This is where we westeners are reminded that the Japanese word for dinosaur (恐竜) can be literally translated as "frightening dragon". Which is why so many dinosaur-shaped dragons show up in JRPGs.
... Of course, a Brontosaurus-based design (and it's the 90s, they were definitely thinking of Brontosaurus) should've been used for the Lightning Element dragon for obvious reasons.
Kefka's Tower's aesthetic hasn't been used in FFXIV YET. They still might draw on it eventually for vague inspiration the way 6.0 did FF4 without any FF4 bosses or characters
Endwalker's version of the Tower of Babil is fairly close, as despite the FF4 name it's a tower built from the cannibalized Garlean palace/capital and given an HR Giger makeover from Fandaniel.
That's another thing that makes FFVI arguably the easiest in the series; it's the only numbered game without any superbosses after they were first introduced in V. Kaiser Dragon was almost definitely intended to be one, but they didn't put him in, probably for Running Out Of Time/Development Space reasons, there are hard encounters like DeathGaze or the Brachiosaur (though the Brachiosaur probably could have been a superboss TBH), but there's nothing that has the pomp and circumstance that says "You see that guy? You know how he's the final boss? Well, that's because he's not coming down to face ME!"
I'd also point out that we've only seen the Warring Triad as statues at this point, in FFVI that is. Characterization in a later MMO notwithstanding, they're perfectly functional as just a final dungeon boss rush as degraded versions of their former selves. Could they have received characterization? Yeah, probably. But they're not really necessary to characterize. Considering you've finished the game at this point, you know what they were saving the characterization for.
Kefka decided to one-up the superboss and just blow them up beforehand. Behold, two dragons for his buck. (As an explanation why they're there, just got enslaved.)
There's some similarities, but overall the two pieces come off very different to me. The first one is "haha, you fools, you've freed me! Now I will destroy you!" and the second is "You hunted down my kin just to become stronger, I will enact their vengeance upon you."
Kefka, she concludes, must have extracted the very source of magic from them. Which I guess would explain why these three gods who once held the whole world in thrall and threatened to destroy it could be defeated by a band of plucky heroes, but the how is left unexplained - it's just one of those things Kefka does.
I'd also point out that we've only seen the Warring Triad as statues at this point, in FFVI that is. Characterization in a later MMO notwithstanding, they're perfectly functional as just a final dungeon boss rush as degraded versions of their former selves. Could they have received characterization? Yeah, probably. But they're not really necessary to characterize. Considering you've finished the game at this point, you know what they were saving the characterization for.
I'd actually say that the lack of characterization kind of works when taken into account of where they are and who has them. Kefka is essentially a distillation of the Empire, the Empire which captured powerful beings and stripped the of everything, their power, their life, even their names, and turned them into little more then batteries.
And that's what the Warring Triad have become, batteries. Kefka took them, drained their power, and then discarded their husks. Just as he did earlier, with Shiva and Ifrit.
Three parties of four, leaving two characters out. Terra and Celes are my powerhouses, so I divide them between two groups; a combination of Locke's white magic and Strago's offensive power should hopefully see the third party through mandatory encounters that they can't avoid altogether from Molulu's Charm. Gogo and Umaro will sit this one out.
Personally, I'd probably take Gogo over Setzer if the latter hasn't been particularly trained up just because you can replace useless Slots with more valuable skillsets like Blitz or potentially Runic, but that's just a me thing. You admittedly grabbed Gogo a lot later than I did, so leveling them up might still be a pain.
Mechanically, the Phoenix Cave was essentially a preparatory course for this final dungeon, which takes the same gimmick but on a bigger scale. Each of the three parties has its own path forward, and as they advance, they meet switches which they can activate to open the path to another party - by swapping between each party, the player opens the path progressively for each other.
Thematically, the way this represents the group's mutual reliance, the way they depend on each other's aid to make it through to the end… Yes, I see what it's going for, and I dig it.
And it's much less of a pain than the Phoenix Cave - mainly because, well…
Basically: in order to not break Final Fantasy VI, you need to take deliberate steps to reduce your engagement with the mechanics that are offered to you. Otherwise, the game basically breaks itself. And while I have no doubt a familiar player would know the break points to keep the game challenging without being unwinnable, I don't and am trying to fully engage with it since it's my first time, so the end result is that gameplay at the higher end devolves into Ultima spam.
I can definitely see the appeal of mods that would increase difficulty or tweak the gameplay experience, for these reasons.
Honestly? Yeah after this playthrough I'm considering giving some FFVI mods another shot. There's one I ran into recently called FFVI T-Edition which adds bonus content and rebalancing that looks kind of neat, and I guess I could always give Brave New World another shot and see if I actually like it this time. "First Boss oneshots the entire party if you don't perfectly time the shitty ATB system" is still kind of a turnoff though.
Okay, no, it's a harder version of the Ultim Weapon with different dialogue, but it uses the same sprite and the same kind of dialogue and is named 'Ultima Buster.' I have no idea what this means. Is this the true Ultima Weapon of the War of the Magi, with the first one in the Floating Continent being merely an ersatz or a prototype? Or is this the original, divine creature, after which the Ultima Weapon was modeled as a weaker copy? Perhaps Ultima Buster was forged by the Warring Triad in their conflict, sealed long ago, and the Magi built the Ultima Weapon from studying records of its might.
Hmm. Maybe, but no. Here's my take: This is the same Ultima we fought on the Floating Continent. When we first met it, it boasted of its 'power ancient and unrivaled' and that it 'did not bleed, for I am strength given form.' Then we kicked its ass, and prompted it to have an existential crisis. What was its purpose? What was its goal? What was even its nature, if it could be defeated? Its answer - to seek power to surpass us, who had defeated it, the challenge and pursuit of greater height giving it purpose - and then going on a training arc.
However, such concerns are purely hypothetical. An endgame boss like Ultima Buster has 55,000 HP; it dies in five Ultima casts. And given that Quick exists, that's less than five turns. To add insult to injury, while Ultima Buster packs multiple powerful elemental attacks, at this stage of the game my party has a large array of elemental coverage even without changing their loadout for a given boss, so this is the result of UB's opening (fire-elemental) Southern Cross attack:
One thing this picture reminded me of is that the Remaster fixes Magic Evasion, so it's more viable than ever to slap certain equipment sets on characters like Terra and Celes and laugh as they never even get hit by magic in the first place.
…unfortunately it's largely useless to us. Because the Crusader summon hits friend and foe alike it's strictly inferior to, say, Bahamut; its stat-up is MP+50%, which is neat but unremarkable in a game that is already giving us more MP than we could possibly need; and the two spells it teaches are Meltdown and Meteor, and while both are strong, they're made obsolete by, say it with me now, Ultima.
A few others have mentioned it, but Meltdown does have one major advantage over Ultima even if it doesn't compete in raw damage. Having a damage typing of Fire/Wind means both that you can shove immune/absorb equipment for those elements on your party to negate them taking damage (or even turn it into a full party heal), but also much like Syldra VS Bahamut back in FFV you can get equipment to boost that elemental damage so it ends up with a higher base power.
Of course, the problem with the latter is that Ultima... already goes for the damage cap, which FFV Bahamut couldn't always manage.
The Guardian, if you'll recall, was the Imperial Palace's static defense system, a machine with enormous firepower that we previously couldn't defeat. But that was all the way back in the World of Balance - this time we're back and armed to the teeth.
The Guardian has a really interesting gimmick - it loads 'Battle Programs' which are the movesets of previously encountered bosses, of varying strength. It starts off with a 'default program' which uses standard Magitek attacks like lasers, missiles and atomic ray, then loads either the Ultros battle program, of all things, or Dadaluma (that rogue monk from Zozo), or Air Force, or finally the Ultima Weapon program, which has Flare and Meteor.
…Victory with the whole party at full HP. This went from a clutch with half of the party dead and the rest injured to a total victory. This is the good Final Fantasy, when proper tactics and adjustment in the heat of battle lead to sudden reversals of outcome and pulling victories out of the jaws of defeat. I love it.
Those are the best kinds of victories, for sure. The kind where you somehow barely win by the seat of your pants, turning things around from a game over to a total victory. Especially when you've been steamrolling everything else for a while so the boss encounter actually pushes your limits for once.
Seems to me if they wanted to win the war of the Magi back in the day, everyone should've just made a bunch of half-breed Human/Espers and taken out the gods.
