Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club.

We are lucky enough to have a special guest today who will be joining us after we chat about this final play session of Final Fantasy 6 covering the entrance to Kefka’s tower until the end credits.

Mavroid is an admin of the JRPG Book Club Discord Server. So we are looking forward to chatting about this masterpiece entry in the Final Fantasy series. So stick around for that as I’m sure we’ll be learning some interesting details we didn’t know or uncover while we played.

So Alex, let’s chat. FF7 reminder we do go into spoilers in this episode about this final section of gameplay in the last dungeon, the ending and the game as a whole. So if you want to avoid all of that, start at a previous episode, play along and come back to this one once you’re caught up.

Now the entirety of this play session was literally just working our way through Kefka’s Tower until beating the game and reaching the end credits.

In case you haven’t started Kefka’s Tower yet, or have started but not finished the game, you can either backtrack to where you dropped in from the Falcon and leave, or just teleport out and do a number of things that we did not find, know about or go in our playthrough of the Open and courtesy of Fender on Discord who gave us some tips. Here are some of the things I’m most intrigued about and if anyone already did or goes back to do them, we’re excited to hear more details about these specific moments. Some of them are also just neat small details that add extra depth to the world and lore that square built here. First of all, the Ultima Sword that you can pick up by beating Ultima Weapon at the end of the world of Balance scales based on the given character’s hp.

Mm, which also changes how the sword physically looks in the battle. So it can be this massive super long sword at high HP and a little dagger at low hp.

The Mog Dances are so Mog special ability are a hundred percent guarantee of not stumbling if you use one that matches the environment that you’re in.

So in the open world, Wind Dance will never stumble, for example.

I wish I knew this so long ago because I saw Mog stumble all over the place. He’s like the klutziest, clumsiest little teddy bear with devil wings and a tail that I’ve ever seen.

[00:02:21] Speaker B: Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:02:26] Speaker A: Umaro has two relics that only he can Equip that give him buffs and unlock unique moves. There’s the Rage Ring, which I used quite a bit of, which allows you to pick up and throw a character. And there’s the Blizzard Orb, which you brought up last time, Alex.

What did that do again for me when I.

[00:02:45] Speaker B: Well, I’m not 100, I think the definition, or something along the lines of like, oh, put it on the yeti and see what happens.

And for me, I don’t know, I put it on and then like, usually to start, he always starts with a snowstorm that hits if it’s multiple enemies, hits every enemy.

[00:03:01] Speaker A: That sounds like a Blizzard orb doing its work.

[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:06] Speaker A: So, yeah, okay. I don’t think I found that one, but I did use the Rage Ring when I was using Umaro. There’s something else that, besides what we talked about that you can do in the ancient castle related to the Odin Esper that we didn’t find. Very cryptic hint here, Fender, but I dig it. And, you know, now that I’ve finished the game anyway, I might just go back there just to discover what. What you’re talking about.

Also, in the same ancient castle, there’s a very strong relic called the Master scroll, or I guess it was called the Offering in the original version in a chest there. I did actually find this when I went through there last week, but after you mentioned it, I finally actually equipped it on lock with the Ultima Sword and his knife. So I saw the extended Ultima Sword at full health along with the knife, and it was plenty of fun to use that weapon. So highly, highly suggest using that.

[00:03:55] Speaker B: Nice.

[00:03:56] Speaker A: Alex, you and I both complained all over the place about Rexsoul and how difficult he was. Yes, but supposedly he was pretty cheesable in most iterations of the game, including the one that I was playing on the Super Nintendo Classic. But the Pixel Remaster fixed it so you wouldn’t have been able to use this cheese. Either way, by using. I guess it’s the Banish spell, I could have, but didn’t know it existed, so I just kind of did it the other way.

[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I did it the. Yeah, I think I just stated the long way.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: The long way, which took a while.

With lock, you can access new things in Narshe. This must be the Ragnarok Magicite. Or the Ragnarok Sword. I also found this in the weapon shop after talking to the shopkeeper in that vac room. I chose the Ragnarok Magicite because, you know, the Ultima Magic Spell is so Powerful in other final fantasies. And it is here too. And I’m so glad that I chose this one.

[00:05:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, same. I chose the Magicite as well.

And yeah, it was definitely more powerful and more helpful.

[00:05:09] Speaker A: Another tip here is that wagering some items in the Coliseum can give you very strong and unique stuff. It is optional, though. We did know this and decided not to bother. Just in this playthrough. I’m sure if we come back to it, we’ll spend more time there.

[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn’t. Didn’t do too much of that. Didn’t. Yeah, didn’t want to spend that much time trying to figure all that out.

[00:05:30] Speaker A: Right, Right. Yeah. And a guide’s cool and all, but I, you know, I guess I’m using a guide. I want it to be in paper if it’s a game this old. There’s a quick side item in the Opera house that’s not story related. I did not know about this and did not go for it. So no clue what’s being talked about here.

I don’t know if you went there, Alex. There’s also.

[00:05:49] Speaker B: Sorry, you said the opera House.

[00:05:51] Speaker A: The Opera house.

[00:05:54] Speaker C: Did I go there?

[00:05:57] Speaker B: I feel like I went there, but I couldn’t do anything.

So it makes me think I might not have the right party member. I don’t know. I think I remember walking into it and there was a guy, like just standing.

Oh, no, I did. I walked into it.

The Opera house. And what did he say? The guy said, oh, look, for. I forgot who. The guy who owns the opera house said he needs help. But then I like, talked to him and it didn’t do much. So I think I ended up walking out.

[00:06:29] Speaker A: Hmm.

[00:06:32] Speaker B: Maybe it was supposed to do something. But again, I may not have the right people in the party.

[00:06:36] Speaker A: You know, there’s a lot you could miss here by just by going to a place without the right party members. So you could, in theory go with any combination of team and just not include the one person that needs to be there and never find something.

[00:06:51] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:06:52] Speaker A: You know.

[00:06:52] Speaker B: Oh, never mind. I remember what it was. You speak to the owner of the opera house.

[00:06:56] Speaker A: Impresario. Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:58] Speaker B: Of the opera house. And he says, oh, I have a dragon guarding it. I need you or whatever inside the opera house. I need you to take it out.

But I couldn’t get inside. So, like, I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

[00:07:14] Speaker A: No. You know, now that you mentioned that, I did fight the dragon there, but I don’t know about any side item.

[00:07:23] Speaker B: Any. I don’t know or maybe I do,

[00:07:25] Speaker A: and it just wasn’t. Wasn’t remarkable enough to remember anyway.

[00:07:29] Speaker B: I don’t know. But I couldn’t get in for the dragon, so I was like, whatever. I walked out.

[00:07:34] Speaker A: I don’t recall how I got there. Well, Discord, let us know. Fender, let us know. I want to hear what this side item is in the Opera house.

There’s also some extra story. Content with Shadow if you rest in beds throughout the world.

I did not do that at all. In the world of ruin with Shadow. I’m very curious now what it is. I’m tempted to just look it up, but I’m going to wait for someone to tell us.

[00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I did about half of. I don’t even know if I did half of it. I may have done a quarter. I rested, like, two or three times with him, but this is not on purpose. But I was just grinding characters, and I just rested to heal my whole party.

And so I had Shadow in it.

And I saw.

[00:08:15] Speaker A: You didn’t get any extra scenes.

[00:08:17] Speaker B: There were a few extra scenes. It was. But again, I don’t know how much I got, like. I don’t think I only saw, like, two or three extra scenes where it’s like, him. He has a partner. His name’s not Shadow.

I forgot his name now. It really was. They’re just talking about what they’ve done. They’re like train robbers or heist. Yeah, train robbers and the big score and all that. But then for me, that was really about it. I didn’t. I didn’t get too much. I haven’t gone and rested. So I’m sure there’s a good amount more to the story. Cause I’m pretty sure it’s how he

[00:08:51] Speaker A: becomes Shadow in the first place.

[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s. Oh, that’s what. Yeah, because it’s. They did, like, a big train robbery. And then his partner gets hurt really badly.

[00:09:00] Speaker A: Something always goes wrong in your one big last heist that you can retire on every single time.

[00:09:07] Speaker B: And his partner asks him. That was my. That was my. The last stream I watched was his partner asked him, like, oh, kill me. Kill me. And Shadow, or I forgot what his real name was, just walks away and doesn’t.

So.

And that was where I got. So I was like, I don’t know what happens after that. So whoever in Discord knows what happens after that. Please let us know.

[00:09:26] Speaker A: There’s most definitely more to the story here.

[00:09:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there’s definitely more.

[00:09:31] Speaker A: All right.

All right.

Thanks again, Fender. There’s a lot to Uncover here and keep digging.

[00:09:37] Speaker B: Yeah, there’s a lot.

[00:09:40] Speaker A: So anyway, as we hover above the tower, preparing to land on the roof of Kefka’s tower here, our party has a chat. And since Kefka controls the warring Triad, we’re talking about, if we kill them, we may eliminate the existence of magic from the world completely.

Celes seemed worried, but to be honest, it seems significantly better than the current state of things if you look at it from our perspective, where everything is shattered. So why the hell not? Well, they tell you why it might also kill Terra because she’s a half esper, or make her disappear or any number of other bad things. I’m sure the way Terra’s story’s gone, she would absolutely sacrifice herself for the better of the world and her gaggle of orphaned kids if she knew it was a guarantee, you know? But she goes along with it, and everyone kind of just. Just has to go for it. Yeah.

And then right off the bat, we have to form three parties of four or maximum four. So up to 12 of our team joined the battle. Which means if you found everyone possible, two unlucky members were left behind.

Who were those two for?

[00:10:50] Speaker C: You?

[00:10:51] Speaker B: Those two for me were very easy to pick. It was Setzer and.

Oh, my gosh. Rim. Why am I thinking Relm Realm.

[00:11:00] Speaker A: Thank you.

[00:11:00] Speaker B: I’m saying Rim.

[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yes, Relm, Strago’s granddaughter. Yeah.

[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yes, Strago’s granddaughter. Setzer and Relm were left behind for me.

I said no to them.

[00:11:10] Speaker A: Okay, so I’m going to disappoint you here, because for me, it was Cyan and Umaro.

I know I’m betraying your Cyan. I know you love Cyan for many reasons.

[00:11:20] Speaker B: Flurry attack and is, like, so good.

[00:11:24] Speaker A: I. You know, I. So I just couldn’t justify using them. I quite enjoy Umaro as a concept and a character, but the lack of control turned me off using him beyond, like, my first couple attempts. And while I really enjoyed Saiyan as a character in addition to the story, I enjoyed him gameplay wise at the beginning. You know, early on, I really enjoyed using his Bushido moves, but I didn’t find him all that useful later, so we got benched.

[00:11:51] Speaker C: Okay.

[00:11:53] Speaker A: Or I just had more enjoyment out of the rest.

[00:11:55] Speaker C: I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.

[00:11:57] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe. I mean, I’ll probably try both of them out if I replay this.

[00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Umaro is fun. Yes. You can’t control him, but with the snowstorm and his slam. His slam does a ton of Damage.

[00:12:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I might have. He throws in there if I had the blizzard orb.

[00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Made a difference.

[00:12:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just throwing my characters around was funny. Funny to see, but not helpful in the way, you know, not helpful enough to oust one of the other people. Do you. I wrote this down because I knew we wanted to talk about it. Who were your three parties entering the tower?

[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so my three parties entering the tower.

So the first party was.

Oh, you know what? Actually, I’m just gonna say. So I’ll redo.

I’m gonna give you. I don’t remember originally what they were, because I’ll say now. I switched it up because I got stuck at a part.

[00:12:54] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:12:55] Speaker B: Because one of my parties. One of my three of my parties was Gao, Umaru, Mog and Setzer.

And having two people who you couldn’t control

[00:13:08] Speaker A: screwed me, basically, potentially up to three.

If you use a dance on Mog, then you can’t control him either.

[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was.

[00:13:16] Speaker A: Okay, well. Yeah, there you go. That’s a good reason to switch it out.

[00:13:19] Speaker B: So I got stuck on one of the bosses that that party had to go and fight. I think it was.

I forgot Inferno. I believe his name was Inferno. Yeah, I got stuck on Inferno. I did it 7, 8, 9, or like 10 times, and I just couldn’t. I tried different ways with them, and I was like, I can’t do it.

So luckily, I took a teleport stone out and was able to jump back in and reform the parties. So I changed it up.

So I’ll go. So then basically, it sort of started. Me. Yes. I had beat.

Most of my parties stayed the same. I just swapped a couple characters around. Like two characters, I think, around.

