Ah, Magic Only in a game where Magic is basically king. Minus the whole first third of the game where you only have "Natural" magic on Terra and Celes. Shouldn't be a terribly hard run I think
Especially finishing at level 30+, yeah. I'd say ignoring the magic only restriction until you get espers but trying to avoid grinding would've made it more like a challenge run, maybe? Magic only for everyone actually makes the game easier in this entry in particular.
Not forgetting to mention that EVERYONE artificially can wield ALL general spells without a "class" restriction (not counting Strago's blue) while even having a decent magic stat growth by default and not counting esper's boost, also not counting Umaro but who tf use Umaro anyways
Yeah, magic is very strong in this game, it turns out. lol. The fact that every character can learn every spell is a difficult thing to balance (which I will be going over in the summary video).
@noyoucantnoicantnowecantsostop Umaro is a one of the best budget option for the Arena fights. Easy to predict the fights since his options are limited. Less dead turns, selfsabotage, less irritating due in to how the arena battle system works.
in Figaro cave with Locke and Celes if you dont loot items the first way through the chest in the room becomes a thunder rod and can 1 shot the tunnel armor. for future non restricted runs.
Narshe caves too. They upgrade twice. Once before the Kefka fight and again in the World of Ruin. I think the South Figaro caves upgrade twice also after the World of Ruin. Not sure if other places do this. If so they are locations that exist in both worlds. Not Zozo though.
Part of why Kefka is fairly easy is because you can fight him immediately after getting the air ship re-recruiting only Celes, Edgar and Setzer AKA the CES run. The only things you can do are collect some treasure before you complete dungeons that give party memeber, The Snowfield and Yeti Cave, and the Anceint Castle. Many of the strongest Magics are locked behind other party Members; you don't get Curaga, Ultima, Reraise, The Strongest spells damage wise are Meteor and flare Infact some ending scenes change if you don't collect all the party members.
In the future, the stats you get from leveling up are tied to Magicite. Early grinding before you get the magicite that boosts stats you want is not advised and it's best to put off grinding as long as you can in this game.
Eh, esper boosts are overrated. And in a run like this one where the challenge is frontloaded to the early-game, I'd say that there's no point to delaying leveling.
Fun fact I picked up while doing a similar challenge (no attacks from the boys, essentially): the Black Belt and Cyan's counterattack technique can be used to get through most of Sabin's scenario, but won't work on the forced Kefka fights. However, Interceptor's counter DOES work on him (and is super OP for this section).
I think investing in Mog for this challenge would have been useful honestly. He's absurdly bulky and a decent mage too. He also start higher leveled. Not sure how it works with Gold Hairpin in WoB, though. In WoR, he just needs Lakshmi to serve as an additional healer
Interesting. When selecting my party, I only really looked at magic stat (though I got lazy at the end and didn't bother grabbing Strago). In retrospect, I should probably have considered getting a durable character.
@@veghesther3204 Yes, but it's irrelevant for this challenge. Whereas the Gold Hairpin helps you conserve your precious MP. I can see it being quite useful early on.
A gold hairpin is more useful in the immediately unless you want Esper stat boosts on Mog. The girls are better mages any ways with most of their endgame gear giving magic power increases, whichi great if you aren't using esper boosts.
@@veghesther3204 You're missing the point. Yes, generally Mog is the best choice. But here, we're discussing the Magic Only Challenge (since that's what the video is about). Dance moves are irrelevant.
Try to keep your level low for a magic only challenge as your level is directly calculated for all damage in this game. To learn magic in Wob just go grind it on Intangir on that triangle island in the Northeast. Just have either shell or 1200 hp to survive the ensuing Meteo. Nice thing is you only get magic points. Stop> spam spells>repeat. In old versions you could just vanish/ doom the guy. For a low level magic only quick + gem box or quick + economizer is the way to go. I did the Ultima spam ages ago and it gets boring quick.
FF6 is just so damn good but if you're doing Magic Only... You're gonna have a good time once you get your Guardian Forces... I mean Espers. First time I beat the game in a long time I forgot how strong I needed to be going into the final fight and uhhh let's just say that everyone throwing around Ultima like it's going out of style makes for an easy end game.
