Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 140: Final Fantasy VI

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

Jeremy Parish and Bob Mackey convene with Kotaku's Chris Kohler and USgamer boss Kat Bailey once again to discuss in detail the next chapter of Squaresoft's biggest RPG series: The fan-favorite, operatic, apocalyptic RPG masterpiece Final Fantasy VI.

This week in Retronauts. That was the opera, man. It's authentic. I'm Draco. God dang. It's very authentic. Gargling musically. Perfect.

You sound like a super ineest. It's amazing. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm Jeremy Parrish. And we're going to talk about Final Fantasy 6 this week. You may know it as Final Fantasy 3, but your childhood lied to you. So with me here to discuss it is the same group that's been discussing other Final Fantasy games in tremendous depth. It's almost like we're doing this as a series of consistent discussions.

I don't know. It's crazy. So, of course, across for me. Hey, it's Bob Mackey, and I'm a sub of a submariner. A submariner? How does that work? Namor is the Submariner. I'm referring to Kefka's bad insults.

I think he's the son of a submariner. Submariner, got it. Okay. Someone who pilots Submariner. Why is that a bad thing? sure a submariner makes a lot of money. Well, you know, because the castle goes under the sand. I see.

So, yeah, I, maybe it's like, maybe it's like, maybe it's, you know, like some sort of low-paying job. It's like, you're a janitor. You're, the janitor's the seas. This is more about the class system of that world. I think so. The cased system. Yes, also this week.

I'm Mr. Thou. That's my name. That name again is Mr. Thou. Wow. That's awesome. So Siam? Hi, I'm Chris Kohler. Hello, Chris Kohler.

Hello, hi. Features editor at Kotaku and also frequent Final Fantasy podcaster on this year Retronauts. Right on. And finally, rounding out the crew. Hi, I'm Cap Bailey. I'm EIC of U.S. Gamer. I don't think I was on the Final Fantasy 5 podcast. Oh, you weren't. You were on Hotif Fantasy 4, though.

You were busy that day. But I am here, and I am ready to talk about the best Final Fantasy ever made. I am going to have perfect attendance. That's true. True. I have to be here. He has a little gold star next to his name. It's great. So, yes, we have, to date, talked in great depth about Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, and now Final Fantasy 6.

But wait, what about two and three? No. Sorry. Oh, God, no. Well, we've talked a little bit about them. We're going to talk more about Final Fantasy 2, the Japanese 2, in the context of our upcoming saga episode, because that's really where it belongs. It's pretty much just a saga. It is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it was. confused and had the wrong name. But that's okay because the saga games were also confused, and they had the wrong names. They thought they were Final Fantasy, but they weren't. So we'll get to that. In another episode, right now, though, we're talking about Final Fantasy 6. Actually, Final Fantasy 6 was a little confused, and it had the wrong name.

It thought it was Final Fantasy 3, but it wasn't. We all knew better. Which, like, actually we didn't. Even though it was literally only like six years between, you know, the release of Final Fantasy 3 for the Super Nintendo in America and them putting it out as Final Fantasy 6 on the PlayStation, you know, just a few years later, it's still the confusion lasts to this day. It doesn't help that they just put the game. Yeah.

So, yeah, that confusion was just cemented by the Super NES Classic Edition, which releases Final Fantasy 6 as Final Fantasy 3, even though Nintendo has previously published Final Fantasy 6 for Game Boy Advance as Final Fantasy 6 advance. But it's accurate. They don't edit the rocks. They don't want to go back and change the, they don't want to go back and change the title screen. just not helping. I know.

I did a heavy side because whatever you're right about this game, you have to do that little semantic dance and the parenthetical every time and I hate doing that. I want people to know. Do we still need to tell people this? I don't think so. But we are talking about the game specifically, well, because of the progressive game-by-game overviews we've been doing, but also because it did just enter reissue status, you know, re-entered the market in America on the Supranius Classic Edition.

So people are going to be playing it and being like, huh. I thought Final Fantasy 3 was that other game on D.S. This is really weird. Right, right, right. So, I don't know. I'm sure everyone knows at this point. But we're done. If they just keep re-releasing it, yeah.

And, you know, actually they Square, and X just released Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6, among other games on virtual console on the 3DS in Japan. Of course they did. Not in America. Not in America. No, that would be ridiculous. That's silly. Americans don't like Square Nix video games.

Especially not portable Squaringex game. Especially not-loved Final Fantasy games. Let's just say it's possible. It's possible. They might do it again. They might do Final Fantasy, quote, unquote, two. I'm holding out for a virtual console release on Switch at this point. There may be a virtual console on Switch at this point.

I wouldn't like go on a hunger strike or anything. Nope, holding out. Don't break my dreams. I mean, you never know. Nintendo might have announced it by the time this episode comes out. They're so unpredictable. I mean, I never thought that they would bring arcade punch out again. And yet they were like, hey, third-party hamster, why don't you republish our old arcade games?

Yep, yep. Okay. So who freaking knows when Nintendo? They're so unpredictable. Whenever Nintendo doesn't do something, you always think there's a reason. They're not doing it. But sometimes there's just no reason. And like, it's like the arcade punchout.

They're like, oh, yeah, we made this arcad. We should put those out. Yeah. So we put them on 3DS? No, that would make sense. Let's put it on Switch. so we can have tiny, tiny little screens stacked up. Well, if they do Tate mode, they will.

Hamster does that. Hamster's good. Yeah. They'll make it happen. But still, like the video they showed of punch out, like tiny, tiny, two tiny stacked screens. I'm like, what is this? True Pixel mode? Come on, guys.

Oh, well. Anyway, that's not Final Fantasy 6. Need those square pixels. Yeah. I don't know. I'm... ...and... ...a...

...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... So Final Fantasy 6. I'm actually a little intimidated to talk about this game because it's so beloved.

It is, like Kat said, she says it's the best Final Fantasy game. Not everyone agrees, but enough people agree that they have very heated opinions about it, discussions. Enough people don't agree that they are willing to take the other side of those heated discussions. It's kind of has a huge footprint in the nerd mind. It's also a huge game. It's so sprawling. I mean, when it came on... It's almost like two games and one.

When it came out on the Super Nintendo, it really felt like a culmination of everything that had come before in terms of the cast. I mean, it was an ensemble cast. It told so many different stories. It felt like almost an entire anime series crammed into one game. It was like everything you loved about Japanese storytelling video games, and it's like it was all there. Yeah. It was just huge. And so in that regard, yeah, it is actually kind of hard to know where to start.

Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm sure there are better Final Fantasy's objectively in putting in scare quotes. But I am the most into this one because it hit me at the exact right time. I was there on whatever day one was for this game in America. And it kind of blew my mind as to what video games could do and the kind of stories they could tell. And this will stick with me forever. I was obsessed with this game as a kid and I continue to have Final Fantasy Six obsession now. It was my first proper Final Fantasy, actually, so... Yeah, I don't know if there is an objective...

I don't want to get into this, but it's like... I don't believe in that, yes. I don't know if you can pick out a Final Fantasy and say, oh, this is definitely 100% better than FF6, because even if FF6 has its flaws, which it does, I feel like every Final Fantasy game. That's true. Every Final Fantasy game has, like, big holes in it.

Except 13. It was not a... Oh, of course, except for... Well, 132, obviously. being the pinnacle of lightning returns, you can't even touch. Don't even talk smack about lightning returns, dude. We're all fans in this room, I think. But, yeah, like, I think every Final Fantasy game, like, has, you know, issues.

And so it's not, no Final Fantasy game is perfect, and therefore it doesn't have to be perfect to be the best. So I just... But this is the Final Fantasy game about working through everyone's issues. Yeah. There's a subquest for everyone that lets you resolve their personal crisis through... So ambitious. By killing things. It's really convenient.

Right, right, right. I mean, there wasn't really a whole lot of gameplay mechanics to, yeah. I think history is just borne out the opinion that it's really, really good because, I mean, there were a couple of essential 100, best 100 RPG lists that went up recently, and Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger were pretty high up on both of them. Yeah, actually, I mentioned this in, this is the, I'll try to only mention this book one time, but hi, I wrote a book about Final Fantasy 5. It's available now from Boss Fight Books.

And towards the end, I noted that, yeah, IGN and Game Informer, right at the exact same, time, independently of each other, did lists of the best RPGs, 100, the top 100 RPGs of all time. Literally, the articles were titled the same thing. And Final Fantasy 6 was number two on both lists. Yes, it was. But the number one was radically different. It was.

Yes, it certainly was. What were the number ones? Skyrim and Chrono Trigger. Yes. Chrono Trigger. Yeah. Whenever people talk about Final Fantasy 6 and like ranking it, they almost, I know. almost never see people go, oh, this Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy is definitely better

than Final Fantasy 6, but they will say, but I think Chrono Trigger was better than FF6. Like, that is the, that is the pinnacle is where that. I always recommend if you want to start playing the Final Fantasy series, you want a really great game to start off playing if you've never played a Final Fantasy before. You should play Chrono Trigger. Like, it's a really, really fantastic Final Fantasy. That's also Dragon Quest. That's also Dragon Quest.

just doesn't happen to be titled Final Fantasy. Yeah. It's tight. There was a real quality curve to Squares 16-bit output. Like, they started out very good and you ended up with Chrono Trigger. Right. There was also sorts of stuff in Japan only. Like, I don't know if Romance and Saga 3 is any good.

It doesn't matter. This was peak square. Peak, peak, peak, peak square. The games that they were putting out, even stuff that was kind of off to the side, like, front mission. Really, really good. I mean, it's not that they could. do no wrong, but they sure were putting on a lot of all-time classics. They knew the SNES.

They were comfortable with it. And an incredibly rapid succession. I mean, this is still when games took, like, a year to develop. And so, yeah. This hits a sweet spot where the tech and the memory available to 16-bit systems were just big enough for them to go hog wild and give you a game with 14 party members and two alternate versions of the same world to fight through. That's pretty crazy.

but the tech hadn't become so expansive that games became very expensive and convoluted and took a staff of 200 people to complete, as would be the case beginning with Final Fantasy 7. So it's like a great sweet spot between creative ambition and necessary technological restraint. And so those two things come together really well in this game

in a way that complements one another as opposed to working as diametric opposites. You don't see that a lot, but when it happens, you get games like Final Fantasy 6. If I may, I would like to draw a parallel really quickly between Final Fantasy 6 and Dragon Quest 6, which was also kind of the pinnacle of the series on the S&S. I mean, a lot of people would say Dragon Quest 6 is not the best game, but it was certainly one of the most ambitious. It was one of the best looking on that console.

