- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, but if you have to fight every ghost in the train to find out which ones will drain your HP and resources and which ones will sell you items, then that doesn't fucking count
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Okay, but if you have to fight every ghost in the train to find out which ones will drain your HP and resources and which ones will sell you items, then that doesn't fucking count
Crucially, I think it's literally the closest or second closest ghost to you when you first get control that is the first merchant. So, you'd talk to them, get your items, and then be surprised when the rest of the ghosts on the train are more unfriendly. There definitely is one in the first car, but I don't have a save file near the Phantom train to check which one exactly.
I wonder if the writers were going for Serious Comedy with some of this stuff and just botched it? The key aspect of that is that the characters in-universe are taking their situation completely seriously and there's every indication that's the case here. Neither Cyan nor Sabin are mugging to the camera with their 'surprised sprites' like what happens in several of the more normal comedy skits we've seen so far.
It's possible, but honestly it seems more likely to me that the writers were more or less learning as they go, and were worried about the whole sequence tipping over into being too grimdark and bleak, and so tried to balance it out with a few gags.
Yeah, also had to reset myself when I suddenly finished the camp and went "wait that's it?" In particular, you... can't wander the camo when Cyan shows up because Sabin is suddenly super interested in helping him where he could in fact wander while Kefka was planning a little bit of genocide.
Ah well you got a green beret out of it, genuinely one of the best helms in the game for a loooong while with that HP buff.
Yeah Invisibility is like Float where it just sticks between fights.
And yes, this does mean you can dunk all over some areas of the game by getting the status on your full party in places where no enemies have magical attacks.
Personally, I chalk Sabin's knowledge of mechanical stuff up to being Edgar's brother. After all, Figaro seems to be one of the most technologically advanced place around asode from the Empire, no reason he wouldn't get a bit via osmosis (even if not to the level of Edgar carrying around his tools.)
And yeah Cyan's I sudden shift to Sit Thou the Comedy Routine is... slightly jarring. Though I do want to comment on how it cracked me up how the moment Sabin and Cyan head north to grab two armors, Shadow just zips away only to apparently loot and pilot his own offscreen when he pops back up.
You know what, sure, head canon accepted.
HERE WE GO BOIS BEST PARTY MEMBER ACQUIRED
...Whoops never thought about that. And you don't really fight any undead before this part of the game iirc...
SABIN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
Fun fact, you get different little scenes forneach party member if you go back and eat again with them in the lead. Like Cyan is fairly hesitant, Shadow feeds Interceptor as well when the dog seems hungry, and the Ghost... absolutely goes wild digging in, more even than Sabin.
A few others have mentioned it by now, but there are in fact a few merchant ghosts wandering the train, so you didn't have to go back quite so far.
Plus, for encounters like Apparation and the Train itself? Well, they're marked as Undead and you probably have a couple phoenix downs, if you want to trivialize things...
o7. He was a real one, he really was.
I was going to post some art here, but got beat to the punch.
I highly suspect Imp is supposed to be a Kappa and they just kept the old translation from SNES around.
Yeah, so while Shadow does have something like a 1 in 16 chance to bail after every fight... he won't run during the Imperial Camp or Phantom Train sequences, so there's really a surprisingly tight window for it to come up.
Also, did you unequip him before he left? At least of relics, that's the important part.
So yeah, I'll say I'm not really against Cyan having his "scared of machines" bit or some comedy roles... but it probably should have waited until after this scenario at a minimum, so it's not slamming a tonal shift up against the whole Doma tragedy. There's actually one more small optional scene later in this scenario that also jarrs me a bit for the same reason.
And now, character Analysis!
...omi you shit you cut off before wild boi I wanted to write like half a novel about him
Fine, other best boi it is.
So, Ghost! Ghost is... well, a filler member while you explore the train, and for obvious reasons. Possess is just too overpowered, I mean imagine if you brought it to the final boss? Very anticlimactic! Beyond that, the Ghost has no equipment other than a permanent Lich Ring, which I assume is the devs way of making sure they count as undead for the purpose of this scenario. Can't be healed or iirc revived, potions and the like iust deal damage (to the enemies as well, to be fair. Phoenix Downs in particular arw a great panic button on the train.)
Really, he's just a fun temp party member who helps fill out some space and give enemies another target to split damage up... especially if you don't have Shadow.