I actually appreciate the things more than I previously did after doing this challenge. I mean, it's not hard and magic is overpowered, but I do think the game is very good.
It'd probably help to rename this video "“Magic” Command only". Magitek, Runic, Summons, Lore, breaking magical weapons, and a bunch of other stuff all either count as magic, or affect magic in this high-magic setting, so saying "Magic Only" almost means nothing aside from just not using certain characters' unique talents that don't also count as- or affect magic!
Items in battle is fine because it leads to less grinding, surely using your last ether annd winning is more satisfying naratively than terra is now 10 levels higher than intended so i should be ready. Just a point of suggestion for future theme runs
This ones pretty fun without using any magicite and actually making use of the characters abilities, of course the endgame without ultima was more interesting
Looking at the wiki for Level ? Holy, it seems to hit all enemies whose level is a multiple of the last digit of one's gil count.... if said digit is 1 or 0 it will hit everyone. Could be that the enemy skill does count the player gil for it and it was 1 or 0.... or that there is a value for monster gil that is checked, which probably is 0.
Some tips and tricks from somebody who has done a few FF6 challenge runs: 5:34: Looks like you're defending, too. Back row + Defend cuts down on 75% of damage, so that'll make most things look really weak. 6:29: One trick you can use here is to do Sabin's scenario first and acquire the Barrier Ring from a sneakily hidden chest in the Imperial Camp. This will set up Shell when you reach low HP, and it'll stay up when you heal, so this would minimize or eliminate grinding here. Not something that's easy to consider without knowing the game well though. If you're allowing Black Belt in general, doing Sabin's scenario without selecting commands is more doable than you'd think. I did this in a low-turn run a while back and wasn't at a much higher level than you are here. Unfortunate that you didn't bring Gau to the Magitek Facility. He's actually the strongest caster for this section barring Celes. 21:01: While this is a Sketch tutorial, it's possible (and realistic) to just deplete Ultros' HP manually instead, so you don't really need Sketch here. 27:20: The number that L. ? Holy uses to determine whether characters get hit is the last digit of your Gil total. So if your Gil total ends in 0, you'll never get hit by it. 27:32: You can actually deal with the Freeze status by casting a weak Fire spell on your party. 36:51: Pretty much. :P It's pretty unsurprising that the endgame wasn't that difficult here. Magic is pretty much the intended way to beat the game anyways, so this stops being a real challenge run at some point and ends up just being a regular playthrough (except for you skipping a lot of WoR content, which makes sense to do).
This is hit every major thing I wanted to say except one thing ... Waiting for shadow on the floating continent is a time save in this run. If you didn't intend to wait and instead left you'd have to do cave on the veldt in addition to owzers house to recruit relm.
So since you mentioned at the start that you haven't played 6 as much as other final fantasy games there's an interesting thing that happens early on in the game that is probably a large reason why you struggled at the opera house. So basically magic in this game is overpowered. Like really overpowered, except for one instance. Right after you get your first magicite in zozo, pretty much every enemy you will run into from there all the way through the magitek research facility has really high magic defense. So like, hurray for finally being able to really use magic in earnest, here's a bunch of enemies that resist magic for the next 2 hours of gameplay.
Huh, that is a weird design choice. It does explain why the opera rats gave me so much difficulty (aside from just not getting thundara before that sequence).
IMO, It's not entirely wrong, but I'm not sure I'd characterize it that way. Enemy physical defense jumps more than magical defense on both the southern continent and the Magitek Facility (at a point in the game where the physical damage formula doesn't scale very well to begin with), and the bosses in the Magitek Facility are fairly weak to Magic. If anything, it seems to be teaching you how to use Magic while also having some outliers (the Flans, Mag Roaders, and Opera House) to teach you not to _always_ use Magic. Defense piercing attacks are probably stronger than they should be, but that's another story.
