Part 4: Jenkees!

This should be your last warning if you haven't played FF6 yet to turn back, because it's spoiler-city


We're starting off right as we left off, from the Opera Scene. A lot of what happens from here on out is surprisingly dull despite us having a character we’re not supposed to have. This section right here is pretty much everything glitchy that happens from now until the end of the World of Balance. Just cameras getting a little messed up with Terra occasionally standing around unscripted, which isn't a big deal.


Something I neglected to mention is that Celes's sprite is now returned to her former glory. This is because the Opera House forces her sprite to be changed to the gown, then forces it to be changed back to Celes. She’s still the same useless Moogle, just with Celes’s sprite. Nobody else from here on out goes through a sprite transformation, so the rest of the Moogles are stuck Moogles.


This is the only interesting thing that happens for a while. This scene is when we discover that Terra is actually half-esper and half-human, right before we reaquire Terra.



Because she's not supposed to be in our party, the script doesn't force Terra out. It’s only coded to force out characters that are supposed to be there, then adding Maduin. Therefore Terra stays. It's only a slight graphical change, nothing big.


Oh, and because we named Setzer our Airship finally stays on the ground when we acquire it. It's a good thing.


The only other strange thing: when we enter Narshe (required shortly after we get the airship), the script is still there for the guard to come and chase us off.


The script is removed after we meet with the Returners for the first time, which we never did. We'll be seeing this a lot as we revisit previous areas. This one is rare in that it doesn't cause our game to freeze. Lucky us, because if it did completing the game from using the airship glitch when you first aquire Terra and Locke would be impossible.


I have no idea what Interceptor is doing up there. (this is shortly after meeting with the Empire)


Here's where we've been looking for. With this scene, we get access to the airship and the ability to switch out party members, so we can start revisiting old areas. We could do that when we first got the airship, but since we couldn't freely switch out our party it limited our ability to exploit the game. That, and I wanted Relm and Strago in my party for a specific reason.


First thing I want to do is create a party of just Kupek and Kuku. These, if you've forgotten, are Sabin and Cyan. I'm taking them along because I want to ride the Phantom Train and without them the scripts would fail and the game would freeze.

Remember that we never went to the Phantom Train in the first place, therefore the script will activate when we enter the train station in the Phantom Forest. The entire Eastern Continent was skipped, so there are loads of scripts lying dormant and inactivated. Most of the Eastern Continent has scripts that just freeze the game, but luckily the Phantom Train is one of the few areas that isn’t affected by this.


The game averaged their stats again, so the Moogles are slightly less useless. Strong enough to make it through the Phantom Train, anyways.


Land the airship on the south side of the Phantom Forrest. When we enter this way it places us directly outside the Phantom Train, and when we exit the Phantom Train we end up on this side. It's just easier.


The scenes play out pretty normally.


Make sure to pick up these ghosts! This is the whole reason I'm doing this.


I pick up both ghosts. You'll notice their levels were averaged with the rest of the cast.


There's really not much to show here. Progressed through the train just like normal, ghosts left us, etc. Everything's the same except Sabin and Cyan are Moogles.



Now, that may have seemed somewhat pointless. But by going onto the airship, going to the character select section, and talking to Strago...


OR SHOULD I SAY ?????...?


Both Strago and Relm have been turned into g-g-g-ghosts!


And they're fully functional!


Remember how I explained characters being substituted in the last update? Well, both Relm and Strago share character data with 2 Moogles (you can’t figure out which 2 through glitching the game), and more importantly 2 Ghosts. The series of character transformations goes &&&&&& -> Moogle -> Ghost -> Strago/Relm. Now I said that characters take the substitutions when you name them, but it works the OPPOSITE way as well. The game is programmed to overwrite the Moogles with the Ghosts, then later overwrite the Ghosts with Strago and Relm when you name them. Because the game makes no distinction between different characters sharing the same data, it just overwrites whatever data happens to be there with the Ghost data. So, Strago and Relm are now overwritten by Ghosts! The game will now treat ????? as Strago and Relm just as the game will treat Moogles as the original characters.


