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freshfeelingAlthough this page doesn't exactly correspond to a specific playthrough, it's been on my mind and I think it's worth documenting as it's really the first instance of variant and/or challenge gameplay that I embraced.
I first played Final Fantasy VI (as Final Fantasy III on the SNES) when it was fairly new, in early 1995. Access to gaming information was quite a bit different at the time, so I didn't know very much about the mechanics beyond my own experiences. Like many people, I quickly saw Sabin and Cyan doing incredible feats with the Blitz and SwdTech commands in the first couple of hours of the game and decided they were great, and I didn't really overthink my spells, stats, and setups and powered through the game; this is a perfectly fun way to play it.
By the early 2000s, community sites like GameFAQs made the mechanics clearer, largely thanks to a small number of individuals. People started to realize the absurd extent to which you could optimize statistics in Final Fantasy I-VIII and the effect it could have. In some games, like FF1 and FF4, maxing stats is neither interesting nor fun. In some games, like FF5 and FF8, maxing stats is almost trivial if a bit time-consuming. In Final Fantasy VI, however, maxing stats is challenging, impactful, fun and rewarding.
How does this relate to challenge play? The only opportunity the player has to manipulate their statistics in Final Fantasy VI is when they level up while equipped with an esper. Since different espers affect different stats, and since the best stat bonuses come from specific espers partway through the game, the best way to optimize your characters is to gain as little experience as possible until at least the late World of Balance. At that point, you should have all characters recruited with minimum levels, and access to some useful esper stat boosts. Low-level gameplay, thus, is the key to this.
At some high level, here's what's interesting about it:
With all these factors, it makes it reasonably possible to beat Final Fantasy VI with an average party level of 7, with Gau as the only outlier. Note that this doesn't consider the more recent Pixel Remaster version, although the new-as-of-this-writing console ports of that also allow you to turn off experience gains entirely! As well, with some of the shenanigans and clever means by which you can succeed at the game's various challenges, sometimes it feels like the devs intended minimum-level play to be possible.
There aren't really a lot of barriers to success up through, say, the Magitek Factory. You'll run from every fight, the bosses can be tough, etc. If you need more consumables, you can fight freely on the Veldt; this is a reliable way to get equipment and money without gaining levels. It's also a nice way to learn magic spells, although the Veldt can be pretty dangerous at times when you have minimum levels (Veldt jumpscares are actually another interesting aspect). In the Magitek Factory, there is one of two parts with highly-randomized forced battles during the minecart ride out of there. In some cases, this segment requires really specific party setups to manipulate luck and ensure you get through it with the fewest levels gained. Done correctly, Terra will rejoin the party afterwards at level 6.
After the Magitek Factory, there aren't really any bosses or mandatory fights for a long while. If you don't care about the challenge of a pure low-level game, you can essentially stop once you can visit the Floating Continent. The boss fights in the late World of Balance will start to feel tough. Some can be trivialized (or at least eased) using the rods you can purchase in Thamasa, and it may be smart to save up for many of those before proceeding to the Floating Continent. The IAF battles are another sequence where you will gain forced experience; there are ways to manipulate the party so that you gain the fewest levels possible. For the sake of level averaging - and this part gets nuts - you may want to ensure Gau leaps onto the Veldt before you recruit Shadow on the Floating Continent to ensure that Shadow joins at the minimum possible level. The Floating Continent is no walk in the park regardless because of random, unrunnable battles against Ninjas, but it's certainly possible to make it through with patience and luck.
When you're ready to gain levels, ditch Gau, double-check that you've recruited Shadow on the Floating Continent at least once, then recruit Mog at his minimum level and get the Zoneseek/Zona Seeker esper, and then carefully only level up one character at a time using either Zoneseek/Zona Seeker for +2 magic per level, or Bismark for +2 strength per level. For the sake of maximizing your HP and MP and/or putting some points into speed later, don't be excessive before you finish the Floating Continent regardless; maybe stop at around level 25, which is plenty. Again, if the whole goal is stat-maxing, what you want to do from that point is keep all characters at the same level at any point level averaging can take place... meaning once you finish the Floating Continent, stop fighting random battles again until you've re-recruited everyone.
In the World of Ruin, not much changes. You don't want to fight anything you don't have to. Ensure that Celes has a Ribbon and Runningshoes available to make the Tentacles battle viable. By the time you get the Falcon, you can make things much easier by recruiting Mog and using the Moogle Charm, which opens up almost all of the equipment in the game. In doing so, you now have access to broken features like maximized evade and defense, plus tons of elemental protection. This isn't some comprehensive guide or anything, so from here I'll just say the rest of the game sort of writes itself!
