>>12888861
It was kind of necessary later on in the game, especially with Kefka's tower to have a few strong characters like that to carry the party. It really needed a few optional tough bosses and dungeons like they did in that one edition to make maxing everyone out have a purpose.

ff6 has a lot of things going for it but combat really isn't one

>>12888861
You know you don’t have to use the game breaking relic combos

oh, this is /vr/, not /vrpg/

whatever

japs thought ff5 was too hard so ff6 is completely faceroll, it's pretty clear they didn't do much to beta test the combat given things like the mblock bug and poor balance between physical and magic attacks

the entire math formula needed to cap out at like level 30 not 99 which is basically easy mode

>>12888861
This is the only ff I've finished.

>>12888873
It's not even relic combos. You literally start the game with a character that has a machine gun panic-button that clears the screen with no cost whatsoever, and you can immediately buy him a drill that ignores defense and evasion, and also a free infinite-use confusion to all enemies.

>>12888861
play romhacks

>>12888861
I haven't played ff6 beyond a few hours. But it is way harder to balance large numbers. You need a spread sheet t9 keep track of enemy and player hp+damage. Thats not an issue, even in the 90s spread sheets were easy, low space and relied on cheap or free software. The difficulty is once you start getting things that csn multiply damage, #of attacks, or reduce damage by large amounts the spread sheet cannot really record this. There are too many permutations.

Once you have that stuff you need to mentally keep track of guesstimates.

Number balance is a fascinating thing I am passionate about

>>12888861
It's not even so much the lack of HP or the ridiculous amount of damage you can potentially do (after a shitton of grinding, mind you) that's the problem, but the fact that the bosses themselves are largely weaklings with attacks and attack scripts that are barely a threat to you unless you go in severely underleveled AND without any element/status protections (which is another problem the game has - it showers you with protective options, especially later on). Many bosses that ought to present a challenge just kinda sit there while you wail at them with your strongest attacks with nary a counter, and when they do attack, they hit you with some basic bitch physical or level 2/3 elemental spell that will barely hurt at all. The bosses who can actually fuck you up if you're not careful are very few, and some of them can be cheesed through other means anyway.

All this to say is the issue lies more in how the enemies and bosses were designed, and well, it's pretty apparent not a whole lot of thought went into them being particularly challenging to anyone with half a braincell. Meanwhile, some ROM hacks have shown it is absolutely possible to make bosses that can give you a run for your money without being damage sponges just through better balancing of equipment so you're not immune to everything willy nilly, as well as through smarter attack scripts that require you to actually plan ahead of time as well as be able to react to potentially catastrophic attacks.

>>12888876
Even level 30 is pretty high when you know what you're doing. Once you get the end game equipment and figure out how to properly equip your characters, and which attacks are the most effective, most characters become nearly unkillable death-dealers. Defense-ignoring attacks, spells, and weapons are just insanely broken in this game, and Ribbons and elemental-resitant shields and armor are almost handed out like candy in the WoR. About the only thing balancing them out is that they are in relatively short supply, which means you most likely won't have enough to fully equip everyone once you're in Kefka's Tower, but all it means is you may have to swap some things around.

>>12889143
i have an honor rule that i refuse to swap equipment around in multi party dungeons. it's really autistic to do that but it's OP

>>12889167
There's basically no reason to do it outside of literal one-offs like Offering and Gem Box.

>>12889205
you can troll the game with the fire and paladin shields and merton

there's not enough genji equipment for everyone either. someone is going to be your bitch on equipment and it's usually one of the more useless characters like mog or cyan

>>12889206
Paladin Shield is a one-off.

>>12889206
You can get infinite Genji stuff through the coliseum with the exception of the Genji Helmet, though you can easily get three of those, five if you bet the game's two Red Caps (not advisable). Also, Mog is far from useless.

>>12888974
I remember the first time I played FF6, getting Edgar, and steamrolling with the auto-crossbow and I was just sitting there with my mouth hanging open.

>... this is the game?
>What are all these other characters for then?
>Why does Terra have MP and a magic attack that costs a resource, meanwhile the Auto-crossbow is just better and is for free? Why?