Kefka's Tower is… fun. I enjoyed it. It wasn't very challenging but, to my frustration, I cannot find the same fun in a difficult FF dungeon experience than I might find getting my shit pushed in in Elden Ring, thirty years of action RPG development later - hard fights against bosses in these games are fun, but hard fights against random encounters that are mostly challenging through resource attrition are merely tedious. In that regard, I am glad for Ultima making the journey easier, even if it trivialized the bosses, because as a result of trivializing the random encounters I enjoyed navigating the multi-party setup and switch-based puzzles more freely.
Perhaps a version of the game in which I can turn off random encounters entirely, like the console PR ports, and then restricting myself to a lower level might get me a better experience out of it.
You know, of all games this kind of makes me think of the Etrian Odyssey series, and how that balances random encounters and dungeon exploration and boss battles? Dungeon exploration tends to be a game of attrition, surviving random encounters as best you can to eventually unlock shortcuts that let you quickly reach the boss around the same time that said encounters have mostly become fodder, so they no longer bother you. And then the boss itself is usually something that wants you to pull out all the stops you currently have available to survive and eventually win, though of course that's dependent on party composition and there's always a cheese strat or three.
VI (and FF as a whole really) is one of those things where I go "amazing game, instant classic, GOATed, love it 5ever, manna from heaven.....now here's 50 things I would have done differently."
Wow, I knew Grunge was everywhere in the early 90s, but I didn't know it even got to dungeon design~
The Guardian has a really interesting gimmick - it loads 'Battle Programs' which are the movesets of previously encountered bosses, of varying strength. It starts off with a 'default program' which uses standard Magitek attacks like lasers, missiles and atomic ray, then loads either the Ultros battle program, of all things, or Dadaluma (that rogue monk from Zozo), or Air Force, or finally the Ultima Weapon program, which has Flare and Meteor.
Huh, kind of interesting that it works like a Boss version of Gau, given it's a machine in contrast with Gau's link with nature. Coincidentally, you even had Gau in the party for the fight.
…
It would be a lie to say that I expected some characterization from the Triad, but I'm still a little disappointed. Not a single line of dialogue?
I'm reminded of in Spyro 3, where Spyro finally confronts the Sorceress who banished his people to the other side of the world then kidnapped all their newborns... and there's no dialogue between them whatsoever. Granted, that was a mascot platformer and this is an RPG, but if you're gonna go with a set-up like that you'd expect at least something.
but the how is left unexplained - it's just one of those things Kefka does.
Ultimately, people probably wouldn't have done anything differently at the time that this game was being developed.
Final Fantasy 6 is a video game that's nearly as old as I am, and I'm turning 30 in a couple of weeks. It's a game that already pushed the boundaries of what video games at the time were capable of doing; it took the things that previous video games had done and really tried to push the envelope forward, utilizing an expansive cast, multiple significant worldstate changes, dynamic changes to characters and the world, and so on.
It's peer to games like Doom 2, Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country. Fantastic games in their own right, but games pushing the package as much as FF6? You might be able to make the argument for Super Metroid, but not the others, and Super Metroid only in a very different way. For comparison, remember that the original Pokemon wouldn't release for a further two years yet.
One of the most interesting things about this Let's Play series is that it's showcasing a series that, in many ways, was the defining trailblazer of what even could be done with video games. They didn't have roadmaps showing them what could be done, what could be possible, what people would react to and what would be frustrating- back in this era of Final Fantasy, they were the ones innovating all of this stuff and showing people what would be possible in future. All of this stuff that you're seeing being added to these games was effectively being added blind, with maybe literally one or two other games before each one showing new stuff that's possible.
It's really hard for people to imagine nowadays not having the benefit of decades of innovation, advancement and experimentation behind them. Being the people responsible for carving out the future of an entire genre of video games- it's a hell of a thing.
Each god's demise opens a path that was blocked behind its statues. By advancing on these three paths, we unlock the way to Kefka's inner sanctum.
As we approach Kefka's domain, the sky illuminated by waves of sickly gold radiance (is this the light which casts the World of Ruin in this perpetual dusky glow?), each of the three parties steps forward and separates out into its constituent members, until they no longer look like three parties but like a single, unified front, standing together.
Against them all, stands but one man - and it still, for all his power and horrors, a man.
Kefka emerges from his dark lair, surrounded in a shimmering triangular forcefield.
"Welcome, friends!"
"I've acquired the ultimate power!" Kefka declares. "Observe!" And with but a wave of his hand, he grabs Locke and lifts him telekinetically into the air, hovering helplessly and gloating. "Such magnificent power! You're nothing more than fleas compared to me now! Embrace your destruction… It is the fate of all things!"
He grabs Locke, then Celes, but does not even commit to their destruction - he merely tosses them around and releases them, so that he can start engaging in true JRPG tradition.
A villainous philosophical monologue on the futility of existence.
Oooh yeah, baby, that's the stuff. Have we really had one of these before? Closest I can think of is the Emperor musing on his contempt for humans and Zeromus ranting about evil in men's hearts, but those are very undercooked and Exdeath is mostly just ranting about ABSOLUTE POWEEEER.
No, this is the real deal. As Kefka says destruction is the fate of all things, the group defiantly replies:
Party: "To be destroyed? Maybe it is? But people can always rebuild, and new lives will always be born!"
Kefka rises in the sky, as before him dance… At first I thought those were coins being tossed endlessly, representing the arbitrariness of fate, but as I watch it again I think they might be butterflies - symbols of the short-lived and ephemeral?
Kefka: "And time will destroy those as well. Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die?" Kefka: "...Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?"
She actually climbed up that spire on her own to shout this in his face.
Terra: "Because it's not the end that matters! It's knowing you have something to live for right now, at this moment!" Terra: "Something you've worked for… Something that's worth protecting!"
Kefka contemptuously tosses her against the spires with telekinesis again, but she is unfettered.
Terra: "As long as you have that… That's enough!" Kefka: "And did you find your 'somethings' in this broken world that's dying itself?" All together: "Yes!"
And this is it. The big emotional payoff for gathering all these characters and going through each individual arc, as each one steps forward and declares what they've found that's worth protecting.
Terra: "Love!" Locke: "A person worth protecting." Cyan: "A wife and child who live on within me." Shadow: "Friends… and a family." Edgar: "A peaceful kingdom." Sabin: "A loving brother who always looks out for me! Gwa-ha-ha-ha!" Celes: "Someone who will accept me for who I am." Strago: "An adorable little granddaughter." Relm: "An obnoxious grandpa… who I couldn't live without!" Setzer: "Wings from a dear old friend!" Mog: "New pals, kupo!" Gau: "These people! All them! Uwaoo!"
This works better for some characters than it does for others, but I really appreciate the effort to tie it all together. You can see the cracks - Shadow referring to his family as something he's found that's worth protecting oozes 'we didn't have enough space to put on your intended character arc on the cartridge, sorry pal,' Mog's line is like 'sure buddy, you totally did have character interactions with literally any of these people,' Relm and Strago's lines kind of reinforce how they're a sort of bubble who bounce off each other but never anyone else…
But overall, I love it. This why I play JRPGs and watch anime, for the whole cast to face an asshole nihilist and unambiguously state their feelings and what they learned from their arc shortly before kicking his teeth in.
Kefka, of course, is unimpressed, in fact this just makes him angrier. Kefka: "Bleh! You people make me sick! You sound like lines from a self-help book!"
…
…I mean, he's not wrong. That is a pretty sick burn on account of how it's objectively true. I have a lot of issues with Kefka's path through the narrative, but as a comedic character he never fails to hit.
Kefka: "If that's how it's going to be… I'll snuff them all out! Every last one of your sickening, happy little reasons for living!" All: "No! Kefka, stop!"
…yeah.
I mean, they challenged the madman by defiantly stating everything they had to live for, when they knew he had the godlike power to smite entire cities out of existence…
…but I couldn't blame them for forgetting that.
Part of why the World of Ruin starts so strong and kinda goes limp over time, I think, is that one of the first things we're introduced to when we leave the Solitary Island is Kefka's new position as the god of this world, an unimpeachable figure who can see anything and destroy any who dare rebel against his rules with the Light of Judgement, wiping out entire towns with ease.
Now, it's ambiguous to what extent this is true - to what extent he can actually see everything and how much freedom and power the Light of Judgement has - but that's never really a question that's on the table because that sense of incredible looming threat just quietly vanishes in the background. Kefka never takes actions against the protagonists, never shows any sign of being aware of their progress, never sends minions after them, never senses their plans, and never uses the Light of Judgement. I had, genuinely, forgotten it was a thing until literally now when he started sweeping the ocean towards Mobliz with it.
