It's possible that the Espers would have had the same reaction that Terra did - namely, that death is preferable to living in a world ruled by the clown and if that's the price of killing him then so be it. A noble sacrifice rather than a genocide.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Final Fantasy VI, Part 14: The Floating Continent, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hello again.
Man, last update was kind of a mess, wasn't it? The Empire betrayed us, Kefka showed up with inexplicable magical powers and steamrolled over the entire esper population, there was that other stuff…
Let's see if things turn around today. This is going to be a big one. Shit is about to go down.
Thamasa made it out of the Imperial attack surprisingly okay, with most of the population alive, NPCs still hanging around and the shops still there. There's even a new NPC, an old monster hunter named Gungho who is an old acquaintance of Strago's who mocks him for failing to hunt a monster called 'Hidon'. Also, looking around Strago and Relm's house, we find an interesting item…
I guess that answer the question of why Relm is living with her grandfather, then: her parents are dead. Putting that information on a Relic's item description without actually alluding to it within the game is an interesting trick of gameplay-story integration, it's…
…wait fuck it's that thing everyone is always on about the Dark Souls series doing but ten years ahead of time, I can't believe I've been Soulsborne'd by Final Fantasy.
Although of note, Relm comes already equipped with the Memento Ring, you just find a second one in the house, which feels like people in dev were split between 'she should have the item equipped so all players will know what's up' and 'it should be an easter egg that's hard to find' and ended up accidentally leaving both in the final version.
Once that's dealt with, we head back to the airship, where some dialogue plays out. We learn that the imperials were heading back to the Sealed Gate, where they'd found statues, which…
…did the entire esper population die? Like, we know the young generation came out to help those trapped in Vector, and then some other espers flew out while Kefka was turning the first ones to Magicite, but was that all of them? That's certainly one way to explain the Imperials just waltzing in and grabbing the Warring Triad without resistance, but if so, wow, that's even cheaper than I thought.
Then we move to the Sealed Gate, where Kefka and the Emperor are gloating about their success.
Gestahl boasts that once the Warring Triad is in his hands, all his dreams will be fulfilled, and he heads forward while behind him, Kefka, sinisterly, laughs to himself.
Then the earth starts rumbling.
An entire chunk of the southern continent - the entire triangular island east of the Observation Outpost - lifts itself into the sky and starts floating over the land. At its peak, Gestahl and Kefka find this:
That landmass doesn't look very… healthy.
I'm not sure what happened here, like, physically. The esper world was another dimension, right? But it's the physical island which lifted itself into the sky. And now the Triad's statues are at its peak, out in the open, and the whole place has a… disgustingly organic look to it, which I love. Well, best not think about it too hard.
Strago explains that the Triads are neutralizing each other owing to their triangular position - the beams of light you can see about is each statue simultaneously blocking the other two. If their alignment were to be broken, however, the resulting power imbalance would 'destroy the world as we know it.' Damn. Stakes are higher than anyone aboard the ship had realized.
Then, the game hands us back control of the airship, and gives us a choice: fly around normally or head to the Floating Continent. This has a very 'point of no return' feel to it, so I decide to first do a quick check of various places to make sure I haven't missed anything. For instance, there's this weird triangle-shaped island in a corner of the map…
…where one of the random encounters is an initially invisible and sleeping monster called 'Intangir' who, upon being attacked, wakes up and wipes the party with Meteor, then goes back to sleep. After a couple of attempts trying to work out a strategy to beat it, I give up - it doesn't seem to have any reward for the effort, it's mostly just a joke death trap.
Other places we can visit include Doma Castle, which is now free of imperial troops but is also eerily empty:
Nothing there, no monster or threat, just a vast, dead castle and some items in it. What a sad place.
At least South Figaro is fine, which…
I mean the weirdest part of all this is that the Empire honored its promises. It did, in fact, pull out of Figaro, Doma, and the Observation Outpost! I guess it's a temporary move, with the Empire pulling out its forces to better lure us into a sense of false safety before conquering the world again once it has its hands on the Triad, but it's still odd that the Emperor rates you on your performance at dinner and grants actual boons depending on how well you do while he's planning to shank us the whole time.
And now… It's time to head for the floating continent.
Oddly, at this stage the game asks me to make a party of three specifically. Then we have to punch our way through the entire Imperial air force as the sky fills up with flying machines.
The way this is modeled is a little weird - basically the game just seems to be using normal random encounter mechanics, but on the airship. So the imperial armors don't come at us, we just walk around until we trigger a fight, then another. I dig the design, also - they're a great application of the Empire's Magitek aesthetic, with little helicopter pods piloted by singular soldiers. They're not much trouble though - any Thundara cast is enough to one-shot them, though the fact that all fights start with us surrounded does make it impossible to wipe the full screen with an omnicast.
This is, I think, the first point where the 'split party' approach really starts breaking down for the game. Previously there was always some justification, the people we left behind were always doing something important like keeping watch on Terra or making sure the Empire wasn't up to tricks (much as they butterfly failed at that and it was all pointless). Here though, there's no reason. We even have to fight at lower than full strength with a party of 3 while everyone else… pilots the ship, I guess? You don't need half a dozen people for that. It's a very gamey constraints and so far the game was mostly good at avoiding that.
Anyway, while we're busy taking on the entire Imperial air force on our lonesome, something is approaching the ship - some kind of monster floating down the length of the hull until it raises to hover at the back. What could it possibly be?
ULTROS, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE
No, seriously! What is he even getting out of this at this point?! What's his goal? Revenge? He just keeps being owned and coming back for more! He went and found a whole-ass flying monster to reach our ship, in the sky, in the middle of a swarm of Imperial forces, just so we could kick his ass again.
What a guy. Such commitment.
And he fucking knows it! Look at how he introduces himself! "No, really!" That is literally what I thought when that happened.
