attack with the naginata.

• Sweep: Gilgamesh does a sweeping attack with the naginata. Nothing too crazy and it can easily be blocked.

• Dual Thrust: He will perform two thrusting attacks with the naginata, back-to-back.

• Pinwheel: Gilgamesh runs at you, while spinning his naginata around in circles in front of him.

• Gilgamesh Pose!: Unblockable. Gilgamesh will jump into the air and try to land on you. If he does, then that character will be bound for a few seconds and Gilgamesh will unleash some attacks on them. As the battle goes on, the attacks will increase in number, so it will do more damage. Will buff Gilgamesh is successfully done.

• Genji Shield: Gilgamesh will use this throughout the fight, which will absorb all incoming damage. It also gives him a variety of buffs.

• Draw Slash: Muramasa. Gilgamesh sheathes his sword and will then quickly dash forward, pulling it from the scabbard and doing a sweeping slash in front of him. Can inflict a random debuff/ailment.

• Daemon Wave: Muramasa. Gilgamesh will send out a quick beam from his sword, sent in the direction of one of your characters. Can randomly inflict a debuff/ailment.

• Triple Slash: Muramasa. He will do a series of three very quick slashes in front of him. Can inflict a random debuff/ailment.

• Booming Swing: Muramasa. Gilgamesh will use this to make anyone with a marker on them from one of the other Muramasa moves, causing a small explosion and damage. Can inflict a random debuff/ailment.

• Brutal Swing: Rune Axe. Unblockable. Gilgamesh will jump into the air and slam the axe onto the ground, causing a small area of effect around it.

• Upheaval Slam: Rune Axe. Unblockable. Gilgamesh will do an upward swing with the axe, causing some rocks to come out of the ground in front of him.

• Lunar Slash: Rune Axe. Unblockable. Gilgamesh will do an upward swing with his axe.

• Spatial Rend: Rune Axe. Unblockable. Gilgamesh jumps into the air and crashes down with the axe. A few seconds after that, a large explosion on the ground will occur. Just move away from Gilgamesh when he does this.

• Flutterwing Dance: Banana Fan. Wind-elemental. Gilgamesh will summon a bunch of small tornadoes on the field. They don’t move, but stick around a while, so try to avoid touching them.

• Fallen Blossom: Banana Fan. Fire-elemental. Gilgamesh will jump away, while conjuring a Chinese character, which explodes shortly afterwards.

• Firefly Ward: Banana Fan. Lightning-elemental. Unblockable. Gilgamesh conjures a barrier around himself that will result in any character being stunned, should they melee attack him.

• Whirlpool Dance: Banana Fan. Ice-elemental. There will be a large circular marker on the ground, with a whirlpool appearing shortly after that damages anyone inside it.

• Sloppy Swordplay: Excalipoor. Unblockable. Gilgamesh lunges forward and does a sweeping strike, causing a lot of hits of one damage each. This deals a lot more damage than you think, so always dodge it.

• Shoddy Swordplay: Excalipoor. Unblockable. Similar in nature to Sloppy Swordplay, only Gilgamesh will do a double sweeping attack with the blade. As with the Excalipoor attacks, this does major damage if you stay in the range of the move, so get out as soon as possible.

• Scrappy Swordplay: Excalipoor. Unblockable. Similar in nature to the other two similar attacks, except Gilgamesh jumps up and stabs the ground. Get out of the attack’s range as soon as possible to avoid major damage.

• Legenderpy Strike: Excalipoor. Unblockable. The opening move that Gilgamesh does when he brandishes the Excalipoor. It only does one damage and he’ll only use it that one time.

• Brilliant Sweep: Excalibur. A sweeping attack all around Gilgamesh. It has a pretty big range and comes out quick, but you’re able to block it.

• Radiant Geyser: Excalibur. Gilgamesh will swing his weapon upwards, causing a mass of light energy to launch straight forward.

• Gilgamesh Beam: Gilgamesh will stand far away and just fire a quick laser beam at someone. This move is very fast and hurts a lot, but it can be blocked.

• Soaring Cross: Excalibur. Gilgamesh will toss out his sword that spins around horizontally. This will essentially act like a boomerang-like object that spins around for a little bit, before returning to him.

• Ephemerality: Excalibur. Unblockable. Gilgamesh does an upward sword slash that can place a number of debuffs/ailments on the character it hits. Avoid this at all costs.

• Phantasmal Field: During the second phase, Gilgamesh will put this large circle on the ground. You seem to take damage over time while standing in it.

• Ultimate Illusion: Unblockable/unavoidable. Gilgamesh’ ultimate attack that begins when he starts counting down. Do enough damage to stop this from happening.