[00:13:58] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:13:58] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:13:58] Speaker A: So do you. Do you remember your three parties when you were in your final batch there?

[00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah, final batch. So my three parties were Party one, which this was also Party one for the party one that takes on Ultima Buster. No, it’s Party B. Right.

[00:14:18] Speaker A: I think it’s B. Yeah. I think B takes on the first

[00:14:22] Speaker B: boss in the tower. So that party, I think, was the only difference in that party was I had Shadow in that party, is what I had swapped.

But my final to go through the whole thing through all the rest of the bosses except for the first one was Party A was Terra, Edgar, Cyan and Ghogo.

[00:14:48] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:14:48] Speaker B: And then Party B was Celes, Locke, Sabin and Gaunt.

And then Party three was Shadow, Mog, Setzer and Umaro.

[00:15:03] Speaker A: Okay. All right, all right. Okay. I kind of see what you’re doing with that. I was at this point, I mean for the last handful of hours, even before this, I was in any time I had a party together, I was trying to semi balance between a magic user physical attacks and then oddball movesets.

And I quite enjoyed its strategy overall as well as having kind of pretty good success and minimal setbacks, fortunately using these. So. So my three parties were. Number one was Lock, Sabin, Strago and Realm. Party two was Terra, Edgar, Shadow and Gao.

And party three was Celest, Setzer, Mog and Gogo.

So I had like my, I had my, my primary magic user I guess in party one is Strago and Realm, the family. There was a double headed magic attack and then yeah, a bit of physical, a bit of like the weird moves and I. I don’t know, it served me well. Side note, did you notice how whenever we skydive in this game without a parachute, mind you, off of the Falcon, it is always over the edge and dangerously close to the propellers.

[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:16:10] Speaker A: Seems like a bad idea.

[00:16:12] Speaker B: It does.

[00:16:13] Speaker A: Again, this is a fantasy game, so I suppose it’s not that big of a deal. But anyway, the tower itself has some strange architecture on the outside, especially on that roof there. It seemed really kind of oddly Giger esque with those red meaty looking floors. Like I felt like something out of Alien was going to show up or Predator maybe.

[00:16:32] Speaker B: I suppose I could see. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah.

[00:16:36] Speaker A: But then, you know, the tower, structurally, both in terms of its architecture and the interior design was like a big old mishmash of a bunch of the different areas we’ve been through throughout the game. Sort of those meaty areas. There was like something that kind of looked like the Vector Factory in some parts. And there was, you know, even the esper tubes and all those kind of things.

So Kefka was just pulling from his memories of everything that he’s been through.

Once we started storming the tower, I found myself just kind of taking it all in, knowing that this was really just countdown ticker to the end, embracing it and taking it in. Until the gauntlet of bosses and the bit of a difficulty spike started kicking in. That is because there were tons of bosses to deal with, both optional and not. I didn’t count the total number. Do you have any idea?

[00:17:27] Speaker B: No, I don’t, I don’t think so. I don’t know which ones are optional.

[00:17:34] Speaker A: So one of the dragons is in a jail cell. You don’t fight? Oh yeah, I didn’t fight them.

[00:17:38] Speaker B: Okay. Did not fight. Yep. That’s right. Did not fight them.

[00:17:41] Speaker A: There was another one somewhere that I don’t remember which one. I think it was just two of them were optional.

[00:17:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, there were two dragons. Yeah, there was. Yeah, there were a couple dragons. I didn’t fight either dragon.

I skipped on those. Yeah.

I was like, I don’t need to fight them.

[00:17:59] Speaker A: Were there, you know, among this long list of bosses, were there any standouts that you loved or hated here?

[00:18:07] Speaker B: Well, I hated Inferno originally, until I changed my party and then I was able to beat him after. It still took me like two or three goes, but I was able to beat him with the Shadow Mog Setzer Umaru Dynamic. Especially with Shadow using the Fumiken.

[00:18:23] Speaker A: Was it the Fukushima Fuma Shuriken. Fuma Shuriken. Awesome.

I realized I had enough money that before I came in here, I went and bought 99 of them.

[00:18:32] Speaker B: Yep. I stocked up a lot of stuff into just 99.

Almost as Max as I could go, just in case.

[00:18:41] Speaker A: I thought that. So you mentioned Ultima Buster. He’s just the Pokemon Evolution of Ultima Weapon from the Floating Continent. And he’s even scarier looking with. You can see there are gears in its back. If you look really closely, there’s gears in its back. And I think in another part, instead of the muscle that’s supposed to be there. So that was kind of a eerie, cool thing to see, you know, once he started charging his ultimate attack, though, I’m really glad I was able to just focus him down and do enough damage to take him out first because I did not want to get hit by that same.

[00:19:13] Speaker B: That was me. That’s why. For. Yeah, because that was set the. Yeah, that’s the B party. Right. So for me, that was Celes Lock, Saban and Gal. With Saban, I was using. I think Phantom Rush.

Is it right on him.

Gal. I was using whatever he was weak to. Was it. I might have been using Cloud or I might have used something else that did Thundaro. Whatever. Some attack to him. And then.

[00:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I was using. Did I have. Did I. Did I have Gao in that party? I did have Gao in that party. I. I think I mentioned last time because I was like kind of grinding the felt trying to get this rage from an enemy called IO. So I was using that against Ultima Buster and it uses an attack called Flare Star, which just lights up the screen and completely wrecks them.

So I was using that. That was fun.

[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:20:08] Speaker A: There are some damn good items and equipment available here.

In this tower, especially armors. So, like the. I don’t know if you found the chest with the Minerva bustier, which I

[00:20:20] Speaker B: think it’s super good.

[00:20:21] Speaker A: I put it on Terra.

[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I put it on one of them. Terra or. Yeah, one of them. I put it on.

[00:20:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Solid piece of armor right there. Yeah. It’s always nice to find like the ultimate version of an armor or a weapon. Can’t just can’t beat that.

[00:20:35] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:20:37] Speaker A: And yeah, I think also as I mentioned, I found at this point, because I think last time I said I had found five dragons and I hadn’t seen the other three, but I found my sixth dragon here.

[00:20:48] Speaker C: Oh.

[00:20:49] Speaker A: Still funny to me how some of these dragons are called dragons and their pixel sprites look like dragons, but then you fight them and their combat art looks like a dinosaur.

Reuse assets all you want. That makes a lot of sense from a development perspective, actually.

[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re right. I did fight the gold dragon because the gold dragon looks like a dinosaur.

[00:21:08] Speaker A: It looks like the brachiosaur that you can find in the dinosaur forest.

[00:21:12] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:21:13] Speaker A: Just really nice and shiny and gold.

[00:21:15] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:21:17] Speaker A: But. So that was my sixth dragon. And then I found another dragon there, as you mentioned, with my second group of party members, which was group three, which is the skull dragon, who looks like some of the skull dragons you see elsewhere. But you can’t beat it with. With a quick, easy holy water or Phoenix down like you can with those ones. But I still managed to beat it easily enough. And after I killed that, it said one dragon left.

And since I didn’t run it into any other dragons here in the tower or anywhere outside, I assume that last dragon lives in the cultist tower.

[00:21:48] Speaker B: Oh, it might. I don’t. Yeah.

[00:21:50] Speaker A: So it would make sense as kind of like a challenge within a challenge dungeon.

You know, thanks, but no thanks. And I, from that point, you know, moved on to my final group of explorers here. Were there any other.

Other bosses within sort of the pre Kafka area that.

That stood out to you?

[00:22:17] Speaker B: Don’t think so. There was the last one. I mean, it was really just like three main bosses.

Right before. The last one being. Yeah. Was it Guardian?

I think was the final one.

[00:22:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So the Warring Triads. You mean

[00:22:35] Speaker B: he.

[00:22:36] Speaker A: So you know how. You know how? Yeah, there’s the final. There’s each party member, each party group has a final boss before they all meet back up together.

Is that what you’re talking about?

[00:22:47] Speaker B: No, there was one before that. Like, that’s then like fiend. Demon and Scarlet, wasn’t it?

[00:22:52] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, yeah, it was.

[00:22:53] Speaker B: Wasn’t Guardian before that? Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe.

[00:22:55] Speaker A: No, Yeah, I think. No, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Was Guardian like a robot?

[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it was like a. Oh, yeah,

[00:23:02] Speaker A: it was like a match. Attack on wheels, I think.

[00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah, I actually took it. It wasn’t too difficult. I mean, it did some damage. Not as much. There was a. It had one attack that did a lot, but not too much. That actually might have been. You know, now I think about it, I think he was at the part where you get all the parties to that little final walkway.

[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:23:22] Speaker B: And then you fight him.

The first per. The first party has to fight. Whoever you put in the middle fights him. And then there’s three more after that.

[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, okay.

[00:23:34] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:23:34] Speaker A: And then that’s the final piece before.

[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, and then it goes to the final. Final piece. Yeah. There were a lot of bosses, so

[00:23:41] Speaker A: the warring triads that Kefka used to gain his sort of godliness are the three statues that we fight as the last bosses, you know, And I was kind of like kicking myself afterwards because I guess I wasn’t expecting to actually fight the warring triads for some reason. In hindsight, the characters talked about it and destroying them, but I thought, like, okay, they’re statues. You could just destroy a statue, drop it from a high place, have it shatter. It’s gone. But no, we’re actually fighting them. So I guess it was inevitable to have to fight them to get past them to get to Kefka in the first place. And once you beat the lot of them, everyone is left wondering why magic isn’t disappearing yet. As they all theorized. It seems kind of like Kefka must have absorbed so much from them that he then became the new source of magic’s existence. Yeah, I guess that’s possible when you turn yourself into a God.

[00:24:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[00:24:36] Speaker A: But those. Those bosses are.

[00:24:38] Speaker C: Are.

[00:24:38] Speaker A: They were fun, you know, they were really, like, well drawn artistically, you know, pretty varied in terms of their designs. And, you know, they weren’t terribly tough, surprisingly. Yeah, they weren’t totally tough. May just be, you know, over leveled at that point.

[00:24:52] Speaker B: I remember the demon looked insane.

[00:24:55] Speaker A: It looked. Yeah, that looked really good. But. Yeah. So you finally push past all of those guys, and then once you get to Kefka, he just laser beams half the world in front of you twice.

[00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:09] Speaker A: And then laughs in the team’s face when they all give their very valid reasons for fighting for hope. And he calls their attempts at happiness pathetic. He even calls into question the point of caring about living when all you’re going to. All of you are going to die eventually anyway.

Which is kind of even like this meta almost fourth wall breaking question to the player. But everyone has great answers to that question too. Enjoying the here and now, putting your heart and soul into the things and the people you really care about, is what life should all be for at the end of the day. I mean, even if his nihilistic view that life is meaningless was true, that doesn’t mean you have to go and destroy it all.

[00:25:50] Speaker B: No, not at all.

[00:25:52] Speaker A: But, you know, we revisit our conversation room before.

This guy’s a psychopath. There. There are few video game antagonists or villains that are more. More off the deep end than this guy. So it’s not surprising to me that he’s like this. But just don’t destroy our world, man. Go away.

[00:26:12] Speaker B: I know.

[00:26:15] Speaker A: So he goes on this whole. That whole monologue, and our characters, you know, valiantly fight it back with words, and it doesn’t quite convince Kefka to walk back his thoughts. So we have to fight him. Surprise, surprise.

What was your party order after you finally reached Kefka again here?

[00:26:32] Speaker B: Okay, so party order after.

Yeah, before we fight these three tiers. So I’m not gonna. I had done this a few times and I could not get past like the first tier. Whatever I did multiple times where I just kind of tried different.

Different having people in different orders, like who I was gonna prefer second, third, fourth, all the way up to 12 in the end. It just took me a while to figure it out. So for a while I just like, I went out.

[00:27:05] Speaker A: Luckily.

[00:27:06] Speaker B: I don’t know if you can do this in the act in like the one you played on, but on the Pixel remaster, as I said, I was able to just use basically. What did I say? Like escape rope or whatever. That gets you out. Yeah, the teleport stone. Thank you.

That gets you out. And then I just grinded.

Spent a good amount of time just grinding in the dinosaur forest.

[00:27:28] Speaker A: Yes. So basically you. You did hear what I did at the end of last play session.

[00:27:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I did.

[00:27:35] Speaker A: I knew being on the.

Being essentially a port of the original Super Nintendo version, I knew if I was under leveled, I was going to be frustrated eventually if I had to keep banging my hand against the wall of the final boss, which I had already presumed to be Kefka, but didn’t realize it was as intense as it

[00:27:55] Speaker B: was as intense it was going to be. Yeah.

[00:27:58] Speaker A: And with many, many layers to it. So I.