It pissed me off so much I actually put the game down, didn't touch it again for a few years. Tried it again. Got over the auto-crossbow and kept going, go the the World of Ruin and thought it was neat but lacked direction, which I guess was the point. Just go do whatever I wanted, when I wanted, if I wanted.

I guess I just like more linear progression...?

>>12889268
>>I guess I just like more linear progression...?
FFX is the game for you then

>>12889274
Not him but im coincidentally playing both of these games at the same time. FF6 GBA version on my phone (I beat the SNES version before) and FFX on PS2 (got filtered by Braska’s Final Aeon, gonna give it another go tonight)

>>12889268
Yeah, the character balance is kinda all over the place. Some characters suck early on but get better later, while others are strong through the whole game.

>>12889268
Most of Edgar's tools fall off a cliff by the end of WoB. Meanwhile, magic only gets better and better as the game goes by. So much so that romhacks actually have to buff and redistribute Edgar's tools so they stay relevant all game (a concept shared with most character special skills).

>>12888861
Big numbers were a mistake, but for a different reason. In Dragon Quest numbers are low enough that you can keep a close estimate in your mind and strategize, which bigger numbers don't lend themselves to that as easily.
This is only one of the many reasons why DQ combat is better.

FF2 was the first to max out HP at 9999, and as much as I love that game, that was a mistake and there is never a reason in the game for character HPs to go beyond 999. It would also have calmed down the retards who kept hitting themselves until the end of time to make that number grow.

>>12890242
Yeah, that seems to be the case across most special skills. I think only Sabin's Blitz, Gau's Rage, Shadow's Throw, and maybe Strago's Lore manage to stay useful. Thankfully most characters who formerly relied on their Skills are able to reliably pivot away from them, if not into Magic then into some form of Attack through the use of powerful weapons and/or Relics. Only Relm is 100% reliant on learning Magic to be of use. Cyan gets shafted big time, unfortunately, since his skill is too flawed and he doesn't get much in terms of good weapons to make up for it, at least compared to other characters.

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>>12893736 >>12893747 >>12894014

>>12888861
Know what annoys me more? The Esper stat boosting system. Most stats aren't even really worth boosting much if at all, and if you're also teaching spells, you gotta be on point making sure you equip the right Esper before a level up, or else it's wasted. It's a lot of autism for a game that doesn't even really need it, given how easy it generally is. Honestly almost wish it wasn't there at all.

Also, apologies for the shitty PR screenshot, it's almost impossible to find screenshots from older versions now without some effort.

>>12893729
They're bonuses, not something you're supposed to go out of your way to care for.

>>12893729
when you're searching for games that have remakes, google will usually get you if you put "classic" into the search

the esper system is honestly the worst part of ff6. materia blows it out of the water

there really isn't much reason to do a diverse character build you either go all-in on vigor or magic power and it's usually magic power

>>12893736
you have no clue what you're talking about dude it's more than a bonus it's your main level growth driver

the magic damage formula takes off ridiculously hard, the more points you put in the more powerful it gets. on the SNES version you can get so strong you overflow the damage and wrap back around to small numbers

i did a FUCK MAGIC run in pixel remastered where i refused to use espers at all and it required a lot of grinding and equipment minmaxing to beat the game

>>12893736
I get that, but my issue is that it's just not that well implemented or thought out. Now, admittedly, part of that goes back to how stats were implemented in the first place. The only stats that actually make a significant impact when increasing them are Magic, Vigor, and Speed, in that order, and Magic is the one that benefits the most by far (until you get to higher levels, when the damage formula for physical attacks starts becoming more favorable). Increasing Stamina basically does fuck all in this game since it only governs a couple of things and negligibly at that, and every character has similar HP and MP pools and they increase at a decent enough rate that you rarely ever feel like you don't have enough unless you're going out of your way to avoid leveling.

