Final Fantasy VI "Ban Something" Part IV
Aug. 29th, 2026 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingI played another session on August 28th. I didn't get especially far this time!
As I started, I had to explain a few things. I had recently posted to GameFAQs before this that I was likely to be hitting the World of Ruin very soon, and I could use a few new bans. I wrote, "The bans so far have all been at least mildly interesting - but I could use a couple more bans to keep the WoR fresh. Perhaps someone wants to ban some things to make my recuritment roundup route interesting? Or ban certain late game strategies and equipment?"
I got two responses in fairly short order: Smash_Master said we'd be banning the use of Team CES - so, after getting the Falcon, Celes, Edgar and Setzer must never be in the same party again (and also needed to be rotated through the active party). I liked this and there was some discussion but I agreed with the idea.
Roughly the first hour of the play session was grinding. Cyan, Gau and Celes were learning spells and gaining levels. Cyan, still equipped with Bismarck, was gaining a lot of strength and techniques like Fang were reliably doing over 1000 damage already. I was strategic about some of the other esper choices but I can't imagine that's super fun to watch regardless.
I had taken an earlier run at the IAF but until Celes was roughly level 21 she didn't have enough HP or even a particularly meaningful offense. I made sure Celes had learned Thundara by learning most of Ramuh's spells and then switching to Maduin, and as soon as she had that we went up. In our successful attempt, she was level 21, and the best strategy seemed to be "Take out the Spitfire as quickly as possible" - doing so avoids most of the strong Absolute Zero attacks and some strong Propellers. Celes finished learning Maduin on the way up, which was nice because we had Blizzara for Typhon.
What's unfortunate is that neither Gau nor Celes had Cura and I was a bit stubborn about switching espers because of CB_Archer's ban ("I ban equipping an esper if you already have any of the spells learned 100% that it teaches."). This left Gau mostly acting as the primary healer with Cure and Hi-Potions. Still, with Celes and Gau both using -ara spells Ultros and Typhon/Chupon were easy.
I was legitimately surprised at how easy Air Force was. I maybe shouldn't have been, since Celes had some stat boosts and Thundara - but I thought the magic-absorbing Speck might present some complications.
With Gau healing, Celes blasting, and Cyan doin' his Bushido thang, it went pretty quick. There were no complications after all - in fact, the Speck didn't even show up!
On the Floating Continent, I saved and then fully avoided Shadow to maintain my non-full party. I chose not to fight Gigantos - which is normally a pretty neat fight - because without summons and status effects it's a very hard fight and I didn't think the prize would be worthwhile. Perhaps I should have tried; with poison spells and spike damage from Cyan it might've been okay. Ah well.
I avoided a lot here, actually - running from nearly every fight.
Supposing that avoiding learning Lores was actually beneficial, I'm glad I didn't bring Strago. While we didn't fall victim to Blowfish/1000 Needles, we saw both Lv. 3 Confuse and Lv. 4 Flare.
Gau gained level 24, Celes gained level 23. For Ultima Weapon, I ensured that Gau and Celes would both have Gaia Gear and Cyan would have Angel Wings/Cherub Down to avoid the potential Quake attack, which I knew could wreck the whole team.
We went to Ultima Weapon, and I decided Celes would be the principal offense, Gau would be the main healer, and Cyan would do Cyan things. Keeping in mind that I can't summon Golem or Zoneseek ("I ban actions that require pressing the 'up' button in battle."), I can't use buffs ("I ban purposefully using status buffs/debuffs or curing them in battle."), and I can't use the back row ("I ban the back row."), the damage was heavy and relentless. Having Celes as a major offense also meant I wasn't depending on Runic to block the strong spells.
Gau was unable to keep Cyan adequately healthy, which is too bad because Bushido abilities have been quite effective. Despite this, we got Ultima Weapon into his later script phase where he uses Quake, Mind Blast and Flare Star. Quake wasn't too bad - but Mind Blast and Flare Star were.
This did not work out.
I took a few more runs at Ultima Weapon. In between, I actually lost to a random encounter for the first time on the Floating Continent, too! That wasn't the coolest.
We had another run, and again we got Mind Blasted, but even worse.
I thought about ways I could avoid or mitigate Mind Blast, but the WoB doesn't really provide any way to negate Flare Star (besides a few Rages that I probably don't have access to). I thought: what if I could avoid Ultima Weapon's late-battle script change - his most problematic attack phase? I do have a way to do that - but it might suck. We can attack his MP instead of his HP. Only Gau can use Rasp here - so I tested it out. It did a bit over 300 MP damage. That's... pretty bad. But if Celes also had access to Rasp, maybe there's a way to make it work.
I grinded out just a couple of Floating Continent battles with Zona Seeker on Celes and as soon as she learned Rasp, and took another shot at it.
Behold, my mighty magic draining skills!
Each turn, Celes would Rasp. Cyan would either do nothing or use Dragon Bushido - amusingly, at one point I accidentally targeted Cyan with Rasp but then he was able to use Dragon to drain Ultima Weapon's MP anyway, so it didn't matter. Gau, with a regular Cure spell, was the main healer. Gau did use a couple of X-Potions when I more urgently needed to get someone above Flare's damage threshold, and Cyan using Dragon provided a surprising amount of safety.