But it was also very much in the classic Dragon Quest mold outside of the addition of, I mean, the return to jobs, I suppose, whereas Final Fantasy 6 really blew up the formula. Like, up to this point, we had kind of followed roughly the same path. You had the crystals and everything. A lot of the story beats were kind of the same and that kind of thing. And then Final Fantasy 6 said, no, totally different world for one thing. We're going full steam punk here. We are introducing kind of a new history.

Crystles are by the wayside. Well, Final Fantasy 5 nukes the crystals. It blows them up. And it's like they took that as an opportunity to sort of say, like, Let's take off that burden. Let's remove that from our shoulders and just go with something different. Let's observe this sort of continuity within the series. It's not crystals anymore.

And it's like there's, you know, Final Fantasy 6 has how many castles, like two? I want to say two. I want to say Figaro and Doma. Yeah. And I think that's it. Yep. Yeah. So it's like they kind of broke out of that.

Because Final Fantasy 5, just like four, was very much like Castle Town, Castle Town. Yeah. And one of the castles is a super like Gundam machine that can transatlany. form and burrow under the sand and travel beneath the ground. Yep. Not your typical castle, really. I want that castle. Final Fantasy 6, I mean, the reason I brought up Dragon Quest 6 was they're both huge.

There were really big games. It's just that Final Fantasy 6 was ambitious in the sense of we're completely redoing the formula. And I think that was the difference between FF6 and DQ Dragon Quest at that time. Yeah. I've, again, in this book that I'm not mentioning anymore, I kind of said, like I think Final Fantasy 5 was like the last of the first gen of Final Fantasy, where they really kind of perfected the original Final Fantasy concept.

And then with FF6, it was like a big sort of break. Sakaguchi stepped down as director and became producer. And it does seem like he really sort of took on less of a hands-on role because Krono Trigger, which I think is going to keep coming up in this podcast, started development. As far as I know, KronoTrigger started development at the same. time as Final Fantasy 6. Sakakuchi was also just really busy in general because there's so many games coming

out. Sure. But he had to start planning a bad movie. Sakaguchi was, yeah. Well, Sakkushi was producing FF6 and Krono Trigger. And so basically he ascended to be supervising two games that were happening simultaneously. So, yeah, a lot of people, I think the standard kind of way of thought is to think of Final Fantasy 7 as the beginning of a new generation of Final Fantasy games. Because technologically, visually, yes.

Sure. Platform. But, yeah, but Final Fantasy 6 really does a lot of the things that Seven also did. It just does it with 16-bit sprites. Yeah, I agree. Like the idea of completely mutable characters who don't have the restraints of the class system. Like, the class system basically goes away once you get Magisite. Yeah.

And so, yeah, all of a sudden you have the ability to turn your characters into anything you want, combat-wise. You can customize their stats if you jigger around Magisite. You can give them any and all spells. You can do crazy game-breaking things with them that was not possible even in Final Fantasy 5. And people say, well, that's not good gameplay. That's not good game design. It's terribly balanced. Okay, but it's cool to be able to figure out the systems and say, you know what, I can actually beat the final boss before he takes a second turn.

Because he gets a free move when the battle starts. And if you cast quick on yourself and then like spam him with that. Ultima and have like the gym box that gives you like double casting and the economizer that turns everything into one magic point cost. Congratulations. You destroy the final boss

before anyone gets another turn in that battle. Right. I think this is definitely... That's not balanced, but who cares? It's so cool. Yeah. Six was definitely a turning point in the series as far as appearance where I feel like there was a decision made where they said these games will look as good as we can possibly make them look. And that was definitely not the case

in four and five. They looked kind of lesser compared to other Super Famicom games of the time, for sure. Yeah, I picked up Final Fantasy 6. It was the first Final Fantasy game that I bought. And I bought it because I was like, Final Fantasy. I don't know if I really want to play this, but there was a commercial on TV. There's a sale at Target. And I really enjoyed Secret of Mana.

And, like, for the first time, I was like, video, you know, RPGs can look good. Secret Amana looks really good. And this is another game that looks really good. So I played it and didn't really expect to fall in love with it. I kind of expected to skim off of it like I had previous Final Fantasy games. Like I beat them, but I didn't really get into them. But this one just pulled me in immediately and I had to see it all the way through. I like skipped social engagements and locked myself in my dorm room and was like, I'm playing this game.

Shut up, leave me alone. And I loved it. And I immediately set about playing it again. I went out about the guidebook so I could like break the systems and figure out what all of Gauss transformations were and so on and so forth. Like, I just, I got really fixated on this game, not like, you know, not an unhealthy obsession. I kind of oversold it there. But it really, really, it just really caught me. And like at that point, I became an RPG fan.

Oh, okay. Really an RPG fan. I think I've told the story on the podcast as well before, but I got a Super Nintendo in 1999 of somebody at work gave me one for free. And I brought it home. And I was like, what should I play on this? Well, I would like a really long game. And I don't normally like these RPG things. but Nintendo Power told me that Final Fantasy 3 is really long and really epic.

And I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll get that. And I do like customizing parties. That could be a lot of fun. So I picked it up from a local Funkoland for $50. And luckily they still had it at a reasonable price too and brought it home. And as you said, it really made me an RPG fan because there are still scenes that obviously are really famous. I kind of did cry when Sid died and Celeste threw herself off the cliff because I was kind of an emo teenager and that kind of thing. It was Final Fantasy 7 that truly solidified that

because that game completely blew me away. But six was where it started for me. Yeah, I'm the same way. I fell in love with RPGs with four because it was the first one my brain could sort of comprehend and understand like, okay, I like RPGs now. And then I bought six for the alarming price of $80 in 1994. And I was like oh, I really love RPGs and this is what got me really into them and really into especially the music. Like this, I

like the music of the older games, but this was the first time I was like, oh, this music is great. I'm going to record this off of my TV with a shitty little like handheld cassette recorder. I spent $40 in 1994 to get the soundtrack. The Kefko's domain soundtrack, yeah. Oh, you got that? I did. Nice. It was a lot of money to spend at that time

on three CDs. But by God, it was worth it. Yeah, by the mid, mid to slightly late 90s, like by 96, 97, I remember my friend passing me some MP2s. They haven't of all files of the Final Fantasy 6 soundtrack, yeah, yep. Yeah, I, um, I, when I played this, I named Tara after a girl that I had a crush on. Nice. Stupid, but whatever. Because the girl that I had a crush on died her hair green, so I was like, cool.

Oh, oh, okay. Yeah. Like Tara's got green hair. Yeah. And then I named everyone else after Star Wars characters, and it worked surprisingly well. Locke was Han Solo. Right. Celis was Leia.

I was like, huh. Hey. Everything kind of works out this way. Umarro was Chewbacca. Right. Yeah. Wicked. I don't know.

At the time, I was in a writer's group, and we were just kind of writing stories together and kind of chaining them together. It wasn't based on any one particular thing. We were just having fun writing. And I named all of the characters after characters from that. except for the main character, Tara, who I named after myself, because that's what I like to do. Yeah. And at the time, I was really happy.

I was like, yay, a girl is a main character, and I can totally name her after myself. Sweet. And then she stops being the main character after like five minutes. She disappears. She faints and it's lock all of a sudden. Yeah. I'm horrified by this. I never changed the character's names of Final Fantasy.

Did you leave them in all caps? No, no. I was going to say, yeah, I took them out of all caps. I only changed the names to get them back to their original intended Japanese These versions such as Cayenne and Tina Mashu as well as Mashu Yeah

I had a similar I did not play I played Final Fantasy 1 back in the day and was like I don't like that Like we got it very cheaply You're like garage sale or something And I was like I don't like this RPGs are dumb

And then Final Fantasy 2 came out And I was like well clearly I'm not going to play this Because I don't like it And then played Secret of Mana And was like Oh this is amazing And then Was it because it was an

action game. Because it was an action game. And then a friend let me a copy of Final Fantasy 4 and I'm like, oh, this actually turns out this actually is good. And so, yeah, for Final Fantasy 3, that Christmas, it was Final Fantasy 3, Donkey Kong Country. I was like, this is the only two things I'm off for Christmas. So I did get them.

One of those turned out to be a great decision. I got them both and I played up to the treetop village in Donkey Kong Country and was like, you know what, I want to play through Final Fantasy 3 again. Come on, man. D.K.C. wasn't that bad. It was fine, but it just didn't grab me, whereas I was like, I've got to go back to that world. I remember one of the things about this game that really, really, like, sticks in my memory was I woke up one Saturday and my roommate was out of town for some reason. So I was just like, you know what, I'm just going to play.

So I started at my save in the floating continent and played for like an hour or so. And then I was going to go out and hang out with my friends. And I got to the end of the world. and I was like legitimately just like I can't believe this just happened like everyone's dead oh my god yeah like it ruined my day I was I was like stunned that it happened and I felt just like crushed that everyone died and then you know there's Celis and she's the only one alive and even her grandpa died oh my god what so yeah like it it's it's weird how these little like goofy super deformed chubby headed sprites can be so gripping but there was just something about the really great natural dialogue, which you didn't see in games that much back then, and the expressiveness of it and just the pacing of everything, just really was an unprecedented experience. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, like Bob, I was like, I did not know video games could do this. And the sprites in this game could act a lot more. They had like five expressions as opposed to two, like raising an arm or lowering their head. They could do quite a few things. They could laugh. They could kneel down. Yeah, I mean, there was a lot going on. Yeah.

I had played plenty of PC games through the 90s, and they all had really good stories and really good graphics. Sure. But I don't know. Like Final Fantasy 6 felt epic in a way that even those games did. And I didn't know that video games could actually be. Yeah. Like, even a King's Quest game, it felt like that took place in the span of like a day, you know. But Final Fantasy 6, you really got this feeling of like this was something that was like going on for years.

in years, especially because of that huge break. The big time gap, yeah. Like, Solace is unconscious for how long? A year. Yeah. So, yeah, things change. It was a pretty brave decision.

And I do want to talk about the end of the world. Maybe it's kind of weird to start a discussion of the game with a discussion of its big midgame plot twist. Yeah, well, it's not even so much that it's the plot twist. Yeah, I mean, the game kind of gave it away because it came with a map that had World of Balance, a world of ruin. Yeah. So I was like something's going to happen. But this is, the fact that it is separated into these two worlds is the sort of fundamental

design element of Final Fantasy 6. Everything flows from that. In my notes, I wrote that you really have to talk about the balance and ruin worlds and the narrative together because it's really like story and game mechanics, world design, matching together. I really feel like Final Fantasy 6 wants to be the culmination of Final Fantasy 4 and 5. And the way it does this is by basically being both games. In the world of balance, it's a very linear game.

You have a party that's pretty much always predetermined until sort of later on when you can pick your party. Your characters can't be customized. Everyone has a fixed skill. Like Terra can transform and use magic. Celest can use magic. But everyone else just uses their class skills. And classes not overtly presented, there's like a description, I think, not even in the English version. Does it, does it, what?

