Game - Final Fantasy 6, Day 45
Hours Played/Hours Total - 6-1/2 hrs / 48 hrs
Starting Point - Nearby Figaro Castle.
Current Goal - Locate and explore the Ancient Castle. Defeat Kefka. Save the World!
What Happened - Here we are again...We're coming down to the finish line of yet another Final Fantasy title! How will it go? Will it end well? I'll stop asking, and we'll start just finding out!
However, before I run to the end, I have one more side quest to complete. The Ancient Castle. Basically, it's a castle located under the ground, and it's ancient and stuff. I took my all-star team (Terra, Edgar, Sabin, and Cyan...the best ones honestly) and proceeded down. Well, to proceed down, you have to go to Figaro Castle and have them dive underground. Halfway through the trip back to where South Figaro is, they hit a bump. I went through a hole in the prison to investigate. After crawling through a small cave with a few treasures and trinkets, I come out into the strangely placed Ancient Castle. Upon entering, I'm treated to a small scene depicting what occurred here. Basically, there was a great battle in this place during the War of the Magi. One of the figures in the castle was the esper Odin. He fought valiantly against the enemy, but he was turned into stone by a powerful sorcerer. Time to explore!
There wasn't a whole lot to explore, but I did get some nice stuff out of it. An item called Offering which gives you X Attack. It allows you to attack random enemies (it targets all) four times! AND if you combine this effect with Genji Glove (equip 2 weapons) you can do EIGHT ATTACKS!!! Awesome stuff there. Further in the castle, I ran into the petrified Odin. Upon examination, he crumbled into dust and revealed his magicite. I grabbed it up and explored the rest of the castle. Couple more items along the way, but I also found out something interesting. It seems that the Queen of this castle had fallen in love with Odin. I went down deeper into the castle and found that the Queen had been petrified as well. However, a single tear drop fell from her and transformed Odin into Raiden. Personally, I didn't really like this...the changing of the magicite. Because you LOSE Odin in favor of Raiden. This means it is impossible to have both (that I know of), and you lose access to the powerful Meteor spell that Odin teaches. I already have Ultima, but this still feels like a bit of a jip. Anyways, I didn't have anything else to do here, so I left the Ancient Castle and made my way back to the surface.
Although I was finished with all the real side quests, I did have one last thing to get rid of. I made my way over to the Opera House where one of the dragons was supposed to be mucking around. The guy there was freaking out about the dragon being on stage, so I made my way in and around to him. A lovely fight on the opera stage begins BOSS BATTLE TIME! The current dragon was the Dirt Dragon, but he looked exactly like the T-Rex monster model. The only threat he possessed was his Quake spell, but I quickly got around that by casting Float on everybody. With Quake out of the way, the Dirt Dragon was easily defeated and disposed of. 2 More to go!
With everything basically out of the way, I was ready to head to Kefka's Tower. However, I planned to take some time for extra leveling up and learning all the spells I could. I spent around 2-3 hours getting everybody into the mid-40s while also learning the majority of the magic I could. This was a long process since I only found one spot satisfactory to completing this. It was a desert area with a giant worm called Hoover and the crazy cactus Cactrot. For those in the unknow, Cactrot is actually an early form of the Cactuar that appears in basically the rest of the Final Fantasy series. He's even a summon in FF8! Anyways, I farmed and farmed and farmed until I couldn't stand it anymore. Once I reached my goal of sorts, I jumped on the airship and made my way to Kefka's Tower...for the FINAL SHOWDOWN!!!
For Kefka's Tower, I had to split the entirety of the group up into 3 parties. I made one party the uber party while making the rest evenly balanced (but not as good). Basically, it was like the Cave of the Pheonix but worse since it was 3 groups instead of 2. Really hope I get to reform my super party before I fight the final boss. As for my groups, they went something like this...
- Terra, Edgar, Sabin, Cyan
- Setzer, Shadow, Relm, and Strago
- Celes, Locke, Mog, and Gau
They aren't too bad, but it's obvious that group #1 is the one I'm wanting to use for the finale. Anyways, I pushed through to the first choke point with group one, and then I had to swap off. The enemies here are fairly tough, but none of them are impossible to handle. The final place has lots of nice items scattered about as well for (mostly) easy picking! Moving right along, the second group went on through with little trouble. My preparation of magic really helped since they all can use Cure 3! And of course, as the final area goes, there will be a large portion of final bosses here. Group two got the pleasure of fighting the very first one! BOSS BATTLE TIME #1!