Then there's how many Espers actually boost stats, and which ones. Out of the first few Espers you get, only one is worth using for boosting (Stray/Cait Sith), with a +1 to Magic. After that you get Ifrit, which gives +1 to Vigor, which hardly does much. Then you get a whole bunch of Espers, out of which you get one that gives +2 to Magic (ZoneSeek) and another that gives +2 to Vigor (Bismark), and that's your lot until the WoR. Again, Stamina is not worth raising, and the HP and MP boosts are negligible at this point. You don't get more +2 Magic and Vigor Espers until the WoR, and you don't get a Speed-boosting one at all until, again, the WoR, and that's at +1 and it requires you forgo the other +2 Vigor Esper AND the Quick spell, which makes it seem like the developers thought permanently raising Speed at anytime before the end of the game would be problematic. You also only get the real substantial HP and MP boosts here at 50% if you are really itching for those.

So out of all the Espers, only seven are actually useful for boosting, and two can't even be possessed at the same time, and until you get the other +2 Magic/Vigor Espers you're gonna have characters fighting over them.

Most of the gameplay systems are poorly balanced and designed, like the esper level up bonuses and Cyan's Sword/Bushido ability. Just play the good romhacks that fix and rebalance the game.

>>12893798
Now, if I had my way, without doing a total overhaul of the underlying formulas, I'd make it so you had access to bigger Vigor stat boosts (+3 or maybe even +4) in the WoR, lock the +2 Magic Espers to the WoR while introducing another +1 Magic in the WoB, introduce a +1 Speed in the WoB and a +2 in the WoR, and well, make it so Stamina actually does something that makes it worth raising. I guess also make the HP and MP raises more substantial earlier so you'll actually wanna bother with it.

>>12893885
i made a romhack where vigor increased your crit chance and stamina decreased your chance to get crit, it was a pretty simple tweak without rewriting formulas to make the builds useful, i also flagged a lot of additional spells to be blocked by stamina, so tank builds were viable

having virtually every character able to learn magic was a mistake

>>12888861
pleb

FF6 is like
>engage in systems?
>No, use every character's free defense ignoring attack they practically start with!

>>12893961
What I do is have the characters I dedicate as mages prioritize learning spells that actually use their Magic stat like the elemental and healing spells, while those who aren't mages learn support spells like Slow and Haste, then maybe healing spells after that.

As unbalanced as it can be, FFVI is still more fun than the vast majority of RPGs. I think having a bunch of unbalanced options actually ends up being more fun than standard RPG combat. It's notable that people spend so much time talking about and dissecting the battles in FFVI compared to almost any other SNES RPG. There's clearly a lot there that's enjoyable and interesting about it.

>>12888861
I pretend I'm the different characters as I play through the game.

>>12893982
That's related to why it's great for romhacks and stuff too I think. You can do a ton with the battle system, so there's a plenty of room for creating interesting new bosses and encounters. And more challenging ones than the base game offers. T-Edition is pretty sweet.

>>12893982
While I'd say FF5 is deeper, the systems in FF6 are certainly interesting and have plenty of room for experimentation. It's just that the game doesn't do a very good job of actually rewarding you for engaging and trying new things, since you can mostly just spam whatever is your character's strongest spell or attack at the time and come out on top almost every time. The enemies are not difficult or varied enough to warrant much more than that, so many players don't even try.

>>12893961
Yes. FF7 and FF8 had the same problem. You just end up with a party of all-powerful mage-knights that can do anything, and there's no balancing at all. FF7 sorta tried where equipping Materia lowers your stats like HP or strength, but the amount was negligible.

>>12893729
The pixel remaster games look so fucking ugly. It's sad that an entire generation of zoomers will only ever know the classics from this trash.

>>12893990
I liked that T-Edition nerfed some of the more OP shit while at the same time introducing some new crazy shit as well. One of the coolest additions was the Gungnir spear, which automatically adds multijump without needing the Dragoon relics, and since you have those relic slots freed up, you can either bolster your defenses further, or double down and go balls to the wall by adding a Gauntlet and an Atlas Armlet or Hero Ring for insane damage.

>>12894014
no they don't

>>12894126
They look like shit.

>>12894213
it just looks like ff6 would if the snes could display more than 256 colors i think it's one of the few remakes that is actually good

that hd2d dq shit is making akira toriyama spin in his grave

>>12888861
Interesting how such boring gameplay was repeated without innovation for so long.

