Damn you and your inconsistent post schedule Omi, right after I went to bed so I miss all the initial conversation, huh? Ah well, let's get to it.
Of course, a lot of that is the fact that Edgar is the third party member joining 20 whole minutes into the game, instead of the second to last joining a good two thirds of the way through, but still.
And also for shame to everybody in the thread getting so caught up in mechanics discussion that they don't even talk about one of the best tunes on the soundtrack, Slam Shuffle.
Yeah I'm linking both the original and the PR version fite me
Neat to find out it's originally French, though.
In general though yeaaaah why would you ever want levels as "pew pew blasterman" when Lightsabers and Force Lightning are right there
Honestly most overhaul romhacks do that in my experience, they always go "since you've played the original game obviously you want something so ridiculously overtuned that it's unplayable without a guide or dozens of hours of trial and error" and it's just... really annoying, as an often more casual player.
But it's not necesssary, in any way shape or form, FFVI isn't a particularly difficult game, doubly so because... everyone can learn all the magic they need, regardless of "class". If you want the best healing or support spells spread around, you just slap a magicite on whoever and congrats now your entire party knows Hasteaga, Curaga, and Esuna. Compared to FFV, ABP is a joke to collect since the most you need to master any spell is 100 and formations tend to be more generous than FFV earlygame is.
As for actual stat boosts... it's been somewhat mentioned, but in general the only stats to really worry about are Strength and Magic since they directly fuel your damage. HP/MP boosts are only small percentiles, Stamina isn't quite a useless stat but it's mostly about avoiding Death effects, and even has a negative in that both Regen and Sap/Poison numbers are tied to it, so a high stamina actually results in taking more poison damage, and Speed tops out in usefulness because of the ATB system (though still might be worth giving a few points of it to Cyan at some point).
As for which character wants which stat, well:
-Terra and Celes both lean Magic over Strength, though with their good equipment sets they also make decent hybrids if you want to go a physical power route
-Edgar, Locke and Cyan are pretty much pure Strength, unless you're going for... one super specific niche build with Cyan, which I wouldn't recommend worrying about on a first playthrough.
-Shadow... can actually go both ways? He has good stats all around in the first place, and scrolls scale off of Magic while Throwing things scales off of Strength.
-Gau wants Strength and Magic because of how Rages work, so it's a decent idea to balance both in his levelups if you plan to use him.
-Sabin... wants Magic. Yes, I know how that sounds, but his Blitzes? All except Raging Fist and Meteor Strike scale off of Sabin's Magic stat, for some inexplicable reason with this physical powerhouse bear of a man.
But of course to repeat myself - Minmaxing these on every levelup might be optimal, but if it isn't fun, don't worry overlymuch about it. FFVI isn't a super difficult game that requires optimization.
And now, rewinding a bit:
Terra is 18, which is maybe a few years younger than I expected, but Locke is 25 which is a few years older than I expected. Oh, and Celes is also 18, which makes Locke's white knighting for them both feel slightly more sus, not gonna lie.
Of course speaking of "kinda sus" we've also got Edgar and Sabin who originally made me look up the ages, and the twins? Are both 27. Edgar please stop flirting with teenager girls, thanks.
Shadow's age is listed as "??", which is... about what I'd expect, honestly. Luckily, he still has one piece of important information where I looked everything up: He likes Boiled Eggs. Truly, riveting deep lore.
Cyan is even older than expected, and is listed as being 50. Gau, on the other hand, our precious wild child boi is only 13. Quite the contrast there, and if FFVI were more detailed about it, I almost expect we'd get a "Cyan all but adopts Gau to replace his dead son" arc.
Of course, you can also skip the inn and move the passage of time forward by just talking to a shopkeeper, so the other possible image of this is Cyan, Sabin and Gau just hanging out in whatever shops, watching out the windows for a return letter so they can continue their little sidequest. Doubly so if you choose the relic shop, which has a free bed in the back you can rest out to skip on inn costs
But of course, it's the classic RPG character backstory, gotta kill off them parents so they don't get in the way of your big grand adventures/give you motivations in the first place!
I'll come back to this, but the mention at the end of the scene here of "ten years have passed" was what finally got me to look up some character ages for FFVI.
Oh hey look, more characterization for Edgar to make him a better character than Edge, despite being somewhat similar characters at base.
Of course, a lot of that is the fact that Edgar is the third party member joining 20 whole minutes into the game, instead of the second to last joining a good two thirds of the way through, but still.
Personally? I'm a big fan of things like missable character interactions and whatnot in games if just because it makes me feel like the devs have confidence in their game. Rather than say, locking you in a room going "YOU MUST EXPERIENCE OUR CONTENT", they're perfectly willing to put hours into something that not everyone might see. The peak of this in recent times being, of course, Fromsoft throwing entire side areas and superbosses in random hidden locations (seriously, how the hell did anyone find The Great Hollow in DS1?)
Not gonna lie, you running into the two Rachel cutscenes "out of order" had me laughing my ass off, because... well YEAH this just seems even more creepy than it already is if you don't have the context of "amnesia childhood sweetheart" and all that!
Hey, man's got a dream and he's gonna chase it to the ends of the earth, mad respect for it.
I mean, presumably the same way you might call something "westernmost" in our world? Like sure, Asia is west of Alaska, but Alaska is farther west on actual world maps rather than globes, I don't think we've gotten a globe form of a world map yet. Actually, can't recall if we ever do or don't in Final Fantasy, entirely possible I'm thinking of other JRPGs.
