Last Edited:
Announced at The Game Awards in December 2020, Sephiroth is the 3rd DLC character of the Smash Bros. Ultimate Fighters Pass 2. While he will become widely available on December 22, 2020, Sakurai announced during a gameplay presentation that players have a chance to unlock him early if they do the “Sephiroth Challenge” – available as soon as the DLC is purchased, either standalone or through he Fighter’s Pass.
Those who own Fighter Pass 2 or Challenger Pack 8 and have a fully updated game will find a new feature in the top left corner on the main menu – the Sephiroth Challenge. This is a limited time event from December 17 until 8 p.m. Eastern on December 22.
This mode allows players to fight a CPU Sephiroth early in an easy, normal, or very hard fight. The match is set on Sephiroth‘s new stage, featuring new Final Fantasy music, and is a stamina battle.
If a player defeats Sephiroth in any of the difficulty modes, they will automatically unlock him as a playable character before December 22nd, and can utilize him in either single-player or multiplayer matches.
Tips for Completing the Sephiroth Challenge
- If all you want to do is unlock him early to play as Sephiroth, you need only beat him on the lowest difficulty. If you want to prove your skills to your friends, you can keep fighting him on the highest difficulty and share how fast you’ve defeated him.
- Since it’s a stamina battle, you don’t necessarily need to knock him off the stage to win – but it may help.
- Characters that can reflect his few but powerful ranged attacks can try and keep out of his sword range and slowly whittle him down.
- Characters that can use aerial spikes (like Mario, seen in the video above), can try and quickly smack Sephiroth downwards once you can knock him off the stage – which is easier than trying to knock him to the left or right of the stage.
- Many of Sephiroth’s moves are powerful with long range, but leave him wide open afterwards. Practice spot dodging or blocking to get in close and evade his moves to counter quickly, and rinse and repeat.
- You can retry the challenge as many times as you want, so don’t worry about messing up.