Oversoul Enemies

It usually doesn’t take very long before a new player encounters their very first Oversouled fiend. This will typically happen in a mundane area of the game, such as Besaid Island or the Mi’ihen Highroad, and the fiend that goes into its Oversoul form is typically pretty weak. Even the Oversoul form doesn’t put up much more of a fight.

This continues to be true for much of the game, but Oversouled enemies become much more critical as you work your way through the game. Some enemies are counterintuitively easier to fight in their Oversoul form; you’ll need to fight them to obtain certain drops, and you need to observe each of them to complete Shinra’s Bestiary.

So what are they? How are they triggered, and how do they work?

Triggering an Oversoul

Each fiend you fight belongs to a family or type of fiend. For example, the “Lupine” family includes Canis Major, Coyotes, Killer Hounds, Lupus, Tindalos, White Fangs, and Wild Wolves. Once you defeat 22 fiends from the “Lupine” family, the next one you encounter will be Oversouled, no matter which member it is. Defeat 22 Coyotes and then run into a Lupus, and that Lupus will be Oversouled. After you defeat it, the counter for that family/type resets to zero.

Escaping and Fleeing

You can also run away from an Oversouled enemy, and the next enemy you face from that family will still be Oversouled. Defeat 22 Coyotes, encounter an Oversouled Killer Hound, run away from it, and the next Lupus you meet will be Oversouled too. As a result, this means you can trigger an Oversoul on the weak members of a family early on and then carry it to the stronger members further down the Via Infinito, out in Spira, or in the Fiend Arena.

Again, this is extremely useful for completing Shinra’s Bestiary.

Battle Differences

So what can you expect in battle? Generally, a creature’s strengths become more pronounced. For example, an enemy with strong defense will have even stronger defense. Powerful attacks have an upgraded form. In many cases, you’ll have to rethink your strategy to get around the Oversouled fiends’ adaptations and be ready for them at any time.

Fiend Families

Every fiend that can be Oversouled belongs to one of the families below. The middle column is how many fiends of that family you need to defeat before the next one you meet arrives Oversouled.

Families That Cannot Oversoul

The families below have no Oversoul form, so there is no number of fiends to defeat for them and they can be safely ignored while you are working through the list above.