If you're stat-maxing, one more weird note is that you need to be rather particular about when to boost HP and MP. The game not only has a set table of HP and MP gains, meaning some levels are more impactful than others (i.e. there are specific levels where it's critical you boost at that level), but this table is known to be different in different versions of the game!
In this stat-maxing process, you also have an interesting choice to make in that you have to pick which stats to boost for each character, too. In general, you can't go wrong with boosting magic power, since all of the esper-using characters have the incredibly powerful and versatile magic command, plus whatever else they use that magic statistic for. However, some characters have access to novel builds that may make the strength/vigor statistic tempting, like jumping spear builds with Edgar and Mog, and ValiantKnife builds with Locke. The stamina stat has arguably as many downsides as upsides, so people don't generally boost that, and speed is not nearly as impactful in this game as others. In general, at least on the SNES and PSX versions, with proper care paid attention to playing low-levelled, you can fully max-out one statistic at 128 while also getting roughly 40 levels pumped into another, getting it reasonably close to the max.
Personally, one of my favourite things is maxing Setzer's magic, and then putting the rest of the points into speed. If you're legitimately low-level when you start, you can max his magic and still dump almost 40 levels into speed, which ends up being pretty noticeable. Setzer's attack damage with his best weapon, Fixed Dice, doesn't depend on strength, so instead of boosting strength he gets to be a magically-inclined, super-fast, dice-throwing gambler. Pretty neat.
Although I haven't seen what this whole experience is like with the Pixel Remasters, it definitely changed a bit with the GBA release of Final Fantasy VI Advance. This version introduced a new, uh, feature (?) that the FFWiki calls the Level Reset Glitch. This allows the player to carry over statistics from a late-game save while having their level reset to whatever level a character joins at. Thus, you can continuously boost characters' statistics, not being limited to what you can do before level 99. In this particular version, getting 128 strength, magic and speed is totally viable.
If you actually wanted to do this with all characters, it requires playing the game through to their recruitment without saving. One day, I endeavored to do this. I got all the way up to the scene where you name Strago and Relm, and loaded my late-game save file, only to find out that the naming event doesn't actually give them their new level. So then I had reset levels for all of the WoB characters other than Strago and Relm, and I was able to give them another ~90 levels of stat boosts. Well, 10 out of 12 ain't too bad.
In my current save on my GBA cart, my stats look like this:
Note both the stats and the levels, which really tell the whole story: I played an LLG to max stats for all characters including Strago and Relm, tried out the reset glitch on Terra (which is very fast and easy) and levelled her up again to beef up her stats, then I reset levels for all characters except Strago and Relm (still playing low-level but not very strictly), and then didn't bother to level any characters all the way back to 99. And why should I, with stats like Terra and Mog have?
Having high-powered characters in this game, especially in this version which features the Soul Shrine, is quite cool. But it's worth noting that the novelty of playing this game at ultra-low levels is also just cool. I think a game that effectively (if accidentally!) rewards low-level play like this, such as Final Fantasy VI and also Final Fantasy IX, is a really good way to get one's feet wet with the idea of variant playthroughs.
I first played Final Fantasy VI (as Final Fantasy III on the SNES) when it was fairly new, in early 1995. Access to gaming information was quite a bit different at the time, so I didn't know very much about the mechanics beyond my own experiences. Like many people, I quickly saw Sabin and Cyan doing incredible feats with the Blitz and SwdTech commands in the first couple of hours of the game and decided they were great, and I didn't really overthink my spells, stats, and setups and powered through the game; this is a perfectly fun way to play it.
By the early 2000s, community sites like GameFAQs made the mechanics clearer, largely thanks to a small number of individuals. People started to realize the absurd extent to which you could optimize statistics in Final Fantasy I-VIII and the effect it could have. In some games, like FF1 and FF4, maxing stats is neither interesting nor fun. In some games, like FF5 and FF8, maxing stats is almost trivial if a bit time-consuming. In Final Fantasy VI, however, maxing stats is challenging, impactful, fun and rewarding.
How does this relate to challenge play? The only opportunity the player has to manipulate their statistics in Final Fantasy VI is when they level up while equipped with an esper. Since different espers affect different stats, and since the best stat bonuses come from specific espers partway through the game, the best way to optimize your characters is to gain as little experience as possible until at least the late World of Balance. At that point, you should have all characters recruited with minimum levels, and access to some useful esper stat boosts. Low-level gameplay, thus, is the key to this.