Anyway, Ultros eats two Thundaras to the face and instantly eats shit, which is when he decides to bring in his new friend: Typhon.
"He's not so great with words," Ultros says, "but his strength'll blow you away!"
Puns. What a monster.
Anyway, this doesn't really matter, because at this point Trance Terra is a weapon of mass destruction hitting for several thousands of damage when she can hit an elemental weakness:
Unfortunately, Ultros has a trick up its sleeve - specifically, before it dies, it snorts, and the power of his snorting is strong enough to blasts us clear off the airship's deck.
And, while we're falling… Well, remember that ridiculous (but kinda cool) 'fighting in the middle of falling down a waterfall bit from way earlier in the game?
Yeah.
God I love that design. Look at these goofy cartoon faces! These angry missile pods and that grinning shark-like face, it's a great monster.
It's also about to kick my ass.
Here's my assumption going into this fight: it's a multipart boss, but also it's a machine, so it's weak to Thunder. I should focus on destroying the core component, the two weapon adds will simply die once it's dead.
Unfortunately, the weapon adds are also where Air Force is keeping most of its firepower, and they aren't fucking around.
Atomic Ray comes from the Laser Gun and inflicts hundreds of damage to each party member, Missile Bay has Launcher, which hits a character for whatever is needed to put them in critical status. Between the two of them they deal some serious damage that Edgar struggles to heal with Cura; and, perhaps more importantly…
…when Air Force goes down, the Laser Gun and the Missile Bay are still operative, and because I wasn't expecting that at all, it takes me by surprise with one KO'd party member and quickly leads to a wipe.
So, not ideal. But that was mostly because of poor strategizing on my part. All we have to do is reload our last save, go through the cutscenes again, fight all the stuff again, fight Ultros and Typhon again… It's a pain. But at least this time, knowing the Air Force fight is coming, I can keep Terra's Trance in reserve.
Yeah, 6k damage apiece will do it.
Destroying both of the cannons causes Air Force to go into its enrage and loudly announce that it is charging up the Wave Cannon to blast my whole party with massive damage which, sure, buddy. Sure you will.
That wasn't hard.
…
It was actually harder than I realized it was. When both cannons are destroyed, the Air Force deploys a tiny ball called a 'bit.' That bit acts like Runic, absorbing all magic. So Terra's supercharged Thundara should have been completely negated… Except because Sabin's Aura Cannon has randomized targeting, he happened to blow up the Bit, and Terra and Celes's magic could blast the hapless Air Force unrestricted. I never even knew about the Bit's effect or, indeed, that it even existed at all.
Plowing through bosses so hard I don't even realize that they have mechanics: a Final Fantasy story.
And once the Air Force is down, we land on the Floating Continent.
…Shadow?
Shadow, what the fuck are you doing here? What circumstances could have possibly unfolded that saw you knocked unconscious on the Floating Continent? I guess Imperial troops backstabbed him while he was searching for the espers on his own and he stayed there in the mountains, and when those mountains took off he was taken with them? That or he did reach the Sealed Gate and Kefka and Gestahl disposed of him once they found him there - none of it is super clear. At least everyone is happily surprised he's alive, and he's first question (d'aw) is to ask if Interceptor's alright. He asks that we leave him alone there and the group is like 'lmao get over yourself' and grab him as our fourth party member to explore… whatever the fuck this is.
Because this place, man. I don't know what the hell it is, but it is some grunge shit. It looks organic in a straight up H.R. Giger way, and you haven't seen the least of it. It's not just the bulbous growths out of the ground, the weird ridged sides floating over the void - in order to advance, we need to press switches that cause flesh mounds to pull out of the way, or other switches which cause sphincters to open up, swallow us, and drop us somewhere else:
And check out those battle screens-
…oh yeah btw we're fighting Behemoths as random encounters.
I think the game might be trying to trick me into thinking this is the final dungeon? Like, it has some very strong final dungeon vibes, with a Gigerian nightmare aesthetic, behemoths are showing up in fucking pairs, the difficulty is juiced up, we are trying to prevent the Emperor from blowing up the world… I don't think anyone would be fooled; we're still early enough in the game that we don't have access to high-tier spells and it is very early in terms of game length. But it's at least invoking the vibes of a final dungeon run, to great effect.
Also the effect provided by the secondary background of the Flying Continent floating over the world is just fantastic - in one spot we can even actually see the airship hovering just below. We collect the Murasame for Cyan and a Beret which can make Relm's Sketch command more successful, all while battling hordes of genuinely tough monsters.
Behemoth is the worst of them, because it's a wall of HP with no elemental weakness that responds to any offensive move with a Beatdown counter, but these chucklefucks above aren't easy either - the Brainpans can Confuse party members, the Apocrypha is a blue mage with a bunch of level spells including lv 4 Flare and lv 5 Death… All in all the Floating Continent is a punishing slog to get through as would befit, again, a final dungeon.
And standing in our way to the peak is a monster.
"I am power both ancient and unrivaled… I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form…"
…okay, I genuinely wasn't expecting that. I was fully expecting the Ultima Weapon to be this game's superboss, or at the very least a late part of the plot, not just… Blocking our path to the actual end of this dungeon. The timeline is also a bit wonky here - the Ultima Weapon was created during the War of the Magi, but here it is found defending the path to the Warring Triad, so is the implication that the War of the Magi was the Warring Triad's war? That doesn't fit, because the War of the Magi was about humans abusing espers, not gods. Also how come Gestahl and Kefka got past it? Well, no matter.
Sick design, also.
Ultima introduces itself boasting of its power, and then it's on. It's a brutal opponent, capable of casting both Flare and Meteor to deal tremendous damage to either individual party members or the whole group, and these aren't even its most powerful moves. The Ultima Weapon works in phases, gated by its HP, with a different routine at each HP threshold, buffing itself midway through and using Tornado and Graviga to set the whole party to low HP and wipe them out with a Blaze.