>>12894220
>it just looks like ff6 would if the snes could display more than 256 colors
Washed out like the GBA versions and with worse looking sprites?

Gotta teach the kiddos to do mental math quickly.
>>12894220
VI is the only one I played the PR of, had beaten it 2x before on SNES. I think it was great, it was everything I'd hope for a remaster to be. I even like the font everyone bitches about.

>>12893750
Okay then maybe they're not just bonuses - but anon's point that you're not supposed to pay attention to them still stands, because casual play will always involve equipping espers (not for the stats but for learning spells and getting to see cool special effects play out), and anybody who even casually and carelessly equips them will find the game to be very easy.

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>Struggled with the Narshe fight where everyone splits up as a kid
>Adult
>Solo Gau vs Kefka
>Cat Scratch

>>12890375

Any useless characters in this game just turn them into an imp dragoon. They're tanky and they hurt. You may have to grind out a few extra dragon horns, but.

>>12894906
Funnily enough, the best Imp may actually be Setzer. His Fixed Dice aren't affected by the Imp penalty, so he can still do massive damage together with an Offering while having much higher defense.

>played FF VI some 15 years ago
>barely remember anything about the game other than I loved it very much

I should really replay it one of these days. Wonder if I'll still feel the same.

>>12894937
i play it about once a year

it's a really good story but without a romhack or challenge run the combat gets stale

>>12894940
You, now that you said it I remember that the only thing I disliked is that I found the game way too easy and full of pointless magic and status effects but that's to be expected with the genre and specially with old games.

>>12893750
Nta but you can easily beat the game and optional bosses without min-maxing esper level up stat boosts

>>12895024
I concur with this, though to be fair, you kinda have to be familiar with how the game works and what to do in most fights to be able to get past them with relative ease. If you're relatively new to the game or just casually playing it without delving too deep into its mechanics or optimal setups, I can see foregoing Magic and the Esper boosting system leading to a bit of a hard time.

>>12893750
it’s completely unnecessary in the vanilla version of the game

>>12895101
Then why even include it as a mechanic? It's just cumbersome. Only FF9's inane (and, might I add, completely opaque) equipment-based stat boosting system is both more complicated and inconsequential.

>>12896002
it was clearly a very poorly tested afterthought

i mean evasion didn't even work correctly

old square had a habit of doing a very good wrong with graphics programming but fuck up the gameplay a lot

>>12896005
>a very good wrong
Good morning saar.

>>12896008
it's not ESL its nerve problems

i make lots of typos these days it sucks

>>12896024
>wrong is a typo for… job?

>>12896030
i don't even know anymore dude i think that's what i meant

>>12896002
Jap devs love including obscure, hidden mechanics to sell more guides

>>12896008
you trend-chasing memelords are so goddamned annoying

>>12896062
If that was the case, they really screwed it up with FF9. Not only was there, as far as I can remember, any indication within the game or manual that a stat-boosting mechanic of any kind existed, but taking advantage of it is basically pointless, as the game is incredibly easy, and the boosts themselves aren't actually immediate (operating on fractions of a stat boost if I'm not mistaken) and so the effect is so subtle most people never even notice it's in effect. Why anyone would even care to attempt to minmax that game is beyond me.

>>12896030
>>12896032
If I had to guess the og anon meant to type "doing very good work" and the word work got mistyped to wrong

>>12896415
i took a bunch of benzos guess i should just use touchscreen autocorrect

he's right to shit on me

>>12896426
>i took a bunch of benzos
That doesn't fit the narrative.

People act like any of this shit is relevant to the actual game. Yes, if you get some overpowered relics, you can roll Kefka's tower, the only thing left in the game.
The ACTUAL game of FF6 consists of Sabin killing everything while everyone else defends because their contribution doesn't even matter. Occasionally an elemental weak boss or runic target will allow Terra or Celes to help.

>>12893961
Thats the point of the story though. Magic existed, humans killed it and now your party is bringing it back to the world

>>12896985
Eh, while mostly true, I get tired of spamming Bum Rush after a while. I find it better to spend all my cash on weapons for Shadow to throw, as once he gets to a certain level, he does just as much damage as Sabin without needing to do the input rigamarole, plus it's quicker and Shadow can do other cool stuff, too, if you feel like it. Just takes a couple of trips to the Maranda desert to get rich enough to afford it.

