Final Fantasy 6 Part 4 – Hope Amidst Desolation

Last time…
Just check it out to see for yourself!

Now that Kefka has sent the world into ruin, we gain Control of Celes. Let’s see what we can find out.

Oh by the way, Celes now calls Cid Granddad.

We look around the world, but don’t find anything.
We feed Cid some more fish, but he is looking worse and worse.

Eventually…

Celes, distraught over Cid’s death, runs to the northern cliffs.

And jumps off.


Somehow, she lives, and a bird, with Locke’s bandana shows up!

Checking in on Cid, we find a letter, that tells Celes to get off of the island and find everyone.

In the note, Cid mentions that there are some stairs that will lead to our freedom, so we go and check it out and find a raft!


Celes uses the raft and ends up on a piece of continent.

We travel around a bit, find an odd tower, and find Albrook!
The place is in shambles, but there are people still alive.

People talk about how Kefka is considered a god now.

We also hear word that a man was looking for a woman matching Celes’ description, and that he was headed north to Tzen.

Someone also mentions that there was a martial artist who recently came through town.
Are Locke and Sabin still alive?

With that new information, let’s head north to Tzen.

In Tzen, the whole village starts shaking!

We look around to see what is happening, and we spot Sabin!

He says he is holding up part of the house, and there is a child in the home!

We quickly rush through the home, on a timer, and save the child.

Celes is happy to see Sabin, and vice versa.

He then joins us, saying he wants to smash Kefka.

Asking around town, people mention a “Light of Judgement” that Kefka uses from his tower to destroy whole towns.

We also find a guy to sells a glowing stone for 10 gil.

We buy it and it turns out to be a the Seraph esper!

This is a very nice esper, with some great healing spells to learn.

Traveling to Mobliz, we find the town in ruins, but there is a young boy and some dogs who see us and run.

Following him, we find many children hidden under a house.
Just then, a voice rings out…

Terra is still alive as well!

She tells us that Kefka used his Light of Judgement to destroy the town the day the world was thrown into ruin.

Terra came along and rescued these children, and began to look after them.
She also says that she can’t join us in our fight.

She says ever since she started taking care of these children, she lost the will to fight.
She says these children need her, she can’t just leave.

Just then, a kid runs in and tells us Humbaba is coming!


Terra rushes out to fight it, but gets wrecked.

Celes and Sabin come in and we take over the fight.

This guy was a doozy.

He could pretty much two-shot us, but he used mostly spells, which Celes could Runic away while Sabin attacked.

Sabin went down at one point, but we managed to get the rhythm going again.

Humbaba flees, leaving Terra in a weakened state.
She says she just can’t leave right now.

With nothing we can do right now to convince Terra to join us, we leave.

But, a little boy says he found something that fell off of Humbaba’s neck when he fled, and we get the Fenrir esper!

Fenrir seems pretty decent, especially with that +30% MP. Learning Teleport at a x10 is nice as well.

The world map is quite different as well.

In Nikeah, we find some thieves who have escaped from the Figaro dungeons.
Crimsom Robbers, they call themselves.

We find their boss, Gerad, who looks just like Edgar.

Gerad is heading to Figaro to steal back their treasure.
Celes tries to speak to him, but “Gerad,” doesn’t know what she is talking about.

We sneak onto their ship and find ourselves at South Figaro.
We find Gerad again, but he refuses to answer us as Edgar.

One of his henchmen come in and tells him they are ready.
Outside of town, we find Siegreid who is still alive after all of this time!

He was the one on the phantom train who stole that treasure.
He says he will clear out all of the vile, nasty monsters for us and to wait here…

But based on his past performance, I am going to venture a guess he can’t handle it all himself.

We move through the cave and find Gerad and his men finding a secret passage to Figaro.
We come out on the other side in the castle and investigate.

We come along and find Gerad again, who is dealing with some tentacles inside the engine room of the castle.

He casts off his charade after his henchmen go and get the treasure, and asks Celes to help him.