Gilgamesh Boss Strategy¶

Gilgamesh is quite a superboss, with a large variety of attacks that can be executed very quickly, so you will need to stay on your toes. First off, he is weak to fire, so it’s a good idea to have a Fire Materia on everyone, preferably linked to an Elemental Materia on your two big melee characters. If you’re using Yuffie, you can just use Elemental Ninjutsu to exploit his weakness. Gilgamesh is also weak to Debrave, Defaith, Deprotect and Deshell, so put those corresponding materias on someone, as well. Debrave and Defaith can very useful to reduce the damage he does to you, while the other two debuffs will help with inflicting damage. He is also weak to Poison, should you want to use that.

As for pressuring Gilgamesh, you have a few options. Blocking his attacks at just the right time will do the trick, but you can also just inflict enough damage. Both of those options will eventually pressure him, causing him to drop one of his weapons. This is extremely useful, since you can limit the number of abilities he can use. At the beginning of the battle, Gilgamesh will be equipped with a naginata, with the first five attacks in the list utilizing that weapon. As the time passes in the fight, he will eventually start adding more weapons into the mix.

These weapons will always be added in the same order, starting with the Muramasa first, the Rune Axe second, the Banana Fan third, the Excalipoor fourth, and the final weapon will be the Excalibur. Each weapon will give him around four new moves to add into his repertoire, so there’s going to be a lot of attacks to watch out for in this battle. The naginata moveset is pretty tame and nothing in it is particularly dangerous. Most of the moves can be blocked, although Pinwheel can be annoying, as it will likely be hitting you multiple times.

The first weapon that Gilgamesh unsheathes is the Muramasa, which has its own little mechanic to it. Basically, the first three moves on the list above not only have a chance to inflict a random debuff/ailment, but it also places a marker on your character, should they hit you. If you have a marker on one (or more) of your characters, then he will perform Booming Swing to make the marker explode for some damage. You can actually block/dodge this, but the move happens quickly, so it might be a little difficult.

The second weapon is the Rune Axe, with all of its attacks being unblockable and having some sort of area-of-effect. The most dangerous here is Spatial Rend, as the AoE is delayed and quite larger compared to the others. The third weapon is the Banana Fan, which has all elemental-infused attacks. Whirlpool Dance has a big area-of-effect and the tornadoes from Flutterwing Dance can be annoying, since they stick around for a while. However, the most dangerous attack is Firefly Ward, as it creates a barrier around Gilgamesh that stuns any character should they attack with a melee move.

That makes it very dangerous when coupled with the fourth weapon’s abilities, the Excalipoor. Normally a joke weapon that only does one damage in other games, the Excalipoor is probably the biggest threat here. While the initial attack is still the same joke, all other moves from this weapon can deal extremely high damage. While you may think it’s all sunshines and rainbows with the one damage per hit, they can easily add up if you stay in the attack’s area and deal upwards of 2,000 or so damage. They are all unblockable, too, so you want to dodge out of the way as soon as possible.

The final weapon that’s unveiled is the true sword of legend, the Excalibur. Of the attacks from this weapon, Gilgamesh Beam is the worst, since it is quick and has a very long range. The rest of the Excalibur attacks seem like different variations of other ones from the various weapons, like Radiant Geyser being similar to Upheaval Slam. So, as you can see from all of the above, Gilgamesh has a lot of different attacks, some of which can be quite dangerous.

Once you manage to get his health to about 60% or so, he will use Swordsman Supreme to recollect all of his weapons again, essentially triggering the second major phase of the battle. Not long after this, he will begin counting down from five, which means his ultimate ability is about to be unleashed. While counting down, he’ll resume his normal set of attacks, so the battle just keeps going on as usual. When he gets to one, he’ll stop attacking altogether and begin charging up. You can do enough damage throughout the countdown to stop this, but it appears a Limit Break also seems to do it (not sure if this is just the damage doing).

If you don’t succeed in stopping the countdown, then you will see Ultimate Illusion, an attack that does major damage to all characters. If you’re not at full health, this could possibly kill your characters. At this point, you’ve pretty much seen about everything he can do, so it’s just a matter of whittling down his health. If you can manage to stop Ultimate Illusion, he will become pressured, so use that opportunity to try and stagger him. Once you do, you can unleash all of your damage at that point.

Gilgamesh Superboss Rewards¶

Once you defeat Gilgamesh, you will unlock a bunch of things. First will be the Gilgamesh Summon Materia for you to use in battles, as well as the Brutal and Legendary Challenges in the Combat Simulator. These are a series of battles that are automatically set to Hard difficulty, no matter what your main game’s difficulty is. They can definitely be the most challenging things to do in the game, so make sure you’re prepared. There is also the recipes for the Genji accessories, which can be quite powerful. The last thing you’ll unlock is more materia from Chadley by turning in points from the Meridian Ocean intel (just the Gilgamesh Island stuff.