I think, does the Super Nios version actually say what their class is? I don't think it does. Oh, I don't think it does. They took that out for the U.S. version. No, they just introduced them as like, here's this person and they are sad about something. Yeah, but like the menu screen, it gives them the class. Does it, does it give them the class? I think so.

It does in the Game Boy Advance version that's what I'm playing. Yeah, in the GBA version it does, but I don't think in the original game it does. So the class system is there, but it's sort of understatement. So, like, Sabin is a monk. And instead of using, like, you know, Yang's commands, like in Final Fantasy 5, it's a completely different set of commands. He's a streetfighter character. He uses Hadukins and he uses like forward and backward and 360 degree.

Which at that time, like, street, I mean, when they started development in 93, Street Fighter would have been at the absolute height of its popularity in Japan. So they put a Street Fighter character in there. Everybody who's probably playing Street Fighter, yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, so then you have some characters whose classes don't work that well, like the the samurai class really sucks in this. The charge attack, like, you have to, like, bring your party to a standstill so Sion can charge up attacks.

It aren't really that great. Right, yeah, exactly, yeah. Like, the, everyone, like, the only use people find for Sion is to turn him into an imp and give him, like, the impalbert and... Oh, by the way. You turn him into a berserk character? Do you know what the impalbert is called in the Game Boy Advance version? Is it like the anus poker or something? It is.

No, it's called, and this is really, you're going to love this. Because the imp is a Kappa, water demon. Right, right, right. So, yeah, so there's a spear that he can use exclusively, or not exclusively, but it's really powerful when held by an imp. It's the imp halberd, I believe, in the original. And the Game Boy Advance version is called the Impartisan. Oh. That's too clever.

Yeah, too much. It's one of them. Funnily enough, I actually had cyan in my original party when I beat that game because, I mean, I was new to RPGs. everybody else had pretty esoteric abilities. Like, I did not understand Gao at all. I was like, what do I do? Where do I go to do the thing? Yeah.

But whereas with Sayan, I was like, just watch the little meter power up and then he used the attack. I'm like, oh, that makes perfect sense to me. He didn't get Final Fantasy 3, Japan, or Final Fantasy 5. So I didn't understand that Mog is a geomancer slash berser. I didn't understand that. Yeah, yeah. He's like a little bit of everything.

He is. I didn't understand that. Like, I got that Locke was a thief. But, yeah, like, you know, Edgar, he's an engineer. That's not even in the previous games. You don't have to understand that stuff. No, but I didn't get where its roots were. But anyway, all of that becomes irrelevant about a third of the way through the game

when you're introduced to the magic system. Ish. About a third-ish, yeah. Well, no, I mean, it becomes irrelevant-ish. Your skills become, your character-specific skills become much less important. Less important. Terra definitely hers becomes better and better the further you get into the game. But, like, Celis is never.

Like, her skill is never good outside of the one demo battle. I still forget what Runeck even does. It absorbs fire, lightning, and ice magic. I see it. And it turns it into, like, that the amount of MP that it would take to cast the spell. What is her job class? She's a Rune Knight. Okay.

That had never been in the games, though, right? Well, I think it's supposed to be like an inverted... Swordmaster or something? Yeah, I think it's supposed to be like an inverted... Yeah. ...from Final Fantasy 5. That was another ability that definitely... But she's really only good against the tunnel armor and against Kefka.

And after that, the first Kefka fight. The first Kefka fight. Yeah. And after that, it's like, okay, you're just going to use cool magic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, actually, she's just so, I've been playing the game of the Game Boy Advance. And it's really interesting the difference between, like, Teenage Chris and now Chris, which is, and also

Super NES versus Game Boy Advance. Teenage Chris really just wanted to get through that game and beat it so I can beat the game and see the ending. Now Chris is like, whatever, I'll just fight Tyrannosaurs for an hour just to kill some time. This is fun. I don't want this game to end. So, yeah, I'm, like, at the beginning of the world of ruin, and I have, like, maybe half the characters so far, and, like, Edgar's level 50, everybody else is level 45, something, because I just keep, you know, building magic levels. And it got to the point where just today before I came out here, it was, like, Celis learned Blizaga.

And I'm like, oh, like, out of nowhere. Like, you didn't have the, I don't have that Esper yet, but because Celis and Tara was sometimes just learn high-level. magic, I was like, oh, snap, I really should stop leveling. It's probably a bad idea. Right. So, as I was saying, like, the class system becomes pretty moot. There are some characters who still can use it. Edgar's chainsaw. Like, right now is doing 5,000 damage for me for free.

Blue Magic is still fun to use. Gow's crazy attacks are fun to use. Samin's attacks are still pretty good, too. Cat scratch with Gow. Like, you can learn that very early. You can learn that immediately in the belt. So unbound. And it just does 5,000 damage.

That's why it's the game of ruin, the world of ruin, because the game has no balance. But then, yeah, like, shortly after you get Magocyte, everything changes, and the game goes from being this linear story to completely open-ended. And you basically have total control over the flow of the game, the sequence in which you go. You have to do certain things in order. You have to go find Sabin. Oh, I don't think you do. Yeah, I think you do.

Oh, do you? I thought all you had to do is. Meeting Saban is like the kind of point that galvanizes Celis and then she... I'm pretty sure you have to find it. I'm going to jump on the Internet. You just keep talking. Okay. I tried looking this up and I couldn't find it. I looked around like what are the mandatory characters? But I think there's just four mandatory characters.

Sellis, Saban, Edgar helps you navigate the world with his castle. And then you find Setzer who finds another airship even though he had the only one of the world and allows you to navigate the world overhead. And if you have those four characters, you can go on to the end of the game and try to beat the fine. And the only reason you need that many characters, you have to have three characters to beat the final dungeon because it's like a puzzle dungeon and you break into three separate teams. Better hope that you've used all your characters and leveled them up or you're going to have a lot of dead weight. What I'm seeing is that you do not need to get Sabin. That you literally you can just you just go Celeste to Edgar and then to move Figaro and then you can find Setzer and then you can take in because you have to split your party up into three to beat the game. So, one character in each slot, and good to go.

Yeah, the World of Rune articulates itself much more like a Western RPG, and I have to wonder if that alienated Japanese fans of this game. I don't know what the popular. I'm sure it's popular in Japan. Actually, there was this weird sort of apocryphal story about how this game was, you know, not a success in Japan, and I actually talked to Sakaguchi two years ago, and he's like, no, this game was very successful. Oh, yeah, big time.

But I don't know, there was like this weird word of mouth on the internet that people didn't like this game. I don't know where that came from. All kinds of weird stories happen. But I wanted to clarify it with him for sure. Yeah, no. So, yeah, clearly, I think that there was this idea of how do we square this circle? How do we give the player more freedom, you know, to wander around the world and really feel like they're on an adventure that they are determining? But also, you know, have the pleasures of a linear story.

So first half of the game is the traditional linear story dumps you into the world of ruin. And after a little bit, it's like, okay, now you can go fight the end boss if you, want to, but you can also go find your friends. And they signpost it. They do a Breath of the Wild kind of thing where they kind of like subtly tell you where to go next if you want to follow that path because it's like, oh, I heard that, you know. There's like a crazy ninja doing ninja things in a cave. Right, right, right, that sort of thing.

And then after that's all over, then it's like, oh, I hear that Gao is out there on the belt or that's before that. But you know what I mean. And plus there are also the exercise quests. They release the eight dragons and doom gaze is out. There's tons and tons of things. There's an absurd amount to do there. Yeah, you can upgrade espers and...

I'm trying to avoid, like, because I haven't played the world of ruin in a while, and I'm trying to avoid, like, just glancing at a fact every time I get confused because I'm just sort of like, let's just, I'll just fly around and see what's out there and have some fun. Now, the one thing I definitely look at the fact for, because I don't have time for this, was the Coliseum, where I got to the Coliseum, just like, all right. You have to wager something, and if you wager the wrong thing, you just get blown away and lose it. Yeah, you don't lose it. You don't lose it.

You get blown away, you don't lose it. Oh, okay. But it's like, I don't, okay, just tell me what to bet. It's like, oh, okay, bet this and then that and then that and then you get Sellis' best armor. Okay, great, thank you. That's all I want to know. Are we going to talk about how dumb the Coliseum is because it's pretty dumb? It's dumbish.

It's pretty dumb. You have to cheese it a lot. I mean, the fact that you can't control your characters at all. Well, that's the idea, right? I mean, you could just build up. But it doesn't work, though. I mean, the AI is really bad. I feel like they were, they were barring more from Dragon Quest because there are

Coliseum battles in that game, but you're just watching monsters fight. You're not controlling the Monsters for it. They dumped so much stuff into it. There were so many like experimental ideas that being one of them. There's the Coliseum, the auction house, all the stuff that doesn't take place in other Final Fantasy

games, in which they introduce new mechanics and weirdness. And yeah, it's all sort of like half formed and, you know, none of it's really great. It just adds, I think, to the texture of the world. It's more of a textural thing than a gameplay. thing, I think.

Or just the fact that, like, really early on in this game, it splits your party up. And it's like, oh, these three people went three different places. Pick what story you want to follow. I feel like that's cool. That's weird. I think it's really interesting because Takashi Tokita did not work on this game. He worked on Final Fantasy 4 and then moved on to work on Chrono Trigger, I think. But he, you know, I talked to him a long time ago and he said his background was theater.

And that inspired a lot of ideas in four. and you can feel that influence still trickling into this game it really feels like a play and the points where you get to like the stop and someone comes out and actually talks to you and says like where do you go next which story do you follow

how exciting what's going to happen now feels very much like you know like a production of Peter Pan or something it's a very stage show the entire game is sort of themed as if it were an opera and there's an opera scene in it and we should mention this is like obvious trivia but the two main female characters are

basically the broken up name of a famous opera La Celestina. So Celis and Tina, that's where it comes from. But yeah, the operatic theming, I thought this is obvious. I did not know that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but that's where it comes from. And I feel like this very theatrical theme, if you want to call it that, is baked in throughout the game. Yeah, I always thought the character names, at least in English, were supposed to be like diametric opposites. Like, Terra, Earth, and Celis, like the celestial heavens.

I don't know. Okay, that's cool. I didn't realize the opera permeated the game that much. But why don't we talk about the opera? Because it is kind of one of the hallmark moments of RPGs, like the point at which I think... Do you want to kind of jump back? Because the opera is pretty close to the beginning of the game. It is, yeah.

