Final Fantasy VI Four Character No Magic Challenge

[freshfeeling]

 

In February and March of 2019, RevenantKioku of the Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta ran one of his side-events, which was a FF6 Four Character, No Magic Challenge. Oddly, the page describing this challenge and its participants doesn't seem to have been effectively picked up by the web archive, but RevenantKioku ran another similar event starting in February 2022 that seems to have had the exact same rules.

I participated in 2019. It was fun! The only FF6 challenge I had ever done previously was playing at extremely low levels (which I had actually done several times on different versions of the game because it's the way to optimize character stats), and my novelty playthough where I typecast the characters into Knight/Thief/White Mage/Black Mage - which was definitely different but not particularly challenging.

I don't have much record of it, really - just tweets and a GameFAQs thread or two. I was streaming somewhat regularly during this particular window but playing on a Wii in such a way that I couldn't stream from it, so I didn't. Specifically, this was on Wii Virtual Console meaning it was the unmodified SNES version of the game.

My team was Edgar, Setzer, Mog and Umaro. I was excited for it, sending quite a few messages to my friend AlricPhoenix at first. He was worried that Mog and Umaro together would be a bad mix, but I was excited for a few reasons. The most notable thing is that I pretty much never use Umaro unless I'm trying some novelty thing like no-magic Fanatics Tower or something. This is the whole reason I enjoy challenge and variant play: to observe and experience aspects of a game that were always there that I hadn't observed or experienced before.

The next day, I was musing on Twitter about how interesting I thought this party was going to be late in the game where the character-specific strategies would blow up: "Umaro’s Umaro. Setzer Fixed Dice + Offering. Mog: Dragoon/Jump/Pearl Lance (consistent) vs. Dance (chance to fail, chance to heal, etc.). Edgar: Dragoon vs. Tools. What works to keep this team alive? What’s the best damage output?"

In the past, I've experimented with how useful certain characters can be in an automated way; it can synergize with haste status, or with Cyan's absurdly slow-charging sword techniques. I wondered if there was a way to use Mog dancing and Umaro's general berserkitude to some great effect. While losing control of half of the party isn't great, Mog's dances can also be a useful (though unreliable) source of healing. At the time I was thinking I would set Edgar up as a Pearl Lance dragoon while Mog would mostly dance, but I quickly realized it was possible to use the Coliseum to trade certain unusable things (Strato, Gold Hairpin) for... abusable things (Pearl Lance, Dragon Horn).

By March 8, I was up to roughly the Floating Continent. I wrote on GameFAQs,

"The early game was interesting. Soloing the game with Edgar from Figaro Castle until the end of his scenario was pretty easy. I did a teensy bit of grinding - probably to level 12 or so - when Banon joined the team. That was plenty.

"A general surprise: how incredibly easy it is to solo a large part of the game - to post-IMRF - with Edgar. With the exponential power curve of the game and the early-game power of tools, nothing was even scary. Edgar one-shot at least half of the Narshe battle. I thought Zozo might be tough, but I had a Wall Ring for vs. Slamdancers. Dadaluma wasn't tough at all. I've had some bad run-ins with Number 128 before but it just took a couple of drills.

"I didn't generally run from battles so far, and kind of thought the levelling curve would work out, but again, it's not designed for solo characters so Edgar turned into Superman. When Setzer joined very shortly after followed by Mog, I finally had a full team (which felt great for the Cave to the Sealed Gate), and the levels were like Edgar 22, Mog 17, Setzer 12. Edgar was running this show."

 

Later but still on March 8th, I was discussing people who were grumpy about being forced to use Cyan or whatever. Again, I find the interest in this playthrough and really any challenge what it's like to play with some sub-optimal condition; I thought people raising this point were somewhat silly, but I answered with benefit of the doubt.

"I think you’ll be surprised. With the game not being designed around solos and low/no magic access, Cyan will have the highest level probably from around when he joins through the WoB.

"And I find myself having forgotten just how much damage a slightly overlevelled character can do; I admit unboosted WoB Edgar beats unboosted WoB Cyan but it’s not a blowout."