Cyan’s quadra slice doesn’t get enough love. Just queue it up when other characters are attacking, only need to wait for ‘4’ and he hits 4 times. If you pair him with the right esper that increases strength on level up, then you can have him doing 9999 x4 without relics or magic.

>>12897053
Quadra Slice occurs when his bar hits 7, not 4, which activates Quadra Slam, a substantially weaker attack that doesn't ignore defense. You want Cyan to kick ass? Teach him Quick so he can charge to his heart's content without consequence.

>>12896992
The revival of Magic is never really presented as a good thing, though. At best your party acquiring it is something of a necessary evil, fight-fire-with-fire thing, as learning it requires the sacrifice of an Esper, and it's only needed because fighting the Empire, and later Kefka, would be impossible otherwise. And both Terra and Celes, the game's Magitek soldiers, express disgust and sorrow over humans lusting over power by wanting to be like them.

>>12897053
ironically, magic damage cyan is the best, but it requires a rare steal

genji glove+tempest+tempest+esper magic power twinking

guy is an aoe god

>>12897382
Problem with that setup is that Cyan dies to just about everything, especially since the Tempest requires him to be in the front row to deal full damage, and that includes the Wind Slash cast. Giving him an Offering without the Genji Glove is a lot safer, but if you wanna double-down on the damage and make him a pure glass cannon, yeah, Offering+Genji Glove+dual Tempests does do quite a number.

>>12897412
i must be remembering things incorrectly, i thought the offering disabled spellcasts

the offering is best on setzer because there is no damage reduction on fixed dice. they didn't even fix this in pixel remastered and i exploited it to beat my no-esper run

>>12897053
All Bushido/SwordTech skills are dogshit due to how long they take to charge in the vanilla version of the game. The hacks that make each level pass quickly make it servicable.

>>12897865
the rank 1 attack is fine but it's shit game design because it ignores armor and has such a high base damage there's no point getting cyan good swords, they do nothing

the one that absorbs MP is good, he can become a paladin out of combat healer with that if you don't want to grind him osmose

the counterattack one is good

the rest are all dogshit

>>12897858
Yeah, the Offering does disable ADDED spellcast, but the Tempest's Wind Slash isn't technically an added spell, but an attack all its own that gets cast in place of the regular attack. That's why it still works even with the Offering. This also applies to weapons like the Assassin and Scimitar that randomly dispatch enemies, which is very useful for the coliseum.

I'm kinda itching to play a new FF6 ROM hack. I've played FF6 T-Edition to death already, and I dabbled in the Beyond Chaos and Worlds Collide randomizers, but I don't think that's my jam. I'm considering either Separate Ways or Brave New World, though I've heard mixed things about the latter. Anyone tried those out?

>>12898920
Fuck, meant to say Divergent Paths, dunno where I got Separate Ways from lol

>>12898920
they ruined brave new world and made it piss easy, play an old version if you do that

>>12888861
Well, that's supposed to be something you figure out how to do for yourself, which makes it satisfying. In practice everyone just looked up how to get big numbers from Gamefaqs or a strategy guide, and never engaged with the systems. But you could enjoy one jrpg like this for over 100 hours if you were a kid and explored it slowly with no help, especially if you replayed it to try different things.

>>12898921
>dunno where I got Separate Ways from lol
Resident Evil 4 Ada content? Divergent Paths is a pretty vanilla-ish hack in difficulty though, slightly harder but with a bunch of bug fixes so you probably won't notice much of a difference if you remember the game's mechanics much at all.

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>>12899793

>>12888974
>You literally start the game with a character that has a machine gun panic-button that clears the screen with no cost whatsoever, and you can immediately buy him a drill that ignores defense and evasion, and also a free infinite-use confusion to all enemies.

>>12898920
>>12898921
I played Divergent Paths and liked it. It's largely a vanilla experience, but with bug fixes, and some moderate script changes that rework some scenes, make the plot flow better and overall make the game feel more complete.

>>12899749
Flash + Earrings is pretty good too