A Tale of Two Scripts: Let's play FF3 US & FF6 RPGOne!

The predecessor to Pokemon!

The Magitek Factory was a real slog with 3 characters, but because I'm slightly overleveled, it wasn't a real big problem (hard to get used to the fact that Fight sucks, at least until you get the elemental weapons). Didn't even know that the Espers switched, I just beat Ifrit using Blizzard with Celes and Gorgias with Gau (who I got super lucky with and used Snowstorm each turn). I dunno if my game is glitched or something, but the first time I talked to Ifrit (and after he turned into a Magicite), I had to fight a group of super weak Flans...wierd.

Ah, what's wrong with Parasite Eve?

No glitch, Flans are a random encounter in there. They appear nowhere else in the game, actually, so if anyone's playing along and determined to get all the Rages try and find a pack of Flans to fight in the garbage chute.

I'm not sure why they made up an encounter table and unique monster for that one room instead of just turning off encounters but hey, random fights are part of the magic of old RPGs.

Argh, I died at the part where you're fighting the two arms on the ship (One used Firage and Magnitude 8 on me), so now I have to do the whole mine cart thing all over again? That's just great.

Nah, that can happen in the SNES version too. And the factory is tricky for a lot of first-time players. It really helps to know which attacks are either magic-based or defense-ignoring (Sun Beam for the former, Drill for the latter). It also helps to have Gau learn a few Rages that have powerful magic attacks (a favorite being the Temlpar for Fira). Of course, since you didn't have Edgar with you, you really were at an insane handicap.

Not a thing. In fact, the game's quite competent from what I remember. It's just that trying to follow up with the release of Parasite Eve after Vagrant Story is more than a wee bit silly, since VS's engine is essentially a highly refined variation of PE's. So the PSN release is great for people who have never played PE before, but I have it on disc if I really want to complete it.

Dressed in festive red and green, he's a magical Christmas fairy who brings the gifts of suffering and death to all the naughty little espers and castle inhabitants throughout the land!

♪♪ Kefka ♪♪

In all seriousness, VI is one of the only FFs I think ever needed a sequel. IV wrapped up it's story pretty well, V didn't even have enough of a plot to justify making an anime, VII was better when left vague, I don't even know what Squeenix was thinking with X, and I haven't played XII or XIII. Such a missed opportunity...

Having never seen RPGOne's fan retranslation of FFVI before, I have got to say this: GOOD GOD THAT IS AWFUL.

Thanks, you really know how to make a guy feel good about his work.

(Secretly, I agree with you. I really wish I'd done more proofreading and post-translation clean-up work.)

The game was translated by Kefka.

Really, that's all you need to say.

Oh my, I nearly forgot to give Setzer's bio! Here we go.

Name: Setzer Gabbiani
Age: 27
Class: Gambler
Height: 175cm (5'9")
Weight: 62kg (137lbs)
Birthday: 2/08
Zodiac Sign: Aquarius
Blood Type: AB
Birthplace: Unknown
Favorite Thing: Bravery
Least Favorite Thing: Cowards
Hobby: Playing solitaire
Treasured Possession: The Blackjack (his airship)

Wait wait wait, shouldn't that be:

I think that bio was written with a little bit of revisionist history hero worship!

Don't ask me, I just translate 'em as I see 'em. Blame whomever wrote up Setzer's bio.

I guess he bides his time at the casino playing solitaire until a new mark arrives that he can gamble with.

Believe it or not, you can actually gamble at solitaire.

When he goes into the red on solitaire he flies the Blackjack over a random town and tosses some GP over the side. The coins are heavy and traveling quite quickly when they hit the ground and can do some major damage. The natives have named this horrific occurrence... GP Rain.

the character of Setzer is something of an objectivist statement against the dangers of irresponsible philanthropy.

Have we found the one person who didn't click "vegas scoring" on Solitaire for Windows?

So... Setzer spends his free time playing Solitaire for Windows on some clunky, noisy 386 machine?
I get the feeling this will end up as a drawing sooner or later.

EDIT: like with a "turbo" button on the front and everything

You...do know that it's possible to play solitaire with actual cards, right?

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1991-05-24/

yeah, it's not such a great idea to play games with Setzer's cards. Or his dice. Or unstable munitions in general.

Darts are just fiiiiiiine, though.

