When Life Gives You Lemons

Go murder a clown!


Things have been cooking along very well in Final Fantasy VI,  in fact well enough that I believe I've managed to surpass the overall power of any party in my previous playthroughs.  Some of it is making use of newer information (I can't do circle motions on a d-pad to save my life, finding out there's alternate command inputs was awesome; finding out you can still learn Ultima via the Paladin Shield, making the Ragnarok sword far more attractive than the Ragnarok Esper), buckling down and using the leveling mechanics as intended (OMG look at them stats), and brining a RPG veteran mindset into things.


Using the Esper bonuses has been the major difference.  The short version is that this game's magic system is based on Espers' essence (the local magic rocks of magicness), almost all your characters can equip an Esper's magicite, with the majority giving a small but significant stat boost when that character levels up.  These bonuses are permanent and persist even when you switch to another Esper, meaning a bit of basic XP management can result in huge dividends.  This results in even the wimpy characters turning into meat-mulching agri-combines of death, and with their powers combined THE HARVEST IS UNLEASHED and not much can get in the way.


I also decided that the open-ended gameplay of the World of Ruin is actually pretty fun, never really realizing that this was a very major departure from the JRPG tradition of linearity.  There are a few oddities; there are bits of gear exclusive to one particular character you can buy, but the process of re-recruiting that character also comes with far superior gear choices, plus using his special skills (he's the local the--I mean treasure hunter) can result in more unique but redundant stuff for him.  There's also some areas on the world map that have random encounters far more dangerous than what you get elsewhere, that you can't even claim as a player nudge or beef gate, since the major dungeon in the area has far more manageable enemies, even the bosses are less lethal than the mooks prowling around outside.


Things are starting to come to a close, with only two dungeons really left (there's a couple I've already cleared than I'll probably return to use as grinding spots) before the big showdown with Jack Hamill in his big trash tower of terror.  The Harvest Never Rests!

Always Wish To Catch A Fish

Well, things are cooking along pretty well on Final Fantasy VI.  I managed to get all the way through the Floating Continent without a whole of trouble (except for 'level acclimation' yay RPGs).  I even managed to wreck Atma Weapon's face on the first go-around pretty handily.  Though I came hilariously close to getting ganked by some mooks immediately afterwards.  Imagine the Harvest coming to such an ignominious end.  Things would have flung and then burned.


I've done some things I've wanted to do for some time; a decade or even more.  I've managed to pull off a handy victory over the dreaded Intangir.  For the uninitiated, Intangir is especially nasty pseudo-megaboss, found in an out-of-the-way area as a random encounter.  It starts off invisible (and therefore immune to physicals) and absorbs all elements (so no skills or magic either), has ridiculous heath and moves that completely crispify your dudes if you don't know what your doing.  And it only spawns in the first half, with all the really good moves and gear still locked out.  On the plus side, invisible enemies can be hit by magic of any type, and it is not immune to Stop.  Cast one Stop, then go to town whaling on the smug freak. 


I've also managed to complete the little fishing minigame successfully and save Cid.  It's much easier in the original SNES version, since the RNG is much more likely to give you the speedy little 'yummy fish' (that's what the game itself calls them).  I have reason to believe that the GBA was tweaked with a much more stingy RNG, likely since the bad ending of the minigame is much more dramatic overall.  Frankly, I'll take yummy fish over depressing melodrama any day.


And now I'm in the World of Ruin.  Everything's been wrecked, but now I can get the awesome stuff.  The lemons of life have been given, and soon that clown will face the beatdowns.  The Harvest Never Rests!

Boom Goes The Fireballs

Things are going along rather well in Final Fantasy VI.  There have been a few eye-openers thus far, mostly in dialog and combat patterns.


I didn't catch how the 'noble rebel leader' Banon was actually a blunt douchebag.  Way back when, even though I knew I got a better reward for refusing to help out (or simply hesitating) I used to always choose to help right off the bat.  Then comes my current playthrough, at least a decade after the last, where I talk to this guy, and the bozo starts barking at a conflicted young woman, mangling the myth of Pandora, and barks again so he can take a freakin' nap.  Way to impress your potential trump card, mister leader!  Needless to say, I went ahead and took the neutral choice and got the better goodies.  Watching him act similarly to other potential allies (Narshe) makes the unstoppable march of the Empire of Doom seem a good bit more believable.


I also remembered just how broken magic is compared to plain old physical attacks.  It makes some sense from a thematic view; magic is explicitly a very powerful force in this world, and very much one explicitly for high-intensity warfare.  Magic users are a major part of Final Fantasy, since the beginning, but VI is where magic users are on a whole different level of power compared to you usual combat troops.  I wouldn't see an in-universe gamechanger like this again until SaGa Frontier 2 where the opposite effect happens; steel weapons and armor completely smash the magic-user masses in-story, and actual in-game combat reflects that.


Well, it's time to go back to smacking freaks (and FF6 has extra gribbly looking freaks, I can tell you).  The Harvest Never Rests!