You want to jump back to the beginning of the game and then go from there. Oh, sorry. We could. I mean, we're talking about the opera, so it's fine. We can treat this whole podcast like the world of ruin. Whatever order we were. It seems to be what we're doing. Yeah, okay.

operatime. I want to find you tomorrow. So the opera is that it should be the opera is that it should be the subject of ridicule. It should be just terrible. Everybody should be going out somewhere. Remember the opera scene where they're doing the on the Super Nintendo but instead it's amazing it's one of the the iconic games

moments in games because as we were already saying we hadn't seen anything like it in a game before I mean what game had tried to be like we're doing a full opera the character is singing

and everything and the music is so good that you're going despite the gargling voice samples despite the gargling voice samples you're actually being moved by it yeah it was the most extended an ambitious interactive story scene in a game I'd ever played.

Maybe just in all of gamedom. It's like a 20-minute long scene with all of these different teams splitting up and a cutting between what's happening above the stage, what's happening on the stage. You're fighting the Earth Dragon around here, too, right? That's in the world of ruin, yeah. In the original version of, you know, when you're doing the opera, you're fighting altros, the recurring villain who is like out for revenge because he's angry at your party. So he's like, I'm going to get my revenge.

I'm going to drop a two-ton weight on the lead singer. Sellis is masquerading as Maria because she looks a lot like Maria, the diva of the opera. And so to lure sets her in so they can steal his airship, she's like masquerading as the opera diva. So she learns the opera and you actually have to play it through. No, the funny thing with Ultros is that he comes in halfway through this whole thing and he's like, ha-ha, and I'm going to drop the weight on it. The weights two times and it's so heavy. Yeah, but then nobody reads the letter. He drops the letter

He's like, aha, now you'll have to read this letter and find out my plan, but nobody reads this So nobody knows what he's doing. Also, they're just concerned that Setzer is going to kidnap Maria. And then there's a timer element, like it's a timed event where we have to fight through because Ultros is like, oh, this weight's so heavy.

It's going to take me, I think, three minutes to drop it. So a three-minute timer starts and we have to beat Ultros before the timer drop. It's elegant and as beautiful as a scene is they are not taking themselves that seriously. saying this is a game segment and they're hanging a lantern on that with that timer that's explicitly stated by the villain. It's great. I love that. Ultros breaks the narrative in a great way. The game's really funny and Ultros is a huge part of that. He's a hilarious

character. And by the way, he's also an octopus. He doesn't even know it. He doesn't realize until Realm draws him with her paintability. And then he's like, wait, I'm just an ugly octopus? He's so devastated. It's such a weird thing. Like, there's a, There's so much solemnity in this game, but yeah, they really just, it's, you know, like Osama Tezica, you know, just there's no topic so serious. Like, oh, here's, you know, Jewish friends, a German friend torn apart by the harrowing experience of World War II. Also, here's some comedy pratfalls with a guy with a big nose. And this spirit really kind of comes through. Like, it's okay to mix heavy drama with just absurdity.

And I think the game is stronger for it. works in this format in a way that it wouldn't work in a modern Final Fantasy game because you are controlling little chubby-headed sprites. And so there's only so much realism you can expect out of the game. I would actually argue that a game that did nail it, a game that we're playing through it right now is Final Fantasy 9, which was a hilarious game with many hilarious vignettes and asides. And that was actually not that far away from being a modern Final Fantasy game.

So I would actually argue that you could pull it off. Well, it still had the sort of super deformed style that they've moved away from. Like, the games are too realistic now, two, you know, characters have proper body proportions. So is this a sign that they should go and be a little more stylized in the appearance of their characters? I'd be okay with that, but, I mean, there's going to be like the mobile version of Final Fantasy 15. Does that count? Yes. Okay, there you go.

Yeah, I don't really necessarily see Final Fantasy going back, you know, sliding back to. the way it was in the 16-bit era. No, I don't either. I think Square just has too much invested in, like, pushing the boundaries of graphics and realism and drama. So it just won't happen. But there is definitely something to be mine there. And I think the Tokyo RPG factory is trying to mine that.

It didn't quite work with... Very small budgets. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, those games were made on small budgets in a different circumstance, but still. I don't think it quite worked with I.M. Setsona, but I'm hoping Lost Sphere turns out better, a little more...

a little closer to the spirit of the 16-bitra. What about Octopath Traveler? Is that Tokyo RPG Factory? It's square, though, right? It is square. It is square. It's more like a brandy default group, and it's more like saga. But it's articulating itself through the 16-bit sprites, though.

And not only that, it looks like Final Fantasy 6. It really does, yeah. Like the art style is very similar. I'm playing that tonight so I can talk about it in the saga episode. If you mentioned Ultros, I just thought of Octopat. Oh, nice. I THANGHAMSEN SULLIVANI-HOWSEN THEIRES HEANGHAMS AND WHERE THEIRES THEIRES THEIRES HEANGH OF A WHERE THEIR SAWING OF A WERE. AND ALEAW AND A WANGE OFAWROWS, ALEAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWA.

All right, so we talked about Sakaguchi's role in the game, but we didn't really talk about the other people who were sort of the leads on it. And the two big creative leads as Sakaguchi stepped back were Yoshinori Kitase, who had worked on Final Fantasy 5 as like a story planner. Yeah, it was like, I mean, basically Sakaguchi describes it as he was kind of his co-director, his right-hand man, like they kind of wrote the story together. And then there was Hirouki Ito, who had designed the systems for Final Fantasy

3, 5, I guess 4 also, 3, 4, and 5. He was the creator of the active time battle system, right? Yeah, so this was, you know, the next evolution of that. These two guys taking more of a hands-on role. So I'm sure he was the one responsible

for cool things like Sabin using street fighter attacks and things that didn't quite work like Sayan holding up the battle while he leveled up to attack 8. I forget, in the original release was the first ATB with a with an explicit meter shown to the player

because they've added those in further re-releases. Five had a meter. It did on the original release? Yep. Okay. So we had talked about how Final Fantasy 6 was really the beginning of the next generation of Square. And it's really evident in here

because obviously Katase and company would have a huge role going forward. Also, this is a Final Fantasy in which Nomura starts to rise to prominence because he designs a couple of characters, sets her in Shadow, and oh my God, those characters are so Nomura. Yep, they're very him.

as I said in the notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, originally both of those characters were ideas for Final Fantasy 5, I believe, like for Final Fantasy 5 jobs. Like, oh, a gambler and, oh, a ninja with a dog. And then it was like... Shinobi, sure. No, not so much, but, you know, maybe Final Fantasy 6, yeah.

Yeah, there's a... I forgot about the dog. Like Shadow is Interceptor. Yeah. Is a big part of the game. And also subject to a very annoying bug. Oh, why? What's the Interceptor?

There's a bug where you can lose Interceptor forever. He's a status. He's a status on shadow, like a permanent status. Okay. But there is an ability that lets you like reverse statuses and transfer statuses onto enemies. So you can give shadow or interceptor status to a bad guy and kill it. And that's it. And that's it.

You'll never get interceptor back. Oh, no. It's terrible. Poor interceptment. Wow. Speaking of bugs, I believe one of the stats or at least one of the stats is meaningless in the original release. Evasion. Evasion, yeah.

Doesn't matter at all. There are many bugs in Final Fantasy 6. The most notable one being the X-Zone bug, which is rather famous. X-Zone. Yes. I consider it a feature for beating that annoying cyan dream boss. Yeah, there is that.

Do you want to talk about that one? Yeah, basically you would use vanish on an enemy and then if you use X-Zone, you were guaranteed to hit it and kill it. Even bosses. So, that's how you could roll through the entire game. Do more death works with less regularity, yeah, I believe so, yeah.

Yeah, but there's basically something like enemies aren't supposed to be able to be turned invisible, but if you, some of them, but like there's zero resistance on enemies, and if you give them vanish status, then they lose all resistances. So instant kill attacks, which should be a zero efficiency effectiveness, become 256 or whatever, and you always succeed. So yeah, that's a great way to cheese pretty much anything in the game that you can turn invisible. So we were talking about Shadow and Setzer, and they're actually emblematic of one of the design philosophies behind this game that I didn't know about until I was researching this episode.

And that is that the characters' designs were all handled by different members of the team. So I knew that Katase had designed Celis and done the end-of-the-world thing and the opera. Like, those were his ideas. But what I didn't realize was that everyone on the team, all the team leads, came up with a couple of characters and also came up with scenarios for each of those characters. So the idea was like each character could be the hero. They could be the lead character if you want them to be. And so they were given that sort of like, you know, a background and also some sort of plot resolution.

Some are better than others. Like I don't really care that Strego is angry and sad about a monster he couldn't kill when he was a kid. But on the other hand, Sayan is kind of heartbreaking because his family is killed by Kepka. And so he's haunted by like the memory of them and the fact that he wasn't able to save them for the rest of the game. You know, he ultimately has to resolve that. I think a lot of people would say Sayan's story outside of the world of ruin stuff is one of the most memorable aspects of the entire game because, I mean, first of all, you watch his family get poisoned and die. Yeah, you do. His wife and child are dead.

They die on screen. You see their bodies there. And by the way, Kefka's just having a great old time here. Oh, yeah. And I think we need to talk about Kefka in more detail later. But, yeah, so that's terrible. You watch everybody die instantly. And then the next scene is the Phantom train, which, putting aside the hilarity of Sabin being able to suplex it, which is another very famous moment, you see him waving goodbye to his wife and child on the ghost train, which just blew me away.

When I played this game back in the day, I was just like, whoa, that's heavy. Yeah, and that sequence doesn't end with like a bang. It ends with the train going off. And Sabin and Shadow are like, we just need to let him. have his time. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It just kind of fades out quietly. This is very, very non-bombastic. I mean, that entire scene starts almost as a Disney haunted house kind of thing.

And then it ends on a just a really sad and tragic note. It's full of goofy ghosts for a while. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I also like the fact that there's a translation error because the opera conductor later in the game was renamed Improsario and they used like the same value for the train conductor, so the train is also engineered by, or like, you know,

driven by an impresario as opposed to a conductor. Oh. There's just like little goofy things like that that they didn't quite catch, but, you know, that kind of just makes the game a little more memorable. Right, right, right. Does everybody have a favorite character, just out of curiosity? Mog. Mogg is mine, too.

As useless as I found his dance abilities, he needed to be in my party at all times. And I would draw Mughals all over everything in, like, seventh and eighth grade. I was obsessed with Mogg. I really liked, I really liked Celeste, because in my mind, she has some of the absolute best moments in the entire story. A lot of people think that she's one of the all-time best characters in Final Fantasy. I mean, she starts out as a villain. You don't even know if she's kind of a spy maybe. And in fact, I believe originally she was intended to be a spy, but she was not, ultimately.

And I really like Tara as well. Her story is tragic. But as you said, she fades to the background, and Celeste really steps forward in, the world of ruins. So she is one of my all-time favorite characters for sure. And I think she's awesome. Yeah, I really want to say Edgar because when I played this game, I was like Edgar. I was a nerdy guy who liked, you know, gizmos and computers.

