Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster Series

After blasting through FF6 all weekend, now I gotta actually do RL stuff and it's pretty nice. I think the burnout officially set in midway through 6.

Anyway, I thought Pink Puff trophy in FF4 was gonna be the big time-consuming awful one that everyone would get hung up on. Nope, that was fine.

Turns out the big awful trophy everyone is gonna get hung up on is the Setzer one in FF6. You have to get Setzer's rarest slot attack (instakill all enemies) and it seems almost impossible. I've gotten the evil counterpart of it (instakill the party) 11 times during the game. That's right, 11 times. It has killed me twice as much as everything else combined.

So the evil version of the attack is super common in PR to the point that it makes Setzer a completely useless character since he kills your group randomly (unblockable). Far as I can tell you just have to grind with Setzer until the trophy unlocks, while he kills your party every few battles, so it isn't like you can go level in Dinosaur Forest while you grind it, unless you save after every fight.

Also I've had Setzer in the party during about 90% of the game that he's available for, using slots regularly, and that wasn't enough to get it. Looks like a grind is gonna be needed when I'm done with everything else, which is super lame cause I'm totally ready to be done with the game. Hopefully autobattle can trigger the right slot combination cause I'm gonna have to lean on that lot.

Good thing I like Setzer, 'cause having him taking up a spot for most of WoR has been pretty lame otherwise.

And as a unique asset, he's absolutely trash-tier now. Slot is beyond useless. I'd switch it to Coin Toss the second I got the trophy...if I ever got it. He's fine if he uses generic abilities and casts, but in order to get that trophy you have to use his useless ability that often kills you. It's so poorly thought-out.

Between Setzer being useless now, the Platinum Dragon absolutely refusing to show up at the end of WoB despite being a normal non-rare spawn, and Mog stumbling about 80% of the time (when the hell did MOG become useless?) I feel like FF6 PR has rubbed me the wrong way pretty hard. Or maybe I'm just burned out from doing the rest first.

I hope to wrap it up within the next couple nights so I can resume the CRPG Crusade on my next real free day (Sunday). Leaning Planescape Torment. Going from FFVI to Planescape Torment? We really do have an embarassment of riches, and here I am complaining about stuff.

Chris said:

FF7R is clearly trying to get the same emotional reaction from people who played it before.

It's going to get you more invested in characters who die, fake out them surviving then kill them again (like Jessie and Wedge). They also add some mystery to Sephrioth again with the "sequel'" plot.

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This could work. Except even factoring all of that in, they still didn't need to have a giant DBZ space battle at the end of FF7R that looked like it belonged in Kingdom Hearts and, again, should have been saved for the last game.

And I really do think that Zack's CC-diminishing appearance at the end was something they threw in there with no plan just to get people talking and stir up some controversy that they'd figure out later. It would be in line with the same kind of impatient development that gave us the KH DBZ space finale of the first one.

The big question now: How will the characters be impressed by Sephiroth's defeat of the Midgardsormr (Zolom) when they just kicked Seph's ass in a DBZ space battle on a meteor?

...for that matter, how will they themselves be intimidated at all by the Zolom now when they just fought Giant Time Gods in space?

Game would have been so much better if it just ended at the end of that highway. They almost catch up to Seph, he drops Jenova-CONCEPTION on them, and that's the final boss.

Gavinmad said:

Sounds like they fucked the odds up with the PR cause in a few hundred hours of FF6 playthroughs I only remember getting 77bar once or twice.

Dance has a 100% success rate if you aren't trying to change the terrain.

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They really did mess with the odds. Slots is a completely detrimental ability now.

I finally got the trophy for it last night. It does indeed trigger from autobattle so that's good. I set it up outside the Dinosaur Forest. Sprinters cast White Wind which helps them stay up, and Tumbleweeds have just the right amount of HP. With Setzer and Gogo both around level 50-60 I had them both spamming Slots while the other two characters cast Curaga on the enemies (with Gold Hairpins equipped of course). They offset each other nicely on either of those enemies. Also these enemies don't have enough damage output to really do anything to a 50-60 party. So I could autobattle that and just let it run. ...that is, until Joker Doom triggered and killed everyone, then I had to set it up again. This happened around 12x in the hour it took to get this done. So every five minutes or so.