It really does stand out how proactive a threat Exdeath was compared to every other villain of that generation. You'd think having the villain actively doing stuff with their power, cutaway scenes to them studying the heroes' progress and talking to their dark minions would be something the game had learned from V and implemented here again, but no - post-WoR Kefka is less proactive than Xande, let alone Golbez and Exdeath. Which would be fine! He's a jester and a madman who is confident he has already won, rather than actively striving for victory, so 'the big bad fell asleep on the throne' would be fine… if it was ever presented that way, instead of Kefka's position in the World of Ruin being introduced as this omnipresent looming menace and then never concretizing.
Part of the reason I say this is because this moment doesn't function as a sudden 'oh shit we grew too complacent' kick either, because Kefka doesn't actually… do anything. Oh, he makes a dramatic pronouncement about destroying the very things the heroes found to give them the will to go on, then sweeps the world (twice) with the Light of Judgement in the general vicinity of places we care about like Mobliz, but nothing is actually being shown destroyed and no one dies. Which I understand, to be fair - it'd feel real bad if Kefka just smote Mobliz and buried Terra's loved ones because she had a moment of open emotional sincerity. That's not something I want to happen, and in the moment 'Kefka starts firing orbital lasers at the world' is perfectly functional stakes-raising, it just sends my mind back to the WoR storyline and thinking 'yeah that threat kinda lost its fangs after a while.'
That said, the fact that Kefka's theme, with its jaunty, marching-band tone plays as he unleashes this power does a great job adding dissonance to it and making it more unsettling.
But now.
Kefka: "I wield the greatest power in existence! You may as well be dirt at the bottom of my boots! Or the dirt stuck at the bottom of that dirt!"
The spire on which Kefka is standing rises into the sky, wreathed in flame, towering alone in the darkness as he declares his new intent:
Kefka: "I'll destroy everything! I'll create my own empire… of death!"
Having already brought the world to a state of ruin and slow dying that he was content to let unfold while sitting in his tower and idly smiting the old impudent, Kefka has been roused from that complacency by anger at the heroes' fluffy feelings nonsense, and is ready to escalate again. If people still find things worth protecting in a dying world, then he'll just have to destroy everything, permanently. There will be no dreams worth having, because there will be no people left to dream.
…
Kefka is, by far, the most emotional villain a Final Fantasy game has had at this point, and I think that ties interestingly into the way he is also so human, for all that his motivations are comic book-tier 'insanity' as omnicidal mania. He's someone who gets frustrated, angry, who laughs at other people's misfortunes and lashes out when they don't play along with his narrative. He is going to destroy the world because people dared tell him he was wrong about the meaninglessness of existence. This is literally why he's doing what he does: because he went on a whole spiel about how hopes and love are futile in the face of the inevitability of death, and people told him 'no, here are the things I am fight for,' and his reaction was 'Fuck you, you're wrong, and I'll prove it by killing everyone and everything!" He's literally motivated by spite and wanting to make a point.
There's the seed of pathos there, when you remember that ultimately, a lot of this was done to him. Kefka was once an ordinary man, before Cid's magitek infused him with immense power and shattered his mind.
But it's not like he's an incoherent, rambling lunatic, a mad dog who has to be put down for his own good. Kefka is perfectly coherent, perfectly capable of agency, of pursuing his own goals and understanding what other people say to him and have expectations of them. It's just…
Terra and Celes were both faced with the emptiness of the weaponized human being. Celes, raised from birth as a knight and general, taught only what she needed to perform her task, still proved capable of forming bonds with others.
Terra, raised as even less than that, as a mere tool without even the need for consciousness, still found in the empty tabula rasa of her own mind, the ability to feel for others, fought for that feeling - every time she faced her own inability to connect with others, she made the choice to help them anyway, to do the right thing even if she could not feel that bond - friendship or love, she did what was right anyway, until she found that she had formed those attachments without even knowing it, and grew even more powerful from them.
Kefka never made that choice. Every time someone offered Kefka a semblance of a moral direction, the possibility of an attachment, he saw it as an obstacle and immediately stabbed that person in the back for his own entertainment, whether it was Leo or the Emperor or, in the long unexplored past before that game, perhaps even Terra - he saw someone who shared his own emptiness, and his immediate reaction was "I'll put a mind-control device on her and have her murder fifty of our best soldiers just for fun." And now, here, at the end, they're both here, along with everyone with whom they bonded, to defy him?
He gave them a broken and dying world of despair, and they still kept finding new things worth fighting for in it.
No wonder he allows himself to wax philosophical in this last meeting. He is, through the medium of all the heroes now facing him, faced with his own fundamental weakness.
It's all pointless? Why bother living if you're going to die? Why have dreams if they will go unfulfilled? Why accomplish anything, if it will be eventually undone? This whole time, Kefka acted as if he was all doing it just for his own amusement, but here, in his anger that everyone is resisting him because of hope and love, you can see the cracks at the foundation of his whole affect. The nihilistic despair buried under all the layers of murderous buffoonery. As far as comic book characters go, Kefka is evidently very strongly inspired by the Joker. But though this movie came out much later, I can think of one other character who fits him as well.
Maybe that's the source of the problem with the World of Ruin. The reason why it doesn't quite fit together for me.
It's torn between two aspects - on the one hand, it is a broken world in which nothing can grow, no new life can be born, and the mad god Kafka must be destroyed for life to have a chance. On the other hand, it is a world which looks to be already doomed but in which our heroes keep finding new life, new hope, laughter and joy, reasons to love and cherish and protect it. And these two aspects are… perhaps not in contradiction, but poorly articulated with one another. In the end, it feels like the desperation fades away in the background and the world is just hopeful, until it's easy to forget that plants do not grow and this world has no place for Duane and Katarin's child to be born.
But now, that world faces total annihilation, and the heroes are all that stands to defend it.
Terra: "People will always have dreams!" Kefka: "No! When I'm done, there won't be anything left to dream about!"
Kefka: "Hee-hee! But what fun is destruction if no 'precious' lives are lost?"
What I find really interesting about this bit is that here, Terra and Celes are standing on spires that just rose from below, just like Kefka's. That's not him doing it - consciously or not, it's them. Visually it's necessary for the dialogue to actually takes place, but thematically this posits the two sides as being on equal footing (literally, though Kefka is higher up): the world reacts to their emotions equally. They are both rising in the sky to the peak of the world. The earth itself supports them.
This is no longer a battle between a god with total command of his universe and hapless peons.This is a battle between two equal wills and resolves in opposition.
Kefka sweeps the seas with another beam of light, and we fade back to the previous scene - the whole group facing Kefka.
And now it's party selection time.
"Decide the order of participation in battle."
I really wish this was explained better, because what the game is doing is really cool, but I don't think you could guess it from what the screen is showing alone, just because it added numbers.
Basically - in the coming battle, there will be multiple phases. When a character falls in battle and isn't raised before moving on to the next phase, they are instead replaced by the next character in the order of battle. So if we beat Phase 1 with Strago KO, he would disappear and instead a fully healthy Relm would take his place, for instance.
This is a really cool way of selling both 'in the deadly battle ahead characters who are taken out will be gone for good' and 'in this battle, everyone is fighting together, and all your friends have your back.' This is fantastic design.
Probably would work better if the difficulty was tuned a little higher, though.
Anyway, because this isn't clear to me, I just decide to be conservative and split my characters across three parties as before:
Which will inadvertently make the battle a little harder, though given the frontwoman is Terra, not that hard.
And now it's time. Kefka raises his arms, calling on all the powers of the gods… and summons them.
A new tune begins to play. Backed by organs and choirs, the dreadful, ominous Dancing Mad begins fills the air, filling the fight with the weight of the world.
I have inverted the order of the screenshots to better capture the statue as a whole.
The Statue of the Gods.
It's not clear exactly what this is. The lower level seems to resembled the Fiend, but that resemblance doesn't hold for the higher levels. Whatever this is, it's a monument to chaos and madness - a biomechanical interweaving of organic beings, tubing, rusted spikes, visages twisted in anger or languidly reclining. I've seen it suggested to be an allegory for Dante's Divine Comedy - Hell at the start, Purgatory represented by the middle tier of humans caught in poses of thoughtfulness or agony, Heaven at the top with a robed figure reclining, a Virgin Mary-style veiled woman looking on, and the lights of candles, and I can see the comparison. Kefka making his own little monument to human nature and the chasm between gods and mortals, perhaps?
As boss visual designs go, this is the peak. The end of the SNES era of Final Fantasy kept its best for last, and it is knocking it out of the park. A multistage baroque fucking orchestra of a monster, literally larger than the screen can contain, which you fight in escalating stages, climbing from the deepest pit of darkness towards the sky and the light, and it's only the prelude.