In anticipation of all that, I had spent the end of last session just grinding for. I was a couple hours specifically in the Dino Forest to get all of my party members up to. What was it like, 45. I did a bit more grinding once I was here. Also in the midst of all this boss fighting just against the strong enemies that we had around. So I just kind of kept walking in circles near a save point.

Fighting, fighting, grinding. And I think ended up somewhere in like 55 to 59 by the end of it all.

[00:28:32] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:28:34] Speaker A: You know, approximately. Like, not every character is the same, but yeah, no.

[00:28:38] Speaker B: So when I first started, I think I had Everybody at like 53, 55 when I was first trying to do it. And yeah, I just.

I got. My max was. I got up to. I got up to the Tier 3, but I could not get past without, like, basically starting the fight and like instantly dying on turn one or turn two.

And so, yeah, I did all the grinding and I grinded people because I also talked to you and I got.

I had the Ragnarok magicite and I just put it on a couple people and got.

I got Celes, Celes, Terra Lock and Setzer. Ultima.

[00:29:17] Speaker A: Got it.

[00:29:17] Speaker B: So they all learned Ultima.

[00:29:19] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:29:19] Speaker B: And then.

Yeah, that.

[00:29:22] Speaker A: That is definitely. I mean, I. Because I had found that last time around and I was using Ultima. Actually, I had to use Ultima was the only way I could get past the brachiosaurs in the dinosaur forest. Like, the couple of times when I finally started beating it, it was because I was using that. So I realized in that moment that that can become kind of your emergency crutch. So if all my other strategies were not doing any. Anything or making progress, I just resorted to using Ultima against the tough ones.

So, yeah, that’s where that suggestion came from, by the way, because I knew how good Ultima has always been. And I mean, okay, I guess in retrospect, I was playing the games that came after six, but I knew Ultima as a spell in.

In the series was quite strong. So it usually does 999 damage. 9999.

[00:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it was doing a lot. So, yeah, so I grinded and got those people that by the time I went back then this was also the. It’s nice of the teleports. Now I can go back. What was nice is when I go back in, everything’s like all the bosses, everything’s dead. So I literally can just. I just have to move the parties all the way up to the switches to get to the spot of the final boss so I don’t have to go through anything again, which is nice.

But by the time. So this time after grinding, I had Celes and a couple others at like, 73.

[00:30:45] Speaker A: 73, yeah.

Okay.

[00:30:48] Speaker B: Because it took a while to learn Ultima, so I just kept them going.

And then the rest of them are around 65 to 68.

[00:30:58] Speaker A: So.

All right, that’s. That’s a good. That’s a good set of levels there.

[00:31:03] Speaker B: Well, because I found a guide, and the guide was saying some of them were like 68 or 65, some of the bosses and then, like, Kefka and some others were like 71. Level 71. So I was like, oh, okay. Well, hopefully we’ll see.

But now skipping forward. So once I finished all the grinding, when I got to the final part, my order was. And I’m trying to remember, I can tell the first four were Terra, Celes, Locke, and Gau. Those were my first four.

[00:31:33] Speaker A: Always have Gau. Always gotta have Gau.

[00:31:36] Speaker B: So those were the first four. And then I think I went five was Edgar.

I think, yeah, it would have been five Edgar because of his chainsaw. Just insane.

So five was Edgar. Then it would have been six would have been either. I think it was Cyan, then Saban, and then.

Who else am I missing here? Cyan, Saban already have lock.

Was that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 was. I think Gogo and then Shadow and then Umaro and then Mog and Setzer were like the last two.

[00:32:24] Speaker A: Okay.

I like how you have a very front loaded magic set there. Terra and Stella’s in the same party is a fun one.

[00:32:32] Speaker B: It was. And since they both knew Ultima and I got through, like, I destroyed the two. One boss.

[00:32:42] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:32:43] Speaker B: Quickly, without really losing much health on anybody, because actually three of them, Terracellus and Locke, all had Ultima. So I was just able to just.

[00:32:53] Speaker A: There you go. Just 1, 2, 3.

[00:32:54] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:56] Speaker A: Okay. My party, my opening party was Terra, Edgar, Sabin, and Gauntlet.

[00:33:03] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:33:04] Speaker A: And then I had Strago, Shadow, Setzer, Mog, Selith, Lock, Realm, Gogo. In that order.

Yeah. I was thinking, okay, if I get anyone wiped out and they keep filling back in with new characters, then I can use, like, Celes in the back half and have her kind of be the anchor to the party or one of the final anchors to the party. After beating that first boss of this Tower, atop the tower. I expected it to burst into red pixels and disappear like all the other bosses.

But did you do that?

[00:33:40] Speaker B: Have that expectation? I did, Yes. I did too.

[00:33:43] Speaker A: But we actually just climb up this giant statue while floating in the air without having float status, mind you. So maybe Kefka was giving us a boost because he wanted to fight for the fun of it.

[00:33:53] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:33:54] Speaker A: So we’re just fighting through layers of a single unit, which was a unique experience.

And okay, after the first one, these guys were pretty tough. You know, there’s just so much attack variety from them with different resistances.

So a lot of single target attacks were required.

And your dead party members were only replaced from your priority list once you move up a layer. So getting fully killed was kind of easy. I think that’s what instigated you to go grind, isn’t it?

[00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes.

[00:34:26] Speaker A: Fortunately, I only had to try this whole series three times, but would have been so frustrated if once I finally got to Kefka, I was underpowered or down to my last characters, and then had to reload and restart over from the beginning yet again. So I hear you here.

[00:34:43] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:34:45] Speaker A: For me, that you said that you got through the first and second layer pretty easily at this point, that third layer with the lady healing the old guy part of the statue and then reviving him if he dies while he does tons of heavy hitting damage. Oof.

[00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, that was crazy. So I think by the time I got to the third one, I had lost.

I know I lost Gao.

I lost Gao and I.

I think actually I had everybody else.

I lost Gao. So Edgar came in for me.

And so for that one, it was a lot of the. What is the.

What is the lady’s name?

Oh, it’s lady in Rest.

[00:35:30] Speaker A: Is it not Lady? I was gonna say it’s Lady.

[00:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It’s lady and Rest.

So I just started attack because after this time I tried it a few times before and I knew she can’t do magic against her. Like lady is just. You have to hit just physical, just regular attacks.

So I was just hitting with Celes, one of them had the ultimate weapon. Sarah Sotella had that. And it was doing damage. And then with.

With Edgar, I just used his chainsaw and he was doing like. He’s doing like. He was doing 7,000 whatever was chainsaw or more.

So I took her out first. So then she couldn’t revive rest, because if you take out rest first, she revives him. So I took her out first and then from there on it was just more of. I was just pushing everybody. I was using Ultima Blizzaga Chainsaw and on. On them.

And I actually ended up losing. I think Locke died in that one. So I went into the.

Yeah, I went into the final battle against Kefka with Tara, Selis, Edgar and Cyan.

[00:36:53] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Yeah. I had to switch up my tactics for lady and what do you say? Rest on my last attempt because, you know, I just needed to focus her down and then go after Rest individually. But I. I killed off Kefka once and for all with a combination of Terra using Ultima Shadow using Fuma Shurikens sets, her using the attack from Fixed Dice, which I guess is his ultimate weapon, which I just found in a chest earlier in this tower and decided to equip to him. And I’m so glad I did, because that was hitting for between 4,500 and 9,999 damage each time.

And Strago was the last part of my party, which he was using a lore called Holy or Question Holy. That was wrecking and doing tons of damage too. I had lost Edgar and Sabin in the second layer. Couldn’t really do much about that because there were four enemies in that one. Four bosses in that one. And then Gau in the third layer got. Or maybe it was in the second layer. I don’t remember which one. But Gal got a Doom status place on him.

And so you just see the ticker start going down. And I couldn’t prevent it from knocking him out and didn’t have a chance to revive him before moving on. So Gao was out.

[00:38:15] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:38:15] Speaker A: So I had. I had Terra, Shadow, Setzer, and Strago as my final party.

Yeah. What do you think about the actual final bit of Kafka there?

So aside from the art style, which was just magical.

[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah, the art style was awesome. So how that was. So this one started. I was actually shocked that I beat this. Like, I. This is the first time I ever got to Kefka. And I was shocked that I actually beat him first try because by the time I got to him, as I said, I think my party was. Yeah, Terracellus, Edgar, and Cyan.

And right when he starts, he does.

What does he do? He does like Holy angel or something. And takes everybody down to one.

[00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s fun.

[00:39:05] Speaker B: One Health.

[00:39:06] Speaker A: It’s a nice, nice, nice intro. You know, he could have easily killed you all, but he decided to toy with you instead.

[00:39:12] Speaker B: So what I did was I had One Health on all of them.

I decided I’m sacrificing two of them.

And what I did was I sacrificed.

Sacrificed Cyan and who did I say? Lock, I think. Or maybe it was Sabin. I don’t know. Yeah.

No, Celes. Sorry, I was right. Yeah, I sacrificed Cyan and Celes. They were gone.

So all I had left was Terra. After they had done, I had them do like two hits. So I had Celeste do one Ultima before she left, and I had Cyan do a flurry attack or Fang or one of the two of a shooto attack to do damage. And then they went. But on the other two, before they did their turns, I had elixir potions and I fully healed them up. Like full mp, full hp. I healed them fully. So then after that, I just would. Terra just hit Ultima. And with Edgar just chainsaw. And I was doing 999, 999, 999 till. And then only after turns, I won because.

[00:40:19] Speaker A: Okay, you sweeped them.

[00:40:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I had to use elixir a couple times on. But luckily I had enough. I had just enough. I think I had one left by the time the fight ended. Switching between putting them on to Edgar and Terara until I took him out.

[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah, and. And then you. Okay, you finally beat him, and his wise ass doesn’t have any last words at all.

He just fades away.

[00:40:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.

[00:40:48] Speaker A: You know, I might need a rewatch. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had placed.

If I rewatch it. And they. They included, like, his eyes shifting around and just like terror or confusion is. How did I not kill these guys?

He seemed so. You know, he felt he was the most powerful thing in the universe, and here he is fading away and, you know, so right after this. It’s funny that your party members that you left back on the Falcon come running when the tower begins crumbling. Even though they were safe to begin with, like, they didn’t need to be on this tower falling apart, they could have easily survived, no matter what happens to the rest.

And then the esper version of Terra collapses. Her magicite flies into the sky.

I mean, I guess it’s the magicite out of her pocket or backpack or whatever, flies into the sky and disappears alongside two others.

So, yep, magic starts disappearing from the world.

[00:41:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.

[00:41:47] Speaker A: It was at this moment or like throughout this handful of bosses or this play session overall, that made me realize, I guess it was. No, it was specifically this moment of our Magicite going away, our espers going away, even though, okay, we’ve already finished all of the combat gameplay we’ll have, we have no need for them anymore. But, you know, you don’t know what you had until you lost it, right? So, despite loving summons in Final Fantasy games, I rarely actually use the ESPers as summons in this one.

[00:42:18] Speaker B: Same.

Yeah, same for me.

[00:42:20] Speaker A: I mostly used them to teach magic, but since I was rotating them all around the characters constantly, I didn’t really keep any mental track of who had which esper in any given moment, like I would typically.

And the ESPers could only be used once per encounter and took up a bunch of MP anyway, so it kind of felt like a drain on your resources that might be better used elsewhere. And I just didn’t know which esper I had in that moment to make it valuable. So I’m kind of bummed about that now that I wasn’t using the summons. And maybe if I do replay this, I’ll prioritize using them more, at least on the bosses. Because the summons are so fun to see. And they have really cool, unique attack animations in all Final Fantasy games.

[00:43:03] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, they definitely do.

[00:43:07] Speaker A: And then Terra leads you out, and we get a bunch of different scenes of various chunks of our party escaping the tower at the end before the credits roll. And they also have, like, these quirky conversations while they’re running from death.

[00:43:23] Speaker B: Yeah, you’re right. Yes, we do. Yeah.

[00:43:26] Speaker A: While you all.

[00:43:27] Speaker B: They’re running around. Yes, running through the tower to get out.

[00:43:31] Speaker A: And you. Yeah, you also, as this is all going on, you also finally learn everyone’s last names.

At least everyone that has a last name. You know, it’s Tara as Tara Branford.

[00:43:44] Speaker B: Tara Branford.

[00:43:44] Speaker A: And they do the credits like, you know, like an opera or like you would see in a theater sheet, like Playbill. You know, it says what character they’re playing. But I guess we were in this meta movie this whole time.

[00:44:03] Speaker B: I will say that for that last part, when you’re running through the tower, getting out, there was a part of it for me because I had Umaru in my party.