Total deaths going through FFVI:

Tentacles: 2 (This fight was actually hard, also underleveled)
Dullahan: 2 (Underleveled and his L? Holy wrecked cause my gil total ended in 1)
Ice Dragon: 1 (First time through his freeze landed on everyone)
Inferno: 3 (With Gau and Celes duo-ing early and underleveled)
Setzer killing everyone randomly with zero recourse: 23

And yeah, Mog stumbles constantly. Back in the day Water Rondo worked very well on most other terrains. Not the case now, it's a stumble 4 out of 5 times. Not sure if he still has a 100% success rate when the terrain matches but I wouldn't be surprised if that were lower as well. Earth Blues was a stumble at least half the time in the Floating Continent, and that was the one I always used back in the day without issue so I think it might be a terrain match.

Setzer and Mog were easily the worst characters this go-around and that's really unfortunate. At the end I left Mog and Umaro on the ship though, because Setzer was very high level from keeping him around to use Slots for so long and was useful as a healer. Someday I look forward to playing FF6 PR again without having to worry about Setzer, bestiary, or trophies, and knowing what to expect/avoid so I can enjoy the game a bit more.

Siliconemelons said:

Unpopular opinion here as usual...

FF3 feels like a step in quality and story backwards from FF2. Now, I will defend Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2 and show how their experiments each manifested in the best versions of each game... I may do the same as 2, 4 and 6 are very much evolution of each other while 3 and 5 are also in the same line of thought - you can even place 1 into the line of 1, 3 and 5 - as you got to "choose your class" but only once... but the story, feel, gameplay etc. do not line up as well by including 1. Just like 8, 9 and 10 are love stories. after that, whatever.

But I have yet to get off of the "starter island world" in ff3... I got the boat and am in the "wonder around till you figure it out" spot.. I did get further than this in my 3d playthough, I forgot if I looked things up on that one or not.

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FF3 does have a lot of vague objectives.

1/3/5 are the class games, 2/4/6 are the story/character games. All improve on the previous one in their group, but not necessarily the previous one overall.

Gavinmad said:

Earth Blues is a terrain match on the Floating Continent, so it sounds like they assfucked dance. Are you playing on Switch?

Slot has apparently always been a fucking quagmire. Might have saved you a couple hours if you'd checked the FF fandom wiki.

Spoiler

There was a programming issue the creators of Final Fantasy VI likely could not solve with Setzer: by pausing and unpausing the game while the reels are spinning, the player could easily align whatever combination they wanted, seeing what was coming up next (in the mobile/Steam version, the player can no longer pause the game during the Slot). Therefore, the reels are usually heavily rigged against the player. If the random number generator (RNG) lines up, there is no way to get 7-7-7 for Joker's Death. The RNG is against the player's favor, with a measly 10/255 chance to succeed. Furthermore, all abilities besides Mysidian Rabbit, Prismatic Flash, and Joker's Death (7-7-Bar), have a chance of not appearing depending on the RNG.


It is easy to manipulate the RNG. The game uses a table of pre-randomized values from 0–255 that change whenever specific animations are played. For example, whenever the animation of Curaga is played, the hexadecimal value that Slot pulls from will increase by 38. If Curaga is used with the assumption that the Hex value is at 0, this will allow the use of Mega Flare, Summon, and Dive Bomb. However, the player will still have to press the button at the right time to stop the spinning reels, which is not a problem by pausing and unpausing the game during the spinning.

The index that Slot pulls from to randomize what is available always starts at 0. By knowing what animations to play at the beginning of a battle, the player can recall any Slot ability at any time. The easiest way to recall an animation that costs next to no MP, and allows the player to use Joker's Death (7-7-7) and all other Slot abilities, is the item Echo Screen. Specifically, the animation of Echo Screen and Smoke Bomb, the former being more practical, bumps the index by 10h, which when done at the beginning of battle allows the use of every Slot ability, including 7-7-7.

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To make sure I understand that nerd speak, in plain terms:

1) start a battle including Setzer in party
2) have the first thing anyone does be use an Echo Screen
3) use slots, and due to the Echo Screen, Joker's Death will be AVAILABLE (because nerd magic)
4) use the pause bug/feature to help you manually line up the 7-7-7 to activate Joker's Death
5) profit / trophy?