How fitting that in a game whose plot revolved so heavily (at first) on the nature of summons, Kefka would open the fight with a summon of his own, only instead of an esper who gave their life for us to have a chance to make a better world, he summoned only a literal monument to his own ego.
And musically? Dancing Mad has multiple movements, one for each tier (and beyond), changing each time a stage of the statue is defeated and we advance, increasing in intensity and complexity as we go.
Mechanically, the Statue of the Gods is represented as multiple separate entities on the screen, each with their own moves. It looks like previous versions of the game as well as the Japanese original assigned the Statue parts various evocative names, like "Long Arm," "Visage," "Magic" or "Tiger," which sounds like it would have made it easier to track each aspect's individual abilities and weaknesses, but not so here - they're all referred to by letters. Each aspect has a limited toolkit, but put together they have a wide variety of attacks - for instance, the Long Arm can only use a normal attack or Shockwave while the Visage has Sapping Strike, Reverse Polarity, and a petrifying move. In theory, the fact that each stage is split into multiple aspects means we have tough choices to make regarding which aspects to prioritize, reduces the effectiveness of attack-stacking methods like giving one character dual-wielding and multiattack, and means spells either have to be focused on one enemy at a time or severely spread their damage.
In practice it mostly means everything is in range of Ultima.
If instead of a boss with 100k HP you have three bosses with 30k HP each, it means that instead of Ultima killing you in ten hits, it kills you in three. A large HP pool split amidst several opponents multiplies Ultima's effectiveness exponentially because of it dealing max damage to all enemies, so the more you spread that HP, the more effective damage it deals.
This is not to say this battle is a complete cakewalk - the second tier of the statue has Graviga, which severely cuts down the group's HP and leaves us vulnerable to follow up blows after it's destroyed, while the final tier uses Tornado to set our HP to critical, so I still have to be on the ball with healing spells, especially because Terra is the only powerhouse in this group - Cyan's Tempest is okay-ish, Edgar has decent healing magic to keep everyone topped up, but Shadow is only good as whatever I can dig out of my inventory for him to throw at the enemy (a lot of Shurikens and Pinwheels) and, in the end, he turns out to be the first victim of this battle, falling to an instant death spell.
Before I have time to raise him, however, the last stage of the statue falls to my combined attacks, and so Shadow disappears, replaced for the ultimate confrontation with…
*checks notes*
…Celes? Oh man, Kefka is toast.
And there it is. At the end of this gauntlet, the true final boss.
The third movement of Dancing Mad fades with a last flourish. The screen trembles. Triumphant organs and ominous choirs herald us as we ascend to the heavens themselves, and there, fight Lucifer himself.
In terms of presentation, this is top-tier. Absolutely unmatched.
The aesthetic subversion here, in which Kefka is fought in the middle of the sky, with radiant light raining down, having taken the appearance of an angel, even dressed in the fashion of a Baroque painting, might not be so unique now, but there's not been a final fantasy boss like it in the series so far, and it's perfect for him. Not because he's a genuine Luciferian figure of temptation or anything - but because he's Kefka, who laughs at the sacred and wears it ironically. Look at his face - he's still wearing his Joker smile, absolutely out of place on this stoic angel figure, with traces of his makeup still remaining. It's like I'm fighting the Sistine Chapel.
Kefka's opening move is Heartless Angel, sending a flock of dark angels that set the entire party's HP to 1 and kill Terra, in a grotesque inversion of the Raise animation. Hell of a way to kick off a fight, I'll give him that.
It shouldn't actually have killed Terra, since its effect is specifically 'set HP to 1,' but it did, so I don't know what happened there.
This immediately launches us into a race to heal the party before they get wiped out by Kefka's follow-up - thankfully, Edgar and Celes have both mastered Curaga, so they can bring the party up to full health; if I had been stuck with Shadow, though, that might have been a TPK.
Also, the color of the background changes as the fight goes on and with Kefka's attacks, really helping sell that vibe of master of this universe.
Kefka's Trine inflicts Silence and Blind on all party members it successfully affects, immediately neutering my immense damage power and forcing me to scramble to cure their status effect so I can keep up healing and attacking - at least on characters who aren't immune, but remember, I collected two Ribbons in the whole game. And proceeded not to equip it on some of my most powerful characters because I was chasing ridiculous Relic builds.
Kefka's special physical attack, Havoc Wing, additionally deals severe damage to a single party member - enough to kill most in a single hit.
Throughout this all, though, the group continues to dish out massive damage. With Terra's Dualcast, I can fall back on a pattern where she casts an omni-heal and an Ultima on the same turn, ensuring the safety of the party as a whole rather than recklessly chasing the big number damage, which allows the rest of the party to flexibly provide additional damage, backup healing, or tanking the floor in Edgar's case.
This means enough damage that we soon reduce Kefka down to below 50% of his HP, causing the signal for his second phase to trigger. A ghostly image of the mad angel's face appears, boasting that "The end draws near…" and the whole screen begins to shake, and does not stop.
I know a boss telegraphing their ultimate attack when I see one. With barely enough time to brace for impact I go into bunker mode, using Arise and Reraise in combination to ensure as much of the party is either at full HP or with a banked Reraise as I can in the second before Kefka's finishing move hits us, and then, we brace for impact.
Golden light turns to a sickly purple glow, then to orange as power gathers in Kefka's palm, and then it hits, a flood of crimson light and darkness, a wave of destruction that engulfs the screen until the characters can't be seen anymore, as if the game was struggling to render it.
…
Do you know how sometimes, the Joker in DC comics (and assorted cartoon and movie adaptations) has someone completely dead to rights, a gun to their head, and it's someone he would have every reason to kill for his own benefit or out of spite for his antagonist and it would really, really hurt, and he pulls the trigger as someone screams "No!"...
…and all that comes out of the barrel of the gun is a little Joker flag, because to him that's somehow even funnier than actually killing the person he is in position to and has every right to kill?
That's Forsaken, Kefka's final joke.
I'm not saying it's intentionally designed as a joke move. It deals real damage and, here, Celes is about to be KO (and immediately brought back by Reraise) and Edgar brought to low HP. In terms of attack power, it is Kefka's most powerful move. But it is a 'normal' medium damage move that cannot kill anyone who is at full HP, which a single Curaga can easily allow - there is no need for Shell or to put everyone in Defend mode or any other special tactic. It inflicts no status effect and has no special properties, and does not force a Reraise wall as Magic Master did. All that sound and fury, all that preparation and warning, was just to pop a Joker flag in our face.
It's funny, in a way, that Kefka was simultaneously the longest and most elaborate of all final bosses in the series so far, and yet the easiest. But sometimes being easy isn't a bad thing. The spectacle and aesthetic this fight brings to the table is unmatched. It's the most gorgeous battle in all the I-VI series, designed as an epic unto itself, escalating from darkness to the Heaven to fight the angel who usurped God.
And now, time for the final climax - Escape from Castle Kefka.
We can only take 12 characters to face Kefka but the game needs every character we have recruited to be present for the last escape sequence, so spot the point where the two stragglers snuck in. They didn't teleport, they just ran very fast and hoped you wouldn't notice they hadn't been there the whole time.
FFV already did the "even though the final boss is defeated, our heroes aren't out of trouble and it's going to be a tense moment for them to make it" - but there it was a matter of whether they could return to the real world or drift away into the void until the Dawn Warriors appeared to help them, and here, it is more pragmatically trying to frantically escape a collapsing tower.
Terra turns into her Trance form to lead the party to safety - and immediately collapses.
One by one, the Magicites are flying away from the characters, shattering, and fading away into the wind. And because Terra is part esper, the same effect is affecting her, her strength running out.
…
I have thoughts on that, which I'll get to in a moment.
But she isn't going to let herself fall here, when her friends need her. Terra get up and announces she will use 'the last of her power' to guide out the group.
And then, the game plays its credit sequence.
…
I know that seems weird. I don't mean the real credits, though. I mean the in-character credits. Readers have mentioned several times that of all the early FFs, VI is the one that is most like a play, like theatre. And this is where it credits its lead actors for their roles - by which it means, the characters in the game.
It plays out like this:
For each character, the game plays a high-resolution (for SNES) shot of an item meaningfully representing him, such as Cyan's katana; then the name we gave them in small characters as if it were an actor's name, "as…" and then, in big bold, blue-colored letters, their full canonical given name. Then it plays out a sequence, either dramatic or humorous, of their place in helping everyone make it out of the tower alive.