Unfortunately, phase-based bosses are vulnerable to simply being overwhelmed with SHEER MAGICAL POWER and broken before they have time to actually deploy their advanced mechanics.
It's really simple. Sabin recently unlocked Chakra, a powerful healing move which heals everyone other than him by a not insignificant amount. He alternates between Aura Cannon and Chakra while Celes alternates between Fira and Cura (as the character with the lower Magic score, she's the one better suited to healing for which Magic matters less because HP healed above max are effectively wasted, freeing Terra up for offensive spells), ensuring flexible healing and damage as needed; Shadow is the Item Boy when he's not throwing Shurikens, and Terra and Sabin deal the bulk of the damage. Mostly Terra. Girl's a powerhouse. With that set up, we burst through Phase 1 fast enough that we skip Phase 2 entirely and reach Phase 3, where Ultima uses Graviga to set us up for a wipe with low HP and dies before delivering.
The ultimate weapon of the ancients, undefeated in a thousand years, is but dust at our feet. And this isn't even the endgame.
Now, it's time to deal with the real enemy.
Cut for image count.
Man, last update was kind of a mess, wasn't it? The Empire betrayed us, Kefka showed up with inexplicable magical powers and steamrolled over the entire esper population, there was that other stuff…
Let's see if things turn around today. This is going to be a big one. Shit is about to go down.
Thamasa made it out of the Imperial attack surprisingly okay, with most of the population alive, NPCs still hanging around and the shops still there. There's even a new NPC, an old monster hunter named Gungho who is an old acquaintance of Strago's who mocks him for failing to hunt a monster called 'Hidon'. Also, looking around Strago and Relm's house, we find an interesting item…
I guess that answer the question of why Relm is living with her grandfather, then: her parents are dead. Putting that information on a Relic's item description without actually alluding to it within the game is an interesting trick of gameplay-story integration, it's…
…wait fuck it's that thing everyone is always on about the Dark Souls series doing but ten years ahead of time, I can't believe I've been Soulsborne'd by Final Fantasy.
Although of note, Relm comes already equipped with the Memento Ring, you just find a second one in the house, which feels like people in dev were split between 'she should have the item equipped so all players will know what's up' and 'it should be an easter egg that's hard to find' and ended up accidentally leaving both in the final version.
Once that's dealt with, we head back to the airship, where some dialogue plays out. We learn that the imperials were heading back to the Sealed Gate, where they'd found statues, which…
…did the entire esper population die? Like, we know the young generation came out to help those trapped in Vector, and then some other espers flew out while Kefka was turning the first ones to Magicite, but was that all of them? That's certainly one way to explain the Imperials just waltzing in and grabbing the Warring Triad without resistance, but if so, wow, that's even cheaper than I thought.
Then we move to the Sealed Gate, where Kefka and the Emperor are gloating about their success.
Gestahl boasts that once the Warring Triad is in his hands, all his dreams will be fulfilled, and he heads forward while behind him, Kefka, sinisterly, laughs to himself.
Then the earth starts rumbling.
An entire chunk of the southern continent - the entire triangular island east of the Observation Outpost - lifts itself into the sky and starts floating over the land. At its peak, Gestahl and Kefka find this:
That landmass doesn't look very… healthy.
I'm not sure what happened here, like, physically. The esper world was another dimension, right? But it's the physical island which lifted itself into the sky. And now the Triad's statues are at its peak, out in the open, and the whole place has a… disgustingly organic look to it, which I love. Well, best not think about it too hard.
Strago explains that the Triads are neutralizing each other owing to their triangular position - the beams of light you can see about is each statue simultaneously blocking the other two. If their alignment were to be broken, however, the resulting power imbalance would 'destroy the world as we know it.' Damn. Stakes are higher than anyone aboard the ship had realized.
Then, the game hands us back control of the airship, and gives us a choice: fly around normally or head to the Floating Continent. This has a very 'point of no return' feel to it, so I decide to first do a quick check of various places to make sure I haven't missed anything. For instance, there's this weird triangle-shaped island in a corner of the map…
…where one of the random encounters is an initially invisible and sleeping monster called 'Intangir' who, upon being attacked, wakes up and wipes the party with Meteor, then goes back to sleep. After a couple of attempts trying to work out a strategy to beat it, I give up - it doesn't seem to have any reward for the effort, it's mostly just a joke death trap.
Other places we can visit include Doma Castle, which is now free of imperial troops but is also eerily empty:
Nothing there, no monster or threat, just a vast, dead castle and some items in it. What a sad place.
At least South Figaro is fine, which…
I mean the weirdest part of all this is that the Empire honored its promises. It did, in fact, pull out of Figaro, Doma, and the Observation Outpost! I guess it's a temporary move, with the Empire pulling out its forces to better lure us into a sense of false safety before conquering the world again once it has its hands on the Triad, but it's still odd that the Emperor rates you on your performance at dinner and grants actual boons depending on how well you do while he's planning to shank us the whole time.
And now… It's time to head for the floating continent.
Oddly, at this stage the game asks me to make a party of three specifically. Then we have to punch our way through the entire Imperial air force as the sky fills up with flying machines.
The way this is modeled is a little weird - basically the game just seems to be using normal random encounter mechanics, but on the airship. So the imperial armors don't come at us, we just walk around until we trigger a fight, then another. I dig the design, also - they're a great application of the Empire's Magitek aesthetic, with little helicopter pods piloted by singular soldiers. They're not much trouble though - any Thundara cast is enough to one-shot them, though the fact that all fights start with us surrounded does make it impossible to wipe the full screen with an omnicast.