[00:44:11] Speaker A: I think I saw this scene too, because the two characters you didn’t bring also join. It ends up showing you the other scenes. So it’s something. He just threw a wall.

[00:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah, he just gets annoyed by a wall being in the way. He just busts through the whole wall.

[00:44:25] Speaker A: And then I think. I don’t know if it’s the same set of characters in each part of this scene, but right after you bust through the wall, I think it was Celes just stands right in front of Fumaro after he breaks the wall down and just stares at him for a sec and then turns around and walks away. Say less, you know.

[00:44:39] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:44:42] Speaker A: And then Terra flies ahead of the falcon to lead us out, runs out of magic and starts to plummet from the sky. But Setzer is skilled enough with the airship to somehow nose dive the falcon and cat her because she turns up just fine.

[00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:44:56] Speaker A: And then, you know, there’s a big thank you and everyone flies off to presumably go live their lives to the fullest now that Kefka’s out of the picture. And cue credits. What a game.

[00:45:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it was an incredible game.

[00:45:11] Speaker A: But wait, there are some mid credit scenes of closure as well.

[00:45:15] Speaker B: Oh yeah. Mm.

[00:45:17] Speaker A: So they show and I don’t know if it’s always the same order. I’m assuming it was because there’s not really much point to do it in varying orders, but. So Dwayne and Katharine’s baby is born. To much excitement from the kids of Mobilis. You see kind of more generalized views of Tamasa getting rebuilt. They rebuild that house that was full of bomb fire, Inferno attacks. Kolingin is thriving once again. Figaro is re established. And then the weirdest thing for me is that there were white doves flying all over the world for some reason.

[00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

Yeah, that was like a weird part in the end credits scenes.

[00:45:54] Speaker A: I mean, I guess doves are a symbol of peace, right? So I guess the world becomes full of doves. Is that why?

[00:46:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Are they doves or are they.

Because isn’t it earlier? Remember earlier you have to follow, was it a pigeon or was it a dove? To the different areas.

[00:46:09] Speaker A: You think all of the.

All of the carrier pigeons in the messaging postal service were set free? I guess that’s possible.

[00:46:18] Speaker B: Maybe that’s what it was.

They look like doves because they’re white,

[00:46:21] Speaker A: but it could be carrying pigeons. Well, leave it up to interpretation.

[00:46:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:46:26] Speaker A: And then the true final end screen.

Yes.

So I guess at the end, in summary. So overall here in Final Fantasy 6, just a Super light hearted joyride where everyone is happy, go lucky and gets along great.

Except not at all.

These are some of the darkest themes and topics around in a video game. And especially for its time.

I mean, we had a military dictatorship run by a power hungry emperor and a sadistic clown.

We had an arms race in pursuit of powerful destructive magic that can flatten enemies or innocents. Chemical weapons to kill off entire cities. Rest in peace, science, family and apocalypses on multiple levels.

People making mistakes. But fortunately they were mostly able to redeem themselves and then, you know, even a step down from all the genocide and murder. But there’s things like the teenage pregnancy with Katharine and Duane, child abandonment with Gao.

There’s that old dude that dreamed of establishing a coliseum where people fight to the death with gambling at the heart of it.

[00:47:35] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:47:37] Speaker A: You know, boil all that together and it’s no wonder that this. This really hit it big with an older audience and is lauded for its maturity and complexity.

[00:47:47] Speaker B: Oh, definitely.

[00:47:50] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean, I think that that sort of wraps up the actual. The gameplay itself. We got quite a bit more to talk about, but I think one thing actually something that we haven’t really talked much about this season is the music and sound design, which is something we often bring up in our seasons. And I hear it’s just epic. Iconic feels like the right word for

[00:48:10] Speaker B: it, maybe for the music in this. Definitely.

[00:48:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it definitely set the stage. Obviously. Final Fantasy 7’s music is super popular and well known, and just music throughout the series has always been a major talking point, and it’s well deserved, once again.

[00:48:28] Speaker B: Well, for sure. I mean, there are some songs that can still hear when I close my eyes to go to bed just because I. From when I was, like, grinding so much or just playing.

[00:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that will fade with time, I’m sure. Or maybe not. Maybe it’ll haunt your dreams forever.

[00:48:46] Speaker B: But overall, it was. It was a great soundtrack. I. Yeah, Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

[00:48:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think there are occasions. I don’t know if they still do this, but I think there are occasionally some Final Fantasy music concerts out there that might be worth checking out if they keep doing them.

[00:49:01] Speaker B: So.

[00:49:02] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:49:03] Speaker A: Now that we finished the game, do you have any favorite characters, both gameplay wise and story wise?

[00:49:09] Speaker B: Ooh, okay. Story wise, not as much, just for the lore. Gameplay wise, it was probably Edgar.

It’s funny because in the beginning, I left for like, you know, the early parts where you can leave a few people, like early in the game, I left like Edgar and Sabin. But then late game, all, like mid game, late game. Like, they were always party members because they were just so powerful. Especially with Edgar with Chainsaw. So Edgar was probably definitely a top one for me. Same with Celes. Celes.

She was great.

I liked her. I liked her story as well.

It’s definitely a bit more depressing, but I liked her story.

Do you like Sabin?

[00:49:59] Speaker A: Do you use runic much?

[00:50:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, there are fights where I only use runic.

[00:50:05] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:50:05] Speaker B: If I knew I was Going against.

[00:50:08] Speaker A: Kind of a shame that like using Runic negated her ability to do anything else. Like, it makes sense why, but it. I feel like I didn’t use Runic all that much because I wanted her to just be attacking with magic on her own. Although it is a quite a useful thing when there are so many magic users as enemies.

[00:50:24] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a. There were a few battles where like I’d go in, I’d lose my first time or two times or whatever. And then I’d be like, because they’re doing a bunch of magic. And then I was like, you know what? I’m going to take Celes in there with Edgar, Sabin and Cyan who just do strong physical attacks because I can’t do magic with anybody else because she just. With Runic, takes your magic, right?

[00:50:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s so especially.

[00:50:50] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:50:51] Speaker A: When you’re fighting someone with magic and then using a bunch of physical attackers.

[00:50:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So I found her very useful for that. I think she. Yeah, she was good. I liked her. Again, another story wise, I like Sabin just. I know he didn’t have much of a story. He has some of a backstory, but just. Just like his little bits of mannerisms and talking and he was funny. I liked him.

The part that always stick my head when they’re on the boat and he goes over to the edge and goes, bleh.

And it literally says on the screen, bleh. He threw it off.

[00:51:19] Speaker A: That was Locke, wasn’t it?

[00:51:20] Speaker B: Oh, was that Locke? I thought that was Saban.

[00:51:22] Speaker A: That was. No, that was locked. That was locked. Either way, Locke had a lot of funny moments too.

[00:51:27] Speaker B: Saban had a lot of funny moments. Semen had a lot. I liked.

That’s right. You are right. Yeah, it was Locke. I’m sorry, I think it was Semen. But yeah, that was funny. With Locke, that moment just stuck out for me. I literally, I was like laughing. I laughed because I just loved on the screen that it said bleh. I was like, they actually like put that in.

[00:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they actually typed that one out.

[00:51:50] Speaker B: But yeah. No, I mean, I don’t know. It’s hard. I mean, all the characters. I mean, Cyan with his family story, another depressing one, his whole background. But top would probably be Celes and Edgar for gameplay, slash. Also story wise, I like them.

[00:52:07] Speaker A: Right.

Yeah. Okay. I guess on the story end for me, I think definitely Cyan because of how deep and then dark and then also funny he was all mixed together.

I would also say Terra and Celes Both had great stories.

[00:52:26] Speaker B: Terra did have a great story.

[00:52:28] Speaker A: Terra and Celes had great stories. And then Edgar and Sabin together as brothers in this kingdom. And one goes off because he doesn’t want to be a part of it and get stronger and whatnot. And Edgar kind of has to hold down the fort and then fake that he’s supporting the empire, but he really, he’s kind of backstabbing them while he can. Getting his little wins in I think was pretty, pretty well done. And yeah, I think those are probably on the story. And my favorites gameplay side, like anyone that had really unique, interesting ways of fighting was great. Like, I talked many times about how much I loved Gau and I think the giant moves that he’s able to acquire is awesome. But I guess the couple ones that really stand out though are like Setzer’s slots attack because, you know, it’s a gambling minigame or what’s a slot machine minigame as an attack.

I didn’t really like Setzer’s like damage output until I got fixed dice at the very end, but his ability to do that with the slots was awesome.

[00:53:26] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:53:27] Speaker A: I really liked Sabin’s. As I mentioned, I think in almost every episode I loved Sabin’s fighting moves and the kind of D pad inputs required there. And yeah, I mean everyone else is kind of just an entertaining piece, but good stuff all around.

[00:53:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. No, it was great for the. I liked Sabin and actually speaking of that, for D pad wise, so I played. I know you played on the Super Nintendo Classic and I played on the Switch 2, but I played this entirely in handheld mode. I didn’t once dock this game.

[00:53:57] Speaker A: Oh yeah, okay. Yeah. Because you were on a Switch 2 or Switch 1 when you were playing this Switch 2, do you touch your Switch 1 anymore?

[00:54:04] Speaker B: I haven’t, no. I play everything on Switch 2.

[00:54:06] Speaker C: Really?

[00:54:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I just played it all handheld. I never docked it once individual.

[00:54:10] Speaker A: It’s the type of like, you know, it’s this super expansive, really in depth, long great story that for whatever reason it’s form factor. It makes so much sense in a handheld at a small screen, you know, because. Because they did so such a good job with the characterization and the writing and the animation and the actual art side of it that you just. Your mind fills in the gaps. You don’t need it to be super detailed on a giant screen with 4K graphics.

[00:54:42] Speaker B: No.

[00:54:42] Speaker A: So, you know, I applaud them for that. It’s just so good.

[00:54:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it really was. And also, yeah, I was Just going to say, just playing Switch 2 wise because the Saban’s attacks are all like D Pad stuff. This Switch 2D pad is definitely better than the Switch 1D pad in handheld. So it actually wasn’t too hard to do all of his attacks.

[00:55:04] Speaker A: Even with the separated clicky buttons.

[00:55:07] Speaker B: Yep, very easily. I was able to basically like for Phantom Rush, you start on one side and you can kind of go in a circle moving your finger around.

[00:55:17] Speaker A: I mean, I’ll just say that is not going to cut it for a 2D fighting game. So.

[00:55:21] Speaker B: No, no, no. But for a cut for this.

[00:55:23] Speaker A: For this. Yeah, yeah. I mean obviously on a.

Basically a clone of a Super Nintendo controller that is built for it. So yeah, that D Pad is solid.

But yeah, you know, it’s just, it’s interesting because I don’t know how many hours you put in by the end of it. I probably, I mean I don’t have a counter, so I was probably, I

[00:55:48] Speaker B: was like 63 hours.

[00:55:49] Speaker A: I think if I remember probably fully in the 50 to 60s on my end, I guess I would say just because I got Ultima earlier, I think is where I shaved off a lot of that time.

[00:55:58] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:56:00] Speaker A: And I think, you know, it’s just such a, like, I think back on like all the individual story moments and like, you know, the, the ghost train and the opera house and all those sort of really iconic moments are so early in the game that I feel like they were so long ago that this is really like a really extensive in depth adventure and they just perfectly encapsulated how that can be back in 1994.

Great job.

[00:56:34] Speaker B: Oh yeah, definitely phenomenal job.

[00:56:38] Speaker A: And now we are excited to welcome Mavroid on from the JRPG Book Club Discord Server and are so excited to chat about the full details of Final Fantasy 6. Welcome.

[00:56:49] Speaker C: Thanks for having me.

[00:56:52] Speaker A: Before we get back to our discussion of FF6, would you like to give us an overview of the JRPG Book Club?

[00:56:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, we’re a Discord server as you mentioned previously. So we usually run like about three games at a time, sort of two in more of a longer forum discussion. And one is sort of like a one shot situation where we cover shorter games sort of in one, one quick chat. We meet up once every two weeks or so in order to talk about these games that we’re covering and we have them sort of segmented out. So basically, you know, everybody kind of plays about four to six hours of a JRPG that we’re all interested in playing. And Then we meet up via voice chat to talk about it and, you know, clown around and have some fun and also kind of get into some more serious sort of dissections of sort of the manics of the game and the characterizations and everything. It’s a lot of fun. Made a lot of good friends for the server and I think we all enjoy talking about the games that we love.