@@Lockirby2 now that you mention it, that does sound right cuz aren't like the pipsqueeks and a few other enemies in the research facility really weak to magic? So maybe I'm more remembering things like the opera house specifically. It's been a while and also yeah defense piercing attacks easily break the first half of the game, hence Edgar being the strongest character in WOB. Another thing I wish would've happened in this video though was to have him fight all the dragons to pick up crusader and meltdown/merton then just spam that with fire shields on everyone. It is a really fun way to break the game doing around 5k damage and 5k heals to all allies every turn... with every character lol
I don't think Gau would limit this due to him being a unique blue mage since he can learn enemy abilities, which is a blue mage ability, though he doesn't lose MP so there's that. Also, replay FF6 before comparing FFVII to FFVI because they are not the same in plot. mechanic wise they are technically the same but plot wise. Be prepared for how each character grows in the game.
I had no idea you could beat the game without Terra, who is, in idea, the protagonist. Makes me wonder, can you beat FFVI without recruiting any additional characters? (So, only getting those who are absolutelly mandatory for progression)
The only characters you have to recruit in the World of Ruin are Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. So you can beat the game with just 3 characters. Everyone else is a bonus.
I've always been of the opinion that FF7 was just a higher budget but ultimately worse FF6. FF7 was also the turning point for Square Enix to start their long slow slide into mediocrity. A slide mostly brought by pursuit of spectacle over substance. There were still some gems between then and now but they've become less and less common with time. The last Square game I genuinely enjoyed was Bravely Default and that was mostly due to the cues it took from FF5's job system.
Hilariously, you didn't even find the most broken things. FF6 is so easy that you can leave X-Magic and Quick at the door and still crush it with Magic only.
Yeah, I remembered vaguely from playing the game once many years ago that there are still more broken options. I just didn't want to bother with how strong ultima was. Lol
The one time I "seriously" tried to play Final Fantasy VI in the form of Final Fantasy III, it decided to hang after the Locke/Sabin/Terra split and I couldn't figure out where I was after reloading so I just dropped it completely.
No it is not possible to beat this game with magic only because you must suplex the train or it doesn't count
AGREED.
Ah, Magic Only in a game where Magic is basically king. Minus the whole first third of the game where you only have "Natural" magic on Terra and Celes. Shouldn't be a terribly hard run I think
Especially finishing at level 30+, yeah. I'd say ignoring the magic only restriction until you get espers but trying to avoid grinding would've made it more like a challenge run, maybe? Magic only for everyone actually makes the game easier in this entry in particular.
Not forgetting to mention that EVERYONE artificially can wield ALL general spells without a "class" restriction (not counting Strago's blue) while even having a decent magic stat growth by default and not counting esper's boost, also not counting Umaro but who tf use Umaro anyways
Yeah, magic is very strong in this game, it turns out. lol. The fact that every character can learn every spell is a difficult thing to balance (which I will be going over in the summary video).
@noyoucantnoicantnowecantsostop Umaro is a one of the best budget option for the Arena fights. Easy to predict the fights since his options are limited. Less dead turns, selfsabotage, less irritating due in to how the arena battle system works.
FF Tactics, Advance, and Advance A2 magic only would be interesting additions to the series.
in Figaro cave with Locke and Celes if you dont loot items the first way through the chest in the room becomes a thunder rod and can 1 shot the tunnel armor. for future non restricted runs.
Gonna keep that in mind for future potential runs.
@Xephrost_Gaming to my knowledge it's the only chest that changes it's content at later times.
Narshe caves too. They upgrade twice. Once before the Kefka fight and again in the World of Ruin. I think the South Figaro caves upgrade twice also after the World of Ruin. Not sure if other places do this. If so they are locations that exist in both worlds. Not Zozo though.
2:25 I absolutely adore Mog's tent sprite.
Final Fantasy 4 and 6 and 13 and the first Tactics are all my favs and I'm played them so many times.
Part of why Kefka is fairly easy is because you can fight him immediately after getting the air ship re-recruiting only Celes, Edgar and Setzer AKA the CES run. The only things you can do are collect some treasure before you complete dungeons that give party memeber, The Snowfield and Yeti Cave, and the Anceint Castle. Many of the strongest Magics are locked behind other party Members; you don't get Curaga, Ultima, Reraise, The Strongest spells damage wise are Meteor and flare Infact some ending scenes change if you don't collect all the party members.