This is, I think, the first point where the 'split party' approach really starts breaking down for the game. Previously there was always some justification, the people we left behind were always doing something important like keeping watch on Terra or making sure the Empire wasn't up to tricks (much as they butterfly failed at that and it was all pointless). Here though, there's no reason. We even have to fight at lower than full strength with a party of 3 while everyone else… pilots the ship, I guess? You don't need half a dozen people for that. It's a very gamey constraints and so far the game was mostly good at avoiding that.
Anyway, while we're busy taking on the entire Imperial air force on our lonesome, something is approaching the ship - some kind of monster floating down the length of the hull until it raises to hover at the back. What could it possibly be?
ULTROS, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING HERE
No, seriously! What is he even getting out of this at this point?! What's his goal? Revenge? He just keeps being owned and coming back for more! He went and found a whole-ass flying monster to reach our ship, in the sky, in the middle of a swarm of Imperial forces, just so we could kick his ass again.
What a guy. Such commitment.
And he fucking knows it! Look at how he introduces himself! "No, really!" That is literally what I thought when that happened.
Anyway, Ultros eats two Thundaras to the face and instantly eats shit, which is when he decides to bring in his new friend: Typhon.
"He's not so great with words," Ultros says, "but his strength'll blow you away!"
Puns. What a monster.
Anyway, this doesn't really matter, because at this point Trance Terra is a weapon of mass destruction hitting for several thousands of damage when she can hit an elemental weakness:
Unfortunately, Ultros has a trick up its sleeve - specifically, before it dies, it snorts, and the power of his snorting is strong enough to blasts us clear off the airship's deck.
And, while we're falling… Well, remember that ridiculous (but kinda cool) 'fighting in the middle of falling down a waterfall bit from way earlier in the game?
Yeah.
God I love that design. Look at these goofy cartoon faces! These angry missile pods and that grinning shark-like face, it's a great monster.
It's also about to kick my ass.
Here's my assumption going into this fight: it's a multipart boss, but also it's a machine, so it's weak to Thunder. I should focus on destroying the core component, the two weapon adds will simply die once it's dead.
Unfortunately, the weapon adds are also where Air Force is keeping most of its firepower, and they aren't fucking around.
Atomic Ray comes from the Laser Gun and inflicts hundreds of damage to each party member, Missile Bay has Launcher, which hits a character for whatever is needed to put them in critical status. Between the two of them they deal some serious damage that Edgar struggles to heal with Cura; and, perhaps more importantly…
…when Air Force goes down, the Laser Gun and the Missile Bay are still operative, and because I wasn't expecting that at all, it takes me by surprise with one KO'd party member and quickly leads to a wipe.
So, not ideal. But that was mostly because of poor strategizing on my part. All we have to do is reload our last save, go through the cutscenes again, fight all the stuff again, fight Ultros and Typhon again… It's a pain. But at least this time, knowing the Air Force fight is coming, I can keep Terra's Trance in reserve.
Yeah, 6k damage apiece will do it.
Destroying both of the cannons causes Air Force to go into its enrage and loudly announce that it is charging up the Wave Cannon to blast my whole party with massive damage which, sure, buddy. Sure you will.
That wasn't hard.
…
It was actually harder than I realized it was. When both cannons are destroyed, the Air Force deploys a tiny ball called a 'bit.' That bit acts like Runic, absorbing all magic. So Terra's supercharged Thundara should have been completely negated… Except because Sabin's Aura Cannon has randomized targeting, he happened to blow up the Bit, and Terra and Celes's magic could blast the hapless Air Force unrestricted. I never even knew about the Bit's effect or, indeed, that it even existed at all.
Plowing through bosses so hard I don't even realize that they have mechanics: a Final Fantasy story.
And once the Air Force is down, we land on the Floating Continent.
…Shadow?
Shadow, what the fuck are you doing here? What circumstances could have possibly unfolded that saw you knocked unconscious on the Floating Continent? I guess Imperial troops backstabbed him while he was searching for the espers on his own and he stayed there in the mountains, and when those mountains took off he was taken with them? That or he did reach the Sealed Gate and Kefka and Gestahl disposed of him once they found him there - none of it is super clear. At least everyone is happily surprised he's alive, and he's first question (d'aw) is to ask if Interceptor's alright. He asks that we leave him alone there and the group is like 'lmao get over yourself' and grab him as our fourth party member to explore… whatever the fuck this is.
Because this place, man. I don't know what the hell it is, but it is some grunge shit. It looks organic in a straight up H.R. Giger way, and you haven't seen the least of it. It's not just the bulbous growths out of the ground, the weird ridged sides floating over the void - in order to advance, we need to press switches that cause flesh mounds to pull out of the way, or other switches which cause sphincters to open up, swallow us, and drop us somewhere else:
And check out those battle screens-
…oh yeah btw we're fighting Behemoths as random encounters.
I think the game might be trying to trick me into thinking this is the final dungeon? Like, it has some very strong final dungeon vibes, with a Gigerian nightmare aesthetic, behemoths are showing up in fucking pairs, the difficulty is juiced up, we are trying to prevent the Emperor from blowing up the world… I don't think anyone would be fooled; we're still early enough in the game that we don't have access to high-tier spells and it is very early in terms of game length. But it's at least invoking the vibes of a final dungeon run, to great effect.
Also the effect provided by the secondary background of the Flying Continent floating over the world is just fantastic - in one spot we can even actually see the airship hovering just below. We collect the Murasame for Cyan and a Beret which can make Relm's Sketch command more successful, all while battling hordes of genuinely tough monsters.
And standing in our way to the peak is a monster.