They hired him to referee a soccer match once. Never again, though; he took the term "red card" a little too literally. Fortunately they were able to reattach that player's arm...

Heading through the door Shiva had barricaded with her body, we climb a long staircase blockaded by high-ranking officers and little gun drones that drop from the ceiling – Fire Dance takes care of the former and a mere Flash the latter.


At the top of the stairs we emerge into the Magitek Research Facility, where they’ve more or less given up on cute little tricks to stop us and are throwing their most monstrous failed experiments at us.


This guy is dangerous if you’re unprepared. He has an elemental weakness, but it changes every once in a while – he uses Barrier Change every thirty seconds or when he’s struck by his current weakness. You can check his weakness (and which element he’s currently absorbing) by what he’s using. Most of them are pretty standard opposites; if he uses Earth attacks he’s weak to Wind and vice versa, if he uses Lightning attacks he’s weak to water and vice versa, etc. The two that might trip you up are his Poison and Pearl weaknesses, which he signals by using Cure spells and a basic attack or Reverse Polarity respectively.

There are three ways to go about this fight, not counting simple use of your most powerful attacks and hoping to outdamage him (after all, that screenshot above? AuraBolt with no weakness, and it did almost a full quarter of his health in one shot). You can pay attention to his attacks so you know his weakness and strike at it, or you can use your best non-elemental attacks to chip away at him, or you can wait until you know his weakness (and it’s something you can hit easily) then cast Imp on him. This will prevent him from changing weakness again but he will start Attacking you with an automatic critical hit every turn, so be prepared to heal.

Because of the nearby save point, some people like to fight this guy over and over until they manage to get his rare steal weapon.


This isn’t it. You can steal a Drainer from Number 024 if you’re lucky, but trying for that has always seemed like a fool’s game to me. As amusing as it is to have a sword that drains the HP from enemies and transfers it to the wielder, the weapon doesn’t have much higher attack power than the elemental swords we’ve been picking up (121 versus 108) but its damage is maxed at the wielder’s max HP minus their current HP. If you want to keep Locke, Edgar, Terra, or Celes’ HP low purely for the sake of maximum Drainer efficiency that’s your choice, but it’s not a tactic I’m eager to use.

Number 024 eventually succumbs to a steady regime of Earrings-boosted AuraBolts and Flashes, allowing us to move on to the heart of the Research Facility. Unlike the previous room, the tubes here contain Espers being drained of their magic.
ESPER: You want to help me... But... I haven’t long to live. Just as Ifrit did before me, I’ll give to you my power...
[All of the ESPERs change to Magicite.]


CID: W...what’s this!? [He runs around the room, examining the tubes.] So... Esper magical power can only truly be transferred when one of them passes away...


Celes: Professor Cid.
CID: General Celes! And who might these dubious characters be? Your troops?
Celes: No... You see, ...
CID: Can it be true that you came here as a spy, seeking to cause an uprising?!
Locke: !? Celes...?


KEFKA: General Celes!! The game’s over. Bring me those Magicite shards!
Locke: Celes! You... deceived me?!
Celes: Of course not! Have a little faith!
KEFKA: G’hee, hee, hee! She has tricked you all! Celes, that’s so... YOU!
Celes: Locke... Please believe me...
Locke: I... ... ...
KEFKA: NOW!!


Celes: Locke... Let me protect you for once... Maybe now... Now you’ll believe me...

Seriously Locke, what the Christ? You’re taking Kefka’s word that Celes is an agent provocateur over... well, anything and everything else you’ve seen? What possible Imperial objective is she accomplishing here? Maybe she delivered the king of Figaro to the Empire with this plan, but she’s done nothing to capture or eliminate Banon, the actual Returner leader, or return Terra to Imperial control. Locke and Sabin are probably wanted by the Empire for their little bits of havoc, but I doubt it was badly enough to send one of the three highest officers into deep cover; similarly, her discovery of how to get the most power out of Espers would be handy intelligence but she could hardly have been expected to come back from dealing with a ragtag rebellion with such information. Meanwhile, she was instrumental in driving the Empire from Narshe and in convincing the one person in the world with an airship to join the fight against the Empire. Some double agent.

Locke: Celes...
CID: Ooh, ooh... What happened? [He examines a damaged containment tube.] This is a disaster! Your fighting has caused the capsules to rupture! Their contents are spilling out! Quick! Over here!
[CID leads the PARTY to the elevator he came up.]