In the future, the stats you get from leveling up are tied to Magicite. Early grinding before you get the magicite that boosts stats you want is not advised and it's best to put off grinding as long as you can in this game.
Eh, esper boosts are overrated. And in a run like this one where the challenge is frontloaded to the early-game, I'd say that there's no point to delaying leveling.
This went exactly as expected, in that it would be tough until magicite is unlocked and then pretty smooth sailing after that.
Small Child nopes local Demon out of existence. Is this Innocence?
Fun fact I picked up while doing a similar challenge (no attacks from the boys, essentially): the Black Belt and Cyan's counterattack technique can be used to get through most of Sabin's scenario, but won't work on the forced Kefka fights. However, Interceptor's counter DOES work on him (and is super OP for this section).
Yeah, I got the interceptor counter a couple times. I figured it was probably possible but did not want to.
Loved the Suplex, strong work Xephrost
I think investing in Mog for this challenge would have been useful honestly. He's absurdly bulky and a decent mage too. He also start higher leveled.
Not sure how it works with Gold Hairpin in WoB, though. In WoR, he just needs Lakshmi to serve as an additional healer
Interesting. When selecting my party, I only really looked at magic stat (though I got lazy at the end and didn't bother grabbing Strago). In retrospect, I should probably have considered getting a durable character.
@@veghesther3204 Yes, but it's irrelevant for this challenge.
Whereas the Gold Hairpin helps you conserve your precious MP. I can see it being quite useful early on.
A gold hairpin is more useful in the immediately unless you want Esper stat boosts on Mog. The girls are better mages any ways with most of their endgame gear giving magic power increases, whichi great if you aren't using esper boosts.
@@veghesther3204 You're missing the point.
Yes, generally Mog is the best choice. But here, we're discussing the Magic Only Challenge (since that's what the video is about). Dance moves are irrelevant.
Magic being stupid powerful in that game is one of the reasons I love it so much!
Thanks for the upload during my September 2024 birthday month! I've played some hacks of FINAL FANTASY VI.
My favorite way to play is no espers, but spells learned through weapons and equipment are okay.
Ooooh. That does sound interesting. It would definitely do a lot to make the characters feel more distinct from one another.
Pretty impressed that only playing this once you had the foresight to collect the relics in the prison beneath South Figaro.
Can't remember if I knew to pick them up or if the abbreviated guide I had up to know where I needed to go next in the story pointed them out.
Try to keep your level low for a magic only challenge as your level is directly calculated for all damage in this game.
To learn magic in Wob just go grind it on Intangir on that triangle island in the Northeast. Just have either shell or 1200 hp to survive the ensuing Meteo. Nice thing is you only get magic points. Stop> spam spells>repeat. In old versions you could just vanish/ doom the guy.
For a low level magic only quick + gem box or quick + economizer is the way to go.
I did the Ultima spam ages ago and it gets boring quick.
FF6 is just so damn good but if you're doing Magic Only... You're gonna have a good time once you get your Guardian Forces... I mean Espers.
First time I beat the game in a long time I forgot how strong I needed to be going into the final fight and uhhh let's just say that everyone throwing around Ultima like it's going out of style makes for an easy end game.
I actually appreciate the things more than I previously did after doing this challenge. I mean, it's not hard and magic is overpowered, but I do think the game is very good.
For the record, the aquatic enemies on the Lethe river are in fact weak to fire.
I kind of get that from a gameplay perspective, but that is thematically odd. But good to know.
@@Xephrost_Gaming the only justification they offer is ultros saying he isn’t sea food soup when you burn him.
I think I would go for things that use magic damage or mostly magic damage (Aura Cannon, thrown elemental scrolls, etc)
It'd probably help to rename this video "“Magic” Command only". Magitek, Runic, Summons, Lore, breaking magical weapons, and a bunch of other stuff all either count as magic, or affect magic in this high-magic setting, so saying "Magic Only" almost means nothing aside from just not using certain characters' unique talents that don't also count as- or affect magic!