Ultima Weapon starts with 5000 MP - which he does wear down himself with all of his Flare casts, but I was going to need at least a dozen Rasps to get this to work. I was surprised when... it did.
Although it might've been nice to one-shot Ultima Weapon and play out the end of the WoB, this was also pretty satisfying! For today, my time constraints were such that instead I had to go back to the Floating Continent save cave. We'll destroy the world next time.
As I wrapped for the day, I commented on how so many of the bans in effect had impacted that fight:
So many of these rules culminated in a rather epic almost-conclusion to the game's first half. Is this a sign of more complications to come?
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As I started, I had to explain a few things. I had recently posted to GameFAQs before this that I was likely to be hitting the World of Ruin very soon, and I could use a few new bans. I wrote, "The bans so far have all been at least mildly interesting - but I could use a couple more bans to keep the WoR fresh. Perhaps someone wants to ban some things to make my recuritment roundup route interesting? Or ban certain late game strategies and equipment?"
I got two responses in fairly short order: Smash_Master said we'd be banning the use of Team CES - so, after getting the Falcon, Celes, Edgar and Setzer must never be in the same party again (and also needed to be rotated through the active party). I liked this and there was some discussion but I agreed with the idea.
The other new one was quite clever. In response to me saying, "Ideally any new bans at this point won't be something I've already made use of", FFTacticsKevin replied, "Exactly that, no abilities learned in WoB."
Conceptually, I like this a lot - like I said, it was clever - and if I were playing a version of the game where it was relatively easy to rewrite the game's memory and remove those abilities (as I've been known to do) then I would do that! But tracking every single learned spell and rage separately for every character sounds so cumbersome that I'd frankly rather just never use magic - and that's no fun in light of the other bans in play. I asked for clarification, offering in the GameFAQs topic, "Unless we’re reducing this to Blitz (which are already banned except Pummel and Suplex, which would now be banned), Lore, and Rage (where the list would get pretty thin!)."
As of this writing I don't have an answer.
While I waited to hear back whether this captured the intended spirit of the ban, I just played. I only had about two hours to play anyway, so I figured we'd only really be going as far as the very start of the World of Ruin at the most. I decided I would intentionally avoid learning useful Lores and Rages just in case they were going to be banned, so I modified my plan - instead of grinding on the Veldt with Cyan, Strago and Gau, I would grind in the mountain near Thamasa with Cyan, Celes and Gau. It took me a while to settle into this team, which would eventually be my Floating Continent squad.
Cyan is coming because he's mandatory because of my bans. ("I ban not using SwdTech/Bushido.")
Celes is coming because, after the cutscene with the statues, she's forced into the team regardless, and this is the best way to maintain a team of 3 at all times. ("I ban having a full party of 4, unless needed for the story, or the final boss.")
Gau almost could've been anyone, but I had been using the (legal!) Belmodar rage to use Megavolt/Thundara and I thought that could be really useful for the IAF sequence and Ninjas. This was almost certainly unimportant.
Roughly the first hour of the play session was grinding. Cyan, Gau and Celes were learning spells and gaining levels. Cyan, still equipped with Bismarck, was gaining a lot of strength and techniques like Fang were reliably doing over 1000 damage already. I was strategic about some of the other esper choices but I can't imagine that's super fun to watch regardless.
I had taken an earlier run at the IAF but until Celes was roughly level 21 she didn't have enough HP or even a particularly meaningful offense. I made sure Celes had learned Thundara by learning most of Ramuh's spells and then switching to Maduin, and as soon as she had that we went up. In our successful attempt, she was level 21, and the best strategy seemed to be "Take out the Spitfire as quickly as possible" - doing so avoids most of the strong Absolute Zero attacks and some strong Propellers. Celes finished learning Maduin on the way up, which was nice because we had Blizzara for Typhon.
What's unfortunate is that neither Gau nor Celes had Cura and I was a bit stubborn about switching espers because of CB_Archer's ban ("I ban equipping an esper if you already have any of the spells learned 100% that it teaches."). This left Gau mostly acting as the primary healer with Cure and Hi-Potions. Still, with Celes and Gau both using -ara spells Ultros and Typhon/Chupon were easy.
I was legitimately surprised at how easy Air Force was. I maybe shouldn't have been, since Celes had some stat boosts and Thundara - but I thought the magic-absorbing Speck might present some complications.
With Gau healing, Celes blasting, and Cyan doin' his Bushido thang, it went pretty quick. There were no complications after all - in fact, the Speck didn't even show up!
On the Floating Continent, I saved and then fully avoided Shadow to maintain my non-full party. I chose not to fight Gigantos - which is normally a pretty neat fight - because without summons and status effects it's a very hard fight and I didn't think the prize would be worthwhile. Perhaps I should have tried; with poison spells and spike damage from Cyan it might've been okay. Ah well.
I avoided a lot here, actually - running from nearly every fight.
Supposing that avoiding learning Lores was actually beneficial, I'm glad I didn't bring Strago. While we didn't fall victim to Blowfish/1000 Needles, we saw both Lv. 3 Confuse and Lv. 4 Flare.