[00:57:58] Speaker A: That’s awesome. I think it kind of really aligns with what we’ve got going on as well. You’re more of a live chat and we’re in sort of this podcast format, but it’s pretty similar in that way. How long has the book club been around and what was sort of the inspiration for creating it in the first place?

[00:58:14] Speaker C: Yeah, so we started in the summer of 2020 as a lot of things started in the summer of 2020 when we were all, you know, looking for some kind of social outlet online during the pandemic. So I wasn’t the.

I wasn’t the person who actually, you know, started the server, but I was here from basically the very beginning and I like very quickly kind of took over the scheduling for what we do here. But basically, you know, our founder just decided, hey, I want to make some new friends during the pandemic. I like JRPGs. Anyone else online want to chat with me? And the Kennedys community just kind of formed around that.

[00:58:57] Speaker A: We are quite a bit later in terms of start time, but I think, you know, it feels like we’re kindred spirits in a way, considering the fact we all run gaming book clubs and we have this kind of overlap here. Which games are you all juggling right now?

[00:59:12] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure we are.

Right now we usually run sort of one game that’s quote unquote retro and one of them is quote unquote modern.

Of course, these things are totally meaningless and it’s totally. We just kind of schedule things based on what makes the most sense. But I don’t know, kind of like philosophically, there does seem to be kind of a divide between like sort of game design and older games versus newer games. So in our retro category, we are finishing up Lunar Silver Star story complete, and we’re about to start paper the Thousand Year Door in a week or two. So we’d be excited if anyone would want to join in for that.

And in our modern category, we’re about halfway through Octopath Traveler 2, which has been one of the more interesting games to schedule due to how nonlinear it is, but we managed to make it there.

[01:00:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we’ve definitely run into some tricky scheduling, not issues, but complications with the open world games or the nonlinear games. So I can definitely feel you on that one.

[01:00:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I kind of find they’re in some ways the most fun to schedule, but, you know, they’re definitely the most complicated for sure.

[01:00:26] Speaker A: Right, Very true, very true. Out of curiosity, do you personally play any genres outside of JRPGs and they’re just your favorite of them all, or do you dedicate most of your gaming time to them, considering they are usually somewhat lengthy and could absolutely suck up all the time you have for your hobby?

[01:00:42] Speaker C: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I. I play a lot of different kind of genres. You know, I think, you know, I got my start, you know, I’m like 30, 40 something, you know, somewhere in that range right now. And I got my start on Super Nintendo right back in the 90s and played a lot of, you know, 2D platformers because that was the genre that was the most popular thing back then.

So I grew up playing a lot of 2D platformers, 3D platformers, and that kind of evolved over the years into enjoying a lot of those. But also like Metroidvanias, so I play a lot of Metroidvanias these days.

Also pretty fond of this random weird story games like 1000x resist is one that comes to mind recently that was really good and you know, really puzzle games. A little bit of everything, I would say. I think most recently I’ve been other than JRPGs on UFO 50, which has been super fun since it’s a little bit of every genre.

[01:01:47] Speaker B: I’ve never, never heard of UFO 50. Do you mainly play.

Are you mainly on Steam, on PC playing or swap between?

[01:01:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I think I got two young kids, so I think like, you know, Steam Deck is kind of the way I get games done these days. So I’m mostly on Steam, but I also have a switch too.

[01:02:09] Speaker A: Okay, I fully agree with that. And I. And I throw a PS Portal into the mix too, just because we have some PlayStation games also within our schedule. But the portable gaming makes a huge difference when a kid’s involved.

[01:02:22] Speaker C: For sure. For sure.

[01:02:27] Speaker A: Another question for you. Do you have a favorite Final Fantasy game of all the ones you’ve played?

[01:02:33] Speaker C: Yeah, so I think like kind of comes down to context. Right. So I think like my personal favorite one is probably, I mean this is like stupid basic answer, but Final Fantasy vii, just because, you know, it’s the one back in the day that just kind of got me sucked into the genre. And you know, JRPGs are really what a lot of what I play these days.

But I mean, over the years I think I’ve kind of appreciate Final Fantasy 1 a lot, especially the more modern releases of it.

Final Fantasy 5 is probably my favorite of like the classic final fantasies. And then, you know, had a lot of fun recently with Final Fantasy 9, which was actually the first claim that we did as our in our JRP Debug Club server together. So I have a lot of good memories of that just because it was like the game that nucleated us as a group and kind of got us all excited chat about games together.

But yeah, there’s a lot of good ones out there. I gotta say. It’s hard to pick one that’s fun.

[01:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that classic PS1 era of final Fantasy is where I first started. And I think nine. I don’t know if nine was my first one that I played. I think it may have been seven or eight, but nine was the first one that I finished and was obsessed with and you know, went back to seven, eight, a little bit of six, but never finished it until now. And 10 was amazing also, so. But I think I need to go backwards and do the 4 and 5, at least for sure.

[01:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I remember, you know, playing renting four from like a blockbuster as a kid and being like, I don’t know what this is because it was like, you know, I was like, definitely too young for it at the time. But I’ve gone back and revisited it lately and it’s definitely worth a playthrough. The sequel, the after years, maybe not so much worth a playthrough.

[01:04:29] Speaker A: I don’t know if I even know about that one, to be honest.

[01:04:33] Speaker C: Don’t.

[01:04:35] Speaker A: Don’t even investigate. All right.

[01:04:39] Speaker B: It makes me happy. I’m happy that, yeah, I have, because I was being playing six on the Pixel remaster. And I’m happy that I have all these because it’s now it’s given me the opportunity, better graphics and stuff to go back and play all these original ones that I never played. So I’m excited to dive back in and go through a lot more of these older ones.

[01:05:00] Speaker C: Yeah. To be honest, Final Fantasy 2 was like probably my gaming white whale for the longest time because I started that game probably like, I don’t know, six times over the years. It’s the one that’s infamously terrible. Right? It’s the way you have to beat up your own dudes to like, you know, like get their HP up and everything. And I finally finished It a couple of years ago at the Pixel remaster. And you know, I gotta say, it was. It was worth it. They actually made that game playable.

[01:05:29] Speaker B: I was about to ask, did they give like in 6 and stuff? I’ve noticed like, they give some low quality of life changes to help out or like make it a little easier to get through the game.

[01:05:40] Speaker A: So.

[01:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And two, you no longer have to beat up your own dudes to make their HP go up because they added in a quality of life feature where every 10 battles you just gain HP. Like crazy concept.

[01:05:51] Speaker A: Imagine that.

Mavret, when did you first play Final Fantasy vi and how did you feel about it at the time?

[01:06:01] Speaker C: I think I first probably first know when it was known as Final Fantasy 3 in the United States. Right.

And I think again, I rented it from like a blockbuster as a kid because I definitely remember like the Moogle Cave bit at the start, but then I didn’t really get past the part where you’re like on the river with Bannon right at the start of the game. I remember thinking like, oh, yeah, this is pretty cool. But I just don’t really get it. But I think the first time I actually got pretty far in the game was through the PS1 port, which is like probably the worst possible way to play Final Fantasy 6 just because, like Final Fantasy Anthology.

[01:06:39] Speaker A: Yes, I had that one as well.

[01:06:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And yeah. How’d you feel about the load times on that?

[01:06:47] Speaker A: Well, you know, so good that I decided to just not continue playing it.

[01:06:54] Speaker C: Amazing, right? I think I had the same experience because I think I got like halfway through World of Balance and I was just like, nope.

[01:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah,

[01:07:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I think I’m. I remember the first time I finished it though, was on the Game Boy advance version, I think when I was. And I think that time I really finally got into like customizing the characters with the ESPers and kind of getting some good magic and stuff on everybody. And I got really into the story as well. So I think that I had like super fond memories of playing it there and had a, you know, kind of probably would have ranked it as my favorite Final Fantasy at that time.

[01:07:33] Speaker B: Very nice.

Yeah, I definitely got into the. I realize now, like, younger playing some of these older games, Final Fantasies, just other games when, just when I was younger. Not really getting into the stories now, but obviously as you grow older, the stories on these games, like Final Fantasy 6, I found myself getting into like really quickly was quite invested of how it was going to go and how it was going to turn out.

[01:07:59] Speaker C: Yeah. For sure. And I think, you know, Final Fantasy 6 is such like a character driven, honestly, and it’s some of the best characters still, honestly, to this day. You know, I mean, Celeste. Right. It’s probably one of my faves. So.

[01:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah, Celeste was great. I mean, the backstory with Cyan and.

Yeah, it’s just. It’s great. And I really got. Yeah, same. I got invested, quite invested in the characters and really enjoyed it.

[01:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah.

Okay. Alex, any other quick questions about the JRPG Book Club before we jump back in?

[01:08:39] Speaker B: No, no, I just. I’ll just say I. I’m excited about the games you’re playing or going to be starting up. I think you said Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door, which I never played.

So I’m gonna have to maybe join the server and join in on that. That did get. Am I wrong that that got a remake on it got a switch.

[01:08:59] Speaker A: A switch. Either remaster or remake. I don’t know which one. Mavroid, you can probably tell us.

[01:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s just an HD remaster, but it’s on sale at Best Buy right now for I think like 20 bucks or 30 bucks or something, which is awesome.

[01:09:13] Speaker A: Okay. I was about to comment because that was the one that I was going to do my first playthrough with you guys and I was waiting for a sale, but I did not know. Didn’t look for physical. So let me check that out.

[01:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I’m going to have to do that too because yeah, I definitely always wanted to play the one, so I think I will follow along as well. That’ll be fun.

[01:09:31] Speaker A: Check in and.

Yeah, great. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit more in detail of Final Fantasy 6. So I think now for the bookend. Right. So thank you, Lo Baka from Discord for the idea and the name. Alex, now that we’ve played it, how does FF6 compare to your expectations from our pre playthrough episode at the start of the season?

[01:09:52] Speaker B: It exceeded it, actually for me. I really enjoyed it. I mean, I’ve just played 10 recently, which was phenomenal as well. But I haven’t played like one of the old pixel. I think this is my first. It’s my first pixel, old school one to play and I really enjoyed it. It definitely exceeded from.

I thought I was not going to get into the story as much when we were first talking about it, but as I was just saying earlier, I really got invested into the story and the characters, so it definitely exceeded.

[01:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean, I think comparing to. I mean, JRPGs are one of the big genres that I really got into in middle school or, like, early elementary or late elementary school and middle school.

[01:10:33] Speaker B: Right.

[01:10:33] Speaker A: When all these PS1 final fantasies were coming out. And I think I love them so much because of the deep stories. And, you know, when I look back at them as adult, it’s been so long that I kind of forget that little detail. And now playing this older one and remembering how in depth and detail the story of a JRPG is, and that’s really kind of got me rehooked. I say. But so, you know, and Maverick I’m curious about because I’ve got this list here of comparisons from, like, after playing it to what we were expecting before, based on our previous knowledge of Final Fantasy as a series.

So I’m curious, kind of what you think, because there are a number of elements that I personally consider to be, you know, pieces of a Final Fantasy game, any Final Fantasy game, at least the ones I’m familiar with. Right. So.

[01:11:17] Speaker C: Right.

[01:11:18] Speaker A: In Final Fantasy 6, we wrote Chocobos. We flew an airship. There were two even in this game. Okay. So double check there. There were Moogles, and we even had Mohg available to join our party. So there’s a ton of things here that I was expecting that were obviously all a part of it. Of course, MOG was on the COVID of Final Fantasy 3, the North America release. So if he wasn’t in the game, it would be really weird. I fought a cactuar, which I don’t know how common it truly is, but it’s one of the biggest things that I remember from Final Fantasy is the cactuar in the desert, usually. And 1,000 needles as an attack, or 10,000 needles.

[01:11:54] Speaker C: This might be the first game that Cactuar appeared in.

[01:11:59] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Interesting.

Yeah. It’s funny that they always put him into a running pose.

[01:12:06] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. And I think what’s fun about Final Fantasy 6, right, is that it really marked this big transition point in the Final Fantasy franchise from, like, you know, classic high fantasy sword and sorcery to, like, something that’s more of, like, a cyberpunk mixed fantasy aesthetic that, you know, 7 and 8 kind of carried on the torch with.

[01:12:29] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. Until, like, that semi reset with nine that was back towards more fantasy. But, yeah, it definitely kind of hit on a theme that was so successful that they decided to keep dipping back into that. Well, multiple times.

[01:12:43] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.

All the classic elements are still there. You know, unlike some of the more modern parts, you know, entries in this franchise.

[01:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I will say also because there were some. Obviously this game is 30 plus years old.