And you harassed women. And I had long blonde hair. But I, yeah, the woman harassment thing, I'm like, I can't really relate to that. I'm not like that. So I guess I think Tara, just in, you know, I can't really separate the character's personalities from their mechanics. So the fact that she's so great in battle when she really gets a hold on her transformation ability, which boosts her power, like that makes her a must-have character

in my party. And yeah, I would always give her like the Atma weapon. There's two Atma weapons in the game. One of them is a monster who's like basically the boss of the floating continent, like the midpoint boss of the game. It apparently is really difficult, but I've never really, like people always. always talk about how hard it is. I beat him on my first try. Yeah, I always just kind of like blasted through him.

But he feels like a final boss. Yeah, he does. He does. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, there's a whole second half of the game. That's the game. That's a head fake. But yeah, go out.

But then there's the second Atma weapon, which you find along the way and it's a sword. And the more health you have, the more, the longer the blade gets, for one thing, changes. So you get like, at the end of the game, you have this, like, gigantic pink blade killing people. But it also becomes stronger. And, you know, as you take damage, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the blade becomes weaker and shorter.

So it's kind of a little cool feature and it kind of behooves you to keep a character boosted. But yeah, like she can still use those attacks when she's in her Esper mode. And so... It's like a pink person with a giant pink blade. Yes. I'm like die with pinkness. It's like Kirby's

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And so. And then, I'm going to be able to my, my, but I'm, and I'm,

and, I'm, you know, and I'm a, So, talk about the esper system and the magocyte system. These are a big

part of the story. You know, instead of having crystals this time, you have you have magical beings, basically summons, who have been turned into crystal, which I guess it's not like the elemental crystal, but you know, they got that little

element in there. You have like they almost look like, I don't know, like pill bugs or something. They're like little metal oval things with a square on them. Yeah. Like, somehow when a magical being dies, it turns into that.

But I guess it's like the story is that they found a way to kill magical beings from another realm and turn them into weapons. They've weaponized it. It's America, the RPG. And this is not the first time that the summoned monsters have been integrated into the story because, of course, they were in Final Fantasy 4. So you travel to their world. This is the first time that they become very important to the story, though.

Even before they were summonable, you still had to go meet up with Bahamut for the rat tail contest in Final Fantasy 1. So, like, that little bit was always there, that thread, and they just wove the entire game. Like, the whole fabric of Final Fantasy 6 once you get the magicite system in place is about maximizing and minimizing and mimaxing. Esper is and Magisite. I don't know if what they're called in Japan, these summon creatures, but I believe Esper is a... They're called summon creatures. Just like literally.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know the actual word, but I think Esper is a woolsyism because there's the ESP thing in there, but have they been recond in me called Idleons? I believe final minute of six advanced, renamed them idylons. I know idylons is what they, no, they don't? Okay. Six advances, espers. Oh, interesting, yeah, because I know...

I'll be horn swoggled. I think nine was the first time I saw Idleon as the official. like from this point on, this is what these things are called. So the main thrust of Final Fantasy 6's Esper system is that you are equipping these espers and you're learning abilities and magic from them. And they're very good in that regard. And you can use that to really break the game in a lot of respects. And in that, it reminds me of Final Fantasy 8 actually, which has a very similar system

where a junction summons to your character and from that point on can set which ability you want to learn, and that is a huge part of breaking that game open. There are no repeated drawn-out animations of summons in this game. In fact, you can only summon an Esper once per battle. So you can't lean on them.

But, you know, a lot of their abilities carry over from Final Fantasy 5, like Golem once again kind of creates a barrier that will block physical damage towards your party for a fixed amount of like the, I think the more, the higher your level, the more hit points it can absorb or something. Certain characters can learn.

certain spells at a faster rate, if I'm... I don't think so. I don't know about that. No, Tara and Celis both learn magic innately because the whole storyline is that they've basically been infused. Well, Celis has been infused with Esper magic, whereas Tara is half Esper. Her parents were an Esper and a human. And so she has the ability to draw on that side, and she's just naturally good at magic,

which it can manifest itself in some pretty cool ways. Like, the game begins with that iconic. scene of the three ride armor so that's Mega Man X, walking into the city of Narshay. And, you know, you have two imperial soldiers, Vixen Wedge, or Biggs in Wedge, if you prefer,

and Tara. And you don't know her name. She's in their thrall. She can't control herself. She's, you know, basically their servant. And they have four abilities, and she has eight, all of which are way better, like more powerful

from her. And things like Tech Missile basically can take out anything except the boss of that area in a single hit. And she has the bioblaster, which if you hit humans with it, it's an instant kill pretty much. So, like, you know, that kind of manifests itself. But otherwise, yeah, I think the characters are just, like, they all learn magic. They learn magic the same way. It's, it's a multiplier. It's when you put the Esper on a character, it says, oh, this Esper will teach this character

cure at a level of X3. Yeah. And so then when you gain one ability point, you get one AP in battle, they get three percentage points. And if you get two, then they get six percentage points. But then some espers teach magic at faster rates than others. So like the first Esper you get that as cure raw, cure two on it, teaches it at a rate of one. So you have to fight, you have to gain at least 100 AP. And so you can do that if you want to grind it out and get that on your characters.

But then later on you get Espers to teach you faster, it's like, okay, well here, you can catch up Yeah, it's like, I think Shiva will teach you Blizzard and Blizzara for like very, very small multipliers. And then later you get Tritok, the Esper that's in the ice in the beginning of the game. Right. And he teaches all three classes of magic, like all three elemental magic types at a much faster rate. Yeah, Maduin, who is Tara's dad, teaches you Fireaw, Blisera and Thunderrah at fairly fast rates. Yeah. And each character has their own, like the two.

the two women have their own, like, innate specialties. Like, Salas is mostly ice, and I think Terra is mostly fire. Oh, okay. So they learn different spells as they level up. But that's just, like, a bonus. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, like you said, a way to accidentally get Blizaga way before you're

supposed to in the game. Right. Basically, yeah. And the Magistite gives you stat bonuses at level up. Yes. And that's where the fuzziness comes in. I never broke the game in this way because I never played it with the intention of breaking it.

I should go back. Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting it all. I forget about. summon magic too. I forget that it's even a thing you can do in battle because it's not like in the list and you have to go in the magic and then scroll all the way up.

You always forget that it exists, but you're right. When you have a ESPR equipped on you, when you level up, some of those ESPRs will give you a stat bonus on level up. And I think I never consider that because I'm more interested in learning the magic and switching

the espers around as much as possible. I'm not devoted to being like, I want to keep this one on this guy for strength and keep an eye on when he's going to level up so I get that strength boost. If you are completely crazy about min-maxing this game and getting the most out of it, there are ways to basically suck all the fun out of it. It's like spreadsheet gaming, but by God, you can do some crazy stuff. Much like Final Fantasy 8.

They want, that's the idea, though, of these, certainly a Final Fantasy game, certainly by this point, it's like they wanted you to be able to beat the game. And if you, it's like, that's why they let you, like, grind for ability points in Final Fantasy 5. And that's why they put things, like this game has, in the advanced version, the growth egg, which is a relic you can equip on a character and then they get double the experience points. So if you need to race somebody to the top, you know. Like they give you, if you're having trouble,

you can go buy the strategy guide and it will tell you like, oh, you're having trouble, well, go do this and then you can raise your levels more. There's always a clever out for a lot of the challenges. I remember, like, the Tower of Mages or whatever, where you can only use magic in battles, but you can equip the Mughal charm and just run up the tower and fight the boss.

You don't need to fight in any battles. It's like, yeah, let's just do that. instead instead of going through all this pain in the ass fighting. Right. Yeah. And there are lots of sort of expert level challenges in the game for people who really want to test themselves. There are the eight dragons, some of which are very, very difficult to defeat.

Yeah, they keep my ass. The prize for getting those is not that great. It's not great. But it's a thing to add into the world of ruin to give you something else. Yeah. So you go back to the opera house and, oh, there's a dragon. Yeah, that was that I felt. When I went back there and saw that, that I felt was kind of like, well, that

That's anticlimactic climax. I mean, literally, it's like, oh, I wonder what's going on at the opera house. So it's like, there's a dragon. Oh, it's the easiest dragon. Yeah. And you're good. That's the one I killed. And it's like, okay.

Like, that was sort of a disappointing part of the game. That's because all the opera people have moved up to the Coliseum. Right, right. You'd hope that something more interesting would happen at the opera house than, like, there's a dragon. But, like, I do like that idea of like the world of ruin, just letting you do whatever you want. And it's like, okay, we've placed eight bosses around the world. Let's see if you could find that. Right.

And on top of that, some of the quests, you know, Most of the quest are optional, and some of them are very difficult. Like the Tower of Mages, like Bob said, if you don't use the Mughal Charm to cheese it and get through there without any battles, it's a really grueling battle. It's a, you know, a grind fest to get to the top. But that's the only way you can get Strego back in your party. Ah, yes. And even if you make it all the way to the...

No, I think you go, you can go to that tower and you can, like, get Strego and then leave. Oh, yeah. I think it's kind of running around in a circle. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. It's the experience egg or something that's up. there, the growth egg, I think. No, I think the, it's either the gem box or the economizer.

Okay, it's one of the, it's something really good. Yes. But even if you make it all the way to the top through grinding battles, very difficult. Or Mughal Charm. Or Mughal Charm, you have to fight the final boss and you have to like use all kinds of tricks to be able to damage him because he casts wall. Yep. And then when he dies, he casts the strongest magic spell in the game and will wipe out

your party. It hits all members. The only way to survive that. is to cast Life 3 on your party, which is a spell unique to this game, I think. I guess it's Arise in other games. I'm not going to say it's unique to this game, but let's say that it's rare, yeah.

Yeah, Arise, which basically casts auto revive on you. Yep, yeah. And otherwise, your party will pretty much be wiped out unless you're extremely high level. So like the first time I got up there and fought my way through and he killed me when I've defeated him, I was like, you giant bastard. But it didn't stop me even playing.

I went back again, fought my way up, and used Life 3. That's this game's equivalent of, you know, Omega and Shinru. It's like, it's a final exam. It's like, did you, okay, have you looked at everything that's available to you? Have you figured out what the solution this puzzle is? I love when the games do that. Yes. When a lot of times when people are people criticize Final Fantasy 6,

they often focus on the Esper system and talk about how broken it is. Is this criticism warranted in your opinion? I think it's pretty broken, but that's okay because you can abuse it or not. Like you have the option. It's within your power to choose how you play the game. And if you feel it's not ethical to, or ethical to, like, cheese the game, then don't. But I think it's interesting that the game doesn't even introduce this to you until like a third of the way through the entire quest. You get really far in using your class system and only two characters having magic, three, I guess, by the time you get Strago.

