Return of the Dark Sorcerer #26 - Freeing the Espers

Описание: Return of the Dark Sorcerer is a hack for Final Fantasy 6 by Gi Nattak. New characters, new portraits, rebalanced spells/moves, a new overworld map, new events, and a boosted difficulty level are just some of the features of this hack.

The latest version can always be found in one of the following two locations:

http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board...

http://rotds.webs.com/

As usual, you'll need to find a proper ROM on your own to patch with.

Version being played: 1.4.2

Everyone's gear has been switched up a tiny bit. Time to move on.

Past the door Shiva was guarding in the last video is the second half of the dungeon where you'll climb some stairs up to the Devil's Lab. There are new enemies, but anything seen before the Devil's Lab just gets crushed.

Hell, even in the Devil's Lab area, the enemies don't put up too much resistance. Beastbears are probably the worst if only because they like to poison people, meaning you'll have to take some time to cure it after battle.

There is one item the Devil's Lab though. When you get into the first room of it, head south from the tube the second red soldier is in and look around for a hidden Speed Tab in a chest. If you're likely playing this on an emulator of your choice, you can also remove graphical layers to get a more clear idea of where the chest is.

Once you have that, advance into the next room to find a boss, Crawler, blocking access into the next room.

Crawler might have some decently strong physical attacks and a stronger physical strike, Gatling Gun, but it's the magical side of things that make it something that can't be taken lightly. It has access to tier 2 elemental spells (and still tier 1 spells which are kinda getting obsoleted in terms of damage to my party)

Also, being a machine and all, it access to just about every move from the Juggernaut Mechas, even some Aurora only ones like Aerods. These can really sting. Magma Beam alone does roughly 550+ damage to a character while Aerods does just slightly above half that to the entire party. It may even use Wave Storm to hit everyone for 500 damage or so.

As if the damage wasn't enough, it runs an annoying gimmick with Barrier Change which, as the name suggests, changes its resistances around. Only a cast of Scan will reveal its weakness (and all other elements will be nulled or absorbed most likely). After hitting it with a weakness, it'll Barrier Change again. As such, this fight tends to take awhile to get through if it doesn't switch to elements you can reliably take advantage of.

On the plus side, it does have a quite useful steal, the Rubber Shield. Minor penalties to speed & stamina, but not only does it grant immunity to lightning damage, it's one of the rare shields the likes of Oboro or Tifa can use, both normally not being able to equip any shields seen thus far.

As for the boss strategy, if you can take advantage of multiple different elemental weaknesses, then by all means go for it. Stuff like Shuriken spam or Cloud using Braver or Omnislash work fine too though. Just remember to keep everyone's hps up because the boss does output some high damage.

The reward for this fight is a Mjollnir, a lightning elemental mace that's pretty good for combat use.

After the fight, you can proceed forward and initiate a cutscene where the espers in stasis break out and turn into magicite, thusly adding their powers to your ever growing supply. Words are then exchanged where effectively, Tifa was apparently supposed to be a spy.

Cloud? Well, I reckon he's not exactly pleased with this turn of events, especially when Kefka comes in to affirm such claims, then flip out upon realizing what the espers are doing and wants his precious gems back.

Tifa? Well, she's not standing for Kefka's crap anymore and warps him, his two Juggernaut Mechas, and herself out of the area, then it begins falling apart, forcing Professor Oak and your remaining party members to take an elevator to safety. Oak says during the elevator ride that he's seen the light and he's going to try talking to Gestahl to try to find a solution to this war.

Upon reaching the bottom, you can find Neko who's selling some usual high priced items (though you may need some of his consumables if you went into this dungeon with minimal resources), Oak who, upon talking to him, will initiate the next part of this area, and a save point.

While I do plan to save and get setup for this next part, I may as well mention the five new espers that have joined the team. There's returning FFVI veterans Unicorn (casts Esuna on the whole team) and Carbuncle (replace the above mentioned Esuna with Reflect).

Then, you have the renamed and different looking espers like Yaluk (Attempts to petrify all enemies), Search Ghost (casts Vanish on all party members), and Sylph (heals some hp of all party members).

More next time!