CID: The life-energy of those Espers... You’ve helped me come to a decision. I’m going to talk to the Emperor and have this stupid war stopped!

If there’s anything you want to do before the next series of fights – healing, changing equipment, saving - do it before talking to Cid again.


“But she was forced to become a Magitek Knight, and has done some awful things. If I could only talk to her... I’d apologize for the way her life has turned out. No! It’s Kefka! [He pushes the PARTY into the mine cart.] GO!!


Surprise surprise, even the mines below the Magitek Research Facility are filled with enemies. These big purple Mag Roaders can use Ice spells and there’s a smaller red version I didn’t run into this playthrough that uses Fire spells; neither one is much of a threat as long as you don’t try to use Blizzard or similar attacks on the purple ones, which absorb it.


Further down the tracks you’ll run into this joker. This guy can be a real pain in the ass, because he starts off the battle by Stopping one of your characters, randomly uses the same ability over again during the course of the battle, and counters physical attacks with Blood Feast, a special action equivalent to the Drain spell. His arms compound the problem. RightBlade simply performs physical attacks (either regular Attacks or the slightly stronger Rapier), but the Left Blade has powerful regular Attacks and can halve your HP with Shamshir.

If destroyed both arms will regenerate after a certain time – fifteen and thirty seconds, respectively – until Number 128 itself is destroyed. If unarmed, Number 128 will Haste itself and use Gale Cut to damage the entire party at once (dangerous if Left Blade has used Shamshir) so if you’re unsure of your damage output you can destroy just the Left Blade then use your best non-physical attacks on the main body for a relatively safe battle.


If you’re me, you’ll use Fire Dance and Flash until the Blades are gone, then trust to AuraBolt and Drill to win the damage race. I didn’t get it this time, but Number 128 does have a nice weapon for Cyan if you want to try for it: the Tempest, which will occasionally cast Wind Slash. We’ll find another one in a couple hours though, so it’s not a big deal.

Setzer: I was starting to worry... ? What’s up with Celes?
Locke: ......
Setzer: We’ll talk later. Let’s get outta here!



Setzer: Right. Speaking of which... Maybe we should be leaving.
Edgar: Something horrible’s coming!!
Sabin: Uwaaoo! What in the...?


These Cranes are nasty. They use first and second tier Bolt and Fire spells, have powerful physicals, and use Shake the Deck to hit the party with Magnitude 8 every sixty seconds. The one on the left absorbs Lightning attacks and will use Gigavolt on the party if three are used on it, the right one does the same with Fire spells and Fire3. The really nasty part is that as long as both are alive they’ll use their spells to heal and charge the other Crane.

With this party I use AuraBolt and follow up with Drill or Chainsaw against whichever one Sabin targeted first, hoping that he picks the same Crane enough times to kill one quickly. If you took the time to get Gau some new Rages before coming through here, his Anguiform Rage’s Water-element attack (or any Water attack, really) will wreck these things. But who cares about that right now? We’ve got a new character in the party!



Trying out Setzer’s special ability we get a pretty standard result for our first time. You control when the Slots stop, and if you don’t get three of something you end up with this little bunny that heals a pittance of HP and cures Sleep, Blind, and Poison. In other versions of the game Lagomorph is called Mysidian Rabbit after the recurring city of Mysidia (which isn’t in this game); notice that it’s dressed like a black mage.

The Slots command is, in my experience talking about this game, one of the most divisive things in Final Fantasy 3. A lot of people decry it for randomness and weakness, but in most cases success at Slots comes down to timing. If you get the rhythm down, you can reliably deal large amounts of damage to entire groups using the relatively easy three diamonds attack, 7-Flush:


This attack hits an entire group for good magic damage and is non-elemental, making it a fine attack choice in any circumstance. Slots’ more powerful attacks include, among other things, Chocobop, which hits all non-flying enemies for defense-ignoring damage, Esper summons, and unblockable instant death. (Some of the moves, especially that last one, are actually blocked off by the game in some fights unless you abuse glitches to make a certain byte in the RAM change.) I personally think the command is cool and I know I’m not alone, but there’s a lot of people who seem to sent into a frothing rage by Slots who usually don’t seem to know that it isn’t entirely based on luck.