And then you finally get the skill system. It's kind of like a Dragon Quest 7 thing where you're like, oh, here's the actual system that you're supposed to use now that you've been playing for 10 hours or 12 hours or 20 hours in the case of Dragon Quest 7. It's about 30. I just played through it. Yeah. So 7 is a little, Dragon Quest 7 is a little more drawn out. Bad memories. but you know the idea is kind of similar like it kind of pulls you in and let you get a handle on the base mechanics and then it's like okay now go hog wild and make the party you want

my counterpoint to that would be aside from the fact that it makes all of the characters a little too samey magic is so overpowered that you were just naturally funneled toward using it as much as possible and the ultimate the inevitable end result is that you're spamming ultima to kill everything which is not extremely fun I didn't really noticed that in any of my playthrus, but I guess everyone approaches things differently. I would, you know, kept using Sabin's, crazy, his abilities, his monk abilities, and Tara's sort attack with the ultimate weapon, or the Atma weapon. I would actually be, I guess that's supposed to be ultimate weapon, isn't it? It is. And they changed that for advance. I see what Kat is saying, but I think I would agree more with her, if not for Final Fantasy

7 and 8, which made that even more extreme with every character being the same. Yeah, at least in six, you have those different skills to give them some uniqueness to them. And then nine was like, okay, now we can introduce skills in magic again like in six. But if seven and eight didn't exist in their current form, I would totally agree with Kat. But I feel like the moves they made. It could be so much worse. Yes, yes. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, yes and no, every character is the same.

I mean, yes, you have all these magic spells to use. But, I mean, I guess it depends on, you know, what you're playing and what you're doing. Like, I feel like, you know, I don't feel like Gow was the same character as Realm. I mean, yeah, you can teach them both Ultima if you want to. And then, yeah, then they kind of become interchangeable. Yeah. That's if you've got Ultima and the Gembox and the Economizer on them and you're just casting Ultima every way. Right. But there's only one character who can do that.

So, like, there's only one of those items unless you use some sort of bug to multiply things. And you can steal economizers from the Brachiosaurus. Yeah. But there's only one gem box, though. Yeah, okay. So, yeah. Yeah. And then there's, you know, kind of like weird or 99 unless you do the realm sketch glitch in the,

which is on the S&ES classic, so it's still a thing you can do it. And I hope that it doesn't completely delete your firmware on the Super Nias classic. Wait, what? The realm sketchbug. Okay, so there's a sketch bug. You know, Realm's ability is, she's an artist. That's her class. Pigtomancer, I think, is her talent name.

Yes, yeah. And she paints an enemy. It's basically like, I think the ranger skill in Final Fantasy 5 where you can capture an enemy and then unleash it, but it's instant. So you, like, see an enemy, you draw it, it appears, and it uses some sort of monster magic, monster skill. Okay, but if you use that on an

invisible enemy, bad, bad things happen. Kind of like the good things happen if you use Doom or X-Zone on an invisible enemy, but if you use sketch, she tries to paint something that's not there, and the game goes, the five-by-zero. And yes, basically. And

so that has completely unpredictable effects. No one knows how it effects things, how it works. Yeah. But you can get like 99 of every rare item. It also has your save file. And so basically then when you turn the save, yeah, you could delete your game. Or you could load up your game and you can have 99 of every item in your save file.

Or it could glitch out your character names or something like that. It's a missing no bug for Final Fantasy 6. Right, right. Right. By the way, because we're going to get emails, realm I would say, is more of the Monster Trainer class from Final Fantasy 5, if anything. Okay. Because the Ranger just calls on random animal friends. But the Monster Trainer can.

can control, well, it can capture and then release in another fight which realm can't do. It's more like control in which it forces the enemy to use a thing. I tend to use Ranger and Monster Trainer together because they compliment one another. So they get them confused. Yes. Okay. And Gao is

very, it's sort of like a Gao is like a combination of blue magic and berserker. And berserker and also like monster and also a little bit of monster copying. Yeah. They're both very unique, spicy blends. Gao, I think, is a really interesting character that was, like, too clever by half because it's like, what do you got to do?

Okay, you have to, you have to bring him into this certain area into the game because, of course, because you hear the drums, then you know you're ready. You have to, then he has to leave your party. And it's funny, it's a really clever thing because he's feral. So he goes and he lives among the animals. And then he learns their secrets. And then he comes back to you having learned the secrets. But it's random. Sometimes it happens immediately.

and sometimes you wander around for five minutes, like, where is go? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you have to go encounter an enemy somewhere in the world, and then they'll start showing up in the Velt, which is the only place you could do it, because if you were doing other places, you could permanently lose him. It's like it has to be in this one area, and it's all so complicated. It's a really clever storyline, mix of storyline and gameplay,

but it's like so complex. And it's like, oh, I was able, it's like, oh, people, got to get in Tangier. You got to get in Tangier. Okay, all right, fine. So we've fought Intangir, and then I go to the Velt, and then I wait until Intangir comes up. He comes up. I have Gao learn the thing.

And then Intangir's ability is to kill himself, you know? It's just like, and the Gao dies. And I'm just like, well, that was worth it. I love when Gao comes back from learning from monsters. He introduces himself to you again. Like, hi, it's he. Yeah, it's like he forgot who he was. Don't hurt me.

Yep, yep. Gow, your friend. Yeah, I had a lot of fun playing with Gao. And, you know, the second time I played through the game, and it was like, I'm going to get the most out of this and played with the official strategy guide. But he's a replay character for sure. Yeah. And there is so much randomness to it.

There's actually a system to how character, like, enemies appear on the Veld. But it's very complicated math. Right, right, right. You're not supposed to understand it. It's supposed to appear to be random. Right. Yeah. And that can be really frustrating.

It's really frustrating when you send them off to learn something and then a really good enemy appears. I'm not going to see this guy for another like 12 battle cycle. I know. You got to pick your, you got to pick your back. As I said, get that stray cat so that he can do the move, which is called the Strait Cat strut, I think. And then once you do that, yeah, that's definitely it. And then you're just doing sick physical damage, so it's all you really need. Yeah, and it's like, it's like element neutral, so it hits anything.

It's like the goblin punch, basically, in the Blue Magic. But way better. Super, super, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then, you know, you have. And the stray cat only has two moves. The stray cat has attack an enemy and do the cat. punch, whatever. So you're going to do damage no matter what. Cat scratch. That's it. Cat scratch us.

So, yeah, there's all kinds of like super crazy stuff you can do once you find Gogo because he's a reference to Final Fantasy 5. You like, you find, you know, it can be Gogo and get the Mime class. I think he's just the same person and maybe so. He's not the only reference to

Final Fantasy 5 either because Long Wolf shows up as well. Yes, that's right. And Sigfried, who I don't know who he is, but people thought he was important for a long time. Oh, yeah, but he's not. So yeah, Gogo in Final Fantasy 5 if you beat him by not attacking gives you the mine ability as like the final crystal

or crystal fragment but here you can actually just like go talk to him if you go inside the belly like you let an enemy suck your entire party in which is very counterintuitive but if an enemy devours your entire party then there's a dungeon inside the monster it's like a dune

sandworm that has a cave inside of it and he's hanging out he's like yeah I've just been like hanging around here and it would be cool to go on an adventure so I'll join up with you guys Sure, why not? And he's so versatile. Like, you can do anything with him. Like, you can give him any character's special, unique command, multiple, like, multiple special commands.

They really bury that, though, within the menus. You have to kind of figure out how to give him those commands. It's kind of interesting. But then the thing is, he doesn't, like, you can't control him. He just acts, right? Or no, can you, can you use the special commands? I forget. I haven't gotten home in this play-through, and it's been a while, so I forget.

Yeah. I think you have to go to the, 10 years since I've played this. You have to go to the status. to assign him the different job roles, I think. Yeah, it's really oblique, but, yeah, if you think Magocite's broken, just wait until you get Gogo and start tampering with him and make him the most powerful character in your part of it. But, like, you wouldn't necessarily, I mean, I think when they were developing this game,

it's like they were assuming that a lot of people would not find Gogo or that, you know, they would do it after turning to a strategy guide, yeah. Umarro is, I mean, you have, like, if you want to get mug back, like, you have to go to Narsh, right? So, I mean, there's, you know, you probably see Umarro at some point. There's some references to him. Go-Go, there's no references at all whatsoever. Yeah.

Yeah. Umarro's interesting because he's a berserker, so he can only do one thing, which is attack. Yeah. But sometimes he can, like, pick up other characters and throw them for extra damage. Yeah. But there is one item in the game, one relic, the Blizzard orb that you can get him. What about the bone club? That's a weapon.

Herma equipped on him. You can't take it off. Yeah. Yeah, but the ice or the, whatever it's called, the Blizzard orb, he can equip and it will cause him to randomly cast ice elemental spells, which, you know, that can be handy. But if you're up against an enemy that absorbs ice elements, it's actually really bad because it's a super powerful attack. And basically, you just gave your enemy back all at home. Right. So why would you bring him into that?

Right. But it's a thing you can do. Yeah. Because why not? But yeah, I mean, they just added so much to this. they put so much into this game. Like, any idea they had just went in. Right.

And there are characters who can die forever. Like, you can lose Shadow midway through the game. If you don't stick around until the countdown of the undiscovered continent there. That was me. I lost him permanently. Yeah, I was like, okay, I got to go. Well, it feels like a moral choice. It's like, do we have to wait for this guy?

Because remember, up until this point, Shadow has been a butthole. Like, Shadow has shown absolutely no loyalty to you whatsoever. into your party. He randomly leaves your party, whatever he feels like. I need my money and takes off. Right, exactly. And so then he ends up on the floating continent. He joins in. And he's just like, yeah, I guess I'll hang out with you guys. They leaves again. And it's just like, do I want to wait for him? It's like, what is the point of this? It's like, oh, he will die. He's working with the empire. Like you encounter him again on the floating continent. And he's been like cast aside. He took all my money and they. Yeah. He's like, they beat me up and took my stuff. So you're like, okay, why don't you fight with us? And then he becomes a permanent member of your party. If, He actually, like, kind of self-sacrifices to try to stop the end of the world and it doesn't work out. He does. But you're like, well, I have, you know, 30 seconds to get off this thing and otherwise my party's going to die. And you've already been conditioned to deal with countdown timers by like the, you know, the altruist battle. Yeah.

So you're like, well, this, you know, this was a big cut scene. There was a hard battle before it. I don't want to do this all again. I don't want to risk this. Yeah. So if you don't wait until like three seconds on the countdown, he's gone. I believe you can lose Mogg permanently too. If you don't save him from being murdered by Lone Wolf.