Zozo? Never heard of it!
And also for shame to everybody in the thread getting so caught up in mechanics discussion that they don't even talk about one of the best tunes on the soundtrack, Slam Shuffle.
Yeah I'm linking both the original and the PR version fite me
Considering what the town turned out to be like... is it really that ridiculous of a name in the end?
Neat to find out it's originally French, though.
I'm not sure if you just kinda missed the gimmick of the town, but iirc it's said by someone over in Jidor that it's "a town of thieves and liars". Specifically? Every single person in Zozo speaks only lies, so this guy's just keeping in theme of "Oh I'm so weak I'd never want to fight with you" means "I'm going to kick your ass so hard you'll wish you never climbed this tower".
Eagerly awaiting the day New Frame Plus awakens once more to give us FFV and especially FFVI sprite breakdowns. FFVI is especially relevant because finally graduating from the overworld chibis to using the battle sprite sizes full time has done a lot to open up how expressive all the character sprites are.
Yeah, this is unfortunately something you'll just have to get used to throughout the game. Sometimes there will still be character specific dialogue (for example, Gau was my party lead in this scene which... unintentionally made things a bit sillier because Ramuh would talk a bunch of lore and he would respond in broken english), but I guess things weren't yet so far with FFVI to have everything be labeled and character specific, instead of the generic dialogue you'll get at times.
It's party-lead specific, Gau did it for me. Celes is certainly someone who makes more sense, though.
Well, I think there's some builds that make use of your non-jedi levels? IIRC Scoundrel/Guardian lets you pull shit like "combine sneak attack bonuses with the force leap ability to do obscene amounts of damage starting fights".
In general though yeaaaah why would you ever want levels as "pew pew blasterman" when Lightsabers and Force Lightning are right there
It's definitely one of those things that they could have worked out better. Like, Celes and Terra have magic learnsets all the way to level 99, even if there's no way in hell you're ever getting there without obscene amounts of grinding. Brave New World apparently has some neat corrections for this, though also last I checked BNW also jacks up the difficulty to levels I wasn't interested in at the time.
Honestly most overhaul romhacks do that in my experience, they always go "since you've played the original game obviously you want something so ridiculously overtuned that it's unplayable without a guide or dozens of hours of trial and error" and it's just... really annoying, as an often more casual player.
And before I go in any details on Magicite, I want to reiterate this point right here. Yes, you can totally min-max the game by staying low levels until now. Hell, you can stay low levels even longer until you get Espers with more stat boosts (like Omi doesn't have Strength+1 available at the current point in time, and that's the other main combat stat).
But it's not necesssary, in any way shape or form, FFVI isn't a particularly difficult game, doubly so because... everyone can learn all the magic they need, regardless of "class". If you want the best healing or support spells spread around, you just slap a magicite on whoever and congrats now your entire party knows Hasteaga, Curaga, and Esuna. Compared to FFV, ABP is a joke to collect since the most you need to master any spell is 100 and formations tend to be more generous than FFV earlygame is.
As for actual stat boosts... it's been somewhat mentioned, but in general the only stats to really worry about are Strength and Magic since they directly fuel your damage. HP/MP boosts are only small percentiles, Stamina isn't quite a useless stat but it's mostly about avoiding Death effects, and even has a negative in that both Regen and Sap/Poison numbers are tied to it, so a high stamina actually results in taking more poison damage, and Speed tops out in usefulness because of the ATB system (though still might be worth giving a few points of it to Cyan at some point).
As for which character wants which stat, well:
-Terra and Celes both lean Magic over Strength, though with their good equipment sets they also make decent hybrids if you want to go a physical power route
-Edgar, Locke and Cyan are pretty much pure Strength, unless you're going for... one super specific niche build with Cyan, which I wouldn't recommend worrying about on a first playthrough.
-Shadow... can actually go both ways? He has good stats all around in the first place, and scrolls scale off of Magic while Throwing things scales off of Strength.
-Gau wants Strength and Magic because of how Rages work, so it's a decent idea to balance both in his levelups if you plan to use him.
-Sabin... wants Magic. Yes, I know how that sounds, but his Blitzes? All except Raging Fist and Meteor Strike scale off of Sabin's Magic stat, for some inexplicable reason with this physical powerhouse bear of a man.
But of course to repeat myself - Minmaxing these on every levelup might be optimal, but if it isn't fun, don't worry overlymuch about it. FFVI isn't a super difficult game that requires optimization.
And now, rewinding a bit:
I looked into it in FFV and was a bit surprised by the ages of the cast, and oh boy FFVI also surprised me!
Terra is 18, which is maybe a few years younger than I expected, but Locke is 25 which is a few years older than I expected. Oh, and Celes is also 18, which makes Locke's white knighting for them both feel slightly more sus, not gonna lie.
Of course speaking of "kinda sus" we've also got Edgar and Sabin who originally made me look up the ages, and the twins? Are both 27. Edgar please stop flirting with teenager girls, thanks.
Shadow's age is listed as "??", which is... about what I'd expect, honestly. Luckily, he still has one piece of important information where I looked everything up: He likes Boiled Eggs. Truly, riveting deep lore.
Cyan is even older than expected, and is listed as being 50. Gau, on the other hand, our precious wild child boi is only 13. Quite the contrast there, and if FFVI were more detailed about it, I almost expect we'd get a "Cyan all but adopts Gau to replace his dead son" arc.
