Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World Part #26

Part 26: The Tower of Slog

Chapter 25 - The Tower of Slog

We've got the pendant, so now we can do the fight proper.

Oh yeah, and Terra may disappear or something, who cares.

My parties pretty much split one major healer (Locke/Relm/Setzer) and one physical powerhouse (Sabin/Cyan/Edgar) and another powerful character (Terra/Strago/Gau), with gaps filled as needed.

The enemies, of course, are a slog. Vectaurs have nasty physical attacks and will eventually use Holy Wind if left alive long enough, but are otherwise pretty fragile. Evil Oscars are slightly beefier, and of course use Bad Breath, but not too scary. Diablos likes nasty attacks like Meteo and has a ton of HP to burn through.

Simple helmet with 30 in both defenses and a 7 point Stamina boost, though it has no special properties other than being equippable by everyone.

Land Worms like earth attacks, of course, as well as canceling Float. As you may have guessed, they take awhile to kill.

Yes, these are just as awesome as the original. I don't use them much since I keep Setzer defensive, thus not using the X-Fight accessory for them, but they're great damage if Setzer doesn't need to top anyone off with Lagomorph.

Brontaurs use powerful physicals and nasty stuff like the Blind-inflicting Starlight.

There's still all the dead ends that require each party opening paths for others. Luckily, the exploit where as long as one party is on a save point, the other two can use Tents and save still exists.

Party Two gets to meet Prometheus, which uses nasty attacks like Hyperdrive.

Also Merton.

Large defenses, 5-point boosts to Vigor and Magic, boosts MP by 25%, and nullifies Fire/Ice/Bolt damage. Pretty awesome stuff for Terra and Celes, the latter getting the armor.

We can't continue downward until we beat Atma, but I'd rather hit a save point first.

The enemies aren't that bad in this room. Ahrimans love Condemned and Roulette, while Madams like L3 spells, including Cure3.

Third party runs into another Hero Ring, which is handy. Setzer uses one with the Ribbon to be more tankish and to help out those at low HP.

Searchers are annoying enemies that will summon monsters when hit.

Also, when they die, they summon a different monster. In this case, we get Arsenal and Air Base.

Robomechs will counter moves with Barrier, which basically just sets up Reflect.

Boosts Speed/Stamina/MBlock, but more importantly changes Slot to GP Rain. Nice for this point of the game, but the free healing from Slot isn't worth giving up for me.

The other Searcher encounter you may get is it summoning Iron Men and then dying to give way to three Androids.

There's a boss up ahead, but first, let's do Atma.

Basically a bunch of Symphony of the Night quotes for his intro.

So Atma is...pretty much the same damn fight as Atma Weapon. Same moves like Rasp, Magnitude, and Purge.

Same countdown to Flare Star, at which point it switches to the same second pattern of nastier stuff like Glare, Raze, and Mind Blast.

The difference is that now I have all sorts of awesome weapons and abilities that make this fight into a joke. Cyan regularly gets 6000 damage with Tempest (4x1500), Relm can get 4500 or so with Flare, and Strago can wreck Atma with dualcast Ice 2. Plus Relm has Cure 3 to instantly heal everyone, and Shadow's as fast as ever at chucking Phoenix Downs to whoever needs them, not that I need nearly as many this time.

Kinda nice to trivialize Atma like that after struggling so damn long against Weapon. Our reward is Cyan's strongest katana, which boosts Vigor and Magic, the latter useful for the random Aero triggers. Of course, I never really bother with physical attacks with Cyan since Tempest usually outdamages them.

Next up is Inferno, who's much peskier.

He has an attack pattern of starting with HasteX, then using Net to inflict Stop on a character.

He mainly uses lots of physical attacks and stuff like Shrapnel to deal damage, though he can also use stuff like Delta Hit.

I think every enemy in this dungeon can be summed up thusly: "Takes awhile and maybe a couple tries to figure out, but as long as you can outheal the boss's damage you'll come out ahead eventually."

Gungnir is the ultimate spear, though nothing special otherwise besides the 25% HP boost. Edgar's not complaining, though.

Of course, I never do use the damn thing.

Has a chance to trigger Rerise. Relm's usually spamming Cure3 or RegenX to heal anyway since Osmose and her high MP make spells little concern to her.

Hits hard and stuff. Not too exciting.

Time for the next dragon!

Weak to Fire and Holy, this is the Poison dragon. Apparently he's undead.

It likes to use Poison and status attacks. Bio, Bio Blast, Virite, and Disaster.

Fuck yeah, Setzer.