Lone Wolf, you can like... There's like a menu option or something to like step in. Yeah, there's like a choice. And you can either like... And you really have to... Take something from Lone Wolf, like a magistite. It's the gold hairpin. Yeah, okay. And so basically, Lone Wolf and Mug are both hanging over the cliff.

Oh, that was my favorite comic, yeah. Lone Wolf and Mock. So they're both clinging onto the side of the opposite sides of the cliff. And then it's like, oh, he's got this treasure that we've pursued. Oh, but there's. this muggle we can save. And so it's really, you don't even know that Mag is going to become a member of your party at that point.

So, like, it's like, oh, gee, should I, should I save the Mughal or should I get the treasure? So the idea is if you're greedy, you'll take the treasure and you'll have a treasure, but you'll lose Mug forever. That's right. Actually, Mogg is only a permanent party member in the world of ruin, correct? No. Outside of that intro section. No, when you get him, when you save him, he joins your party.

But if you don't save him, he will not join party. Is that in the world of balance or the world of ruin? World balance. Okay. World of balance. I thought it was a bit later than that. Well, no. thing with Mogg is that

his best dance, which is the water dance. The water dance. Right. Only get it by going all the way back with him to the serpent trench and learning it in the serpent trench because in the world of ruin, there is no serpent trench anymore and there is no water area for him to learn that dance in. And the thing is, you don't

you will never go back to the serpent trench for any gameplay reason whatsoever, so you have to like go all the way back. There was that seventh, that eighth slot that bugged me, so I went back. So once you go through it, you have to you actually have to then walk your way back to your airship

which you left at the beginning of the serpent trench, although it's actually not that bad. You should mention a serpent trench and the magic tech factory have two mode seven first person sequences. I believe the magic tech factory sequence is not interactive but the serpent trench one, you decide which way to go. There's like a mind card. I think you can choose.

The serpent trench is interactive. I don't think it's just the graphical effect to show you like you're going really fast. I always try to control it. But you might be thinking of the Mario RPG one, which is the kind of the same. idea, but it's actually interactive. I got stuck this time for a long time in the freaking Magistak factory because there's

at one point you have to, you have to proceed, you have to get on a conveyor belt. Oh, yeah. You, and the conveyor belt is just there. You can't get on it from the north or the south. You can only get on it from the left hand side. But the game doesn't do anything to indicate that that would be the case. So I tried to get on it from the north and I couldn't. And I was like, oh, okay, I guess you just can't get on this.

I'm going to be able to be. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not sure. I'm not. I'm not. And so, I'm going to

be able to I'm a new so. And so I'm and I'm

Yeah, the Serpentrench thing is actually where one of the more interesting glitches in the game can be exploited. There's a way to get General Leo like permanently in your party. Oh, right. by doing some like save exploits. So this is like before there was Revive Areth, there was, how can I make General Leo a member of my party? He's the third of the Imperial Generals. There's Celis, Kefka, and Leo, all of whom have been augmented with magic. And there's a brief period where it's getting close to the end of the world of balance.

And Kefka, like, knocks down your entire party. You're all out for the count. But General Leo steps in and you get to fight Kefka with Leo. And he has a really cool ability called Shock. which is literally just he holds up his sword. It's like the inverse of Runic and emits a shock. And basically Kefka falls before him, but then Kefka like stabs him in the back. So people are like, wait a minute, I can play as him.

And he's really cool. And I want him to be a part of my party forever. So they went to great lengths to figure out how General Leo could be a permanent party member. And people have figured out some glitches that makes the game completely unstable and weird. Oh, no. What you can basically do is, so as soon as you get out of Narsh, right, you save the game right, there, like, as soon as you hit the map screen, as soon as hit the world map, save the game. Then, you play through the world of balance until you get the airship, never saving the game.

Then as soon as you get the airship, I believe that you die. And then the way the game works is that it doesn't boot you to the title screen. No other Final Fantasy does this. That's right. It brings you back to the last place you've saved with all of the experience that you'd actually gained, just no items or anything like that. But you save all your experience. But the airship flag is still turned on when it does that.

Because, of course, they never found this bug because who in their right minds would ever do this? Who in the world? So now you're at the very beginning of the game or right as soon as you hit the world map with an airship. So now you can take that airship around and start totally breaking the game. Leo and your party, you can do all kinds of stuff. If you go to the Let's Play Archive, there is a great archive thread called Let's Break Final Fantasy And it's basically like, how will the game react if I'm here when I'm not supposed to be? And it's really long and really great.

And the game just, like, shits itself all the time. It's great to watch. But it's interesting because you can figure out, in a lot of those cases, why it's reacting that way. It expects a certain character to be there. And then the game has, like, redundancies in backup. So if, like, a certain, oh, well, if a certain character isn't here, we'll put this other character in. And so that's how you get, like, cutscenes with, like, the wrong character and things like that. Yeah.

I mentioned General Leo. Is this the first black character in a Final Fantasy game? Is he black? I'm pretty sure he's black. I don't know. His skin is very dark. His skin is very dark. And he's got a mohawk.

I never read him that way. Interesting. But maybe. I saw him as just like a very tanned dude of the Mohawk. But maybe you're right. I don't know. That would be kind of cool because he's tough. But it does kind of get into like the black guy dies first.

I was thinking that actually. Yeah. There's a lot of good. I'm looking at the art and I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that Biggs and Wedge die first anyway. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, but as party members. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He has a very pronounced lips in Amano's original art. So, yes, unfortunately. I'll take that as word of God. There was a lot of speculation that General Leo was going to be actually a member of your party because apparently if you hack him in, he appears in certain cutscenes, such as in the final sequence where you're confronting Kefka, like he'll pop out and be there with the parties. So people were speculating that. That was part of the original concepts and that they ultimately said, eh, no.

I also need to add that I'm looking at the original sketches for Amano's version of General Leo. one of the pieces of art is of him picking his nose. This is official arts. He's picking his nose with his finger like this. Amano just like draws stuff, like a fire, and sometimes it's really weird. There's one character design he did from this game where there's little like imps around the character. I forget which character that is, maybe Sian. She's like, I'll just start a little imp here for no reason.

Tara was some Amino's favorite character to draw. But she looks like every other woman he draws. Well, apparently. He has said that she is his favorite character and he incorporates her into a Because every single person who Andrew reviews him is always like, what's your favorite character? What's your favorite character? What's your favorite character? Oh, God.

She pops up a lot. I get $20,000 for every drawing. Like, that's my favorite part. I'm and so on the I'm gonnae. And... ...that's...

...theid... ...that... ...you know... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and...

...and... ...and... ...the... ...and... Can we talk about Kepka? Yes. Why don't we kind of wrap this up by talking about Kepka? And we can talk about the final battle, too.

Tell me about Kepka. A lot of people think that Kepka is the best villain in Final Fantasy. Yeah. He is because he's the Joker, which is the best villain in Batman. And maybe one of the best villains in gaming ever. And a lot of this is because he's just not just unrepent and completely evil, but a psychopath, like a maniac. And we had not seen really a villain like that.

I mean, we had seen plenty of pure evil guys, but not in the way that Kafka was pure evil, where he is clearly psychotic. Yeah, a lot of Final Fantasy villains, they seem to... Appear from nowhere? Yeah, well, a lot of the end bosses of Final Fantasy games would, like, I mean, certainly, like, Final Fantasy 4, where it's like the antagonist is Goldbez all the way through,

and then, like, the end boss of the game is this amorphous blob that came from nowhere. But, yeah, he's not chaos. But Kefka is not, yeah, he's not chaos. He's not Xeramus. But Kefka is a side character essentially that you keep, you know, yeah, running into while you think you're fighting the emperor. He's the inchman of the emperor. Yeah.

And then basically it's like, well, that's the, you know, he's the guy who kind of stabs the emperor in the back and, you know, comes around and takes over everything. But, yeah, it's like, imagine if at the end of Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader chucks the emperor down the shaft. and then is like, you know what, this Death Star is pretty cool. I think I'm just going to blow stuff up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine if the Turks were the real villain of Final Fantasy 7 because essentially Emperor Gestal is Rufus from Final Fantasy 7. Yeah, but back to your original point, Kefka, whereas typically Final Fantasy villains,

they sometimes they think they have a better understanding of the world than the heroes, and they're just sort of like, no, this is the way that this is the way of all. all things. This is the way it must be. And you can sort of see where they're coming. They're wrong, but you can kind of see where they're coming from. Whereas Kefka is literally just evil wants to. He just wants to kill everyone.

He just wants to watch the world burn. Yeah, yeah, basically. Yeah, every villain that wants to be. He enjoys torture. Yeah. Every villain that wants to be God wants to recreate the world in some sort of ideal image. He's just like, I want to be God and also just fuck everything up constantly because I'm God.

But the really great thing about Kefka is he's the villain who wins. Yeah, he does. Yeah. So his aim. He wants to destroy the world and rule on high and he totally does it. Yeah, because that's what everybody's always threatening. With his laser. He wipes out entire towns.

He's like, I'm going to wipe out the world. Yeah, exactly. His light of judgment. Kefka does it. That's what makes him interesting. And then you kind of get to this point where you're like, once he rules everything, what happens then? Well, he's kind of got Anwi. He's like, okay, well, I rule.

What's next? I'm just going to be petulant and step on people like ants because of my God. Yep. So, like, what's the end game there? Like, eventually he'll just kill everyone and then what? Right, right, right. Blow up himself, go to another planet? Maybe, maybe.

Well, I mean, it's just. proof that being a psychotic killer is not an end of itself. It'll just burn itself out. But the other thing about Kefko is that he's one of the funniest characters in the game. He has many of the most memorable lines, stuff like you sound like pages from a self-help book. And when he makes the soldiers clean off his boots. He has such comical animations when you see an army of characters marching and he's hopping up and down like going, I mean, he's hilarious.

Yeah, and he's supposed to be funny and he's supposed to be ridiculous and comic release. in the beginning of the game to make it so surprising that he is the end boss of the whole operation too. And I was going to say that, of course, it helps that he has one of the most memorable themes in the entire game, too. The second you hear that he, it's, the second you hear that music, you know that something bad's going to happen, because here comes Kefka. And then you fight him at the end, and that, that comical clown circus music turns into like a three-part, Prague rock, 18-minute sweet. I'm going to be the I'm not going to be. I'm going to

I'm going to I'm going to I'm I'm going to I'm going I'm I'm a bit of

I don't know. So, Yeah, I guess we didn't mention the music at all, really, in this podcast. Which is crazy. It's really good music. That's why I paid $40 for a CD. I think we did mention a lot of this in the Ui Matsu episode. It's just best work.