It seems they got lazy at this point. The first of many bosses was a revised Atma Weapon simply called Atma. He had something to say (much like he did before) about being alive for so long and whatnot. He did have some nice spells, but he went down like all the rest.~ Group Two has proven themselves worthy of moving on. He dropped a save point on his death, I saved, and I moved right along. Just a few rooms later (across multiple random areas), I was able to hit a switch and let the first group continue. I forgot to mention earlier some details about Kefka's Tower. You see...it formed near the middle of the world, and it's constructed of junk pulling towards it from all over the world. The dungeon itself is made of junkyard looking bits and random pieces from previous dungeons. It's pretty strange...Anyways, Group One got to move right along.
Unfortunately, they didn't get very far. I ran into a pair of monsters called Doom Dragons, and fuck me they were hard. I guess I just went too easy on them, and on top of that, they were throwing out top level super spells that were ridiculous! They ended up killing my face off despite Group One being my best group. Luckily, I had save not too long ago, so I was able to pick right back up and catch up almost immediately. On my second walk through the area, I didn't run into the stupid dragons (thankfully), but then I hit another impasse. I had to switch back to Group Two and work around to release them again. Yeah, Group Three isn't currently needed, but they will be soon! With Group Two, I had to backtrack a little ways to take another path. This path took me by another Dragon. I charged at him and let him have it! BOSS BATTLE TIME #2!
This was the Golden Dragon. I'd like to say that it looked more like a yellow dinosaur than a "Golden Dragon", but whatever! I could have fought him directly, and he'd have been hard-ish. However, I'm ready to finish this game! I used the Vanish-Doom combo, and he went down fast.~ 1 Dragon left! They eventually came to a dead end at what looked like the Imperial Palace. I jumped on the switch I had access to, and then it was time for Group Three to shine! Group Three is probably the weakest group by comparison because I didn't realize how much magic they were missing. Ah well. I worked my way around and through. I ran into some trouble with a group of enemies at one point though. A group of robots were just using the most annoying spells. One of them kept using Lvl 5 Doom, and that kept killing off Celes. Then I wasted a turn trying to revive her while they kept using more stuff on the rest of the group like Lvl 4 Flare. I came closer than I'd have liked to dying again. Luckily, I kept my cool and persevered!
I came up on another save and saved the game once again. Just a short distance away, I encountered another BOSS BATTLE TIME #3! It was some giant robot thing. It was one of those lovely multi-limbed enemies where every limb gets an attack. Of course, that was easy to take care of. I threw all of my best group attack magic at him. His limbs almost immediately flew off, and then I finished it up with a good old smack to the face (with magic)! He went down before he could have known what had happened. I moved right along, and on the way, I opened up the path to Group One. However, I went ahead and caught up with Group Three and ran into the final dragon....BOSS BATTLE TIME #4! The final dragon was a Skull Dragon. He looked ominous, and the guide stated that he would be an unfriendly and mean son of a bitch! Unfortunately for the guide, I used Vanish-X-Zone to beat the dragon in a few turns. Take THAT guide! With the final dragon defeated, the game claimed that the Dragon Seal was lifted, and I was rewarded the Crusader Magicite. This esper is so powerful that it hurts the enemies AND the party. Personally, I don't really look forward to using it at all, but I would at least like to see what it does. Anyways, I moved a bit further, found myself in the palace, and hit the switch. Back to Group One!
What came next was a series of movements with all the groups to get them to different spots with different switches. Eventually, I worked around and had another boss to fight! Group Two took on BOSS BATTLE TIME #5! This time, it was a giant robot called Guardian. I threw all sorts of Bolt 3 and Ultima at it. It went down fast and easy. After that, my next hurdle was a trio of bosses that were the three magic gods. First up, Group Two got to fight Poltergeist for BOSS BATTLE #6! He was pretty weird looking for sure! However, like the last couple of bosses, I simply harassed him with all the Ultima I could manage. He had quite a bit of health, but in the end, he died like the rest.~ Now, I switched over to Group Three! They charged forward and had to fight Doom Gaze! BOSS BATTLE TIME #7! Yeah, I might be getting lazy on the boss battle descriptions, but I'm being 100% honest when I say they weren't that hard...They especially weren't hard because of constant Ultima casting. He was over before you know it.~ Next up, Group One taking on the Goddess for BOSS BATTLE TIME #8! The Goddess was actually easier than the other two. It didn't help her that I had Terra double-casting Ultima all over her face. Yeah, I beat her down so easy-like. With the Goddess down, all that was left...was the big guy himself!