Not too bad, really. The Crystal Orb boosts MP by 25%, Magic Defense by 20, and increase magic damage by 25%. I think I give this to Strago, though I'm not sure.

Powerslaves...not sure what they do. Assassins still throw weapons and scrolls and counter attacks by going invisible.

Back to Cyan's team.

Fiends use Storm and other stuff.

A second Ribbon, and also an excuse to finally switch to Sabin's team.

Of course, after a bit of time, we get another boss fight.

Guardian will basically copy various boss battles you've already had, first being Ultros.

It basically consists of Tentacle spam with the occasional El Nino.

Mog's great at keeping everyone topped off with his dances.

Next is Soul Train, which is like one Evil Toot or so.

This is a physical counter of Guardian's.

Dadaluma Program may be my favorite just for the jumping robot.

Barrier. It goes down quickly.

Obviously doom spells.

At this point I heal like hell in case Black Omen hits. Thankfully, it doesn't, though I do get hit with Quasar.

At this point, it hits itself a few times for small damage, then

No prize from this guy, sadly.

Now to get Cyan's team up here.

After this dragon, of course.

Gold is the Bolt-themed dragon, and it's weak to water.

It also has some really nasty attacks. Powerful multi-target, very powerful single-target, and even nasty status spells like Muddle. This was one of the more difficult battles I had to deal with, though my ever-useful strategy of "stab and heal a lot" continues to work well. Of course, it makes every fight long, boring, and leaves me little to actually say anything about, but what can you do.

The reward is the Muscle Belt. 20 Defense, HP +25%, Physical damage +25%. Think I gave this to Sabin.

And our reward for beating all eight dragons is the final magicite of the game, Ragnarok.

Name: Ragnarok
Characters: Terra
Stat Boosts: MP +60
Spells: Ultima (4)

Ultima's been toned down a bit, but that sure as hell doesn't mean it sucks now. Ragnarok's worth the wait.

And now onward!

These guys use a huge variety of elemental moves, but so does Mog.

We've also got a new friend waiting for us.

There was originally another dragon that appeared after all eight were killed, but it got dummied out and didn't show up until the GBA release as a bonus boss. But he exists here, as you can see.

First thing he does is do Polarity on the entire party, the jerk.

This is another Wallchange boss, though fortunately he's more forgiving about non-elemental damage than Magimaster.

Of course, that's because he uses more powerful attacks than Magimaster. Fire 3, Avalanche, Tsunami, and a powerful physical attack are some of what I saw.

Also, I finally use Aurabolt after I remember it exists and works well against enemies with a holy weakness, like the one Kaiser gave himself.

A decent fight, not too tough. Our final reward is the Excalibur, tied with the Zantetsuken for strongest sword in the game. It uses MP for guaranteed criticals.

Next up are the three statues, one for each party. No rewards from these guys, and of course they're much nastier than the previous bosses we faced.

Myria gave me the most trouble, as she always starts things off with Overcast, which turns characters to zombies if they die. Setzer and Celes aren't affected since they're using relics to block the status, and after a few tries I give Gau one too (with Edgar's set-up doing too much damage for me to mess with it).

Each goddess has a particular element, Myria's being Fire, which means they'll cast the L2 and L3 versions of that spell. None of them have weaknesses, though.

Virite and Mind Blast lead to some nasty status effects as well.

Also, Flare Star, in case this battle wasn't painful enough.

The zombie status is just nasty here, especially as you try to stay healed and have to contend with someone working against you.

This one took several tries, but eventually I pull through.

I like how each team does a victory dance after the battle to celebrate killing a god. I imagine that would be a pretty good feeling.

At this point, I was over random encounters, so I didn't bother seeing whether Warmech lived up to its earlier predecessors.

Next up, Asura, the Ice Goddess.

She'll use attacks to freeze characters in place. Fortunately, Mog's Sun Bath will actually cure frost, which makes perfect sense in an actual, logical way rather than through just jRPG logic.

Also, at least Sabin will get to say he suplexed a god, so there's that.

Plenty of nasty spells and attacks, of course, like Death.

Also, a giant falling ball counter that will deal over 1500 damage, enough to insta-kill Terra and Locke.

At this point, I was worried since Mog was in full Earth Blues mode.

Don't forget that Mog is a fucking boss, though. Even the goddess herself can't fight against the power of dance.

I then take this opportunity to grind up Ultima for the final battle.

Now for the final goddess.

Isis is the thunder goddess, and she's all about turning your party against each other. Whoever is hit with Love Token will take physical attacks in her place.

Charm will force the character to kill themself, perhaps others. It's a really nasty status that can't be cured, unlike Muddle. That's why Gau could use it to break the game in the original.