For Cyan, they run through one of the earlier rooms but the switch-activated bridge turns off while Edgar is trying to make it across, so he has to ask Cyan to help him, and Cyan freaks out because he is so bad with machines - but, after some hesitation and probably because he read all these books about Machines for Dummies, he manages to figure out how to activate a simple switch and save Edgar's life, and strikes a proud pose, declaring "I do believe I'm getting better, though!"
Poor Cyan, forever caught between comedy and tragedy.
Setzer is leading Edgar and Celes and they have to pick two doors; Setzer tosses a coin to decide which one… then immediately doubles down from the one he just picks, which proceeds to explode, and he declares "Whenever you think you're right, you're wrong. And that's a big mistake. That was what you always used to say, wasn't it, Darill?"
…you know, it's kind of funny that the biggest lesson Darill taught Setzer 'always second-guess your gut instinct and go against the flow,' because that is the one character trait least exhibited by our Gentleman Gambler here.
Edgar and Sabin share one flashback, represented by a two-faced coin, each face representing a different prince. An enormous iron beam comes falling down on the group, and Sabin manages to hold it up long enough for Edgar to work on unlocking the door behind him while Sabin has a meaningful heart-to-heart with him, before casually hefting the tons of steel aside.
Sabin: "It's not like I wanted to dump all that responsibility on you… I knew you'd look out for the kingdom. I wanted to be able to look out for you. That's why I went off to become stronger…"
Mog's scene is him opening a door into a giant chasm and nearly falling to his death, calling out for help, and said help coming in the form of Edgar rescuing him with a crane hook while Mog shouts about watching the fur and how he's not a stuffed animal. It's just funny. Being a moogle is suffering, kupo.
Umaro's scene is even funnier. Celes and Setzer are ahead of the group, and arrive in front of a locked metal door. They struggle with it - it won't open! Umaro the yeti arrive behind them, can his strength help them escape? Of course!
This literal cryptid proceeds to punch through several meters of straight wall to get to another corridor that has an unlocked door in it. You know. Instead of bashing in the presumably flimsier door that is right in front of him.
I love that for him.
Gogo's bit is that two button sequences have to be pressed simultaneously and in order, so they and Celes both face each button, and Gogo mimics her perfectly, and the group escapes the room…
…except if you will look closely, Celes and Gogo are on each side of a chasm in the machinery. So when the group leaves the room, Gogo proceeds to 'mimic' Celes leaving, that is to say runs straight across the chasm and falls into the dark.
Don't worry, they make it in the end, but this is hilarious.
Then we get Gau, who seeing the group is taking too much time, decides to take a 'shortcut.' By which he means grabbing onto a rock and barreling down the side of the tower at high speed; the group tries to follow him and does so with a few bumps and bruises, and Gau excitedly points to his next 'shortcut' and proceeds to throw Celes off the side of the tower.
Poor Celes.
Poor Celes indeed, because her bit (shared with Locke) is next - and, in a decision I think was the right one, the game frontloaded all the 'comedy' beats of the escape so it can now escalate the drama. Celes's representative emblem is the flower bouquet which Maria threw off the side of the castle in the opera sequence:
As the group is running across a series of collapsing plates, Celes drops something - it's absolutely not clear to me what it is, but according to the wikia, it's "the bandana she found on the island;" I genuinely can't be sure that's the case, but I'm not sure what else it could be. She looks behind in horror and, recklessly, dives back to get it even as the platforms fall from underneath her…
…Locke, of course, hurries and manages to take hold of her before she slips. As she gets up, he yells at for almost getting killed, 'for that'? And then grabs her and hauls her off to the other side of the screen.
The symbolism of 'Celes is holding on to Locke's bandana, the thing she found on the beach which revitalized her hope for the world, because through its proxy she's keeping hold of her hope for the new world,' isn't quite landing for me because it's Locke's bandana and the Actual Real Locke is right there, so while I get it on a symbolic level (Locke is here for her now in truth, not just a memory) it doesn't really make psychological sense to me, but that's not the real issue here -
The real issue is that in this save, we successfully saved Cid. Celes never found a bandana to begin with.
Which is just more evidence that the option to save Cid was added in post as an easter egg and never intended to be the actual canonical events of the game, if we needed any.
And then…
Remember when I commented that having Terra happen to be the head of the party who walked through the broken vats section was, while a random happenstance of which group I put her in, narratively really cool because of how it tied to her backstory? Yeah?
AM I SMART OR WHAT?
Anyway - Maduin's Magicite, one of the last remaining, leaves Terra and hovers into the air in the middle of the esper vats corridor, and announces:
Maduin: "Terra… we must part now. We espers will disappear from this world. You may fade away as well… But, perhaps if the human part of you feels something strong enough, then maybe… just maybe you will be able to remain here as a human…"
And his Magicite shatters.
…
Okay.
On Espers
I get it now.
It was not a good beat, but I get it.
In Mass Effect 3's much-criticized ending, Commander Shepard is faced with the choice of how to try and save the universe. One of these choices, the only one relevant to us today, is to emit a magical space wave that will destroy all sentient machines in the universe. This is, on many levels, the most straightforward and least morally objectional choice because all three endings are pretty messed up, but also it means you're going to kill the One Single Unambiguously Sympathetic And Virtuous Robot In The Galaxy,* your android friend EDI, who doesn't even know that this is a choice you're faced with and has no mean of giving you any input or willingly agreeing to this sacrifice. You have to choose to push the button that will murder her (and also the not-meant-to-be-unambiguously-sympathetic-but-the-writers-are-bad-at-their-job Geth species), along with the Bad Guy Robots whose death will save organic life.
It's a bad attempt at injecting moral ambiguity into a bad ending, but it's really illuminating to me to remember that looking at FFVI's ending, because…
I get why Kefka had to inexplicably be able to destroy every living esper in the world, without a single one managing to escape:
Because they would have fucking died out of nowhere at the end and that would have been real awkward.
Like, when they decided to introduce this final part of the plot, where magic must fade from the world and all the espers disappear, and Terra's choice is to fade away with them or remain as a human, it would have been real fucking awkward if Little Bobby Bahamut over there was told 'oh yeah btw, sorry you're a fully sentient being with free will, agency and emotions but you're gonna get got by the esper-deleting wave now.' So they had to make sure all the espers were already dead in a manner that was morally unobjectionable on our heroes' part and did not involve Terra going over to Cara Carbuncle and going "So… buddy… sorry about that but we think I might make it but you're definitely going to die if we stop Kefka, so… can I ask you to sign a consent form on your heroic sacrifice?"
Like. It wouldn't be very good. And the writers, I think, realized this. And the solution of 'Kefka murders all the espers so the problem never arises' is awkward and clumsy, but I'll give the FFVI writers this:
They do a better fucking job than the Mass Effect 3 ending.
All this, of course, is built on the assumption that 'the espers and magic fade away' is the ending you want, but they were clearly committed to that.
So…
Sigh.
On Personal Bugbears
Sometimes there are tropes in fiction that you don't vibe with.
It doesn't matter if it serves a narrative purpose. It doesn't matter if it's thematically consistent. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if it even makes the story better or more coherent or resolves important questions. It's a story conceit that you just don't like, no matter what.
For me that's when the heroes' actions involve bringing about an end to magic, returning the world to mundanity, and giving up all their powers.
I get why it happens most of the time. I get the idea of the transition of the age of legends into our diminished world. I appreciate a good Tolkien as much as anyone and I'm not going to be mad at the elves leaving Middle-Earth.
But when it's this, when it's literally "humans and magic cannot coexist, and so peace can only come at the cost of magic fading from the world, and you, the hero, giving up your own magic so you can have a place in that world"?
I'm never going to like it. No matter how well it fits your story's needs. I won't enjoy it, and I wish you had done otherwise.
'Fantasy,' no matter what some say, does not inherently imply a power fantasy. I am a horror fan at heart, including some horror set in deeply mundane, #2real4me settings, and some of my favorite fantasy is set in worlds that involve little to no magic. But fantasy is a fantasy, and the turn of the world to the mundane is not why I'm here for.
So no. I don't like that all the magic is fading from the world and Terra must remain on earth not as she was, a child of two worlds, embodying the possibility of love between two people, the conflict and the pain and the fear but with the hope of balance and harmony between them in the end, and must remain in this world as only human.
It's not my jam.
…
The next sequence is Relm and Strago.
The two of them have to run down an uphill treadmill, which requires too much strength from Strago's ageing body. He falls to his knees, too tired to go on, and Relm backtracks to tell him he can't give up yet - he apologizes, he can't go on…
So she threatens to paint his picture if he doesn't get up immediately, and he panics and immediately leaps to his feet. Relm hefts her up on her shoulders, and carries him down the treadmill.
