Part 2: What Time Is It?

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest - Shrine of Light - This plays when you wake up and until you get to Locke.

Saber takes in her surroundings, and makes a beeline for Arvis' clock. Everyone loves clocks right?



Remember how I said items are usually about as powerful as the item would be in the normal game? Clocks in the base game have Elixirs, so clocks can lead to all sorts of things, like this helmet that normally comes from the final dungeon. This comes with a price; clocks can ALSO have a Monster-in-a-box and they will usually be waaaaaay stronger than you can handle at the time. Lots of permadeath runs have ended right here and now with this clock.



Arvis normally gives you an item before you leave his house. In vanilla I think it's two Sleeping Bags. Instead, I got a vanilla Barrier Ring. Nothing special but helpful. The Coronet has its normal stats with a tad higher Defense/Magic Defense.



I also picked up a Shuriken at some point. Shurikens, Ninja Stars, and Tack Stars can all be equipped by anyone that rolls that particular weapon group. I think they're individually pieced out, as I've had characters that can equip the Shuriken but not the Tack Star and vice versa. This Shuriken is over twice the damage of the MithrilBlade I have but that -10 Evade hurts; it's just as well that Saber can't use it.



Now we come to the dances. The randomized names are a recent addition and I think they're a neat touch! Dances in FF6 are a combination of the Dance moves from FF5 and a Berzerker. You choose which Dance you want from the menu; if the battleground you're on matches the Dance you choose (city, plains, snow, etc.) then the Dance will go off. Otherwise, you have a 50% chance to stumble and nothing happens. When the Dance does go off, the background changes (if applicable) and you perform one of the four moves listed. They're not equal odds though. For Town Mazurka, Aurabolt has a 7 in 16 chance of happening, Wild Fang has 6 in 16, Land Slide has 2 in 16, and Wind Slash is a 1 in 16 chance. All the Dances follow this same format. A Dancer will continue Dancing on their turn until the battle is over, or they are incapacitated in some way, be it death, petrification, Sneeze, whatever.

Town Mazurka is nearly useless as a dance. The individual abilities are OK but Land Slide and Wind Slash being a low chance really hurts the dance overall. Cavern Jig is better; Flare Star is an amazing ability but being stuck at a 1 in 16 chance means you can't rely on it at all. Harvester is a good multi-heal but you absolutely cannot rely on it. I will rarely, if ever, use these dances.

https://i.imgur.com/VtYIADl.gifv

Flare Star sure looks nice, though!



Speaking of, we find our first new monster in the Narshe cave, the Oscaged.

Besides the slew of immunities and decent Magic Defense, nothing to write home about.



Cutscenes!



Seiken Densetsu 3 - High Tension Wire - Locke's new theme is very cool.

Instead, we meet our Locke replacement. He looks like Minwu from FF2 and is even more useful.



He commands the respect of radioactive monkeys, for one. Say hello to our Moogle replacements, some monkeys hailing from the Legend of Zelda series. The reason they have character names is explained in Elephantgun's fantastic Let's Break Final Fantasy 6 LP. The basic explanation is that these Moogles take the place of future characters, and are overwritten when you reach the naming screen for that character. This means we can get a sneak peak at what future characters will have for stats and commands but we're not doing that. Gotta leave in some suspense, ya know? As it turns out, the moogles don't indicate what you'll get in the future. They can have any of the basic skills (Blitz, Throw, Morph, etc.) in addition to stuff that Terra, Locke, and Mog have.



Now we get a deeper drink of the battle randomizer water. Due to character limitations, names sometimes come out weird and it's a guessing game what the command actually is until you use it. I'll spoiler that second command if you want to try and guess it yourself!

Flash + Pearl. WuFei will cast Flash on a creature (or everything if you multi-target) then cast Pearl on the initial target. If the Flash kills the target of Pearl, Pearl won't even go off and the creature will die.

R-Pearl will use a random holy-elemental skill, with some varying chance.

https://i.imgur.com/sUhmQH8.gifv

Scar Beam looks cool, unfortunately it's not very powerful. Flash does much better.



Some kind of bug or funky programming within the game causes Flash to do this instead of the same Flash from Edgar's Tools.



Much like Biggs and Wedge, the items the moogkies are using have no bearing on the rest of the game, they're just arbitrarily random, save one thing. Whatever Kamog has equipped is what you will start equipped with in the World of Ruin.

WuFei has something new though.



5 lower defense and 5 higher magic defense compared to vanilla.



I also stole a couple new items from Mog, who you CAN unequip. The Plumed Hat is slightly worse than vanilla, while the MithrilKnife has a juicy +10% Magic Block.



Something that KUMAMA has equipped is giving her auto-sleep status. It's broken by any physical attack but she will start every fight with it. See if you can guess which item has it! I certainly won't remember by the time I get those items.



Did someone order a huge fuck-off robot named Alexandr?



Final Fantasy IV: Restless Moments (Unreleased) - I really like this track, and had never heard it before. You may notice this boss music is different from the Whelk fight; I'm not sure of the criteria but certain battles have different music.

Ela Hur is our Marshal replacement and the only thing that would be threatening is that attack x2, if it didn't have a paltry 12 Attack. I didn't even upload this battle, it was literally just one use of FlaPear and they all died.



*POOF*



Final Fantasy VI - The Day After - This is the town music that plays in the World of Ruin normally.

Outside the city limits, we find a new scorpion. This one has red eyes.





The new battleground does give us another Dance however.

We're at 3/3 for shitty dances, folks.



Maybe these new fellas will teach us how to bust a move? Writa is the land octopus, and the slimes are named Tycho after famed Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.

Ghost Octo is a great name.



NOW we're talking!

Sun Bath restores a ton of HP at this level. The other abilities are pretty worthless here but Sun Bath is amazing.



Eventually the enemies get some more meat to them. We're still replacing the initial easy enemies.



They do provide our final dance for a bit!

Stunner appears blank due to a quirk of the game's programming. I believe it's related to the fact that you can rename Cyan's SwdTech abilities in the Japanese game. Something to do with that interferes with the ROM displaying SwdTech in the Dance menu. Programming is weird. Anyway, Aqua Rake is a strong all-target spell and while Tapir is good, not being able to target or control it makes it very niche. Stunner is good but it has a 2 in 16 chance, and Kitty would have little impact even if it wasn't a 1 in 16 chance.



With all that information out of the way, next time we visit the castle of a lecherous King and learn about his spoony brother.