There are certain things that you hear about whether you want to or not. And you know, I think we, Alex and I mentioned we were surprised how well we insulated ourselves from major, major spoilers. Because there, you know, there are some iconic moments. And despite knowing that they existed and not any detail just besides like, couple keywords, they varied wildly compared to my initial expectations. So, like, there’s that intro march through the snow and the magitect magitech armor. It’s like the perfect way to set the scene. There’s the fight against the Phantom Train was just super fun. And I was able to live out this moment that I had heard so much about and use Sabin to suplex an entire train.

[01:13:34] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, gotta do that every playthrough.

[01:13:37] Speaker A: That’s like a classic thing that I didn’t know what it looked like. And then I finally did it and was like, this is awesome.

Then there’s Go, go, go for it.

[01:13:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I got a fun fact too, which is, did you know that Tetsuya Takahashi, Xenogears and Xenoblade Chronicles Fame was the one who directed the March through the Snow at the beginning of the game?

[01:13:59] Speaker A: I did not know that.

[01:14:01] Speaker C: Dude liked his giant robots even back then.

[01:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess there’s no surprise there. There’s. Okay, there’s also this, obviously, the famous opera scene. So it was super underwhelming for me on one hand, since I had heard about the opera scene mentioned online in discussions and articles constantly whenever anyone talked about Final Fantasy 6. And so I was really underwhelmed because I was expecting, you know, in my context of 2026, expecting a massive character death or Kefka betrayal or some wild twist to happen because of twists or whatever media is about these days. So I was expecting that to happen based on all this conversation and mention of the opera scene.

And then it’s just a scene of an opera, which in hindsight now makes so much sense because despite it being underwhelming compared to that specific expectation, it was just such a great moment in gaming in its own right. Because who puts an opera into a video game?

[01:15:04] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. You know, I think, like, you know, you gotta give Nobuo Uematsu so much credit here for like literally writing an opera.

[01:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. From scratch.

[01:15:13] Speaker C: Yeah, from scratch. Like, you know, at a time when, you know what we’re like 10 years, if that removed from Beeps and boops. Like being game music, like so it’s nuts.

[01:15:26] Speaker A: It really is impressive. And I mean, you can. Like including the pixelated imitation of someone singing too, is incredible.

[01:15:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And of course, narratively, how that scene functions in the game too is essentially the whole story is about, what is it? Wanting to wait for her lover but kind of losing hope.

And then she throws the bouquet off of the balcony or whatever. And it’s total foreshadowing of Celeste doing exactly the same thing at the beginning of the World Ruin segment, throwing herself off of the cliff instead.

[01:16:05] Speaker A: Right, yeah. There’s so many parallels there that they throw in there. That obviously is so great to go back and think about once you’re done. You wouldn’t even expect it in the moment. The entire sequence with the Opera House is full of hilarious kind of scheming. There’s the fake acting gig, Otti Versalus, the looming arrival of Setzer, who they kind of say is going to be this womanizer or whatever, and he kind of just ends up being the soft spoken dude at the end of the day.

[01:16:36] Speaker C: Yeah, Setzer never lives up to the hype. I think, you know, he’s fun, he’s a good character, but, you know, he’s just not the. I don’t know. I personally never really found him to be like, as like bombastic as they built him up to be.

[01:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah, not at all. And then there’s Ultros, you know. Gotta love Ultros.

[01:16:55] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, no, Ultros is Final Fantasy mainstay these days.

[01:17:01] Speaker A: Just the combination of all those details. Like, there’s a ton of comic relief, there’s a ton of really poignant moments, and then there’s the actual music itself and I think they really killed it.

And I need to like retroactively go back and adjust my expectations for that because they did a great job.

[01:17:18] Speaker C: Right.

[01:17:18] Speaker A: The opera scene is worth all the hype, just in a very different reason than what I thought.

[01:17:23] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, for sure.

[01:17:25] Speaker A: I also had no clue at all about the World of Ruin even being a thing. So that blew me away. Alex and I talked about that last time.

[01:17:32] Speaker B: I thought, like, when we were getting towards the end of the world of balance, I was like, oh, we’re almost done with the game. And then I remember you told me, like, oh, no, there’s a whole nother world after that.

[01:17:41] Speaker A: I was like, oh, okay. And I think it’s wild that we were able to make it this far without knowing that.

[01:17:52] Speaker C: I think so. I feel like you mentioned out of context, spoilers, right? And I feel like one of the out of context spoilers everybody knows about Final Fantasy 6 is that. Oh, Kevin, that’s the game where Kefka destroys the world halfway through. Huh.

[01:18:06] Speaker A: So, yeah, I don’t know what it is, but we somehow figured out a way to avoid that one. Obviously knew plenty about Kefka, but not necessarily that, but I knew that plot point.

[01:18:15] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:18:15] Speaker B: Going into it, I knew like, I didn’t know much about Kefka. I just knew Kefka was the villain and I knew Daktera was the main protagonist, but otherwise I didn’t know about the train, the opera. I’d kept myself basically spoiler free from that, like the entire game, with the exception of the opening scene, like the mechs and the Magitek armor. Otherwise I. I didn’t know anything. So, yeah, that’s why I really enjoyed it.

[01:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like it’s going to be a pretty magical experience to get through that without any spoilers at all.

[01:18:46] Speaker A: I was also kind of surprised that this entry in the Final Fantasy series has what, I guess what I would consider whether they are officially or not to be three subspecies of a blue mage.

When usually there’s just one. Right. I mean, there’s. You’ve got. You’ve got Strego, who’s, you know, actually listed as a blue mage. Then you’ve got Gao, who his rages aren’t learned by being attacked by an enemy, which is how a traditional blue mages. But you can learn like, and I’m curious actually what the total number is, but it seems like at least a hundred different abilities.

[01:19:22] Speaker C: Yeah, you can learn a unique rage from every single unique enemy type in the game.

And there are, you know, I. I don’t know exactly the list, but there’s well over, I think, you know, well over 100, if not over a couple hundred unique enemies.

[01:19:41] Speaker A: That’s. That’s wild. I mean, to program that all. I mean, obviously they’ve programmed the attack into all the enemies already, but programming it into your player character is crazy. And then you’ve got Gogo, who can just copy anyone else and do the same thing. So I’m. I’ve always been a fan of blue mages in these games and in JRPGs when they’re available and. But I constantly had those three in my party when I could because I just had so much fun with it.

[01:20:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I never really gave Gao a chance when I played this game a lot growing up, just because, I don’t know, I always feel like, oh, Edgar is The one with the chainsaw, that’s so cool. Like Saban, he supports the train. That’s so cool.

[01:20:19] Speaker A: Those are much more visceral, for sure. So it makes sense for a younger, a kid to be enjoying that, but a lot more.

[01:20:26] Speaker C: Yeah, I played, you know, I forced myself to use like the weirdos like Gao and Umaro a lot on my most recent playthrough and honestly had a ton of fun, especially with Umaru, the stupid yeti.

[01:20:37] Speaker B: Umaru. Yeah, he’s fun to use. Yeah, I enjoyed using him towards the end once I got him.

[01:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just saying I love the concept of a character being a yeti that you can’t control, but he’s just like your loyal kind of not, not pet, but companion almost. That just goes and destroys people. But I just couldn’t bring myself to like, lose the control over it. And at least on this playthrough, didn’t use him all that much. But, you know, if I go back for another one, I’ll definitely put him in the front of the line once he’s available.

[01:21:10] Speaker C: Yeah, nah, he’s definitely one of those characters that’s like really good for a replay. Because, you know, honestly, one thing I don’t think I ever realized until this recently. Replay is like, he hits like a truck. Like his normal attack does like, like 2,500 damage.

[01:21:26] Speaker B: Yeah, slam attack can. Yeah, it can do a lot.

[01:21:30] Speaker A: Definitely wild, but yeah. So I guess, kind of circling back to our question from the beginning of if Final Fantasy 6 is still worth playing in 2026. I think the answer is resounding. Yes, most definitely.

Alex. I guess it’s time, you know, for our kind of rating and review.

After finishing the story and my playthrough of this game, I’ve been trying to kind of encapsulate what it is about it that makes it such a classic, such a masterpiece that so many people still gush over today. And still, there are still people clamoring for a remake of this 30 years later, and they always throw out the disclaimer, okay, it’s not a necessary remake because it still stands up amazingly today, as we’ve just figured out, even in its original form without any adjustments needed at all. But even so, people still want to remake just because they want to experience this again as something somewhat fresh.

Mavroid, what is it that you think allowed Final Fantasy 6 to stand the test of time so?

[01:22:32] Speaker C: Well, yeah, I think it’s honestly probably the characters of this game.

As I mentioned before, it’s a big Character driven narrative.

And I think the kind of just letting all of these different goobers interact with each other in this, like, honestly, pretty crazy setting and, you know, bounce off of each other and have such sort of unique niches in this world really helps flesh it out. And then, you know, I think also the whole second half of the game, like, Nonlinear World Ruin part, which, you know, honestly revisiting this game, I think is.

I honestly think is the weaker part of the game is the world ruin part. But I think it’s still so novel and so unique that, like, you know, yeah, the bad guy wins halfway through. And then, you know, you have to kind of go through these little vignettes to get your party back and go fight him one last time. Like, that does still end up being, like, quite powerful, even if some of the party member recruitments are a little iffy.

[01:23:39] Speaker A: A little. A little iffy?

Yeah. I mean, I think especially because at the end of the Floating continent, in the World of Balance, you fight Ultima Weapon, and then you get up to the cliff edge of the continent and you see Kefka there and you think, okay, this is the final battle.

And then you don’t fight them at all.

And then it kind of sinks in that there’s no fight here. This isn’t over yet.

And then it does the whole big shift. Right. Just executed that so well to kind of pull the rug out from under you when they had set it up in that way.

[01:24:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And then, of course, I think, you know, I mentioned this before. I think the total high point of the game is when you’re just alone with Celeste on that solitary island. Right. And just, you know, the events that happen here, which is. It’s still crazy to me. Like, did you guys. I don’t know, since you guys ended this wine, did you guys know that you could let Cid live depending on your choices on that island?

[01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we. When we were talking about that portion, I think we both realized that we both, obviously immediately. He died on us because we had no idea that there was a difference. I mean, he mentioned some fish and you find the fish and he.

You know, we had no idea there were different types of fish because there’s.

[01:24:48] Speaker B: I didn’t realize there was a fish. I just kept feeding him fish and then he died.

[01:24:53] Speaker C: And I think that’s totally intentional, right? I think they made that on purpose because I think they wanted you to see the scene where she.

Where Sid dies and she reaches the depths of despair. Right. Because that’s sort of the Actual better scene.

[01:25:05] Speaker A: Right.

[01:25:08] Speaker C: But I think they left in an Easter egg that keeps it alive on a replay, which honestly I think kind of weakens the whole bit a little bit.

[01:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it is. And I mean, okay, you think to a story kind of like, I don’t know, Spider man, for example, and those are often the family member passing away in semi tragic circumstances is often the thing that kind of pushes the protagonist into becoming great again or great for the first time. And yeah, obviously it almost pushes her over the edge. I mean, it physically does. And she survives it and is able to pull through, I think. I also really love this moment and this first kind of couple hours after you take over as Celeste is that they pull a protagonist switch on you. Right. You start the game off as Terra and you expect her to be the number one in the list of. In the pecking order from the beginning.

And then no, okay, there’s another protagonist that has a deep guide you along the way and you don’t get Terra back for many, many hours after that.

[01:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. And I think that definitely shocked me the first time I played this too, because I was like, wait, where’s Terra? And her story is, you know, basically done at that point. Like the World of Balance is Terra’s story and, you know, the world ruined it as her epilogue. Now she finally gets to be the happy mother, normal person that she always wants to be. Right, Right.

But yeah, I mean, it’s just, I think it kind of speaks to the staying power of these characters that like, you know, as the creators of this game have said many times in interviews over the years, is that they don’t envision there being any main character of this game. You know, they envision it being a total ensemble cast with, you know, 10 main characters.

[01:26:50] Speaker A: Yeah, which. Which absolutely ends up becoming the truth by the time you wrap it all up.

But I think most people tend to gravitate towards like, okay, you see one person by themselves that is the person you internalize as the main character or the one that you identify with the most. And especially because you have the ability to write to on the Overworld, swap out who you’re actually walking around.

[01:27:13] Speaker C: Right. And you know, I think the Overworld theme being Terra’s theme in the World of Balance also really kind of drives home that like, yeah, no, she is the protagonist of this phase, Alex, until she’s not.

[01:27:27] Speaker A: Until she’s not very much.

Very much the case.

And then with the one exception of being on the Velt, you are Gal is the main character.