These tentacles were pretty tough.

They love to inflict Slow and Poison, and, they have the dreaded Grab attack.

When a character is grabbed, they slowly lose health while the tentacle gains health.

They can’t take any actions, and any cure spells cast on them just don’t work.

They will be released after a short time, but in some situations, this can happen, where all of your characters get grabbed and you just have to wait.

The fact that Edgar doesn’t have that many spells doesn’t help, but at least his tools are still pretty strong.

I made the mistake of trying to attack them all at once, but it is best to just try to focus on one tentacle at a time to dwindle their numbers.

Eventually, we defeat the tentacles, and Edgar says we have to hide before the thieves come back.

We do, and they assume “Gerad” was eaten by the tentacles and quickly leave.
With that, Edgar joins us again!

We leave the engine room, and the engineer makes the castle go above the sand again, allowing everyone to breathe again!
Figaro is now free of monsters!

We now have the option of going to Kohlingen, so we do.

In the pub, we find Setzer, who is still alive!

Celes is happy to see him, but he seems really down.

He says he lost his will to fight after what happened. Especially after the Blackjack was destroyed.

Celes manages to talk him into joining us, and he mentions a place called Darill’s tomb, where a new pair of wings await.

Arriving at Darill’s tomb, we run around and solve a few puzzles and then we face this thing as we open a chest!

He was really easy, just like the Whelk fight way back in the beginning, don’t attack his shell when he retreats into it.

He can cast Magnitude 8, but it didn’t do a whole lot of damage.

I then cast Float, and didn’t have to worry about it.

He went down shortly after.

Moving on, we find a stone pillar with some flowers at the top that says Darill is resting here.

Then, this thing jumps out at us!

He started off the fight with Level ? Holy, which thankfully didn’t hit anyone.

He had some powerful magic, like Blizzara and Blizzaga, but Celes could Runic that away.
He was weak to fire, so everyone spammed Fire while Celes used Runic.

Every so often I would have either Celes herself or Setzer heal.

After we beat it, we continue on, where Setzer tells us a little about Darill.

She was a fantastic airship pilot, like Setzer.

One day, she rode off and never came back.

Later, Setzer found the wreckage of her ship, the Falcon, restored it and placed it in Darill’s tomb.

With that, we now have another airship, the Falcon!

A pigeon catches Celes’ eye and we follow it to a nearby town to check it out.

Celes thinks this bird might lead us to some of our friends.
We arrive in Maranda, and look around.

It seems people have noticed a swordsman who “talks funny,” come and go through town.
We speak to a woman in town who informs us of her boyfriend, who sent her a letter.

Which looks and speaks a lot like Cyan!

We send a letter for her, via carrier pigeon, who shows us the way to him.
We arrive in Zozo, and pick up a Chainsaw for Edgar!

Making our way through the town, we speak to a man who sells us something that will get rid of rust.

We find a rusted door that leads to Mount Zozo and use it, allowing us entry.

Moving along, we hit a switch that opens up a chest, which lets out this thing!

The Storm Dragon hit really hard, I wasn’t prepared at all.


We got a game over from it.

This time, we managed to beat it, but it wasn’t easy.

The Storm Dragon uses Wind Gale, Leaf Swirl, Aero, has very strong physical attacks and a ton of health.

For some reason, Celes was weak to wind, because she would take almost 2000 damage from wind attacks, so I just had to let her stay dead.

At the start, I had everyone start buffing and healing each other.

When the first wave of buffs were applied, I had Sabin start using Raging Fist against while Edgar and Setzer kept the heals and buffs coming.

Eventually, we were in a good enough spot that both Sabin and Edgar could attack while Setzer healed.

We then defeated the Storm Dragon!

We got Force Armor, and it says there are 7 dragons remaining.

I remember talking to a NPC that mentioned defeating all the dragons, but I can’t remember exactly what it was.

We find Cyan, who is sending off another letter.

He is happy to see us and agrees to go with us.