 

In the late World of Balance, there are a few points where you have actual, useful control over your party make-up. For example, for the Cave to the Sealed Gate, I was able for the first time to bring Edgar, Setzer and Mog (along with Terra's dead body). For the Floating Continent, I brought the prescribed Edgar, Setzer and Mog, which is a perfectly good team for that part, and allowed myself to put the Sprint Shoes and Back Guard relics on Shadow and called him my "utility corpse".

Unfortunately, in this kind of challenge, the early World of Ruin is sort of always the same. If you're able to put RunningShoes and Ribbon on Celes vs. Tentacles she can usually wriggle her way through in just about any circumstances.
 

The rules as laid out by RevenantKioku - as you can still see on the 2022 challenge's page - were rather vague. I was surprised at how much disagreement there was about certain things such as whether you were allowed to use elemental shields (which grant magic points and thus enable the Magic command). Or, maybe I should say... I wasn't surprised about the disagreement, but the passion behind the disagreement. It was like coders arguing about spaces vs. tabs, or essayists arguing about the Oxford comma.

When someone would mention a particularly hard part, someone else would come in and say, "Why don't you just use a Thunder Shield?". To which I would say, "Of course I can't use a Thunder Shield; those enable magic.". And they would say, "Only if you are wearing them at the end of battle." But challenge rules are always fuzzy, like, say, taxation rules, where I personally choose not to abuse them so as not to put the burden on society (different stakes, strawman, I know). And if we open the door for Thunder Shields, why shouldn't someone get the Paladin Shield and cheese the whole shebang? Should we not be observing the 'spirit' of the challenge?

I'd be part of these debates - briefly, at least - and then get called out for using the consumable Magicite shard item - which does not teach magic, provide magic points, or use the magic command. Well, this is why one must play for oneself, right?

Regarding actual party optimizations for the endgame, I got two Snow Mufflers for my white-furred friends and I made sure Edgar and Mog both had Pearl Lances and Dragon Horns, but I didn't bother getting Marvel Shoes. With powerful multi-dragoons and Fixed Dice + Offering on Setzer, the team was strong but had very "swingy", random damage output. There were Setzer's varying die rolls, varying numbers of dragon horn jumps, and random Pearl spells, etc. When things went well, they went really well.

Despite this, I struggled with solo Mog vs. Guardian. That was the single hardest fight in the game, and the least fun part. The folks on GameFAQs didn't offer much help (or sympathy if that's a thing) but I made it eventually. Guardian echoing Dadaluma and throwing things for 6000+ damage was one of the worst things that happened regularly. I took a solid ~20 attempts before trying it with Setzer, which was more like waiting for a few perfect die rolls.



When I actually did the final battles on March 19, Umaro got knocked out by a final Quake on tier 1, which means he didn't proceed through the other tiers, so that was most unfortunate.

 

In tier 2, I was very lucky in that "Hit" wasn't the last thing standing and I also didn't get hit too badly by the "10 Hits" counter. This is where I used a few of my Magicite items for funsies hoping for buffs like Golem, Zoneseek, Fenrir and Kirin; I happened to actually get Golem.

 

For tier 3, I was lucky with my mostly-random attacks (again, multi-Pearl Lance-jump and Fixed Dice + Offering) that Girl died last, avoiding the significant potential danger of the Calmness death counter. Actually - strangely - Calmness missed every time it happened. Edgar and Setzer both had Aegis Shlds and Force Armor so that isn't absurd, but still improbable. The holy-element Pearl Lances were healing Girl and thus keeping her alive, so I later switched to Edgar drilling and Mog using more Magicite. At this point the Magicite was more for fun than for practicality, but I got Fenrir, which was neat.

Against final Kefka, it was funny seeing Mog land a multi-jump with Pearl from the previous tier before Kefka's message boxes ("Hope... dreams...") even came up. I don't think I've seen that happen before. With a single target and with my high-but-random damage in play, this didn't last long at all. He got Goner off while Edgar was in the air and I was scared for Setzer and Mog, but it surprised me by not doing too much damage... only 3 digits vs. Mog, I think.

I was prepared for that to take a few tries, but it was fine. The only part that really hung me up at all was Guardian. That was probably the only part that took more than 2 tries. Overall, as I expected, it was quite fun! And Umaro got to be useful, so that was exciting to me. I would play this again... unfortunately, I guess I missed the 2022 iteration.