When I started playing for maximum stats, I was not particularly interested in challenge play. It was actually just a happy side-effect that I got to see how playing a game with an unconventional goal or ruleset allowed you to see more of the game or experience it differently.
I have played this game with intent to maximize stats at least a couple of times that I remember: at least once on the PlayStation's Final Fantasy Anthology version in the early 2000s, and once on Final Fantasy VI Advance (GBA) in roughly 2007. I honestly forget whether I ever did this on my original SNES cart or not. I was a real purist about minimum levels when I played on the PlayStation. Although there is a distinction between "beat the game with minimum levels" and "get maximum stats", for at least the first half of the game those two goals overlap, and there are guides written on both of these subjects (sometimes both together, sometimes with a singular focus). Perhaps the most comprehensive I've seen wasn't even a published FAQ/Walkthrough but rather this entire topic written by a GameFAQs user named sabinscabin.At some high level, here's what's interesting about it:
- Stats and Levels Are Impactful: Final Fantasy VI's damage formulas are stupid. The growth is generally on a high exponential curve, with weapon/ability power, statistics, and level all playing a role. As all of these factors generally rise through the game, you get the exponentiality. However, the magic damage formula in particular has the character's magic stat as a square term. In short, for something so hard to manipulate, stats can be very meaningful. The fact that character level is multiplied into almost every calculation is noteworthy, too. Playing a low-level game directly impacts your output a great deal.
- Level Averaging: Final Fantasy VI features "level averaging" at certain key points in the game, designed to have newly-recruiting and returning characters stay usefully "caught up" with whichever team you've been using. When a character's level is boosted by level averaging, they don't gain stat boosts from espers. Consequently, gaining one or two levels can have a cascading effect on how many esper bonuses other characters are eligible for.
- Changing Party: On a related note, characters leave and come back. Particularly Gau, who can leave the party to roam with packs of wild animals at the player's command, and Shadow, who as a paid mercenary sometimes chooses to just... leave. The levels of characters who leave and return can impact level averaging, sometimes in a way favourable to the player.
- Exploits: This game is buggy as hell, or otherwise has some absurd manipulations that devs probably didn't intend. Depending on the version (and your gaming ethics), you can trivialize large parts of the game with things like vanish + doom, maximized MBlock, 255 Defense, clever use of the Rage command, weird battle speed behaviours, illegal equipment, maybe even the sketch bug.
- Poor Balance: Along with FF5 before it, and trending forward in the Final Fantasy series, this game is generally somewhat poorly balanced, tending toward being easy. The more freedom and agency you afford to the player, the easier the experience generally becomes, especially for someone who knows what they're doing. This is because the game needs to be balanced around a variety of characters selected, magic learned, equipment gained, etc.
With all these factors, it makes it reasonably possible to beat Final Fantasy VI with an average party level of 7, with Gau as the only outlier. Note that this doesn't consider the more recent Pixel Remaster version, although the new-as-of-this-writing console ports of that also allow you to turn off experience gains entirely! As well, with some of the shenanigans and clever means by which you can succeed at the game's various challenges, sometimes it feels like the devs intended minimum-level play to be possible.
There aren't really a lot of barriers to success up through, say, the Magitek Factory. You'll run from every fight, the bosses can be tough, etc. If you need more consumables, you can fight freely on the Veldt; this is a reliable way to get equipment and money without gaining levels. It's also a nice way to learn magic spells, although the Veldt can be pretty dangerous at times when you have minimum levels (Veldt jumpscares are actually another interesting aspect). In the Magitek Factory, there is one of two parts with highly-randomized forced battles during the minecart ride out of there. In some cases, this segment requires really specific party setups to manipulate luck and ensure you get through it with the fewest levels gained. Done correctly, Terra will rejoin the party afterwards at level 6.
After the Magitek Factory, there aren't really any bosses or mandatory fights for a long while. If you don't care about the challenge of a pure low-level game, you can essentially stop once you can visit the Floating Continent. The boss fights in the late World of Balance will start to feel tough. Some can be trivialized (or at least eased) using the rods you can purchase in Thamasa, and it may be smart to save up for many of those before proceeding to the Floating Continent. The IAF battles are another sequence where you will gain forced experience; there are ways to manipulate the party so that you gain the fewest levels possible. For the sake of level averaging - and this part gets nuts - you may want to ensure Gau leaps onto the Veldt before you recruit Shadow on the Floating Continent to ensure that Shadow joins at the minimum possible level. The Floating Continent is no walk in the park regardless because of random, unrunnable battles against Ninjas, but it's certainly possible to make it through with patience and luck.
