Final Fantasy VI Advance Part #33

Part 33: Tower of Power

As requested, the abominable snowman is named Gandhi. We could have gone with Elvis, too, but this is pretty much superior in all aspects.

Gandhi! No slouching, now, kupo!

Galuf shows the yeti who's boss...

Ooooh... Me wait, big flying ship!

...and sends him on his way.

So let's look at that esper we just picked up. Quake hits everything on screen, which is nice if you're either floating or absorb earth damage, and not so much otherwise. The other two come a a hideously slow rate and aren't going to work against anything you really want to use them on. Moving on. We'll go up those stairs and

holy shit I hate Narshe so fucking much.

THE PAIN

Gandhi's status screen. He's strong, but doesn't have much else going for him. He goes berserk in battle and does his own thing; mostly useless, really.

Now that we've collected the greatest treasure, the game opens up. Basically, FFVI turns into a WRPG in the last third or so - a bunch of self-contained events that can be tackled in any order but have very little impact on any of the others. With the acquisition of Tim, Gambit and the Falcon, we actually have all we technically need to tackle the final dungeon, so everything else could be considered a side quest. For some, this is where it gets fun. Others think the game goes in the shitter with the lack of any kind of story other than "go pick stuff up, then kill the boss".

If you hadn't guessed, we're going to pick stuff up for the next couple of updates.

AUDIO: Tower of Fanatics

There's no way to get here without an airship so don't ask me how all these people managed it. Also pictured: Alfred refusing to talk to us and then walking straight through us! Maybe he's a ghost. I'm trying to figure out if we should tell Robin about this as soon as we see her or pretend we never saw it and spare her the traumatic experience.

But you can only use magic inside, so you'll never make it to the top without strong magic!

Someone doesn't know about my moogle.

Guy on the right:
No use talking to them. They've given their souls over to Kefka.
All they do now is shuffle about, praying to him day in and day out...

alfred you dumb fuck why would you do such a thing

Guy on top:
For 100,000 gil, I'll tell ya where ya can find some hidden treasure!

I do not have a hundred thousand gil.

I do not need a hundred thousand gil.

Very helpful man.

The tower of fanatics is... a tower.

With fanatics in it.

Which we're going to ignore completely because moogle supremacy.

It is also very tall. To get the authentic experience, listen to the music through a tin can or something (because that's how it sounds on the GBA) and stare at this gif for about five minutes.

...

All right, you done? Then let's move on.

Every several floors, there's a door with a small room and a chest. The Safety Bit has a curious description...

It's a goddamn Ioun stone!

More interesting, however, is the completely invisible switch on the wall to the right of the chest which, when pressed...

...opens a second door on the floor below.

The room is identical, but the chest holds an Air Anchor, Tim's last tool.

Air Anchor is both awesome and impractical. It causes instant death, but only after the victim has takes one more action. On the plus side, it always hits unless the target is immune to death effects. On the negative, well, any other death effect is faster.

Well, except Doom, but no one cares about Doom.

Next up is a Genji Shield. All Genji gear is solid defensive (or in case of the glove, offensive) equipment but lacks special effects. Meryl gets this one because she already has all the "special effects" she could possibly need.

Here's the second to last treasure room. Spot the difference!

So if this is your first trip, you may be saying something like "Oh shit it's a dragon and it's casting Holy three times per round and I am so fucked help what am I supposed to do?"

Well, worry not, for I have a simple solution:

Tell it to shut the fuck up

...no, really. The Holy Dragon is weak to Silence. Just hit the mute, toss up some invisibility and he's as good as dead already.

He has 18500 HP and is worth 10 AP.

He also drops the Holy Lance - curiously, not as a regular battle trophy, but as a post-battle event. It's a nice weapon for, say, Galuf; It may cast Holy when you stab someone with it, and boosts the wielder's magic by three points.

The game informs us that there are six dragons remaining. Pfft, if they all go down this quickly, this is going to be a cakewalk.

The chest in the dragon's room holds a Kagenui, the sword previously known as the Stunner, a Batman-exclusive equip. Now if we could only find him...

There is just one last treasure room before we reach the top, and it holds a Force Armour.