Even more importantly, the Ghosts are far more useful in battle than Strago and Relm will ever be. If you're willing to manage them they’re possibly the best characters in the game. The Ghosts only have 3 moves: Attack Possess and Item. Possess in case you’ve forgotten removes the character from your active party and causes instant death on the enemy. What makes Ghosts so good is that there are no resistance checks for Possess. It makes sense; since you’re supposed to fight only normal enemies with Ghosts why bother giving bosses resistance to the ability? Every single enemy and every boss is affected by it. Even ones that you can't Vanish+Doom, the game’s primary instant-kill glitch.




It makes the game a huge joke.

To add to that, ghosts can break in-fight scripts.


For example, against Ultros/Chupon on the way to the Floating Continent, just use the ghost against Ultros and Chupon never pops out. (if you're curious, you still fly off the airship as if you got sneezed after the battle is complete)




There are only four primary downsides to the Ghosts. First off, they have awful stats. Their stats, just like the Moogles, suck. No stat growth either. Secondly, they can't equip any equipment. Thirdly, when they're dead at the end of a battle or Possess is used successfully they'll disappear from your party. Luckily they'll show up in the airship afterwards. Finally, Possess has an iffy hit rate. I'm not sure what stat it uses to determine hit rate but they miss a good 50% of the time. This wouldn't be a problem if not for their horrible Defense and lack of armor, causing them to get blown up in 2-3 physical attacks.

They also cannot be healed through normal means, but that fixes itself later.


(Their stat sheet, for reference)


Traveling around with a glitched out party is really messing with my shop list.

Traveling along with them is pretty normal. They have an entire animated sprite sheet so that's no problem. I'll figure out ways to create some of these effects and post them later, but I never saw them get all distorted.



The exception is, of course, riding a Chocobo.


Oh, and when you Possess an enemy with a Ghost in a lead you'll be controlling an invisible character. Opening your menu and closing it fixes it, but it's an interesting bug.


Before you ask, yes you can take them to the end-game. They stay ghosts even through the World of Ruin. More importantly, after the World of Balance they get deequiped of all of their equipment. The only reason healing hurt them while on the Phantom Train is because they had a Relic Ring equipped. With that gone, they're much more managable with Pheonix Downs and Cure. And with that, feel free to play through the entire game with 1-2 ghosts. They're in your party forever, are fully functional, and replace 2 of the least-used characters.

Now, while this two-ghost thing is dandy, there's a better use for these two than carrying around defenseless ghosts everywhere. Despite them being extremely useful, if they die at the end of the battle you're screwed, and they're very fragile.


Gogo. For those who don't know (or never found him) Gogo has the ability to emulate any character in your party's moves. This includes the Ghosts/Possess. He just takes whatever moves your party has, no matter how glitched or buggy. He's also miles better than the Ghosts - his stats are higher and he can use equipment. When you're fighting enemies on the way to a Boss, he's useful for more than just spamming autoattack with fists. Not to mention because his stats are considerably higher Possess has a much higher hit rate. At max level it’s 100% from what I can tell, and at level 30 it seems to be around 75% hit rate. Possess turns Gogo from a gimmick character to the most powerful in the game. Unfortunately Possess still removes him from the party, but most areas only have 1 Boss anyways.


You’ll notice that since we turned everyone into Moogles a lot of our special abilities are missing, including Lore and Sketch. This... kind of sucks.


Instead of choosing two Ghosts, I generally prefer one ghost. Reloading my save, I hop on the Phantom Train and repeat the process only grabbing 1 Ghost.


This just replaces Strago. While I don't really care about Relm too much (even though I think she's an underrated character), I generally don’t see a need for two ghosts. That and prefer Gogo for obvious reasons, and just one ghost allows the use of Possess.

Of course, if you want to utterly destroy Kefka's Tower feel free to pick up both, that's just my personal preference.



A huge drawback to the ghosts I haven’t mentioned is that they're not selectable for the final battle.

But Gogo is.