I was allowed to save in several spots before the final bout. The group all approaches Kefka at once who has now absorbed all of the power of the Magic God statues into himself. It doesn't say it in-game, but basically, he's the God of Magic now. He plans to use his vast power to destroy anything and everything. He basically goes on to do his crazy bad guy bit. To summarize it, he questions why everyone rebuilds despite his destroying it and plans to destroy everything again and again until it is no more. Of course, the group isn't going to stand for this, and thus begins the BOSS BATTLE TIME #9! FINAL BOSS TIME!
Now, this was a fairly impressive final boss if I do say so myself. It's constructed somewhat weirdly, but basically, if you have a total party kill, the party switches to the next available party! You are allowed to organize it all beforehand into whatever groups you want. After that, it was finally time for this super battle. You go through multiple stages with your party and fight several different bosses in a giant tower of bosses. They look pretty messed up being all melded together as one giant tree of magic and tools and monsters and junk. The first stage was one big demon that was just the torso up. I had to defeat him and his arms to go up. My opening party was Terra, Locke, Cyan, and Shadow. Seeing as it was, I just piled on all the Ultima I could while supporting with a Cure 3 whenever it was needed. After his defeat, I continued upward and fought the next stage which consisted of 4 different things. Each one represented something different, but I didn't pay attention to what each individual one was. I just blasted them all with Ultima! Of course, at this point, I was starting to run a tad low on MP, so I had to start up with the Elixers I had been saving up. I had more than enough, and I easily plowed through this group. Next up was stage three featuring a man and a woman. Things were starting to get a bit rougher, and I still was running a bit low on Magic. I lost a person here and there, but I managed to get them back up and in the fight. Seems like characters won't change unless you lose the entire party. After I finished the two of them off, it was time for the final stage...
The game music changed perfectly, and the video tilted slowly upward as Kefka was revealed. He appeared as a massive purple angel of sorts. He started blasting away at me, and things got pretty close for a bit. However, I wasn't about to give up at this point! I started Throwing items at him with Shadow while I used up what little magic I had left with the rest of the crew. He had some pretty powerful attacks though. And just as it came close...I BEAT HIM! I realize that's fairly anti-climatic to put it like that. But honestly, he wasn't as hard as I thought he was going to be. With Kefka destroyed though...the story began to end. Remember what I said about Kefka being the God of Magic? Kinda important you see...with him destroyed, all magic was starting to fade. His tower began to crumble and all figments of magic were disappearing. Even the magicites began to crumble and disappear! The group began to flee the place as the credits began to roll. Not the actual credits yet, just fake in-gameish credits going over all the characters and their full names. Each one was accompanied by a scene and such. It seems you get a slightly varying version of this if you didn't go and pick up certain characters throughout. From what I read, you can actually attempt this with JUST four people! Celes, Edgar, Sabin, and Setzer. Not that I'd ever do it, but it is an option. Of course, you might be wondering what happened to Mrs. Half-Human, Half-Esper. I'm going to super-spoil it and say she lives on, but she loses her Esper half of course. From then on, it is closing credits and last minute scenes. You see stuff and things happen. Yay!
The cooler thing that happens is the special CG cutscene that you get to see on the PS1 Anthology version! It's like a 2-3 minute animated scene showing bits from the game...but in CG form! It's pretty cool and such. You also unlock extras for viewing game stats and secrets. Overall, I had a great time with it all. Sure I kinda forced the ending bit, but I was ready to finish! I've done that on basically every one since the beginning. And guess what's next? Final Fantasy 7! Expect my Final Thoughts up in a bit, and hopefully will get to start FF7 on Thursday!
Ending Point - End of the Game!
Current Party - *Final Party Stats will be posted in the Final Thoughts.
Next Goals - Start Final Fantasy 7!!!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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