It's a fun comedy beat, but it's elevated by this:
Behind all the colorful insults and mean persona, Relm genuinely does care. Both about her grandfather, and about her art.
Shadow.
Shadow's bit is perhaps the most and least baffling of them all.
He and Interceptor are racing after the group, seemingly the last in tow - and there, Shadow stops, and leaves the path the others took. Interceptor catches up to him, barking at him - so Shadow grabs him and throws him away.
The fact that Interceptor can escape, and Shadow is making an active effort to leave that path, clearly indicate that he's making a choice not to escape with the others. He is choosing to stay behind, and he has to convince his dog to leave him and be with the others - with Relm, implicitly. And when Interceptor accepts and leaves, Shadow turns around and heads for one of the peaks of the collapsing tower, and there sits in the rubble, and talks to ghosts.
That's where he'll meet his end. Alone, in the collapsing tower, waiting to be reunited with his friend whom he left behind and never gave the death he wanted. He's no longer running from his guilt and Baram's shadow.
…
When Shadow had his one line confronting Kefka, he said that he was fighting for "Friends… and a family." But he doesn't have a family, does he? He never reconnects with Strago and Relm. There is a cut scene in the game in which Strago confronts him about his identity, but it's not in the game. That line is a nonsequitur.
It really feels like Shadow was supposed to have an arc at the end of which he either revealed himself to Strago and Relm and faced the terrifying prospect of reconnecting with the child he'd abandoned for unjustifiable reasons, or never did, and went to die alone with Baram's ghost. That's the only way that ending makes sense to me - as one end of a fork of cut content.
The last of the sequences is Strago's, but Strago already had one - it's really just there as a cap on the whole thing, showing the final part of the escape, as Strago struggles to leap onto the airship's crane and manages to find the resolve not to be shown up by the young ones.
And then - the last credits.
The last actor of this performance.
The last player, if you will.
I'm never not going to love that.
We're almost there - almost at the end. The monochrome effect goes away; we return to full color, with everyone on the ship's deck, except for Shadow. Terra, still in trance, shouts to the others to follow her, and flies off the deck of the ship to lead it to safety through the rain of rubble and collapsing spires of Kefka's city-sized tower of ruin.
Protip to writers, especially in visual mediums: if you want one character to feel particularly, uniquely different and powerful compared to everyone else, give them, and only them specifically, the power of casual flight. To take a completely out of left field example in contrast to Terra FFVI, it's something The Boys does excellently with Homelander.
As they fly, the last remaining Magicite flies away and shatters. Magic is almost gone from this world.
Celes hurry to the front of the ship, shouting to Terra that she's done enough, and her powers are getting weaker (incidentally, this is one of the surprisingly few pieces of direct Terra/Celes interaction). But Terra doesn't answer, she keeps going, the ship soaring out and over an ocean of rubble…
And they're in the sky, free. But Terra is weakening, her power is dimming (literally; her sprite is graying out) and she's losing altitude, swaying from side to side…
…until she's gone, falling off the screen. No dialogue then: Edgar waves to Setzer, who takes the wheel and turns the Falcon into a dive.
The same light as we saw when Terra flew across the world in confusion after discovering her power blinks, soaring across a rainbow, and the children of Mobliz appear on a cliff, watching that light - in recognition? Hope? Another girl comes to warn them, wordlessly.
Children gather. Katarin is giving birth, and they're all at her side, encouraging her through the pain - two lives in the balance at the same time, Terra and the ones she was fighting to protect.
Fade to white…
The ship is still flying, but everyone is knocked out. That reckless, desperate dive took everyone out from sheer G-forces. But words echo through the air - "Not yet…" The others slowly sit up, looking around - "Not yet?" who spoke? And then they shout, "Terra!"
The camera pans to the left:
Terra was there on the deck this entire time, off-camera.
This game is so fucking cinematic it gets downright cheeky with it sometimes.
Terra: "Thank you, Setzer." Setzer: "I told you, didn't I? She's the fastest ship in the world!"
And those are the last spoken lines of Final Fantasy VI.
They're not, by any means, the end of the epilogue - but what's next is told entirely through visuals.
The Falcon, soaring above the clouds. A ship, sailing the seas, with a flight of seagulls crossing the sky. A flight overland, where the barren ground of the World of Ruin is being overgrown with grass and plant life.
Katarin and Duane's baby is born, and the mother is safe. As excited as the children are with these news, their attention is soon drawn away by something else - they run out into the open space, where a shadow is cast over them, and they wave at the sky.
From the Falcon's deck, Terra waves back. Relm does a funny grimace at the kid, and Terra bursts out laughing.
In Thamasa, the burned-down house is being repaired. In Kohlingen, the seeds that mother and daughter pair were planting have finally sprouted. Figaro's chocobo cavalry is running across the sands - Edgar and Sabin stand at the railing, waving to them in greetings.
Terra stands at the Falcon's bow, and - in a gesture that would be echoed years later in another Final Fantasy game and which remained engraved in my memory even as the context of it faded away - makes one gesture which symbolizes personal change and freedom:
She undoes her ponytail, and lets her hair fly in the wind.
The flock of bird that passes at this moment is what we follow next, passing over mountains, rivers, forests, into the sky again, and then - one final shot:
And that… was Final Fantasy VI.
…
It's 2am now, and I have written ten thousand words in a day. Any final thoughts I have about the game will have to wait for another day, hopefully tomorrow. But for now:
...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.
That entire Let's Play is a gift from god. The Possess Exploit is right up there with "Turning the Emperor into a toad"
"Do an incredible series of glitch events to have a ghost in your party at the same time as Gogo, then copy Possess, use Possess to delete Kefka with spooky ghost noises, Win"
Notably, in the original game release, there was a combination of tricks that let you one-shot almost any boss in the game.
Specifically, it exploits Vanish, which works by reducing the chance of a physical attack hitting you to zero in exchange for increasing the chance of a magical attack hitting you to 100%.
But magic evasion was scuffed as fuck, so it ultimately ends up just working as "Hitting something with magic when they're Invisible means the spell always works"
Vanish is a buff, so it works on almost every boss in the game.
Then you have Doom, which has a low hit chance and an astronomically low one against a boss. However, an invisible target is always hit by spells.
So you'd cast Vanish on the boss, and they disappear. Then you cast Doom, and they die instantly.
Now of course, this doesn't work against Undead enemies, who are healed instead. But for those, you could cast X-Zone, which just removes the enemies from the battle of it hits. That will work on anything that isn't explicitly immune to Vanish.
Of course, the problem there is that X-Zone just deletes the enemy from the battle, it doesn't count as 'Killing them'. I got a nasty surprise on my run where I was abusing this glitch when I used that on Deathgaze and ended up not getting the Bahamut Magicite because he was just removed from play instead of defeated, so the script that fires that gives it to you never activated, but he was still dead so I couldn't encounter him again.
...
Original release Final Fantasy 6 was scuffed as fuck
I'm guessing the Possess glitch is possible because the writers never really thought any boss that mattered would be in range of a !Possess-having character. Hence why Kefka doesn't have the immunity flag for this ability.
Sometimes there are tropes in fiction that you don't vibe with.
It doesn't matter if it serves a narrative purpose. It doesn't matter if it's thematically consistent. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if it even makes the story better or more coherent or resolves important questions. It's a story conceit that you just don't like, no matter what.
I hate how so many JRPG villains are just so emo they decide to kill everyone. It's. So. Boring. I always kind of thought FF7 invented it, but here it is in FF6.
But. But it's actually sort of interesting? It shows the idea for what it is: a child throwing a tantrum that he isn't getting his way. It's just that, when the child has (inexplicable) phenomenal cosmic powers, it's an enormous problem.
That's just fucking awesome. No notes, great scene.
Well, here at the end of FF6… it's interesting. I hated Kefka's bullshit "I win" button so much that I quit the game in disgust, years ago, and never saw it since. It's such a well-liked game that I kinda suspected that it was the singular incredibly low point of the game, but so much of the third act just didn't work at all.
And yet the ending sort of mostly works. It broke both its arms at the end of act 2 and was mostly just stumbling around, but it manages more-or-less to stick the landing.
FF6 is a creative genius. It has so many ideas that it can't wait to share with you! A lot of them are good ideas, and some are great ideas. Also, a lot of them are bad ideas, and some are incoherent trash ideas.
Can you look past the terrible parts to enjoy the great parts? I hope so. I kinda can't. Which is, frankly, my loss.
I think it might be worth addressing the long game-ending post Omicron just made, rather than immediately moving on to talk about another Let's Play five minutes after he wrote thousands of words and spent dozens of hours finishing and analyzing the game for people's entertainment.