Did I get that right?

Seananigans said:

To make sure I understand that nerd speak, in plain terms:

1) start a battle including Setzer in party
2) have the first thing anyone does be use an Echo Screen
3) use slots, and due to the Echo Screen, Joker's Death will be AVAILABLE (because nerd magic)
4) use the pause bug/feature to help you manually line up the 7-7-7 to activate Joker's Death
5) profit / trophy?


Did I get that right?

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I'd say just use an Echo Screen and then run auto battle + Curaga. I mean I didn't fool around with all this. The pause trick might work.

Gavinmad PS4. Yeah I thought Earth Blues was in tune with the FC since I always used it there in the past to good effect.

They assfucked Dance and they did the same to Slots. I might have to revise my earlier "PR is best way to play 6" and make it FF6 Advance instead TBH

Rajaah said:

I'd say just use an Echo Screen and then run auto battle + Curaga. I mean I didn't fool around with all this. The pause trick might work.

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Well the exact mechanics of the Echo Screen trick are my main confusion. Am I right that what needs to be done is the first ability a party member uses needs to be Echo Screen to kick this whole shindig off? Or as soon as you use another non-Echo non-Slots ability does the index get re-updated? Not sure how this works mechanically.

Seananigans said:

Well the exact mechanics of the Echo Screen trick are my main confusion. Am I right that what needs to be done is the first ability a party member uses needs to be Echo Screen to kick this whole shindig off? Or as soon as you use another non-Echo non-Slots ability does the index get re-updated? Not sure how this works mechanically.

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No clue, I didn't do any of this, I just grinded it out with Curaga (Tumbleweeds outside Dinosaur Forest) and it took an hour which isn't terrible. Even if there is something blocking some battles from being able to trigger it, you game over every few minutes from Setzer killing everyone so the fights reset that way. Reload, resume Slot/Curaga, check back every 5 minutes. Maybe check the trophy every 15 minutes.

Rajaah said:

No clue, I didn't do any of this, I just grinded it out with Curaga (Tumbleweeds outside Dinosaur Forest) and it took an hour which isn't terrible. Even if there is something blocking some battles from being able to trigger it, you game over every few minutes from Setzer killing everyone so the fights reset that way. Reload, resume Slot/Curaga, check back every 5 minutes. Maybe check the trophy every 15 minutes.

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Understood.

What method are you using to hands-free autobattle on a PS5? You can turn on the option for auto-battle but you still have to generate random battles by moving around, yeah?

Gavinmad said:

I think so, although I read you can't pause during slots anymore.

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I'm able to pause it but it doesn't seem too terribly helpful.

Seananigans said:

Understood.

What method are you using to hands-free autobattle on a PS5? You can turn on the option for auto-battle but you still have to generate random battles by moving around, yeah?

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Yep. Mostly you just have to get into a new fight and set it up every time Setzer kills everybody, though. The rest is auto. 2x Slots and 2x Curaga can run itself for 5-10 minutes if you're lucky before Setzer goes full school shooter and caps all his allies.


In other news, I never realized this before, but Siegfried in the Coliseum is basically an optional superboss. Always used to wish FF6 had a big optional fight like 5 and 7 onward do. Well...this guy definitely qualifies. He uses some of the final boss' attacks like the seemingly-unblockable Hyperdrive that does 7k damage, has about 50k HP (the final boss has 64k IIRC), and you fight him with one character who you can't control directly. Yikes. Took me some experimentation to get a win here as it was the last bestiary entry for the platinum. Even Ultima Weapon + Master's Scroll isn't a guaranteed win cause one big attack from him and your HP (thus attack) is cut by two thirds.

The winning combination for me at mid levels (70 but would work at 50) was Setzer (of all people) with Fixed Dice + Master's Scroll + Black Belt. Makes the fight extremely easy since Setzer will counter every physical attack he does with 4x dice rolls. The Fixed Dice do apparently random damage from 1 to 9999, so every attack from Setzer in this setup is likely to do around 15-20k. With him also countering, you can beat Siegfried before he beats you. It's gonna be over in about 30 seconds one way or another. Not really my optimal kind of superboss but it's something.