It's not quite the Minerva Bustier, but it's still very nice! Tim gets this one, since Galuf already has a shield that does much the same thing.

Finally, we reach the top. In a chest that looks much like any other, one of the most breakalicious items in the game awaits. The Soul of Thamasa (see, there's that name again), a relic which - well, better let it speak for itself.

Granted, in order to equip this, you sacrifice an earring, but it's pretty much always going to be worth it for the sheer versatility of being able to cast two spells at the same time. You can nuke and Osmose at the same time! Or Raise and Cura. Or drop Vanish on two people. And of course, if you start hitting the damage cap, this allows you to do up to 19998 points of damage in one round.

But they're not going to let us just walk out of here with the fuckawesome relic...

...and the moogle charm does not work against scripted battles.

The Magic Master can fuck right off. He opens with a second-level spell, then goes over to third-level spells, and tosses Death, Silence or Bio every few turns. If you hit him, he'll Barrier Change, which changes his weakness.

But, hilariously, he can be berserked, so once more, toss a status spell, throw up some Vanish, and you have this in the bag. Except that-

-when you kill him,

this happens.

So, how do we get around this? Well, there are a couple of ways. We could just grind until we can tank Ultima. We could make sure someone is in the air when it happens. Or we could so something else that will make it irrelevant.

Jump would be easy, except that the only commands that work here are Magic and Item, so the Dragoon Boots won't be of any help here.

Gaining another 5000 HP is out of the question.

There is only one thing left to do.

Rasp.

...the Magic Master is worth 10 AP.

And a Megalixir, which is like an elixir but more so.

Fuck the tower of fanatics.

So what better way to celebrate getting out of that place than to go visit another place I can't stand? Welcome to the cave on the V... that horrible place we had to visit after jumping down the waterfall.

Doesn't this guy look kind of familiar...?

Did Timmy fall down the well again? Seriously either put a lid on it or a leash on the kid, fuck's sake.

There's a treasure chest! I bet you're wondering what this does. So do I, but I don't wonder enough to put Gandhi in my party and find out. Sorry!

That's strange. I'm sure I've never heard of anything like it!

Good thing I have a full party. Wouldn't want to be accosted by strangers when I'm out grinding for AP!

There's no way a human could defeat one. But it sure would be something to brag about if you did!

did you say dinosaurs

you did say dinosaurs

holy shit there are dinosaurs

the world of ruin is the best world

I am going to murder the hell out of those dinosaurs

Hmph... I don't wanna go hunting with them, anyway!

I feel sorry for him. How about we bring him back with us? He can be our cute but useless mascot character.

Just next door, there's a chest with this guy in it.

He likes to cast Death a lot.

Now if only I had someone who likes to strap sharp objects to their fists and go out suplexing things...

There's also this! The name sounds vaguely familiar...

just two updates ago, vilkacis posted:

Gasp!

This really shouldn't come as a surprise because we just passed on that path below to the left, but apparently Meryl is too short to see over the edge.

There was a save spot in the previous room, so it also shouldn't come as a surprise when...

...we're jumped on by some kind of furry.

If you're paying close attention to the images I'm posting, you've already figured out my strategy for this fight.

Yes, it works. You just have to follow it up with Reflect, or he'll de-Imp himself after a couple of rounds.

What's this now?

Hey, coming back from the dead to take revenge on me is cheating!

I hope you don't mind if I respond in kind.

The reward is two behemoth suits. TWO.

I like the implication that the party killed and skinned this guy, then killed his ghost and skinned him again.

Let's fly back to Thamasa on the double.

Time-wasting airship cutscene go!

---

At least it's not a piss-yellow flashback.

Stay here with my daughter... You both deserve to live in peace...

The dog hesitates, but in the end it follows the man...

---

That was interesting!

Let's go bother Batman.

It's only a scratch. I've had worse. And I've got this guy watching over me.

Woof!

Well, enough faffing about, I have a species to hunt in extinction!

Holy shit it's a real tyrannosaur!

...I was going to show off Air Anchor here, but it didn't take.

Tyrannosaurs are level 57, with 11808 HP and 420 MP. They're basically miniboss-level encounters just wandering the worldmap. And they're far from the worst you can run into here.