"I am power both ancient and unrivaled… I do not bleed, for I am but strength given form…"
…okay, I genuinely wasn't expecting that. I was fully expecting the Ultima Weapon to be this game's superboss, or at the very least a late part of the plot, not just… Blocking our path to the actual end of this dungeon. The timeline is also a bit wonky here - the Ultima Weapon was created during the War of the Magi, but here it is found defending the path to the Warring Triad, so is the implication that the War of the Magi was the Warring Triad's war? That doesn't fit, because the War of the Magi was about humans abusing espers, not gods. Also how come Gestahl and Kefka got past it? Well, no matter.
Sick design, also.
Ultima introduces itself boasting of its power, and then it's on. It's a brutal opponent, capable of casting both Flare and Meteor to deal tremendous damage to either individual party members or the whole group, and these aren't even its most powerful moves. The Ultima Weapon works in phases, gated by its HP, with a different routine at each HP threshold, buffing itself midway through and using Tornado and Graviga to set the whole party to low HP and wipe them out with a Blaze.
Unfortunately, phase-based bosses are vulnerable to simply being overwhelmed with SHEER MAGICAL POWER and broken before they have time to actually deploy their advanced mechanics.
It's really simple. Sabin recently unlocked Chakra, a powerful healing move which heals everyone other than him by a not insignificant amount. He alternates between Aura Cannon and Chakra while Celes alternates between Fira and Cura (as the character with the lower Magic score, she's the one better suited to healing for which Magic matters less because HP healed above max are effectively wasted, freeing Terra up for offensive spells), ensuring flexible healing and damage as needed; Shadow is the Item Boy when he's not throwing Shurikens, and Terra and Sabin deal the bulk of the damage. Mostly Terra. Girl's a powerhouse. With that set up, we burst through Phase 1 fast enough that we skip Phase 2 entirely and reach Phase 3, where Ultima uses Graviga to set us up for a wipe with low HP and dies before delivering.
The ultimate weapon of the ancients, undefeated in a thousand years, is but dust at our feet. And this isn't even the endgame.
Now, it's time to deal with the real enemy.
Cut for image count.
Last edited:
Final Fantasy VI, Part 14: The Floating Continent, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait, what?
Shadow what the fuck -
And then he runs away! He went through the whole Floating Continent and then he ditches us right before the confrontation with Kefka and the Emperor. What the fuck???
This… Isn't going to end up mattering, but after checking something, I think the reason this happens is that, up ahead, the game needs Celes for a cutscene, but it didn't force us to have Celes as a party member. So if we don't have Celes in the group, she needs to join (with everyone being duly confused where just popped out of), and that means we need to be three, which means Shadow has to leave.
Which is… weird.
There's another possible direction to this, though; if the game is ever going to do something with Shadow's identity (which it might not; it's completely possible he stays forever just a masked dude with no name), then maybe he doesn't want to confront Kefka and the Emperor because they know something about him that he doesn't want revealed to the group. We'll see.
Anyway, it's time.
Gestahl: "Ha-ha… So you came to die together, then.. Well, you're just in time! Behold, the Warring Triad!"
Then the Triad's power starts to somehow pour into Gestahl, the three beams of light shifting in alignment and converting upon him; he gloats about the power filling him with goosebumps and Celes steps forward to beg him to stop this madness, and his answer is to blast all non-Celes party members into incapacitation to address her alone.
Which I guess ties into a question I've had for a bit now - how is Gestahl planning to use the Warring Triad's power for his own benefit?
It's fine if he doesn't have an answer, narratively. He is a cackling power-hungry asshole with a terminal case of hubris. I'm asking because, like, are they planning to also turn the literal gods of magic into magicite somehow? Or is there plan to break the alignment and then somehow profit instead of it blowing up the world? It looks like Gestahl is just planning to use it as a free energy source, simply draining their magic for his own hand, and I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.
Then, Celes declares that he has plans for Celes - specifically, he would like to "give her and Kefka the task of creating progeny to populate my new Magitek empire."
…ew.
The creepy fascist villain is daydreaming about using eugenics to create a new master race and instrumentalizing women's bodies in the process of doing so, there's nothing particularly surprising there, I won't belabor that point. It's unclear whether Kefka's really into it as more than just liking to fuck with people, though; he tells Celes that if she kills her other companions, the Empire will forgive her treachery, and then hands her a sword.
…in other circumstances I would call this a stupid move but like, Celes is already armed to the teeth and packed with magic, handing her another sword doesn't meaningfully impact her chance of turning around and murdering Kefka, it just gives her the opportunity to be dramatic about it. Which she does; the game briefly plays coy, with Celes slowly approaching her paralyzed party members like she's genuinely considering stabbing them…
…then she turns around and stabs Kefka.
Duh.
It actually lands, though; Kefka cries out and rolls over, flopping on the floor in distress while screaming about how he's bleeding - not in any lethal way, just, she did actually cut him.
Which tells us something interesting about Kefka: that he actually expected this to work. He wasn't hiding under an illusion and didn't have a defensive spell prepared, he's genuinely so disconnected from how people work that he thought telling Celes to kill all her friends and they'd welcome her back at their side to conquer the world would work. This actually did take him off-guard.
It's… good, in the context of Kefka's last showing, for the game to show up that he also has blind spots in that his 'literally insane' shtick leaves him unable to understand how people work. And my dude is genuinely mad as hell.
These lines of dialogue are actually flashing nearly too fast to be read, to convey how Kefka is just doing high-speed rambling.
This is where everything takes a turn for the worse. This specific bit right here. Celes turning around and stabbing Kefka while he's having a laugh, and him going into an insane, childish tantrum about it.
Because when he gets up, he turns to the statues and pleads - "Gods, you were born to fight! Now is the time! I implore you… show me your power!"
Then he tries to enter the triangular energy field.
It doesn't work, at first. The screen flashes and he's knocked back. But he just gets back up and rams his own face into the energy field again, demanding that he be let in. That's when Emperor Gestahl finally grasps that things are not going according to plan, and tries to step in.