[01:27:38] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:27:39] Speaker B: Very true.

[01:27:40] Speaker A: That thing just never stops.

Alex, how would you rate Final Fantasy 6 now that we’re done?

[01:27:48] Speaker B: So, yeah, how we do it? So out of on. Out of 10? I would.

I’d give it, yeah, nine. Solid nine out of 10. For me it was. Yeah, yeah, solid nine out of 10.

[01:28:00] Speaker A: I’ve got a list of way too many notes for my reasoning here. And I think for me, nostalgia aside, because I only barely played a few hours of this as a kid, both between the anthology version and emulated on Z snes. The things that really stick out to me about why this game is so great are Kefka. Just spectacularly written, even with relatively little screen time in the world of ruin. Outside of being that kind of looming presidents like Sauron, you know, every appearance he made in the world of balance, no matter how sadistic and ruthless, was iconic like the best villains are. I think if any Final Fantasy game were to be adapted more closely to the source material into a movie or TV series, I would choose Steph 6 and it would would primarily be to see Kefka acted out.

[01:28:50] Speaker B: That would be really cool, I think.

[01:28:52] Speaker A: You know, we’ve talked about it already, and the character variety in this ragtag band of misfits is just so out there. You know, we have a yeti, we have kind of like this gypsy type person that you don’t know anything about them. But like, the classes and the abilities are another thing. The personalities they all have attached to them were surprisingly varied. You’ve got the amnesiac, the kind of the thief, the king, the samurai, the escaped general, the random kid that’s raised by monsters. I mean, it just keeps going and going. I think most final fantasies do a good job of making your team kind of really full of unusual misfits, but this one did an exceptional job, I’d say. Also. So the classes are another story. I did quite like how every character had their own unique mechanic and some were very fun to use. And obviously with a party this large, they can’t all be winners. And everyone has their own opinions here. But at least they were all useful, unique. So I have to say I didn’t love the fact that just by equipping and cycling espers around, you could over time, give every single character every magic ability available.

[01:30:00] Speaker C: I can jump in here to mention that there’s a popular ROM hack out there called the Brave New World ROM Hack of Final Fantasy 6 that actually restricts which ESPers, which party members can use, which actually kind of solves this issue.

[01:30:15] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[01:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that is Interesting. Okay. In that case, I will maybe consider my next playthrough being emulated again, like the first time around. Okay, yeah, that’s really interesting, I think, because that. That just took away the kind of the uniqueness aspect of using ESPers.

But, you know, obviously this. It’s. Some of the characters are better using the magic than others, but even just having that as an option for me kind of took away some of the magic of magic here. It also kind of of trivialized some of the unique abilities that characters had a bit, since everyone could use magic. And I’m not saying that every Final Fantasy game needs a really specified, defined black mage, white mage, blue mage. And they can only do their specific things, you know, kind of like Vivi in Final Fantasy 9. But putting at least some of those guard rails like that ROM hack you’re talking about would have been better, in my opinion, if they did it from. From the original release.

Another thing I think was huge for me, right, is that the fact that you can find almost everything you need all the clues you might possibly require to continue advancing the story just by talking to the townspeople and NPCs.

[01:31:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that.

[01:31:28] Speaker A: And yes, there is a glaring exception. Mavroid, you weren’t on for this one, but there’s that staircase at the very entrance of Figaro Castle that for us was just like camouflage. And it took us both, I think, like 20 minutes to find that we needed to go down the stairs to get. I think one side’s the prison, the other side’s the engine room.

Because I don’t know about you, but, like, whenever I’m playing a 2D, especially a 2D RPG like this, the second you enter a room, you just start moving up or down or whatever direction, you know, is like, into the room further. So I didn’t even think there would possibly be a set of stairs right there.

I was banging my head against the wall, but.

[01:32:04] Speaker C: But I always get frustrated by Figaro Castle, to be honest with you. I feel like there’s just too many stairs, too many bits.

[01:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that’s a very unusual layout. The architect of that thing didn’t do the right thing. No, but otherwise, because of the help of the NPCs, I never felt hopelessly lost for too long, which can very much happen in a lot of games nowadays. And I think what made it feel even more special now is the fact that pretty much every npc, even though most only had a couple lines of conversation, either provided a useful hint, added a small layer of lore to the area you’re in or the world at large in that given moment of the story, or they sold you something or gave you something.

[01:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah, wilder ruin NPCs are top tier for sure,

[01:32:52] Speaker A: I think. Also, I guess for me, the injections of difficulty throughout the game are meaningful most of the time. I found especially that boss designs required, at least, unless you are really overpowered, required a specific strategy or a specific loadout of equipment to defeat. And they might mop the floor with you the first time around, but then you switch up your equipment or your characters in your party and then you do the same thing to them the next time around.

[01:33:16] Speaker B: Yep, that happened to me a few times.

[01:33:19] Speaker A: More modern games try to make all kinds of builds more viable to defeat anyone, but I think the way they did it here allowed for a kind of a set vision to an extent where you can still counter and come up with your own chess strategy in a way. Or if you don’t want to bother with that, you can just grind out and become overpowered and work your way through. But they all had sort of those unique fun mechanics to strategize against. I really liked the boss designs, with the exceptions of maybe Kefka’s Tower, where the final boss in itself is kind of tricky because it cycles through your lined up party between tiers, but doesn’t replace them mid tier, so you still have to survive each battle as the same group. Before that you started it with, rather than subbing in new characters.

Alex and I were just talking a bit more about that.

So that specific difficulty spike of just going through a gauntlet with tons of different resistances and strength and variables made that tricky.

I can’t even. We did not play the Cultist Tower, so I can’t even begin to imagine how much more difficult that was. But I’ve heard stories.

[01:34:21] Speaker C: It’s not bad if you bring Umaru because you know, he just punches everything to death.

[01:34:30] Speaker A: Okay, interesting. That was not who I would have expected to bring along, but.

[01:34:34] Speaker C: But yeah, it’s kind of like a hack for that actually. Because like, you know, I think the. The idea behind the Coldest Tower, right, is that you can only use magic, right, because your attack command is disabled, with the exception of Umaru who just punches things. And. And it turns out that everything in there is weak to punching because they’re all squishy mages.

[01:34:55] Speaker A: Okay, interesting.

[01:34:57] Speaker C: But then, but then the final.

The final boss of the Cultist Tower is mean because he casts like. Basically like Ultima on your party when he dies as like A scripted event. So you have to have, like, Phoenix or, like, reraise up or you just game over, so.

[01:35:16] Speaker A: Oh, okay. So they, like, lull you into a sleep with all these squishy mages and then just drop that on you?

[01:35:24] Speaker C: Yeah. It’s kind of mean. Some of these bosses in the world Run are kind of mean. Like, I remember Rexhul also, like in Cyan’s dream, we had a chat about that guy.

[01:35:33] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:35:35] Speaker C: Did not like that boss at all.

[01:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I kept having to kill my own party.

The problem was, is we talked about it. My problem was my main problem was I had Mog in my party doing Wind Dance and he just. I kept getting people down and then he’d do sunbath. Sunbathe. And then I was like, no.

I was like, I need to get him out of the character.

[01:35:56] Speaker C: It. Yeah. If you got the wrong party in that fight.

Woof.

[01:36:01] Speaker A: Yeah.

Also related to combat, I really like this kind of layer of detail where if it seemed like something should work in a fight, conceptually, it often did. Like using Holy Waters and Phoenix Downs to kill undead enemies, or using the float ability that allows you to dodge Earth attacks, or like that magnitude 8 attack that crushes people.

It went beyond that uber simplicity of an ice or a water attack damaging a fire enemy, for example, which is much more of kind of a standard or a given.

And the fact that that went all the way back to that kind of whenever this. What was it, 1994. Right.

They were thinking about all those things because they were able to implement it. And that just. I mean, I’m sure it’s even not all that complex, but I’d like to kind of look at that code base and see how it all shakes out.

Because there’s a lot of if then statements I have to imagine based on how your party is equipped and the statuses you have set and all that.

[01:37:02] Speaker C: And those kind of things you mentioned are, I want to say, trace a lot of the roots back to Final Fantasy 3 and 4. I think, like, the first seed of the idea came in in three and then kind of just got turned into like, a series staple at four. Like they recall in Final Fantasy 4, there’s like an undead boss or something that, you know, you’re supposed to just sling cure spells at it forever. So a lot of scripted stuff like that in that game,

[01:37:33] Speaker A: I guess. Also, though, we’ve talked about it here and there throughout this season. But the pixel art is obviously gorgeous across the environments, especially the backgrounds of every battle screen and the sprite Work of actually visibly displaying emotion in these tiny charact characters. The use of Mode 7, which was obviously very persistent across most games for Super Nintendo was really creative and I don’t feel like it was abused. They, you know, they did have a couple.

What seemed to be going on too long scenes like with Terra flying around when she first becomes her esper form and then a couple of the airship moments like they. They probably didn’t need to go that long but.

But they did a really good job obviously with using that feature of the Super Nintendo and placing it in interesting moments of the game.

[01:38:22] Speaker C: This is still one of the best looking pixel games ever made and I don’t think it’ll ever be topped.

[01:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I have to agree there. I mean obviously there’s been a big wave of like there’s the. What’s it? HD2D. Is that what they call it? Like Octopath Traveler. There’s a lot of remasters but I think there’s. It’s just. And a lot of especially Metroidvanias and retro type retro inspired games that have come out in the last 10 or so years, maybe a little bit longer than that. And I don’t think anyone’s really topped it. Yeah, they just did such a great job with the paintbrush they had in their hand.

[01:38:58] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. It’s like, you know, limitations breed creativity. Right?

Totally. A lot of want a cool use of the Super Nintendo hardware here.

[01:39:11] Speaker A: Flying the airship and riding Chocobos was a lot of fun just to kind of joyride around and you don’t even have to battle it just except with Death Gaze I suppose.

Just. And there’s a good use of the Mode 7. Right. It’s just you can just run around and just run endlessly or fly around endlessly. And I mean I think I just took laps around the world and saw it cross over to the other side. Was just so much fun.

[01:39:35] Speaker C: It’s so immersive for sure.

[01:39:39] Speaker A: And I. Okay, so I guess all of that is my very, very long winded way of saying looking at through sort of this combined lens of playing it in 2026 with all the gaming context I have now, as well as how the experience would have been if I played it all the way through when I was loving the hell out of that PS1 era of Final Fantasy. I’d definitely give this an 8.5 or a 9 out of 10. I can certainly say when my son is old enough to not only play video games games, but ones with actual stories and I’m sort of Drip feeding him the greatest experiences available.

I’ll almost definitely be introducing him to Final Fantasy as a series with six.

[01:40:17] Speaker C: Yeah.

First Final Fantasy game.

[01:40:23] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s not much wrong with it, maybe a couple exceptions, but there’s just so much that they did well that I think it really makes sense.

[01:40:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they did.

[01:40:33] Speaker A: And so, Alex, I guess as far as our parting thoughts, the way they took some of the same concepts that were done here In Final Fantasy 6, Mav already mentioned 4 and 5 had a lot of the traces back to it as well.

But they took these concepts, especially from six in this more steampunk industrial type setting, like future technology type setting, and completely changed things up when they simultaneously moved to 3D and went into that kind of specifically steampunk setting instead of High Fantasy with Final Fantasy vii and still absolutely crushed it.

Like, this is just emblematic of how Peak Square was in their heyday and how creatively risky they were willing to be with this really stellar team in place.

[01:41:19] Speaker B: Oh, definitely.

[01:41:20] Speaker A: Matt. For do you have any idea how long sort of that core Final Fantasy team was in place over there?

[01:41:27] Speaker C: Until Final Fantasy the Spirits within just broke the company.

[01:41:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I do remember that.

[01:41:34] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, the father of Final Fantasy is, you know, Hironobu Sakaguchi, right. And he was the director of every Final Fantasy up through God. I want to say 10. And yeah, they basically fired him after he directed the Spirits within and forced them in Virtual Enix.

[01:41:50] Speaker A: Well, you know, it just goes to show you, in the corporate world, you can be an absolute legend and make one mistake and you’re out.

[01:42:00] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:42:01] Speaker A: As fortunate, unfortunate as that is, I guess I do kind of wish that. And everyone talks about how well the story is written and how well these characters are written and their level of depth. I wish they put more lore behind at least the bosses and mini bosses besides Kefka.

And I know a lot of people rag on those very cryptic bits of lore in souls games, but I feel like it could fit perfectly here to deepen the meaning behind fighting the bosses instead of just they’re in your way and they’re evil and about to attack you, so you should kill them.