I'm not Omicron, but if I was, I think I would feel pretty bad if the first several posts after the finale to this were about a completely different Let's Play. Just throwing that out there.
EDIT:
Okay, not the only thing. Thank you Omi, sincerely, for the time and effort you've put into all of this. It's a genuine joy to see someone make their way through some of my favourite pieces of entertainment, and in such an insightful way to boot.
Definitely an interesting end to the game. I found the tower of Kefka's Ego boss interesting, from a design perspective, and the post-final-boss escape sequence was pretty fun too. Always like those.
Definitely an interesting end to the game. I found the tower of Kefka's Ego boss interesting, from a design perspective, and the post-final-boss escape sequence was pretty fun too. Always like those.
Fun, and actively superior to what it would be if it was made today, in that its just a cinematic conclusion, whereas if it was made today, the escape sequence would be a series of quicktime events
He grabs Locke, then Celes, but does not even commit to their destruction - he merely tosses them around and releases them, so that he can start engaging in true JRPG tradition.
A villainous philosophical monologue on the futility of existence.
Oooh yeah, baby, that's the stuff. Have we really had one of these before? Closest I can think of is the Emperor musing on his contempt for humans and Zeromus ranting about evil in men's hearts, but those are very undercooked and Exdeath is mostly just ranting about ABSOLUTE POWEEEER.
Awwww yeah, the real start of proper villain monologues and discussions in Final Fantasy? Fine by me. And probably another big part of why Kefka is so memorable as a villain, honestly.
Kefka, of course, is unimpressed, in fact this just makes him angrier. Kefka: "Bleh! You people make me sick! You sound like lines from a self-help book!"
…
…I mean, he's not wrong. That is a pretty sick burn on account of how it's objectively true. I have a lot of issues with Kefka's path through the narrative, but as a comedic character he never fails to hit.
"You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet!" is an old, and very classic Kefka line because as you say, it's... honestly not wrong? It's a sick burn of a comeback, though at the same time it's a good quote of just how nihilistic and loathing Kefka is.
Now, it's ambiguous to what extent this is true - to what extent he can actually see everything and how much freedom and power the Light of Judgement has - but that's never really a question that's on the table because that sense of incredible looming threat just quietly vanishes in the background. Kefka never takes actions against the protagonists, never shows any sign of being aware of their progress, never sends minions after them, never senses their plans, and never uses the Light of Judgement. I had, genuinely, forgotten it was a thing until literally now when he started sweeping the ocean towards Mobliz with it.
It really does stand out how proactive a threat Exdeath was compared to every other villain of that generation. You'd think having the villain actively doing stuff with their power, cutaway scenes to them studying the heroes' progress and talking to their dark minions would be something the game had learned from V and implemented here again, but no - post-WoR Kefka is less proactive than Xande, let alone Golbez and Exdeath. Which would be fine! He's a jester and a madman who is confident he has already won, rather than actively striving for victory, so 'the big bad fell asleep on the throne' would be fine… if it was ever presented that way, instead of Kefka's position in the World of Ruin being introduced as this omnipresent looming menace and then never concretizing.
In retrospect, yeah it's kind of odd compared to previous games how incredibly passive Kefka is as the second-half villain. Most others throughout the series are constantly up to something, even if it isn't until FFIV that we start getting cuts to "look how the villian is scheming". The Emperor is always working to advance his plans of conquest in FFII, Xande sent out many a monster to destroy the crystals and stop the Light Warriors, Golbez is a constant threat working as a puppet for Zemus, and Exdeath straight up actively shoves himself into the plot from the very moment he's freed, starting wars, burning down forests, destroying cities and releasing the denizens of the Rift to kill your party.
Meanwhile, Kefka's contributions to the World of Ruin are... a single laser beam waaaaay back when you first meet up with Sabin, and then I guess he powernaps until you've killed the Warring Triad and showed up in his bedroom and has to throw on some makeup and monologue on the spot.
Terra and Celes were both faced with the emptiness of the weaponized human being. Celes, raised from birth as a knight and general, taught only what she needed to perform her task, still proved capable of forming bonds with others.
Terra, raised as even less than that, as a mere tool without even the need for consciousness, still found in the empty tabula rasa of her own mind, the ability to feel for others, fought for that feeling - every time she faced her own inability to connect with others, she made the choice to help them anyway, to do the right thing even if she could not feel that bond - friendship or love, she did what was right anyway, until she found that she had formed those attachments without even knowing it, and grew even more powerful from them.
Kefka never made that choice. Every time someone offered Kefka a semblance of a moral direction, the possibility of an attachment, he saw it as an obstacle and immediately stabbed that person in the back for his own entertainment, whether it was Leo or the Emperor or, in the long unexplored past before that game, perhaps even Terra - he saw someone who shared his own emptiness, and his immediate reaction was "I'll put a mind-control device on her and have her murder fifty of our best soldiers just for fun." And now, here, at the end, they're both here, along with everyone with whom they bonded, to defy him?
He gave them a broken and dying world of despair, and they still kept finding new things worth fighting for in it.
No wonder he allows himself to wax philosophical in this last meeting. He is, through the medium of all the heroes now facing him, faced with his own fundamental weakness.
You mentioned it as well, but yeah Kefka clearly has some inspiration from the Joker going on. I actually looked up when The Killing Joke released since Kefka's whole deal kind of reminded me of Joker's "anyone could be as broken as me" bits from that, and apparently it came out a few years before FFVI. Not saying it's a direct influence, but there's some parallels to be had with that story also very clearly shutting down Joker as being entirely wrong, and it's him that's a stinky loser who couldn't handle a few hard times in his life.
I really wish this was explained better, because what the game is doing is really cool, but I don't think you could guess it from what the screen is showing alone, just because it added numbers.
Basically - in the coming battle, there will be multiple phases. When a character falls in battle and isn't raised before moving on to the next phase, they are instead replaced by the next character in the order of battle. So if we beat Phase 1 with Strago KO, he would disappear and instead a fully healthy Relm would take his place, for instance.
This is a really cool way of selling both 'in the deadly battle ahead characters who are taken out will be gone for good' and 'in this battle, everyone is fighting together, and all your friends have your back.' This is fantastic design.
Everyone's fighting is always a cool final battle system in a party RPG, but yeah there's other games I can think of that pull it off better. Granted, yet again FFVI is a game that's Breaking New Ground as it goes, so a lot of those other RPGs have had decades to iterate on the concept by comparison.
I should have kept a count of how many bosses got trivialized by "ULTIMA BEAAAAAAAAM" in these last few updates. Because it's been... quite a few.
I think the series eventually has lategame/final bosses with mechanics to counteract easy spam like that (some thoughts on FFVIII and X countering summon spam come to mind), but that's a ways away, so I won't say much else there just yet.
Do you know how sometimes, the Joker in DC comics (and assorted cartoon and movie adaptations) has someone completely dead to rights, a gun to their head, and it's someone he would have every reason to kill for his own benefit or out of spite for his antagonist and it would really, really hurt, and he pulls the trigger as someone screams "No!"...
…and all that comes out of the barrel of the gun is a little Joker flag, because to him that's somehow even funnier than actually killing the person he is in position to and has every right to kill?
Gotta love when the big, telegraphed windup attack of some major boss just... isn't all that special. Again, can think of other examples, but won't go into details until we get there.
It's funny, in a way, that Kefka was simultaneously the longest and most elaborate of all final bosses in the series so far, and yet the easiest. But sometimes being easy isn't a bad thing. The spectacle and aesthetic this fight brings to the table is unmatched. It's the most gorgeous battle in all the I-VI series, designed as an epic unto itself, escalating from darkness to the Heaven to fight the angel who usurped God.
And yes, granted, Kefka isn't the hardest of final bosses, but it's still one hell of a boss sequence, especially since we only just got into "I guess bosses can transform or something" with Exdeath.
Of course on the flip side of things, if you had wiped to Kefka... you'd have to go through all this shit again in a game without skippable cutscenes, something I'm sure many a gamer can attest to experiencing in JRPGs over the years.
Edgar and Sabin share one flashback, represented by a two-faced coin, each face representing a different prince. An enormous iron beam comes falling down on the group, and Sabin manages to hold it up long enough for Edgar to work on unlocking the door behind him while Sabin has a meaningful heart-to-heart with him, before casually hefting the tons of steel aside.
Sabin: "It's not like I wanted to dump all that responsibility on you… I knew you'd look out for the kingdom. I wanted to be able to look out for you. That's why I went off to become stronger…"
Edgar and Sabin are still some of my favorite characters in FFVI. Despite the... slight hiccup in Edgar's character at one point, and both him and Sabin being fairly static overall... they're just a fun pair with a surprising amount of depth for characters who don't really develop as people over the course of the story. Also, gotta get that rep of characters in their mid twenties instead of the ever-present Teenager Save The World squadron.