Yeah. Gestahl, at least, understands that the Warring Triad are dangerous, and is only looking to exploit the power they give off, rather than waking them up. He has a plan here - he's an evil backstabbing asshole, but he is not a maniac. He wants to rule the world, not destroy it.
When he realizes that this Kefka won't listen to reason, he finally does what he should have done years ago (but he couldn't, of course, because Kefka is the true face of the Empire, the naked worship of strength and violence for their own sake), and tries to put the jester down.
I like the paternalistic, falsely comforting vibe Gestahl is giving off here - it fits his character. From his point of view, the loyal general whose mind broke years ago under the strain of Magitek infusion has finally lost what little sanity he had left after years of faithful service - no matter his madness, Kefka was always loyal to him, understanding his true nature and lack of scruples better than Leo or Celes ever did. And now he's gone and fully lost it, and he must be put down like a rabid dog. I suspect it's the closest the Emperor could feel to being sad for someone else's demise.
Unfortunately, the Emperor is reading from the wrong script. Which becomes apparent as soon as Kefka's shocked expression shifts to laughter, even as the Emperor prepares to smite him, saying, "I suppose it's fitting that you would go out laughing," then casting Firaga.
Which doesn't work.
The Emperor plays out his casting animation, and light shines around him, but no spell happens. He tries again to cast Flare, but it doesn't work either. Kefka rolls around the screen, laughing as the Emperor attempts more spells, all of which fizzle out. Then Kefka close in and knocks the Emperor down. (I assume he stabbed him like he did Leo, but since he doesn't play out a weapon sprite it's hard to tell).
I am experiencing another bout of 'where did that come from.' I guess I can kinda see it making sense from the perspective of how the Triad are 'neutralizing each other,' but it feels like an ass pull.
But, well.
This is it.
This is the point on which everything hinges.
Kefka betrays the Emperor. For the first time in a Final Fantasy game, a lesser villain has upstaged the original big picture threat. That's never happened before - true villains revealed themselves as being the real threat behind the bad guy, Chaos behind the Fiends, the Cloud of Darkness behind Xande, Zemus behind Golbez, Exdeath behind most of the events of the game. But here, the Emperor has been upstaged by his own minion.
Kefka demands that the Warring Triad 'show him their power,' and lightning starts blasting the rocks - I don't think this is Kefka controlling the Triad, I think he's just inciting an angry lashing-out reaction in the sleeping gods and they strike indiscriminately. The Emperor is reduced to running around trying to dodge lightning bolts, knocked to the left and right with every blast, until finally lightning strikes him head-on, and he falls.
…
Ever since FFIV and all the way through V and now VI, the games have had a weird story-gameplay integration issue where there is a completely arbitrary line between which opponents you get to actually fight, and which ones get to cast a cutscene spell that incapacitates your entire party because the plot needs us to lose there. Here, Kefka is (somehow) channeling the power of the Warring Triad, but also he is inside an energy field which he just said absorbs all magic used within it, and Celes and the others are all just standing there while Kefka kicks around the Emperor until the all man lays dying.
I keep wavering on this scene. It has some of my favorite bits and it has some bits where I'm left 'is it unfair that I think this is a bullshit move on the game's part?'
In an act of cruelty so petty it's almost funny, Kefka tosses the Emperor over the side of the Floating Continent and into the void - on the part of a franchise that has been drawing heavily on Star Wars for years now, it's a twisted reshoot of Darth Vader throwing the Emperor down the energy well. Here too, the Emperor's highest-ranking minion turned on him because of his own feelings at the moment when the Emperor least expected it, and threw him down from his weapon of mass destruction - only there, it's because the minion is even more evil than the Emperor himself. Kefka was never loyal. The Empire was just the best vehicle for his sadistic violence.
Now he's done with it. Now he has something much, much better.
Kefka starts moving the statues out of alignment.
Celes finally manages to get up and lunge at him, but he casually hurls her off the cliff, Celes only barely managing to hang onto the side to keep from plummeting to her death. She pleads for him to stop, the power of the Triad will run wild, but Kefka just laughs and keeps going.
But then.
An unexpected hero appears.
Shadow comes jumping out from the right screen, grabs Ceres and pulls her up to the temporary safety of the peak, then flanks Kefka and knocks one of the statues over him. Pinned down, the mad jester can't keep up the spell that was paralyzing our other party members, so everyone is free to act…
Unfortunately, it's too late to save the Warring Triad's alignment. Light flashes on the screen and the Floating Continent rumbles, massive power starting to run wild. Shadow, who appears busy keeping the statue in place so Kefka can't escape, tells us to go - he'll make his own way.
At least the man found a way to redeem himself for working with the Empire, if he truly needed it. His sudden vanishing act just before facing Kefka and Gestahl is still weird, but it probably turned out to be the only reason why we even make it through.
The sky beneath the Floating Continent is gone, replaced by total darkness, and a counter plays out - five minutes; that's how long we have to make it out of here alive. The Floating Continent is breaking up, whole chunks lifting or falling; the enemy roster has been replaced by a single enemy type, 'Naude,' a kind of fae- or imp-like entity that tries to slow us with status effect spells - and, at the end of the path, this boss:
It's not clear where all these foes are coming from, although the most likely explanation is that they are in some way related to Kefka, his personal guard sent after us somehow. Nelapa's gimmick is that it casts Doom on each party member, meaning they have a countdown over their heads, after which they instantly die - the goal is simply to pour as much damage as possible into this guy to kill him before the timer runs out and with time on the clock before the island collapses.
Then all that's left to do is jump off the island and onto the airship below, hoping for the best.
Then, things start spreading beyond the Floating Continent.
The earth quakes. Forests come apart. Towns break and fall into the earth. People topple to their deaths in the chasms that open between falling mountains. The destruction is utterly indiscriminate, hitting Imperials, Returners, and civilians alike. But it's not just the earth, the waves of power are rocking the air - and the Blackjack comes apart.