When you're ready to gain levels, ditch Gau, double-check that you've recruited Shadow on the Floating Continent at least once, then recruit Mog at his minimum level and get the Zoneseek/Zona Seeker esper, and then carefully only level up one character at a time using either Zoneseek/Zona Seeker for +2 magic per level, or Bismark for +2 strength per level. For the sake of maximizing your HP and MP and/or putting some points into speed later, don't be excessive before you finish the Floating Continent regardless; maybe stop at around level 25, which is plenty. Again, if the whole goal is stat-maxing, what you want to do from that point is keep all characters at the same level at any point level averaging can take place... meaning once you finish the Floating Continent, stop fighting random battles again until you've re-recruited everyone.
In the World of Ruin, not much changes. You don't want to fight anything you don't have to. Ensure that Celes has a Ribbon and Runningshoes available to make the Tentacles battle viable. By the time you get the Falcon, you can make things much easier by recruiting Mog and using the Moogle Charm, which opens up almost all of the equipment in the game. In doing so, you now have access to broken features like maximized evade and defense, plus tons of elemental protection. This isn't some comprehensive guide or anything, so from here I'll just say the rest of the game sort of writes itself!
If you're stat-maxing, one more weird note is that you need to be rather particular about when to boost HP and MP. The game not only has a set table of HP and MP gains, meaning some levels are more impactful than others (i.e. there are specific levels where it's critical you boost at that level), but this table is known to be different in different versions of the game!
In this stat-maxing process, you also have an interesting choice to make in that you have to pick which stats to boost for each character, too. In general, you can't go wrong with boosting magic power, since all of the esper-using characters have the incredibly powerful and versatile magic command, plus whatever else they use that magic statistic for. However, some characters have access to novel builds that may make the strength/vigor statistic tempting, like jumping spear builds with Edgar and Mog, and ValiantKnife builds with Locke. The stamina stat has arguably as many downsides as upsides, so people don't generally boost that, and speed is not nearly as impactful in this game as others. In general, at least on the SNES and PSX versions, with proper care paid attention to playing low-levelled, you can fully max-out one statistic at 128 while also getting roughly 40 levels pumped into another, getting it reasonably close to the max.
Personally, one of my favourite things is maxing Setzer's magic, and then putting the rest of the points into speed. If you're legitimately low-level when you start, you can max his magic and still dump almost 40 levels into speed, which ends up being pretty noticeable. Setzer's attack damage with his best weapon, Fixed Dice, doesn't depend on strength, so instead of boosting strength he gets to be a magically-inclined, super-fast, dice-throwing gambler. Pretty neat.
Although I haven't seen what this whole experience is like with the Pixel Remasters, it definitely changed a bit with the GBA release of Final Fantasy VI Advance. This version introduced a new, uh, feature (?) that the FFWiki calls the Level Reset Glitch. This allows the player to carry over statistics from a late-game save while having their level reset to whatever level a character joins at. Thus, you can continuously boost characters' statistics, not being limited to what you can do before level 99. In this particular version, getting 128 strength, magic and speed is totally viable.
If you actually wanted to do this with all characters, it requires playing the game through to their recruitment without saving. One day, I endeavored to do this. I got all the way up to the scene where you name Strago and Relm, and loaded my late-game save file, only to find out that the naming event doesn't actually give them their new level. So then I had reset levels for all of the WoB characters other than Strago and Relm, and I was able to give them another ~90 levels of stat boosts. Well, 10 out of 12 ain't too bad.
In my current save on my GBA cart, my stats look like this:
Note both the stats and the levels, which really tell the whole story: I played an LLG to max stats for all characters including Strago and Relm, tried out the reset glitch on Terra (which is very fast and easy) and levelled her up again to beef up her stats, then I reset levels for all characters except Strago and Relm (still playing low-level but not very strictly), and then didn't bother to level any characters all the way back to 99. And why should I, with stats like Terra and Mog have?
Having high-powered characters in this game, especially in this version which features the Soul Shrine, is quite cool. But it's worth noting that the novelty of playing this game at ultra-low levels is also just cool. I think a game that effectively (if accidentally!) rewards low-level play like this, such as Final Fantasy VI and also Final Fantasy IX, is a really good way to get one's feet wet with the idea of variant playthroughs.