Last edited:
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This observation is leaning up against one of the things that most bugs me about FF6, but I'll talk more about it later.
In any case, there it is, the thing FF6 is most known and memed for: you can use one of your regular abilities on a boss.
I own this shirt.
I jest, of course. Suplexing the train is one of those rare moments in videogames where disparate mechanics come together to create a perfect moment of absurdity. "Wait...can I...?" we wonder as we see 'suplex' in the menu, looking dubiously for a moment at the very real-world-like steam engine opposing us on the screen. And with no fanfare, Sabin just does that, grabbing a hundred-ton locomotive and smashing it upside-down against the ground. After which the battle just continues as if that didn't just happen. Wouldn't that have smashed the rails? "Fuck the rails, I'm the God Damn Phantom Train." It's such a truly delightful boss fight.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
There are two things about the writing here that you have to understand:
1) There's no single "writer". Sakaguchi divided sets of characters and scenes and gave them out to different people who before that had been designers, artists, programmers and so on. IIRC because he wanted people to start getting on their own so he didn't have to shoulder the direction of more games than necessary after FFVI. For example, the couple responsible for the idea of Sabin, Edgar, and Figaro would later helm Xenogears, with a few similar ideas there as well. So of course, going from one scene to another can absolutely be possible to find something jarring, just out of the multitude of minds trying to do their thing.
2) I said it before, but FFVI is theater. This gets more obvious as you play (the veterans should know there's a very particular scene later very apropos of this concept). Just look at how the characters "act". Speaking lines aloud that even in other games would be reserved for musings or silence, sometimes looking at the audience when talking, or even some very energetic movements that would look real weird in a movie, but it helps the guys at the back of the room to notice and understand what you're trying to act out. Or, in this case, very extremely jumping from one mood to another, just to make clear to those far back wall hugging bastards what's comedy and what's tragedy.
1) There's no single "writer". Sakaguchi divided sets of characters and scenes and gave them out to different people who before that had been designers, artists, programmers and so on. IIRC because he wanted people to start getting on their own so he didn't have to shoulder the direction of more games than necessary after FFVI. For example, the couple responsible for the idea of Sabin, Edgar, and Figaro would later helm Xenogears, with a few similar ideas there as well. So of course, going from one scene to another can absolutely be possible to find something jarring, just out of the multitude of minds trying to do their thing.
2) I said it before, but FFVI is theater. This gets more obvious as you play (the veterans should know there's a very particular scene later very apropos of this concept). Just look at how the characters "act". Speaking lines aloud that even in other games would be reserved for musings or silence, sometimes looking at the audience when talking, or even some very energetic movements that would look real weird in a movie, but it helps the guys at the back of the room to notice and understand what you're trying to act out. Or, in this case, very extremely jumping from one mood to another, just to make clear to those far back wall hugging bastards what's comedy and what's tragedy.
Last edited:
Incidentally, it drops Green beret, which is the best headgear for, like, half the game. Good defense, some stat bonuses, extra HP.
Fun fact: if you approach him from the front, he actually punches you and tells you not to get between him and the enemies.
Monk training.
Given that Figaro is a diving castle, it's not too surprising. If anything, only having railroads marks Doma as a backwater.
And they also invented first, second and business classes solely to place themselves in first.
If we go with your earlier theory, I guess they can just walk on rails or use whatever other means of reaching afterlife there were.
Or they're going to haunt Sabin and Co forever. One of the two.
Incidentally, it's important to defeat Oversoul for reasons. It's a missable encounter.
Fun fact: each character (including Shadow) has a unique food ordering scene here if you switch between them with keys 2 or 3. If you have a save nearby, I would recommend watching them, they're cute.
What's he trying to protect his mother from in the afterlife? Are they going to hell?
Hope you didn't forget to get his equipment.
Oh, yes, he's indeed a character. He's, in fact, the most character.
- Location
- Spain
Yeah, imagine
Surely nobody would be evil enough to sequence break the game to allow this
Last edited:
...You know I meant it as a JOKE and assumed !Possess ran into the usual instant death protections on some enemies and bosses, but according to the wiki NOPE it ignores those.
Ghost really is The Strongest Party Member
- Location
- Spain
Who bother making bosses immune to status effects than the player isn't supposed to be able to get anyways
(!Possess isn't even the only case of this lmao)
Something of a tangent.
