The only reason this part was harder
than it had to be was because I made some stupid mistakes and poor
choices.
About all that was really left to do at
this point was to fight Atma, and that part was relatively easy. I
can't remember if I mentioned this before, but the term “Atma” in
this game refers to two things. One's a sword that just about
anybody can use that maxes out their battle power. The other's the
boss monster we fight here. The boss monster Atma's supposed to be
the ancient power of the universe made manifest by the Goddesses of
Magic or some such thing. Sure, it's got some strong attacks and
magic, but crap for defense. It really wasn't as hard as one might
expect for a boss with the better part of 50,000 hit points. I beat
him pretty much just by having Shadow throw shit at him and having
the rest of the party heal as needed and hit Atma when they could.
And after the first attempt at this, I
got stupid, in part because I forgot that Shadow leaves the party
instantly when this fight ends, and I had the Carbunkle Esper on him.
That's one thing that would have really helped towards the end of
this dungeon. And it was also kind of dumb of me to take everybody's
equipment off after that, too. I guess I didn't really need to put
it all back on after the cutscene that follows, but it seemed like a
smart thing to do.
After the fight with Atma, we see Kefka
and the Emperor getting ready to take the statues. The Emperor takes
a little power from the statues and stuns whoever's in the party with
Celes. I think we might actually need to have her in the party for
this part of the game, because this cutscene seems to rely on her
being there. Kefka and the Emperor tell her that it's their destiny
to rule the world together, and that if Celes kills the others, all
she's done before will be forgiven.
Of course, Celes won't have any of it
and stabs Kefka with the sword he gave her instead. Between hearing
that Emperor Gestal wants to make Celes his wife and the stab wound
from her, Kefka finally shows just how messed up in the head he is.
He declares his hate for everybody and then tries to get the statues
to give him ultimate power. Even though that doesn't quite go as
planned, Kefka does kill Gestal by throwing him off the island after
the statues stun him. And just to take it that one extra step, he
starts moving the statues around, too.
As has been advertised a few times,
this throws the world out of whack almost instantly. The turbulence
almost knocks Celes from the island, but Shadow catches her and
brings her to safety with the rest of the party. After that's taken
care of, Shadow uses the statues to trap Kefka, telling the others to
escape while they can.
This is a timed mission, of course.
We've got six minutes to get to where we can jump off the island and
onto the waiting airship below. It's plenty of time, usually,
provided that one doesn't make the dumb mistakes I did. Mostly
because I'd unequipped everybody's stuff before that cutscene, I was
running out of time at the end, so I had to let the mini-boss there
kill me and just do the whole thing again.
The second time through, I got the
second part of that right. The only thing we'll have to fight are
magical monsters called Naughty until we get to the mini-boss,
indicated by a sparkling point near the end. The Naughties are weak
against fire, and if any two party members use Fire 2 on them, it's
sufficient to get us to the mini-boss in time, even with chunks of
the path falling away as we go by them. There's a box along the way,
but I don't bother with it, because I think there's a monster in it
and it's hard to beat both that and the mini-boss in time.
The mini-boss is called Naraptha. It's
got Reflect on it, and I think ice magic is the only thing that hurts
it. This is why it's good to have somebody in the party equipped
with Carbunkle, because it puts Reflect on the whole party, which
will allow you to just cast Ice 2 on the whole party and bounce it
back onto the monster. I'm not sure if this is an actual thing or
not, but that might even triple the damage.
With Naraptha out of the way, you can
either wait for Shadow to come with you or you can go back to the
airship right away. Waiting for Shadow means letting the timer run
down to five seconds left, but it's worth it. He's a good party
member, and you'll lose him if you leave without him
Once everybody's escaped the island,
all hell breaks loose from the Magic Statues getting moved around by
Kefka and Shadow. As they try to escape, the airship breaks up, and
so does the crust of the world. I think REM said it best in the song
who's title I've borrowed for the last couple entries here:
If this had been a CD-rom-based game
like the ones that have come since this game, this is where we would
have had to change disks, and there would have been a chance to save
the game. But since we don't have to deal with that, the next best
opportunity is coming up in a bit.
I know I'm probably spoiling this for
some people, but if you've read this far into this and were
interested in playing for the first time yourself, I've probably
spoiled quite a lot already. I'd say I feel bad about that, but this
is a twenty year old game, and there's that many years of spoilers
out there.
Anyway, what we see next is a small
chunk of land with a single busted up house on it. In the house are
Professor Cid and Celes. There had been others with them, but they
all died over the course of the year that had passed between this
scene and the last. Cid's not doing so good, either, and Celes says
she'll take care of him now that she's awake again, because he'd done
the same for her. I've heard said that it's possible to actually
keep Cid from dieing too, but if I've ever done it, I can't remember,
so I don't know if it's worth it or not.
Celes falls apart with despair when Cid
dies, so she goes to throw herself off the cliff the others used to
when they were feeling down. It's just high enough to be a long
fall, but not high enough to be fatal, so when Celes comes to on the
beach again, she finds a bird with Locke's bandanna on it, which
gives her hope.
Back at the house, Celes finds a note
from Cid saying that he'd made her a raft to go looking for
civilization on, and it really took it out of him. His last request
is that she use it to go find her friends and maybe save the world.
We'll pick this up right about here next time.
I'll say right now that it might take
me awhile to get to “next time”, at least as far as Final Fantasy
VI is concerned. Part of the reason for that is that I'm also going
to start up Final Fantasy VIII, and I'm planning on doing a video
intro for that playthrough, just to change things up a bit. The
plan, as of right now, is that I'm going to be doing that in the next
couple days, along with another project I really need to get to.
So, anyway, I'll see you all soon with
something video game related. Until then, folks, stay safe, have
fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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