[01:42:37] Speaker C: Yeah, this game had a lot of like, you know, monster bosses, which are always the least interesting.

[01:42:42] Speaker B: Yeah, very true, very true.

[01:42:45] Speaker A: I think as.

As you incorporate more human or humanoid or remnant of what used to be a human type bosses or enemies, it seems to be a more common way to get some actual interesting information out of them. But I would be curious if they did do a full remake of this if they would incorporate something like that.

[01:43:07] Speaker C: I feel like there’s bits and pieces of it with Ultima weapon and like Vargas at the start of the game and stuff. But yeah, it’s definitely missing in most of these.

[01:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:43:20] Speaker B: I will say though, like the enemies at the end, the three main. The three main that you play before Kefka, because we were talking about like. Yeah, the rest of them, it’s sort of like just beasts. But those three, now that we talked about the opera scene, they do kind of more remind me of like opera inspired like characters or like Roman paintings, like type characters.

[01:43:43] Speaker A: You’re talking about the tears of the tears.

[01:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah, the tears of the tower up to Kefka and then even Kefka himself.

[01:43:51] Speaker A: True. Yeah. Kefka looks like he’s straight out of a painting from Classical.

[01:43:57] Speaker B: Exactly.

[01:43:58] Speaker A: You’d see it like in the background.

[01:44:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Something Sistine Child somewhere in. Yeah.

[01:44:05] Speaker C: There’s a recent interview with Tetsuya Nomura, Right. The character designer of all the characters in Final Fantasy 6. Right. Where I think he said that he basically just drew the Kafka sprite for the final boss and then went to the programming team and was like, do this, make this.

[01:44:28] Speaker A: It’s a great looking strike.

Yeah. I mean it’s really kind of legit as a work of art that you could put on the wall.

I don’t know if you want to be staring at Kefk all the time, but I’m sure someone does. Mavro, do you have any, any other context that you know of related to that sort of three tiered tower right before you get to Kefka?

[01:44:46] Speaker C: Yeah, the goddess statues or whatever. No, I don’t. I don’t really think I know of much.

[01:44:53] Speaker A: Okay.

[01:44:54] Speaker C: Besides, I don’t know, you know, Nomura was the one who drew all this stuff, right? He’s like, I mean, you know, Tatsuya Nomora, he still makes games he’s known for like Kingdom Hearts these days. He’s kind of like.

[01:45:07] Speaker A: He probably just had a dream and said, okay, there you go. That’s the next enemy.

Probably so. Yeah. Also, I guess now that we’ve reached the end, Alex, to revisit a conversation we had in Episode four and Matt Vroid, I’ll have you join in on this too. Now that we’ve had the time to really think about it, is there any other villain you can think of in all the video games you’ve played who is more of a sadistic psychopath than Kefka?

Huh?

[01:45:36] Speaker C: That is a question for sure.

Yes, Luca blight from Suikoden 2 comes close.

[01:45:46] Speaker A: Okay, I. I have not played anything from that series, but I’ve heard really good things.

[01:45:50] Speaker B: Same.

[01:45:52] Speaker C: Yeah, let’s say he definitely is like the same sort of chaotic, evil kind of archetype that Kefka is, but in a more like grounded political setting. And I don’t know, usually those villains kind of fall flat for me, but he just works super well.

[01:46:16] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, I guess I’ll have to have there been. What was the Most recent one? Suikoden 6, I think came out a few years ago.

[01:46:24] Speaker C: No. So Suikoden kind of died with Suikoden 5, which was a PlayStation 2 game.

They are currently in the midst, like, they being Konami. They’re currently in the midst of sort of reviving the series with the 1 and 2 remaster that came out last year. And then they’re also like really hyping up like a mobile gacha game that’s basically supposed to be like Suicide in six in terms of its story coming out later this year.

[01:46:53] Speaker B: Isn’t there Just on tweaking in wise. Isn’t there? Is it the Elite Elusian Chronicles or something?

[01:47:00] Speaker C: That’s sort of a. Yeah, that’s Chronicles. And yeah, that one was like Chronicles. Yeah, yeah, that one’s a lot of the. The original team that made tweaking 1 and 2 kind of spun off and made this.

This. Yes. Ayuden Chronicles game that is like supposed to be tweaked in everything but name. But it kind of, I don’t think was just didn’t necessarily reviewed as well because of how, like. I don’t know, I think it’s just kind of what people like about Suikoden is like. It’s. It’s basically. It’s kind of like, you know, the Trails series where it’s like one very long interconnected story that takes place in a lot of different countries, like over the course of multiple games. And Suikoden really did that well. And I think that people were just kind of like excited to see where that story was going. And then it just kind of ended, you know, 20 years ago, roughly.

[01:47:55] Speaker A: All right, we might have to check that out.

[01:47:57] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:48:01] Speaker A: So. Okay. Finally a fun activity popped into my head in the last few minutes related to one of my earlier comments.

You know, how we’ve been talking about how expressive they managed to make all these pixel art characters be throughout this game, which is an impressive feat on its own.

It made me start wondering who would you cast if you were making a movie or a TV series in 2026 about Final Fantasy VI.

Including, let’s say, our main party at least, plus Kefka, obviously.

And you can just throw them out there, you know, don’t need to cover everyone. But just curious.

[01:48:36] Speaker C: I mean, obviously we’re making a TV series in 2026, so Pedro Pascal has got to be in it, right?

[01:48:42] Speaker A: Well, okay, I am Chilean, so I by default have to include Pedro Vasquel in everything. Also include on top. Maybe he has two roles for me.

[01:48:53] Speaker B: Oh, man, that’s a.

[01:48:57] Speaker A: So, okay. He just did too good of a job in the show Shogun. I don’t know if either of you watched that, but Tadanobu Asano, who played.

I think his name was Kawashige in that show and who also played.

What was it? He played Raiden in the Mortal Kombat movie.

The more recent Mortal Kombat movie. I think he would be a great cyan.

[01:49:22] Speaker B: Okay.

[01:49:26] Speaker A: For Tara, I was thinking someone like Cailee Spaeny, who was in Alien Romulus. I want to say it was.

[01:49:33] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, she was good. I liked it. Yeah, I liked Alien Romulus.

Yeah, she’s a good up and coming.

Yeah, she would work well with her.

Trying to think of someone for Kefka.

[01:49:49] Speaker A: So I’m trying to like. I guess when I think about Kefka, I’m trying to avoid someone who’s already done something similar because like, okay, you could obviously the similarities between Kefka and the Joker from yeah. And R2. So you could. No, we did it 15 years ago. No, I was gonna say you could put Heath Ledger, man. What are you talking about?

[01:50:07] Speaker B: Jared Lettow. I know.

[01:50:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

[01:50:09] Speaker B: I’m kidding.

[01:50:10] Speaker A: And then like. Okay, so we already did something like with a bit of a hint of it, like Adam Driver just looks wise. I feel like could fit the part based on his play as Kylo Ren. I think Joseph Quinn was the. What’s his name? Human Torch in the most recent Fantastic Four movie. Could do a decent job.

He was in, I think was season four of Stranger Things, maybe as like this grungy rock dude. I also think from Stranger Things, I think Joe Keery could be Locke.

[01:50:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I can see that.

[01:50:44] Speaker C: Fantastic.

[01:50:47] Speaker B: You’re going all young and young school. I was thinking, I mean, some reason for Kefka, but Kefka is too funny. I don’t know if it would work.

But just the evilness and like Kefka sometimes reminded me of Red Skull. So I was thinking Hugo Weaving because he was.

[01:51:02] Speaker A: Hugo Weaving’s good at playing Villains, though.

[01:51:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And then Mr.

[01:51:07] Speaker C: Is he even still, like, making films?

[01:51:11] Speaker B: I don’t know. He’s too old. I don’t know.

[01:51:13] Speaker A: That’s a good question.

[01:51:15] Speaker B: I don’t know.

[01:51:15] Speaker A: He was good, though, as a villain, if you want. Okay. If you want, like, slightly older. I mean, the thing is, this cast is so varied. Right. And you can only gather so much from their.

[01:51:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

[01:51:25] Speaker A: Like little portraits in the party menu and then in the, you know, their actual pixel art. So, you know, you gotta stretch and make your own assumptions of certain things. I think Christopher Walken would make a good strago.

[01:51:38] Speaker C: Yeah. I could definitely see that

[01:51:42] Speaker B: as Saban. As Saban. I would like Alan Richardson Bautista. Oh, David.

[01:51:48] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:51:49] Speaker B: I was thinking Alan Ritchson from Obviously from Reacher and Blue Mountain State, I think.

Funny, because Saban’s got the comedy as well. I think he’d be.

I don’t know. I think he’d be fine.

[01:52:02] Speaker A: No, I can agree with that.

I would. Okay. And then. So for. Not that there’s much lines to it, but for Gao, I would put Will Poulter in there when he was a lot younger. I guess it doesn’t really apply in this scenario, but like in that movie. What was that movie he was in with Jennifer Aniston where they’re like a fake family.

[01:52:22] Speaker B: We are the Millers.

[01:52:23] Speaker A: That’s the one. I feel like he’s a.

[01:52:29] Speaker C: I could

[01:52:30] Speaker B: see that Gao, to me is just whenever I was playing as Gal. And this just brings me back to childhood. Just reminded me of Donnie from the Wild Thornberries.

[01:52:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, definitely.

[01:52:42] Speaker B: Right.

[01:52:43] Speaker C: Let’s just do gal with 100%,

[01:52:51] Speaker A: I guess. Okay, I’ll throw.

[01:52:53] Speaker B: So

[01:52:56] Speaker A: thinking about Celeste, you know, I look at, like, this buff military general type character in the pixel art and then the story behind it a little bit. But then the concept art is like a very kind of skinny person that doesn’t look like they in a lot of wars.

But I’d probably throw out someone like either Brie Larson or Lea Seydou.

[01:53:23] Speaker B: I could see.

I could see Leah say, do.

[01:53:26] Speaker A: I think this probably makes more sense there.

[01:53:29] Speaker B: If it was an older casting, I could go with, like, Charlize Theron.

[01:53:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that’d be a good one. That’d be a good one if you

[01:53:37] Speaker B: did, like, an older.

[01:53:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no, totally.

[01:53:40] Speaker B: Because we named so many, like, younger actors. But yeah, but yeah, no, there’s some good choices for them. I like.

[01:53:48] Speaker C: Yeah.

[01:53:48] Speaker A: Anyway, they’re not calling on us to make a movie anytime soon, but it came to mind because there’s so much that you could do with a movie out of this. So I guess the question then goes to the listeners. Who would you cast if you were making a Final Fantasy 6 movie? Let us know on Discord.

[01:54:02] Speaker B: Movie, TV series, whatever you want.

[01:54:06] Speaker A: Any other final comments on this game? It was a masterpiece.

[01:54:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

[01:54:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Great game.

[01:54:17] Speaker A: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Mavroid. It’s been a pleasure having you on and going through Final Fantasy 6.

It’s really rekindled our old school love for JRPGs. So we’re excited to join you and playing some more in the very near future over on your end of things. I think I especially now that I know about this Best Buy deal. I’m going to go try to find a way to pick up Thousand Year Door and join you over there.

[01:54:40] Speaker B: Definitely.

When are you guys starting that up?

[01:54:43] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. We are.

I think I mentioned we meet every two weeks to talk about a chunk of a game. So I think we’re talking about, I want to say the prologue and the first two chapters. A Thousand Year Door about a month from now.

Of course, that means nothing. That would be mid April.

[01:55:08] Speaker A: Mavroid for our listeners, what is the best way to join the JRPG Book Club and play along with the group in any of your future games?

[01:55:16] Speaker C: Absolutely. So I think the easiest way to find us is if you go to Reddit and you go to RJRPG or actually on the sidebar of that subreddit. It’s like the JRPG Book Club Discord Server.

We’re also, you know, a community server on Discord, so you can find us. It’s just, you know, JRPG Book Club.

And also happy to DM me at Mavroid on Discord and I can send you an invite link.

[01:55:46] Speaker A: The Reddit route is indeed how I found you to begin with. So really appreciate it and you’ve got a great thing going over there. So happy to be a part of it.

Thanks.

[01:55:56] Speaker C: Happy to have you. Hope some listeners might join in too.

[01:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.

[01:56:00] Speaker A: Excellent.

Well, tune in next time to find out which game Season nine of the Gaming Backlog Book Club will be about. Thanks so much everyone.

[01:56:08] Speaker B: Yes, thank you all. Thank you for all of you for joining us on this journey through Final Fantasy 6. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And yeah, stay tuned for Season nine.

Thanks.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of naive games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram account under the same name. Thanks.