So, there were, obviously, other takes on the train of the dead concept in various media. My favorite design comes from a free RPGMaker game Middens, notable for its surreal collage art.
It looks like this:
And it is, in fact, an enemy you can fight (twice, as it resurrects itself, possibly due to a bug). Sadly, there isn't a story attached to the train, it just sorta rushes at you as you travel through a tunnel, but still, respect the reference.
You can't suplex it, but you can shoot it dead with your revolver.
So, there were, obviously, other takes on the train of the dead concept in various media. My favorite design comes from a free RPGMaker game Middens, notable for its surreal collage art.
It looks like this:
And it is, in fact, an enemy you can fight (twice, as it resurrects itself, possibly due to a bug). Sadly, there isn't a story attached to the train, it just sorta rushes at you as you travel through a tunnel, but still, respect the reference.
You can't suplex it, but you can shoot it dead with your revolver.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
And indeed, this would be another of the points where it comes through that FFVI really is built to take full advantage of its 2D nature to the point the game is incredibly hard to translate to another format. I would have said that this particular fight was just straight up impossible, but after hearing this:
I would ask how this was done, and how close it was to what FFVI offered here.
Also, I wanted to make a note on your comment about the tonal dissonance, because at some point in the past I mentioned that FFVI is harmed by the fact that it's relentless in its pacing - it never stops and keeps throwing new, crazy things at you at a breakneck speed, and while that does makes it very interesting and highly creative, it's also one of the game's big weaknesses, in my opinion. I'd be curious to hear if, once you're through it all, you will feel the same way, or not.
cB557
voOOP
Q: how do you kill an enemy main battle tank?
A: kill it with your main battle tank.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Having looked at it again, it's more clearly practical than I remember. You can watch it here - it contains no real story spoilers if you care about that:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy_vbk7c05I
Essentially, they split the train in two. The protagonists are riding on a freight car at the rear end of the front train, which is a flat platform such as might be used to pile cargo; the Phantom Train attacks by chasing the front train from behind. Its physical attacks are represented by it slamming into the freight car, which causes it to shake and inflicts damage on the player, and it alternatively summons ghosts to deny certain areas of the platform, fire its front light as an energy beam, uses weather effects as attacks, and so on. At one point, it switches tracks and pulls alongside the protagonists' train to disgorge a horde of zombies from its passenger cars, at which point you must climb on top of the car, reach the smokestack, and smash it with attacks. The car reacts to this by knocking the characters back onto the freight car, whereupon the ghosts teleport each party member in an individual car where they are locked in with a ghost and must kill it in 1v1 before a Doom effect kills them. Afterwards they are teleported back onto the platform, whereupon the train resumes its first phase of attacks at a faster pace until slain.
So it's a fairly faithful recreation within the context of an MMO, although you cannot, sadly, suplex the train. Like most of FFXIV, it avoids 'actionizing' the gameplay by not having collision between character models, so rather than a physical, tangible object that you hit with physical attacks that have momentum and inertia, the PCs and the boss exchange attacks from two sides of an invisible boundary and are not really 'tangible' to each other, which is honestly relatively close to the feel of turn-by-turn row-based RPGs in its own way, though personally I'm not a fan.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mma9d7MY2cU
Instead of running on the ground, you're on a seperate train being pursued by the Phantom Train. As you fight the train, it summons ghosts that either occupy a section of your platform or chase you around, and getting caught by a ghost teleports you to a private room in the Phantom Train where you have to duel it one on one to return to the fight. The Phantom Train attacks you with Saint Beam, a Holy spell that's supereffective against undead that can be learned by Blue Mage, but you can turn this against it by having it hit the ghosts instead, banishing them.
After a bit of this the train pulls up aside your platform, and you can jump up onto it and run along the roof to attack the chimney. After destroying it, you're sent flying back to the platform as the Phantom Train begins to leak a massive amount of toxic smoke that covers the entire battlefield - now you need to deliberately get caught by a ghost so you can escape to the safety of the private room while the smoke disappates.
Then you return to the fight as it was in phase 1 and finish off the Train.
Fuck, beaten.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Woolsey translation: "Evil Toot".
An effort was made, I suppose.