He says he went to Maranda and saw how the woman was eagerly awaiting her boyfriend’s letters, but they never came.

He said he couldn’t just sit by and watch her wait, so he posed as her boyfriend and send the letters and silk flowers.

But, he says it must stop, since it is all a lie.

He tells us that he met Gau in Maranda, who said he wants to get strong and smash Kefka.
Cyan suggests we try looking in the Veldt for him.

We also find some funny books in a locked chest of Cyan’s.

Let’s head to the Veldt to try and find Gau!

Well that was easy, same deal as last time, except I didn’t have to give him a Dried Meat.

I stick around and teach Gau some of the new rages for a bit.

Afterwords, We find a cave in the Veldt, and when we enter, a dog, much like interceptor, appears and leads us to someone…

Relm! We go to her, and she is badly wounded.

We then get ambushed by this!

He wasn’t that tough. He did hit hard, and he did cast Blizzaga once, nearly killing Edgar, but it wasn’t that bad, he mostly stuck to physical attacks.

However, they aren’t through yet, and something else attacks!

This guy seemed to go down faster than the previous one, probably because all of our buffs from the previous fight were still active.

He hit pretty hard, and tried to use Sleeping Gas on Edgar, but Edgar evaded.

We also get these! Might be useful.

Celes suggests we take her back to Thamasa to rest, so we do.
With nothing else to do, let’s just let Relm recover from her injuries.

In town, someone mentions Doma castle, and how they woke up with nightmares while in there.
Let’s investigate that while Relm rests up.

When we arrive in Doma castle, it is deserted.

We find a room and rest in it, but when everyone awakes, Cyan won’t wake up!


Just then, three young boys enter the room and tell us they are the “dream stooges” and they are going to take Cyan’s soul!

Thinking quickly, Celes jumps into Cyan’s dream as the three boys do as well.

We then find ourselves split up, in a weird dream world.

I only have Gau in the party right now, looks like we will have to find everyone.

We quickly find Edgar, along with one of the boys, who runs when we get close, saying he won’t take us on without his brothers.

Continuing our search, we find Celes.

The fights in here aren’t that bad, but they love to inflict all kinds of nasty and annoying status ailments on us.

We then find a door that we couldn’t previously enter, and out pops the three dream stooges, who finally attack us!

These little… Individuals…

Were annoying!

They all had various absorbs, counters, spells and abilities.

They somewhat mirrored the Triton, Phobos, Nereid from FF5.

However, they didn’t seem as hard as that fight, but still pretty challenging.

They could also use the same annoying Delta Attack that the other trio from FF5 could use.

I managed to get the brother that was the “healer” of the group down, when the other “support” brother revived him with Arise, which was extremely annoying!

Since they used mostly offensive spells, I had everyone cast Reflect on themselves to bounce back their spells, but they were sometimes smart about it;
they would cast Reflect on each other, and target themselves with spells, therefore bypassing our Reflect entirely.

At one point, it was nuts, with spells flying and bouncing off everyone.

Eventually, we got the last brother and continued on, but we now found ourselves back on the Phantom Train?

Going through some annoying puzzles and even more annoying enemies, we exit the engine car and find ourselves in a new setting.

This time, we are in Magitek Armors! We see Cyan chased off by some imperial soldiers and follow them.

Quickly wandering through some mines, we find ourselves back in Doma, but Cyan’s wife and child are there and speak to us.

They tell us that he is riddled with guilt over what happened in Doma and the world.

They say that Wrexsoul has latched itself onto Cyan, and that we need to save him!

They they disappear leaving a convenient save point for us to use.

We go through and find Wrexsoul and fight him!

This was one of the most annoying boss fights I have faced. Unique, yes, hard, not really… Just really frigging annoying.

The boss’ gimmick is this; he can “possess” one of your characters, and until that particular character is killed, he won’t be able to be attacked.
There is no sign that tells you which one is possessed or not, so it becomes a guessing game.

You would be surprised how hard it was to kill my characters.