The airship collapses, and every single one of our party members is hurled into the void.
Then shit goes Akira.
Then we get what is probably one of the best, most haunting shots in the series:
A view of the world from space, as continents split and burn.
Then the dramatic, high-stake orchestral music fades to silence, and the screen turns dark.
Then it's just silence, and the sound of the waves washing upon the shore.
The camera pans out again, to a world cast in dusk-like colors, the earth barren and the seas red.
It's… haunting. The way we see no characters, only a desolate world, and hear no sound but the sea, and our first sight of the 'ground level' is airship debris, half-buried on the beach.
If this were just a narrative piece, a story I was writing, I would stop there, to emphasize the cliffhanger and let the reader sit with what just happened and wonder about what could possibly come after that. But interestingly that's something the game can't do. Due to the way cutscenes work in a pre-autosave game era, the story cannot stop during a cliffhanger - it always has to stop afterwards, because you can't save during a cutscene. And it's a video game, it can't cut to credit and ask you to come back next week like an HBO drama.
So the game goes on, with this - a view of a tiny, broken hut on a ruined island, and the people inside.
Celes, and Cid. One of them in the cabin's only bed, the other coming back from some errand outside. After a while, Celes wakes up.
And that's where a classic plot twist which the games had never used before hits us:
The time skip.
Celes has been asleep for a year.
The world we saw in that silent montage isn't the world directly in the aftermath of the Warring Triad's eruption. It's the world a year after, still in ruins.
Celes asks if Cid has been taking care of her this whole time, and he says yes, and he's getting pretty worn down. They both landed together on a tiny, deserted island. Celes asks where the others are, in particular Locke, but as Cid explains, they have no means to know anything about the state of the world - for all he knows, that island is the last piece of land above the water. Ever since that day, the world has been dying - plants wither, animals waste away. Cid and Celes were not the only people on the island - at first. But one by one, everyone who lived there with them lost hope, and threw themselves from the cliffs to the north of the island in despair.
I'm really curious by what immense cosmic coincidence Cid and Celes somehow ended up drifting to the same island, when Cid was in Vector and Celes was falling from an airship into the sea. That doesn't make sense - but we'll return to that next update.
Man.
This is some On the Beach shit. The entire world destroyed, and the last two living people alone on a deserted island. One of them trying to convince the other than even if they're going to die like the rest of humanity, they can at least have whatever time is left until that happens.
Cid tells her she's the only family he has left, and she says maybe he's right - and she asks if she can call him 'Granddad.' He is, after all, the man who raised her, even if he did a shit job of it until the last moment. Cid is overwhelmed with joy - and with a sudden, violent coughing fit that marks him as doomed with Mysterious Anime Coughing Disease. Though he tries to play it off, he 'fell ill' three days ago, and he's clearly not recovered. Celes asks if she can get him anything to it, and he says that the only thing you can find on the island is fish - so she agrees to get him some fish, and puts him to bed.
And now, at last, we regain control of a lone character - Celes - and we can walk out, and find the world that's been left to us.
It's only now, once we're out of the hut and step onto the world map, that the silence and sound of waves sees the slow introduction of music - dark, repetitive organ sounds and church bells, barely underscored by the slightest touch of a softer tune here and there.
This is the World of Ruin.
Oof.
…
Can a fantastic scene be rooted into a badly executed premise, or is one inherently tainted by the other?
That's the big question at the heart of this update, I think. Everything Kefka does from his arrival to Thamasa to the confrontation in the Floating Continent is backed by pure authorial fiat, the jester pulling out inexplicable powerups out of his ass, knowing things he had no right to know, taking on all the espers at once, repeatedly disabling the entire player party with ease after we clowned on him multiple times in the game prior to this point. It's like we're guests to his party, having to just watch him have fun from the sidelines without getting to interfere. The character drama is still good - Celen stabbing Kefka, the Emperor being betrayed by his own sidekick, Shadow's heroic sacrifice(?), it's all great stuff, but it's all undercut by Kefka being handed an I Win button by the narrative until he gets his wish and manages to literally cause the apocalypse.
But.
What a fucking apocalypse it is.
Final Fantasy has played with the idea of big picture villains causing massive damage to the world before, from the Emperor bombing cities to rubble to Exdeath vanishing entire chunks of the map into the Void, but there's never been anything this grand and terrible and poignant. The visual and sound effects of the devastation spreading across the world, terminating into a conflagration that literally tears continents apart and rewrites the geography of the planet. And beyond that - instead of places being devastated, it is the world itself which is now barren and dark, everything deserts or barren rock or mountains with only a handful of tiny, dark forests.
And just… That zoomed in view of the two people at the end of the universe, alone on a rock watching the world die. Obviously there are more people, more cities, we'll find our old party members again, but in that moment this almost reaches to the quiet, intimidate drama of the best sad post-apocalyptic fiction.
It is a genuinely incredible scene, rooted in a deeply frustrating chain of events.
But at least I knew going in Kefka would win and bring about the apocalypse. Much as I try to compartmentalize my knowledge of the game from my experience of playing it, I did know that the clown was going to destroy the world going in. I don't know if not knowing that would have made his antics more, or less frustrating - on the one hand, maybe it would reinforce the 'twist' feeling of that joke villain turning into a true monster; on the other, the increasingly escalating length the games goes to to make him able to win every time might have been even more frustrating had they been genuine surprise at the end of my efforts to stop him.
I don't know. Those of you who played the game young/blind, and those of you who are experiencing it for the first time in this LP, chime in with your opinion.
Either way, 10/10 apocalypse.
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- Location
- Spain
Obviously the other ring is from her second mother.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Obviously this means that Relm had two mothers, both of whom loved her dearly and both of whom died tragically.