Gau gained level 24, Celes gained level 23. For Ultima Weapon, I ensured that Gau and Celes would both have Gaia Gear and Cyan would have Angel Wings/Cherub Down to avoid the potential Quake attack, which I knew could wreck the whole team.
We went to Ultima Weapon, and I decided Celes would be the principal offense, Gau would be the main healer, and Cyan would do Cyan things. Keeping in mind that I can't summon Golem or Zoneseek ("I ban actions that require pressing the 'up' button in battle."), I can't use buffs ("I ban purposefully using status buffs/debuffs or curing them in battle."), and I can't use the back row ("I ban the back row."), the damage was heavy and relentless. Having Celes as a major offense also meant I wasn't depending on Runic to block the strong spells.
Gau was unable to keep Cyan adequately healthy, which is too bad because Bushido abilities have been quite effective. Despite this, we got Ultima Weapon into his later script phase where he uses Quake, Mind Blast and Flare Star. Quake wasn't too bad - but Mind Blast and Flare Star were.
This did not work out.
I took a few more runs at Ultima Weapon. In between, I actually lost to a random encounter for the first time on the Floating Continent, too! That wasn't the coolest.
We had another run, and again we got Mind Blasted, but even worse.
I thought about ways I could avoid or mitigate Mind Blast, but the WoB doesn't really provide any way to negate Flare Star (besides a few Rages that I probably don't have access to). I thought: what if I could avoid Ultima Weapon's late-battle script change - his most problematic attack phase? I do have a way to do that - but it might suck. We can attack his MP instead of his HP. Only Gau can use Rasp here - so I tested it out. It did a bit over 300 MP damage. That's... pretty bad. But if Celes also had access to Rasp, maybe there's a way to make it work.
I grinded out just a couple of Floating Continent battles with Zona Seeker on Celes and as soon as she learned Rasp, and took another shot at it.
Behold, my mighty magic draining skills!
Each turn, Celes would Rasp. Cyan would either do nothing or use Dragon Bushido - amusingly, at one point I accidentally targeted Cyan with Rasp but then he was able to use Dragon to drain Ultima Weapon's MP anyway, so it didn't matter. Gau, with a regular Cure spell, was the main healer. Gau did use a couple of X-Potions when I more urgently needed to get someone above Flare's damage threshold, and Cyan using Dragon provided a surprising amount of safety.
Ultima Weapon starts with 5000 MP - which he does wear down himself with all of his Flare casts, but I was going to need at least a dozen Rasps to get this to work. I was surprised when... it did.
Although it might've been nice to one-shot Ultima Weapon and play out the end of the WoB, this was also pretty satisfying! For today, my time constraints were such that instead I had to go back to the Floating Continent save cave. We'll destroy the world next time.
As I wrapped for the day, I commented on how so many of the bans in effect had impacted that fight:
- Boldrin: "I ban Edgar from not dropping trou the second a woman is in his presence." - this is why I didn't bring Edgar!
- VVagner: "I ban the back row." - this would've been huge to mitigate damage from physicals, including the potent Full Power.
- VVagner: "I ban Gau from using Rages from monsters with first letter L through Z." - I'm sure I could've found a better rage for this battle with more options!
- kingbob08: "I ban purposefully using status buffs/debuffs or curing them in battle." - being able to use Protect and Shell would've been incredible for this fight! Not to mention any healing possible after Mind Blast.
- VVagner: "I ban having a full party of 4, unless needed for the story, or the final boss." - there is little question that with a fourth party member - Shadow - this would've gone smoother!
- Wyldstar: "I ban actions that require pressing the 'up' button in battle." - having summons like Zona Seeker, Golem, and Carbuncle would've made this way easier! Even Seraph and Kirin would've been an asset.
- CB_Archer: "I ban equipping an esper if you already have any of the spells learned 100% that it teaches." - well, this ban has sort of shaped the whole run and certainly would've left me with more options, especially for healing.
- Smash_Master: "I ban the doggo." - well, this didn't matter but only because of the full party ban.
- pumaloaf: "I ban any of Sabin's Blitzes that scale off of magic." - this is a big reason I didn't bring Sabin, where blitzes could have been quite handy.
- MonadoGuy25: "I ban (optional) Moogles." - Earth Blues could have been quite a good dance for this fight, and Mog has a natural level advantage. He would've been a real contender to join us if he were allowed.
- Outl4w: "I ban Phoenix Down." - augh.
- Knight S. Hade / sierramadresquatter: "I ban not using SwdTech/Bushido." - imagine if Cyan - or another character - had been able to contribute to the healing!
- kingbob08: "I ban any relic that gives a stat boost." - things like White Cape would definitely have been an asset.
- Smash_Master: "I ban natural magic." - this had a bit of an impact in that it's changed what spells and espers Celes has access to.
- Boldrin: "I ban Shadow not living out his dream of being a life-coach starring on hoarders." - again, this didn't matter because of the full-team ban.
- Smash_Master: "I ban Team CES actively fighting together." - even this had its impacts! It's a part of the reason I stuck with Gau as a party member.
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