Even using the Death spell wasn’t that effective, since my characters would dodge it with the Aegis Shield.
I mostly resulted to using Bio, since that dealt great damage, if it hit, and dealt Poison.

Trying to physically attack each other was pointless, since we dealt less than 100 damage to each other.

And since Gau doesn’t actually have an “Attack” command, he either Rages, or uses Magic. I couldn’t just let him Rage out this fight.

He does come with two lackies, Soul Savers. They could cast some mildly damaging spells, but nothing major.
What I used them for was MP refills via Osmose.

Unfortunately, they do revive themselves when they die, but they keep their MP total, so if it was 0, it will stay 0 even after you kill them.

When Wrexsoul is out on the filled, the Soul Savers will try to cast Reflect on him, but thankfully, I had Osmosed all of their MP before hand, so I could blast away at his Ice weakness with Blizzara.

The Soul Savers do know Magic Drain, which drains all of your MP, it seems, but I just drank a quick Ether and Osmosed it all back.

Eventually, we got him.


After that, Cyan’s wife and son appear again and give Cyan a pep talk, after which, he lets go of his confusion and doubt, and becomes a master of Bushido!

There is also a magicite that I spied on the throne room, but couldn’t get it because of the cutscene… Let’s go pick that up real quick!

We find it’s the Alexander esper!

Alexander is like Carbuncle, comes with a bunch of awesome buff spells, but at a much higher rate than Carbuncle, and comes with Holy to boot!
No stat boost on level up, but oh well, Holy is worth it.

Going back to check on Relm, she is gone!
Someone in town mentions that someone from Jidoor left with her.
Let’s head there and see.

In Jidoor, we hear about Relm being put in the service of an art dealer of sorts.
When we check out his abode, the light is off, and a mysterious voice tells us to stay away as we go upstairs.

When we turn the light on, we can venture upstairs, and we see a panting of the late emperor, and we get a letter, that tells us a cryptic clue about where a legendary treasure is!

We also check out his diary, and it appears he had a painting commissioned, a large one, except, ever since he has put it in his home, strange things have been happening in the home.

When we investigate one of the painting, it literally leaps off the wall and attacks us!
After the fight, a door is revealed.

We go through a somewhat confusing dungeon, and fight another painting, which is… This thing. It gives us no trouble.

We go through it and eventually find Owzer and Relm.

They tell us that the painting is possessed, and when we go to attack it, it comes forth and reveals itself to be Chadarnook, the demon!

This guy wasn’t that tough.

It has two forms, the “goddess” form and the “demon” form.
The demon told us not to attack the goddess form, so we tried to hit it when it was in its demon form.

In the demon form, it had powerful thunder magic, and was quick as well.
While the damage wasn’t that bad, it did add up without the occasional healing.

Gau was set with the Thunder Shield, meaning all those thunder attacks healed him, so he was fine.
The goddess form uses status ailments along with some very weak physicals.

He goes down, and Owzer tells us that he collected a stone, and wished to paint Lakshmi.
When Relm painted it for him, the demon, attracted to the stone, possessed the painting.

He gives us the stone, which is actually magicite!
Relm then joins us!

Lakshmi is much like the other healing espers, except Lakshmi teaches Curaga, albeit very slowly, at only x1.
+2 Stamina is all right.

With that, let’s rearrange our party to put Relm and Setzer in and go check out Terra, maybe she has changed her mind.
We head to Mobliz, and Terra isn’t anywhere to be found.

The kids tell us that one of the woman staying here is pregnant.

We go to one of the houses and find Terra with the woman, when Humbaba attacks again!

We quickly rush out and put up a fight, but he blows half of the party away!


Then, Terra rushes outside quickly, and morphs into her esper form and we wreck him!

Everyone then sees her esper form, and at first, are scared.
But they slowly realize it is just Terra.

Terra then tells everyone she will fight to make the world a better place, and finally joins us!

With that, next time, we continue our search for everyone else.
Can we find Locke, Strago and Shadow?

Stay tuned!