…Locke, of course, hurries and manages to take hold of her before she slips. As she gets up, he yells at for almost getting killed, 'for that'? And then grabs her and hauls her off to the other side of the screen.
The symbolism of 'Celes is holding on to Locke's bandana, the thing she found on the beach which revitalized her hope for the world, because through its proxy she's keeping hold of her hope for the new world,' isn't quite landing for me because it's Locke's bandana and the Actual Real Locke is right there, so while I get it on a symbolic level (Locke is here for her now in truth, not just a memory) it doesn't really make psychological sense to me, but that's not the real issue here -
The real issue is that in this save, we successfully saved Cid. Celes never found a bandana to begin with.
Which is just more evidence that the option to save Cid was added in post as an easter egg and never intended to be the actual canonical events of the game, if we needed any.
Canon misalignment of Cid's survival aside, this is also a strong character moment for Locke because he just saved Celes from exactly what he was too slow to save Rachel from all those years ago - falling down. Presumably with much more fatal consequences if Celes had fallen considering the collapsing tower rather than just some cave he was exploring, but still, I've no doubt there was a moment of absolutely terrified rush at history trying to repeat itself in his mind.
Because they would have fucking died out of nowhere at the end and that would have been real awkward.
Like, when they decided to introduce this final part of the plot, where magic must fade from the world and all the espers disappear, and Terra's choice is to fade away with them or remain as a human, it would have been real fucking awkward if Little Bobby Bahamut over there was told 'oh yeah btw, sorry you're a fully sentient being with free will, agency and emotions but you're gonna get got by the esper-deleting wave now.' So they had to make sure all the espers were already dead in a manner that was morally unobjectionable on our heroes' part and did not involve Terra going over to Cara Carbuncle and going "So… buddy… sorry about that but we think I might make it but you're definitely going to die if we stop Kefka, so… can I ask you to sign a consent form on your heroic sacrifice?"
Like. It wouldn't be very good. And the writers, I think, realized this. And the solution of 'Kefka murders all the espers so the problem never arises' is awkward and clumsy, but I'll give the FFVI writers this:
They do a better fucking job than the Mass Effect 3 ending.
Sometimes there are tropes in fiction that you don't vibe with.
It doesn't matter if it serves a narrative purpose. It doesn't matter if it's thematically consistent. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if it even makes the story better or more coherent or resolves important questions. It's a story conceit that you just don't like, no matter what.
For me that's when the heroes' actions involve bringing about an end to magic, returning the world to mundanity, and giving up all their powers.
I get why it happens most of the time. I get the idea of the transition of the age of legends into our diminished world. I appreciate a good Tolkien as much as anyone and I'm not going to be mad at the elves leaving Middle-Earth.
But when it's this, when it's literally "humans and magic cannot coexist, and so peace can only come at the cost of magic fading from the world, and you, the hero, giving up your own magic so you can have a place in that world"?
I'm never going to like it. No matter how well it fits your story's needs. I won't enjoy it, and I wish you had done otherwise.
Generally? I'd say I'm in agreement with this. I think it can be done well, but... most of the time, it isn't done well and feels as hamfisted as the average "Immortality is actually super awful and forever bad" morals do.
I know we've still got the retrospective bits left, but figured I'd say it now: Thanks for all of this, Omi. It's an absolute joy revisiting a lot of these games, sometimes playing along, and the fact that you're sharing this experience with us all for free is great. Seriously, it's enough time and effort just on my end mass-quoting and responding to these updates, there's obviously at least ten times more on yours organizing the screenshots and typing up your thoughts and doing your best to keep us entertained.
I hate how so many JRPG villains are just so emo they decide to kill everyone. It's. So. Boring. I always kind of thought FF7 invented it, but here it is in FF6.
But. But it's actually sort of interesting? It shows the idea for what it is: a child throwing a tantrum that he isn't getting his way. It's just that, when the child has (inexplicable) phenomenal cosmic powers, it's an enormous problem.
It tends to work best in cases like Kefka where there's not even a shadow of a "oh yeah but what if maybe he has a point?" and it's pretty clearly just a big dumb baby throwing a temper tantrum at the world, personally. Other times, you get this pseudo-waffling about of characters going "oh but what if they have a point" no lmao just beat the genocidial madman into the ground like they deserve, stop listening to the nonsense they spew.
Fun, and actively superior to what it would be if it was made today, in that its just a cinematic conclusion, whereas if it was made today, the escape sequence would be a series of quicktime events
Oh man, just imagine. "Good job beating Kefka, anyways you failed to press circle seventeen times in under a second so now go back to before the final boss save point." Or "whoops didn't hit the right buttons in the Strago part of the escape sequence, guess Relm is a Super Orphan now in the ending!"
Shadow's arc is just so...he was my favorite character from the moment I walked into that South Figaro building and his theme kicked in, I went back and plowed my face into Atma Weapon another several dozen times despite only narrowly managing a win after repeated efforts because going to GameFaQs at the public library informed me I could save Shadow from the Floating Continent and recruit him in the World of Ruin...
And then after all that hope and world saving and trying to redeem himself for being a cold blooded killer who worked for the Empire, he decides to die in Kefka's tower. It's a downer, no two ways about it.
(Really enjoyed the LP, FFVI was my Big Formative RPG and it was great to see @Omicron tackle it)
This one was a fascinating ride. Thank you for your time covering it, once again!
It's interesting, but for all I knew that FFVI was significant, I didn't know almost anything about it. It was a legitimate surprise to see how much it innovates and the amount of stuff it tries to do. In context, as a follow-up to the previous entries in sequence, it feels like such an ambitious game. Narratively, it tackles a breadth of highly dramatic elements and situations with a cast bigger than ever before, but it also seems like a really interesting game in mechanical implementation, and at the same time often weird because of it.
Overall, I ended up feeling pretty warm about the playable cast and certainly wishing many of them had better or more extensive writing, and I also understand now why Kefka is so popular. Celes, parts of Terra, some elements of the other more present playable characters, and the incredible shift to the World of Ruin stand out as high points besides the delivery of the finale itself. I think I can agree that the World of Ruin's breathing room, in a sense, fights against some of the beats in the finale... I wonder if I'd react differently to the mechanical side of that if I were to play it myself.
I didn't know right from left about Final Fantasy VI before, but this LP definitely asserted it for me as something wild and huge.
Fun, and actively superior to what it would be if it was made today, in that its just a cinematic conclusion, whereas if it was made today, the escape sequence would be a series of quicktime events
Are QTEs that much of a thing anymore? Kinda thought they were more the 00s' and 10s' deal.
Anyway, FF6's 'magic goes away' ending is probably why it's never been milked as hard as other FF installments. You can't exactly do a sequel to it as it'd be weird to have a Final Fantasy game without magic, yet introducing a new magic source let alone resurrecting the Espers would just cheapen the ending.
Now you could do a prequel instead, I mean people have been asking for a War of the Magi game ever since FF6 came out really. But that raises its own problems as we already know how the WotM ends, unless maybe you do a Shadow Hearts thing where FF6 only takes place after the bad ending
Are QTEs that much of a thing anymore? Kinda thought they were more the 00s' and 10s' deal.
On another topic, FF6's 'magic goes away' ending is probably why it's never been milked as hard as other FF installments. You can't exactly do a sequel to it as it'd be weird to have a Final Fantasy game without magic, yet introducing a new magic source let alone resurrecting the Espers would just cheapen the ending.
Obviously you could do a prequel instead, I mean people have been asking for a War of the Magi game ever since FF6 came out really. But that raises its own problems, as we already know how the WotM ends, unless maybe you do a Shadow Hearts thing where FF6 only takes place after the bad ending
Obviously you could do a prequel instead, I mean people have been asking for a War of the Magi game ever since FF6 came out really. But that raises its own problems, as we already know how the WotM ends, unless maybe you do a Shadow Hearts thing where FF6 only takes place after the bad ending
Eh, they could always do what is usually done in such prequels, and introduce a wholly new never-before-mentioned villain with a unique evil plan for the sequel, reframing the known events to relate to the efforts to stop them and having the known events be introduced in a twist so the player doesn't realize things are leading up to the known event until it happens (or its shown early in the prequel as is known, and gains more context reframing it later on in the prequel, depending on the story's use of flashbacks in its narrative). The FF7 prequel starring Zack, the Xenoblade 3 DLC, Tales of Berseria... its practically formula.