Yeah, yeah. It's, I feel like other games use light motifs for, just in general, but this one use it on characters for the best emotional effect, attaching different songs to characters for, you know, more emotional moments. Yeah, and this needed it because the game was so character to, because there were so many characters that, yeah, everybody needed their own piece of character music. And when you fight Kefka at the end, the final battle, it just completely blew me away back when I played the game for the first time. Yeah.

Yeah, because, I mean, you are just keep crawling up, right? Right. And of course, the bottom of that sort of Kefka tower, like that in and of itself looks like it is a boss that you are fighting. You're basically, yeah, you're fighting through like the entire works of Hieronymus Bosch. To get to Kefka, who is an angel at the end of his life. Yeah, right, right, right. He's elevated himself, not to a God, but to an angel. It's a pretty great final boss, just because when it first moves upwards and it's like, oh, God, there's more.

How tall does this thing get? What is up here? And then he gets to the top of that statue when you're like, well, this has got to be it. It's the top of the statue. Oh, no. Right. But, yeah, then Kefka descends from the heavens and music changes. It's like a reprise of the title screen music.

Yes. And then he opens the. the battle by reducing everyone's hit point to one. Like that's his opening sortie. So, like, all of a sudden, you're, you've gone through all of this and you're on the brink of death. And then you used to make alexer.

Which at that point, yeah, exactly. At that point, you've got either a megalixir or you've got Kurega or whatever. Sure, but at the same, like, when it happens, it's a heart attack for the first time. You're like, how can I, what am I going to do? Right. But he takes a long time to fire off his second attack.

He gives you the time to heal. But it sure is a, like, kick in the pants. It's not supposed to be an FU. It's supposed to shock you. And you're supposed to be able to bounce back from it without time. But that's a great use of play mechanics to reinforce the fact that, yo, you're fighting God. And also, that title screen music is so profound. Like, that title screen music is so, so catchy from the beginning of, like, what the hell game is this?

It's all the logo is on, it's not, do, do, do, do, do, do, no, it's on, everything's on fire, you know, it's like this. It has that, but then it has, like, this, like, a stereo panning drum. element that's like kind of building up almost like a heartbeat and it's like there's more filtering and echo and reverb

and of course and of course every time you turn the game on you hear that music and so then when you get the final battle you hear it again as Kefka is descending oh it chills

The best song in the game, though, is the ending theme, because it is every song in the game, all in sequence basically, and rearranged, too. The best subway sandwich is just all of the ingredients in one sandwich by? There is no... There is no best subway sandwich. sandwich. Yeah, the, like, the music is great all throughout this game, but that final battle suite is really incredible.

And, you know, the fact that it's completely ripped off, remember something like in Palmer just makes me love it even more. Yeah. But it's, it's so, like, it so matches the battle because it has, just like the battle, it has multiple phases. Yeah. And there's actually, you may have heard this piece of music before because they, I think they used it in Napoleon Dynamite, but there is a, so Final Fantasy.

After Waymatsu came back from Ireland recording Final Fantasy 4 Celtic Moon, he got super into Irish music. And there was a point at which he was like, it's all I'm listening to these days. I'm super into it. Well, in Final Fantasy 6, there's a piece of music called Johnny C. Bad that plays occasionally. And the opening of that... A ragtime theme in the bars, right? Oh, sorry, cafes.

But the verse of that, the first, the A section of that song is identical to a piece of music called Music for a found harmonium that was done by a band called Patrick Street. That was a very, very big Irish traditional band in the early 90s that, I mean, If Waymatsu was going nuts, just buying all the really popular Irish music, had to have heard this. So if you compare the two, Johnny Seabad in Music for a Found Harmonium, they're not just close. It's the same melody. Ooh, so you're accusing him of being a plagiarist. I, Waymantz, there's a lot. This guy had to write, like, 50 songs a year.

Like, there's a lot of music in Final Fantasy games. Yeah, considering the volume, it's three CDs of music. It sounds a lot like other music, yeah. It's three CDs of music that loop after 90 seconds. And I don't think that he did it on purpose. I think that a lot of this stuff was sort of like, I mean, he just has to keep composing melodies. It's going to come from somewhere. And sometimes when you don't have perfect recall or the internet to check for things like that, like you might think you came up with something, but you really didn't.

It happens accidentally. Yeah. I don't think less of him for it. It's an amazing soundtrack. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's a wonderful, wonderful soundtrack. Yeah.

And many pieces of it have been kind of reworked. Like the opera has been given a proper finale because it doesn't actually end because you fight altros and do-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Like there's a kind of comical, big timpony battle theme that doesn't appear anywhere else. And so he's actually like written a finale to it and people have performed to the opera. And it sounds a lot more convincing when real people are singing it as opposed to... That was a big thing that everybody was... After they started doing Final Fantasy concerts, you know, in the early 2000s, it was like, okay, when are they going to do... the opera at one of these concerts.

And they worked it in pretty early on. Yeah. So now if you go to a Final Fantasy concert, they'll probably do the opera. And, you know, like the Black Mages, his heavy metal band that he used to be in, has done all kinds of like battle themes. And they did that sort of thing. Black Mages, when they started dancing mad. Yep.

Yeah, that's right. And it's a great version. Yep. Yeah. So there's not really anything about this game I don't like. Yeah, it has some flaws and some balancing issues. But I like those. It's okay.

They're part of the personality. It's kind of the, I mean, RPGs at that. time, a lot of the appeal of RPGs was that even if you weren't good at video games, you could get through this RPG. So, I mean, you are supposed to be able to just sort of like grind and level up and get through things and consult strategy guides and figure out ways around things. Like, you're supposed breaking it is a part of the game. You're supposed to be able to. The point was that you're enjoying a story because stories run exactly prevalent in video games at that time. And really being so ambitious and trying to give you like two games in one, a linear story and then a nonlinear story. But by giving you that linear story, making the first 20 hours of the game, a linear story in which you're introduced to these characters and meet them all, then when you're thrown into the nonlinear part, you already care about all these characters. These characters' story arcs are already on their way so that you can then wrap all those arcs up in a nonlinear way and gain the characters back in a nonlinear way and still feel like there is structure. The structure is already there.

And that, I think, was the genius of the two worlds is that it gives you this ability to play the world of ruin at your own pace, but not feel like it's like a saga game or it's like completely unstructured and you don't understand what's going on. And getting back to what you said about a game anyone can beat, we mentioned the game over feature where you keep your levels. This is the one time Final Fantasy has intersected with Dragon Quest in that sense. Dragon Quest has always had, like, you lose half your gold, but you keep your experience because eventually with persistence, you will be able to beat the game. You will level up enough that you can win by brute force if you don't understand combat. It's the only time Final Fantasy has done that that I can think of.

Has there been any other than that particular mechanic, yes, I believe so, yeah. But of course, Final Fantasy would intersect much more closely with Dragon Quest. in Chrono Trigger. Indeed. And that's the next deep dive that we'll do. So we'll save that for next time. Yep. But in the meantime, that's Final Fantasy 6.

And it really, and to understand, as I kind of said, like, when you know that Sakkuchi was doing Final Fantasy 6 and KronoTrigor in tandem, it makes sense as to why Final Fantasy 6 was a step back for him and why Final Fantasy 6, the people who worked on Final Fantasy 6 did so and were able to be a little bit more free and to do new and interesting things is because. A lot of the people they worked with were now on Chrono Trigger, and Sakaguchi was overseeing both games. So Final Fantasy 6, we had a ton of reader letters, and we don't have time to read those. So sorry about that, but we will read those in some capacity. I don't know what, but look forward to it because there were a lot of great responses to the call for mailbag info responses, whatever. Yes, I'm very tired. It's been six hours of recording. So thanks everyone for listening.

Thanks, Bob, Kat. and, of course, Bob for being here. Bob got thanked twice. Wow. Did I say Bob instead of Chris? He said Bobcat and Bob. Bobcat, you know. Bobcat Goldthwaite has actually been here.

Like me some Final Fantasy 6. We told you not to talk, Bobcat, Goldthwaite. Chris. We said he could be here and didn't talk. Okay. So, thanks, everyone. This has been a Retronauts podcast at Retronauts.com on iTunes and on the podcast one network. as usual, we are supported by advertisements that you might hear if you're listening to this in the public feed,

but also through Patreon support from cool people who are willing to hand over a few dollars a month to get access to podcasts a week early at a higher bit rate with no ads. It's a pretty good deal, I think. So your support keeps us alive and able to do this podcast. Like literally, it keeps me alive. And Bob, too. It's our way of life. Don't kill us, please. Please.

So you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, at, oh, you. The Retronauts, Patreon, sorry, is at patreon.com slash Retronauts. Hooray. As for myself, you can find me at Retronauts on YouTube. And at you know, Twitter, yes, that place. Twitter as GameSpite. Ooh, I'm done talking now. I'll go next.

Hey, it's Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Talking Simpsons every Wednesday on the Laser Time podcast. Now we go to Talking Simpsons.com or look for Talking Simpsons in your podcast device. Every Wednesday, a brand new episode about an old Simpsons episode. So we're going in chronological order. We also have a Patreon. That's patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

We have so many things to offer you on that. Too much to mention here. I'll mention one thing. We're doing all of the episodes of The Critic with the Talking Simpsons approach. So if you like The Critic, you want to hear us play clips, explain references, and just have a lot of fun. Go to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and support the show. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Chris Kohler.

You can find all the stuff that I'm writing these days at Kotaku. Kotaku.com, which is a website about anime and snacks. I want to really make sure that I, again, formally let everybody know. I did write a book about old school Final Fantasy. It is called Final Fantasy Five. It's mostly about Final Fantasy Five, but not entirely about Final Fantasy Five. It's also about Young Chris and his Kokoro. It is.

Yes, indeed. And, yeah, so it's available. It's from Boss Fight Books. It's on Amazon. It's on BossFitebooks.com. And it's like only $5 for the e-book if you want to just, you know, if you don't want to buy in too much. but if you want it in a handsome paperback format with cover design by Corey Schmitz

who also did the logo for the Shadow of the Colossus remake. I know, yeah. You can buy it and learn more about Final Fantasy. And I'm Kat Bailey. You can find me at my site, usgamer.net, which we have a lot of good stuff for retro fans who might be listening to this podcast. We also have a couple podcasts,

one is a US Gamer podcast. And you should also check out Acts of the Blog if you're enjoying this Final Fantasy 6D. dive. We are currently in the midst of a Final Fantasy 9 deep dive in which each episode, we are basically progressing through the game and talking about it with each episode. So you should join us for that. And that wraps it up for this episode of Retronauts. You can of course play Final Fantasy 3 on the Super NES Classic Edition. If you can find it, who knows. In the meantime, we'll be back in a week with another podcast and on some random Friday alternating Fridays with a micropodcast. So be

excited about that. Thank you. The Mueller Report. I'm Edonohue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to bill the board. border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among

the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.