Okay, this is just very Final Fantasy.
Mister Bad Guy
Mr Mercury to friends
- Location
- Bay Area
In another "Woolsey translation is great" moment, this is how it was rendered in that version.
View: https://youtu.be/sxgcAZgCfOI?t=5379
It never bothered me that much as a kid that it was an asspull it was just so god damn cool and terrifying.
Experiencing it for the first time.
I can feel the plot holes with Kefka, but that doesn't make it not... I can't describe how I feel.
It was incredible.
Oh, he actually wasn't there for me. I had to do all this stuff with a party of three and was super confused why the game would enforce that random limit. That is also probably why he suddenly left for you. That way they can later use the same scene whether you unlocked him laying there or not.
Also, being stuck with a trio against all these crazy encounters made me give up on the balancing, set all modifiers to max and just grind in place for like a dozen levels. I then kept the inbuilt leveling cheats on for the rest of the game.
Regarding the stuff at the end: I was pretty disappointed with the Kefka execution compared to the expectations popculture built up within me, but I agree that the actual apocalypse was done wonderfully.
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FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
I make peace with video game RPGs pulling old White Wolf style big dick NPC fiat moments by reminding myself I will eventually get to knock that NPC's dick into the dirt.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
This, basically. I didn't even notice the asspulls involved, the ride after was just too wild.
It did basically cement Kefka as top FF villain for me, though. More than any of them I can remember and any I would eventually personally encounter (I haven't played any past 9), on top of everything else going on with 'im, dude just... won. Blew up the world, got exactly what he wanted. He brought the fire and shattered the world, flat out, harder and more directly than not just most of the franchise, but most of anything in the gaming sphere at the time and for a great deal afterwards. Not as a space flea or some kind of pseudo-divine figure, but just as one evil asshole wresting power from the gods to break the world into his image. It's a hard thing to top, heh.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is a very big missable, mind - without it you cant get optional backstory cutscenes that are important context for characters.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That is an impressively bullshit missable to put in the game, and that means I have to replay the entire Ultima Weapon to World of Ruin bit.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And now you know why
people took "Aeris lives if you do things x y z" rumors seriously for years - it had been done before in the previous game
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Also one of those things that, like... you'd need a spoiler to know about it, because natural play isn't going to encounter it at any point. There's no indication it exists and you'd have to be actively bad at the game to see it otherwise, heh, and not just actively bad, but actively bad in such a precise way you don't actively fail and still land in a very specific time frame.
It's genuinely one of the most bullshit missables of all time, and its very presence inspired and kept people trying at all the fake "missable" stuff that was floating around FF6, because if that horseshit actually happened, maybe you actually did need to walk around Narshe widdershins five times to get Leo to resurrect or somethin'.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
I can hear it now, a thousand voices screaming out in unison, "OMI, YOU FORGOT...!"
Stealth joke, Kefka might not look like a waiter but maybe you the player should be
The scene of Kefka destroying the world is just burned into my brain since I first experienced it as a kid. First you have the crazy boss fight with Atma Weapon with its completely rad music, and then you get the massive tonal shift of the Catastrophe theme. Really made the whole scene truly awesome, it that it filled you with both awe and terror. Also, too, "run run run or you'll be well done" is such a fucking fantastic line.
Stealth joke, Kefka might not look like a waiter but maybe you the player should be
The scene of Kefka destroying the world is just burned into my brain since I first experienced it as a kid. First you have the crazy boss fight with Atma Weapon with its completely rad music, and then you get the massive tonal shift of the Catastrophe theme. Really made the whole scene truly awesome, it that it filled you with both awe and terror. Also, too, "run run run or you'll be well done" is such a fucking fantastic line.
You could even say he's...hopping mad. Dancing madly, even
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RogueIce
Noctis Æternæ
- Location
- New Lunar Republic, Equestria
I haven't gone up to this in the PR myself but, did they take out the "Wait!!" option when you jump for the airship? On the one hand, I know it's kind of expected to give you the option rather than auto-jump so maybe you don't think about it immediately, but Shadow did say he'd catch up so it makes a certain amount of sense you'd wait for him? The airship being his only way off, really.
It's one of those things I guess.
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Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Anyway, this was where FF6 finally lost me.
Which is a shame because this is pretty much the moment that FF6 in general and Kefka in particular is most famous for - the main villain/supporting villain reversal. Unfortunately it felt like the plot handed Kefka so many bullshit I-win coupons in the runup to the twist that I emotionally tuned out and stopped caring. I finished the game but at this point it became more a completionist effort rather than a labor of love.
Which is a shame because this is pretty much the moment that FF6 in general and Kefka in particular is most famous for - the main villain/supporting villain reversal. Unfortunately it felt like the plot handed Kefka so many bullshit I-win coupons in the runup to the twist that I emotionally tuned out and stopped caring. I finished the game but at this point it became more a completionist effort rather than a labor of love.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Don't forget to keep checking back on it, you may never know!
I always got the impression that's partly the lava caves, but now out in the open and without lava.
... I did actually play awfully-but-not-That-awful my first time, and happened to get it just by the skin of my teeth. Didn't understand for a while what was the big deal.
Stealth joke, Kefka might not look like a waiter but maybe you the player should be
You're terrible. Enjoy your damn bag of likes. :_DYou could even say he's...hoping mad. Dancing madly, even
On the other hand, if someone really really liked Shadow for some reason and waited till the last second out of hope for them they got a hell of a reward. It does make some sense.
So, maybe a few hundred people organically.
So, maybe a few hundred people organically.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
he does have the best character theme in the castOn the other hand, if someone really really liked Shadow for some reason and waited till the last second out of hope for them they got a hell of a reward. It does make some sense.
So, maybe a few hundred people organically.
Admittedly, there's a scene that you only get if Shadow dies.