A lot of people dislike Setzer the character because they dislike the Slots command which, to be fair, does require the player to put in some work to learn to control it. His equipment isn’t overwhelming in its power, consisting of a handful of daggers and some character-exclusive cards, darts, and dice weapons (dice damage is based on luck, but the second set (which we’ll get much later in the game) can hit the damage cap pretty easily); oddly enough, despite being limited to light weapons he can use heavy armor and shields. The bottom line is if you don’t like gambling, either as a mechanic or a personality trait, you probably won’t like Setzer.

Oh yeah, the Cranes. Kill one and the other becomes less of a threat. It will use this move to go into defensive mode, activating Protect and Reflect. Protect is a minor annoyance to us since most of our physical attacks ignore defense – it will reduce damage from the Attack and Mug commands but, well, did you see how much damage Locke did to Number 024 with Mug compared to one AuraBolt? With Mug the damage is the bonus effect to the theft, and no one else uses a basic physical Attack at all. Reflect provides no safety for the Crane either thanks to the fact that no one’s using actual spells against it. Once one is down, the other one really has no defenses left and falls easily.


Free of the trap, we take off into the air.
Setzer: Terra? Who’s that?
Locke: I’ll explain on the way... about Terra... Espers... the Returners...


[The PARTY spreads out.]
Locke: Terra...


Terra [glows]: Father...? I remember it all... I was raised in the Esper’s world.


Even in the Esper world you can’t escape NPC chatter!
“You okay, Maduin?”
“You’re the Gate Keeper, Maduin?”
“Strong winds... Be careful, Maduin.”
ELDER: This evening is an ill omen...
“You okay, Maduin?”


[Near the village entrance, MADUIN finds a collapsed human GIRL and returns to the village with her.]
FAIRY ESPER: She’s pretty weak. Better let her rest for a moment.
ELDER: Did I hear there was a human here?
MADUIN: Probably... ...wandered in here by mistake.
“You’d better do away with it. Humans and Espers are incompatible...”


[The GIRL stands up.]
GIRL: You’re... an Esper? What’s that pendant for?
MADUIN: It’s... yours now! It helps protect the Esper World.
GIRL: Esper World... Boy, did I take the low road or what?
MADUIN: The Esper folk are pretty upset, you being a human and all...
GIRL: You the one who... saved me?
ESPER: I am Maduin. I tired living in the human world... That world is filled with desire, greed and loathing. It’s highly infectious... Are humans and Espers truly... so different?
MADONNA: So... I’m an example of the evil in this world, huh?
MADUIN: No, I mean...
MADONNA: I’ll return to my world tomorrow!
MADUIN: You’ll need a guide.

The next day...
ELDER: Everything all right? WHAT? The human’s gone?
“A human girl made it all the way to the gate!”
“If this generation of humans knew about our abilities... And decided they wanted to utilize our powers... It would be a total disaster!”
“Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“Why has this happened now after all these years?”
“The link between worlds has surely weakened over the past 1000 years.”
“Everyone here’s feeling uneasy.”


MADONNA: But humans and Espers can never coexist...!
MADUIN: How do we know for sure unless we observe for ourselves?





MADUIN: We’ve given her a name...
MADONNA: What? You and your friends named my daughter without consulting me?
MADUIN: It’s Terra. Not bad, huh?


[Suddenly the YOUTH is knocked flat.]
“Humans!!!!! The nexus between our worlds has opened again!! The wind... so odd... just like 2 years ago...”
[An IMPERIAL TROOPER emerges from the cave.]


GESTAHL: Those ancient writings told us of this world, and described the awesome magical properties of these beasts! Grab them! Riches to any man who captures an Esper! GO!
[IMPERIAL TROOPS rush past GESTAHL into the Esper World.]

Gestahl’s line implies he’s never seen Espers before but wants the arcane powers of these mysterious and fey creatures... who his completely human (at this point) troops are currently beating to a pulp seemingly barehanded. I suppose the point isn’t to beat the Espers though, but to gain something tricksy that will give his soldiers an advantage over the other normal humans of his world. Come to think of it, the only thing we ever hear that is special about Vector is the Magitek power they’ve rendered from half-dead Espers like blubber from a living whale.

I like to imagine that at this point in the story Vector is a tiny place ignored in favor of its richer cousins like Maranda and Jidoor, gazing avariciously at places like Narshe, with its plentiful wealth and steam tech, not to mention the occasional tamed guard monster, and Figaro with its masterful grasp of mundane mechanics and astounding size of a castle and a city.