It was a little weird and out of place in FFXIV when the ghosts of Elayne and Owain (ie Mina and Shun) appeared at the end of the FFXIV Phantom Train fight to thank us for saving Doma, and I was thinking they're thanking us for entirely the wrong version of Doma. I get that it's supposed to be a call-back to this scene in FFVI, but honestly I think it doesn't fit in the context of FFXIV.
One ghost merchant per "normal" (ie not restaurant, puzzle, or first-class) train car, as well as one recruitable ghost per normal train car. But as you say, they all share the same ghost sprite.
I can't recall how many "normal" train cars there are, so there might actually only be two.
If you're asking how closely the FFXIV version matches the FFVI version in terms of mechanics, I'd say not close at all, because the FFXIV Phantom Train battle is designed as a MMORPG raid boss fight, which means it's constrained to certain design considerations.
I'm not sure how to summarize it, since it is a raid boss battle, and so has lots of mechanics. The gist is the party is fighting on an open train platform pulled by an unknown generic train, while the Phantom Train locomotive is rushing up from "behind" (but actually in front of you, from the player perspective) and you fight it there. The mechanics usually involve ghost-type visuals.
The video showcasing the music is probably a good example of the "Normal" (ie story) version of the fight, which is relatively simple. Phase transition at about 3:45, if it helps.
And then there's the "Savage" version, which is in-universe a reimagining and so not canon, but in development the fight that the devs designed first, before simplifying it for Normal. It's meant to challenge players, so it has many more mechanics. The guide video for the Savage version is like ten minutes long, even reduced to just the mechanics highlights.
(Beaten to the post. I was thinking of posting the FFXIV version of the Phantom Train theme, but I can't seem to find just the theme itself on Youtube, and, uh, the entire thing is just twenty seconds long. It literally is just the intro to the theme, before going straight into the boss battle music.)
Last edited:
- Location
- Lost in Hell
"You can't trap me in the underworld if I don't even know where it is!"
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"THE JOKE'S ON YOU, I'M NOT WEARING UNDERWEAR" - Sabin probably
Sabin would just punch his way out of the underworld anyways. Plus, he's got type advantage against undead and demons - Aura Cannon is holy damage!
Man, you were pretty lucky. When I played it, he ditched me before I got to the phantom forest. I wonder if they lowered the chances of him leaving for the pixel remaster?
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
It's hard to say, as with all RNG-based mechanics. I think out of all the times I've played FFVI, across all the ports and remasters, I've only had Shadow leave me before Baren Falls maybe twice. So given the 1/16 chance, I think having Shadow leave early is considered unlucky, rather than Shadow staying the entire time being considered lucky.
Also as a point of trivia for this playthrough, if you don't have Shadow during the Phantom Train sequence, you can recruit two ghost friends to fill out your party.
Really just depends on how many fights you get into and how lucky you get. Wiki lists a 1/16 chance of him leaving per fight, but if you're just running straight through the gaps where Shadow can leave between the camp and train, then train and waterfall are maybe 3 or 4 encounters each.
I'm pretty much in the same boat as Adloquium, I've played through this section of the game four or five times total, and I can't recall Shadow trying to leave more than once or twice.
I'm pretty much in the same boat as Adloquium, I've played through this section of the game four or five times total, and I can't recall Shadow trying to leave more than once or twice.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I got to thinking about how the Phantom Train segment works as a good counterexample to Chekhov's Gun. While it's not completely irrelevant to the overall game (tying in with Cyan's character for instance), for the most part it has little to do with the rest of the plot... and yet it's still one of FFVI's most beloved sequences.
(Inline spoilers just to be safe)
To bring up a completely different series, it reminds me of how Animorphs was intentionally formatted as a long series of shorter books, rather than a shorter series of longer books that stuck closer to the main plot, because the first format made it easier for them to make more experimental digressions that would be harder to incorporate if every book was strictly dedicated to the main plot
(Inline spoilers just to be safe)
To bring up a completely different series, it reminds me of how Animorphs was intentionally formatted as a long series of shorter books, rather than a shorter series of longer books that stuck closer to the main plot, because the first format made it easier for them to make more experimental digressions that would be harder to incorporate if every book was strictly dedicated to the main plot
Last edited:
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
That whole phantom train sequence was great, though I was expecting the helpful ghost to turn out to be one of Cyan's family or friends.
I remember that in a fan novelization of FF6, the ghost was a soldier from Doma.