FFVI - The World in Ruins, Epic...

So this one is pretty epic so far. Outside of the story arc which I will get to shortly, I just wanted to point out a few things in the game that were new or fun. One thing is that I got to jump into some mech warrior type suits and wreak havoc for a bit. Also got some side scrolling action for a while and a train scene similar to that of FFVII where I had to work my way through the train to the front. Also new is the sorta 3D view while controlling a chocobo. Of course all they did was change the direction of the mesh view so it stretches and rotates but still something new.

When last I'd posted my team was slowly growing to face off against the evil empire which is trying to gather magic to gain power over other kingdoms. They're very brutal, especially one Kefka guy who is just ruthless and annoying. He poisoned an entire town, killed one of the main characters' wife and little son. Was pretty messed up. I've gotten all kinds of characters with new and different abilities, unique to them and some new to the FF series completely.

Along the way I lost track of Cysra, who went berserk after coming into contact with an Esper (summon) creature. While trying to find her again we learned quite a bit about the history of the world. Long ago Espers lived peacefully with humans until some humans got power hungry and the War of the Mages began. At that time the Espers all retreated to another world and locked the humans out. At one point 20ish years ago, a human female found her way into that world and mated with a male Esper to have a baby daughter, half Esper, half human; they named her Cysra.

After a couple of years the emperor Gahstal found a way to invade the Esper home world and killed many Espers in an effort to harvest their power for himself. During this time, the baby Cysra was captured and taken away by Gahstal before the Espers once again sealed the humans out. Over the last fifteen or so years Gahstal raised Cysra as his own magic war machine. He also used the dead Espers (magicite) to infuse power in other trained soldiers such as another character I received named Nazomi. Presently the empire is on a tear, sacking town after town and Cysra has escaped with my thief Ikorid.

After learning all of this we found Cysra again and made our way to the Espers, obtaining Ramuh first as he explained that he wanted to give his life so that we could use his power in magicite to fight the evil empire. Many other Espers followed suit as we raided the Magicite Factory to save them, giving themselves to us as magicite. I think I have 15 or so summons now but they don't exactly work like other games in the series. Rather, each Esper has abilities attached to them which are slowly learned by the character currently equipping the magicite of that Esper. So the person who has Ramuh equipped eventually learns Bolt, Bolt2 and Drain eventually. That Esper can then be handed off to another party member to also learn those abilities permanently. It's an interesting and fun system. If I have ANY complaint about it, it's that the learned spells are often much more powerful than actually summoning the Esper to fight.

Anyway, when raiding the Magicite Factory I find that Cid is the scientist behind it all (first time Cid isn't an engineer or airship builder). Cid changes sides though once he realizes that the harvesting actually kills the Espers and tries to convince the Emperor to stop his war. But it isn't until the Espers come out to aid Cysra against the empire that he does; after they've devastated several cities. The emperor concedes and repents for all he's done, imprisoning Kefka. The gang all goes to meet with the remaining Espers to negotiate a peace treaty, but once all the Espers arrive so does Kefka with powerful magic that kills them all; he collects their magicite and absorbs their power. It seems the emperor changed his mind. When the other Espers in their world come to try to rescue them, Kefka only has more souls to harvest...

Eventually he and the emperor are so powerful they enter the Esper mountain and raise the whole continent into the sky. My crew pursues them while Kefka and the Emperor attempt to find the three magic statues which gave the world all of it's magic in the first place, forever holding the world in a delicate balance. They find the statues before my party can get to them and begin to tap their power. Kefka goes a little overboard and kills the Emperor himself then proceeds to purposefully move the statues to bring them out of balance. Unable to stop him my party must just stand by and watch paralyzed as he does this. Finally freed by a last minute save by another party member, we flee the floating continent before all hell breaks loose.

We barely make it before the three statues go into overload and reign all hell upon the earth, devastating the surface, destroying everything. The airship carrying 10 of my party goes down in broken flames as the world ends... EPIC!

Nazomi now has awakened A YEAR LATER on a deserted island with Cid who dies shortly thereafter, all alone. She tries to commit suicide to join all her dead friends but washes up on shore again, having failed. Finally she finds a note left by Cid and his raft. She ventures out and finally hits the main land, a destroyed, gray and rotten world.

Let round 2 begin, first half of the game was ... Pretty. Fucking. Good. Can't wait for more!