While escaping reality, Cyan and his moody friends come across the phantom train, which acts as the RPG version of Charon on the River Styx. Cyan decides it’s worth a shot to try and find his recently murdered family and plop a couple of phoenix downs on them while they’re still just mostly dead.
At first the train seems really creepy, what with all the ghosts implying that you’re never ever ever leaving.
I popped in Final Fantasy VI for the first time on Christmas Day, 1994. The Super Nintendo wasn’t entirely new to me, but I had played mostly Super Mario Kart, so I wasn’t prepared for the brilliant music and graphics that hit you during the introduction. And then, right when you’re settling in, you start to wonder. Is this girl with the green hair one of the good guys? Am I killing innocent people?
It was exhilarating to have my expectations for a video game story flipped upside down. It’s not just that you are forced to kill innocent people; you absolutely destroy them with a strange power called Magitek that shoots elemental lasers from your body suit. Who are these bad guys I’m fighting for, and what power do they yield? Without much exposition, it sets up how bleak the situation is for whatever heroes you wind up playing as.
It all culminates with a boss battle against Whelk (aka Ymir), your first test in the game. Ultimately, he’s not very powerful, but you can make the battle much longer than it needs to be if you don’t plan your attack. Time your attack wrong and he’ll absorb your pesky lasers and come back with a powerful attack that nearly destroys your party. If I recall, I almost lost to him my first go round.
My mind was sufficiently blown, and I spent a good part of the next two years of my life married to Final Fantasy VI.
For our second challenge, we had to simply write about religion. I had initially hoped to write about how the intergalactic pasta wars led to the rise of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Then I realized I only had 150 words and I’m not Douglas Adams. So I decided to tackle an older religion:
Continue reading Play with the Prose VII, Challenge 2: Matt Novak
Several times during the game you are asked to split your party up into groups of three or four in order to win a long battle or take on separate tasks. The first time is right near the beginning, when Terra is passed out and Locke has to protect her with the help of the Moogles. It requires long-term strategy, a rarity in video games.
This will be my fourth Play with the Prose contest. I’ve made the semifinals once and the finals twice, but remain a bridesmaid. This time around we have 17 contestants. The moderator’s prompt this season is to write like previous contestants. There may even be a week where other people have to write like me! While that seems bound for lots of in-jokes, the themes should be general enough.
There will be 12 challenges, I think. Top 8 make the playoffs. This might be the strongest group of writers yet. Wish me luck.
The first challenge was to write like Bret Highum. Or specifically, about an emotionally repressed redneck.
Continue reading Play With the Prose VII–Challenge 1: Bret Highum
After Leo gets mysteriously called back to Vector, Kefka engages in some not-so-subtle foreshadowing for the player. What’s particularly great about this scene, however, is how truly evil Kefka comes across in such a short time. He tells one of his soldiers that he doesn’t care if the Empire has prisoners in Doma; he wants everyone dead.
In many early RPGs, you started at the castle. The king was just the king and he gave you money. Here, you start in a somewhat shady town and then head off to the castle. And the king has feelings. And we learn about them in an incredibly effective cut scene that not only develops two important characters, but sets up another significant plot point with Setzer later in the game. Briefly, we learn that Edgar and Sabin’s dad, the former king, was likely murdered by the Empire. Sabin’s pissed about the local apathy towards this and wants to run away and fight. Edgar wants to as well, but feels a strong responsibility to his people, even if they are naive and oblivious. So he makes a proposal to soften tensions with his brother.
Right away after meeting Leo, one of the highest ranking generals in the Empire, we begin to identify with him.
A trend I’ve noticed with my entries so far is that I can’t help but compare Final Fantasy VI to previous games in the genre. But today, it’s in a good way. Dragon Warrior was the first I played, and you went the quest alone. You never faced more than one enemy per battle, and that eventually got stale. But Dragon Warrior II improved upon this, only having you start the game alone, forcing you to find allies. Sometimes you did run into multiple enemies, and the increase in strategy was welcome. Dragon Warrior IV played around with this as well, sometimes having you fight alone, sometimes with groups of 2, 3, or 4.
Final Fantasy VI plays around with this constantly, which is one of the reason the game doesn’t get stale for a long time. You begin the game with just a couple of people in your party, and it steadily grows. But there are several times where your group is forced to split up. The first time is after you go to the Returner’s Hideout. When I learned I’d be going to South Figaro alone with Locke, I was excited.
While there’s no battles you have to fight while alone, you certainly can. And you will almost certainly lose. The best strategy is to pull an Indiana Jones and find an enemy to help you blend in.
Until the era of the Super Nintendo, final bosses in RPGs were nearly all the same. They were evil entities that loved being evil because they loved evil. Their motivations were pretty much “Mua ha ha ha!” and not much else. Not only that, they were generally heard about and not seen until the final battle.
Death By Troggles 
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