Items in battle is fine because it leads to less grinding, surely using your last ether annd winning is more satisfying naratively than terra is now 10 levels higher than intended so i should be ready. Just a point of suggestion for future theme runs
This ones pretty fun without using any magicite and actually making use of the characters abilities, of course the endgame without ultima was more interesting
Looking at the wiki for Level ? Holy, it seems to hit all enemies whose level is a multiple of the last digit of one's gil count.... if said digit is 1 or 0 it will hit everyone. Could be that the enemy skill does count the player gil for it and it was 1 or 0.... or that there is a value for monster gil that is checked, which probably is 0.
Yeah, someone mentioned in another comment and I checked the footage and yup, my gil ended in a 1.
Some tips and tricks from somebody who has done a few FF6 challenge runs:
5:34: Looks like you're defending, too. Back row + Defend cuts down on 75% of damage, so that'll make most things look really weak.
6:29: One trick you can use here is to do Sabin's scenario first and acquire the Barrier Ring from a sneakily hidden chest in the Imperial Camp. This will set up Shell when you reach low HP, and it'll stay up when you heal, so this would minimize or eliminate grinding here. Not something that's easy to consider without knowing the game well though.
If you're allowing Black Belt in general, doing Sabin's scenario without selecting commands is more doable than you'd think. I did this in a low-turn run a while back and wasn't at a much higher level than you are here.
Unfortunate that you didn't bring Gau to the Magitek Facility. He's actually the strongest caster for this section barring Celes.
21:01: While this is a Sketch tutorial, it's possible (and realistic) to just deplete Ultros' HP manually instead, so you don't really need Sketch here.
27:20: The number that L. ? Holy uses to determine whether characters get hit is the last digit of your Gil total. So if your Gil total ends in 0, you'll never get hit by it.
27:32: You can actually deal with the Freeze status by casting a weak Fire spell on your party.
36:51: Pretty much. :P
It's pretty unsurprising that the endgame wasn't that difficult here. Magic is pretty much the intended way to beat the game anyways, so this stops being a real challenge run at some point and ends up just being a regular playthrough (except for you skipping a lot of WoR content, which makes sense to do).
This is hit every major thing I wanted to say except one thing ... Waiting for shadow on the floating continent is a time save in this run. If you didn't intend to wait and instead left you'd have to do cave on the veldt in addition to owzers house to recruit relm.
Ultima really is king here.
Isn't Humbaba vulnerable to Vanish? And then a follow-up instakill spell?
@@veghesther3204 RIP Humbaba cheese. I understand the reasoning, but it was such a funny weakness for a late boss
So since you mentioned at the start that you haven't played 6 as much as other final fantasy games there's an interesting thing that happens early on in the game that is probably a large reason why you struggled at the opera house. So basically magic in this game is overpowered. Like really overpowered, except for one instance. Right after you get your first magicite in zozo, pretty much every enemy you will run into from there all the way through the magitek research facility has really high magic defense. So like, hurray for finally being able to really use magic in earnest, here's a bunch of enemies that resist magic for the next 2 hours of gameplay.
Huh, that is a weird design choice. It does explain why the opera rats gave me so much difficulty (aside from just not getting thundara before that sequence).
IMO, It's not entirely wrong, but I'm not sure I'd characterize it that way. Enemy physical defense jumps more than magical defense on both the southern continent and the Magitek Facility (at a point in the game where the physical damage formula doesn't scale very well to begin with), and the bosses in the Magitek Facility are fairly weak to Magic. If anything, it seems to be teaching you how to use Magic while also having some outliers (the Flans, Mag Roaders, and Opera House) to teach you not to _always_ use Magic.
Defense piercing attacks are probably stronger than they should be, but that's another story.
@@Lockirby2 now that you mention it, that does sound right cuz aren't like the pipsqueeks and a few other enemies in the research facility really weak to magic? So maybe I'm more remembering things like the opera house specifically. It's been a while and also yeah defense piercing attacks easily break the first half of the game, hence Edgar being the strongest character in WOB. Another thing I wish would've happened in this video though was to have him fight all the dragons to pick up crusader and meltdown/merton then just spam that with fire shields on everyone. It is a really fun way to break the game doing around 5k damage and 5k heals to all allies every turn... with every character lol
Ultros is such a cutie 😍
my horrible damp husband~
I don't think Gau would limit this due to him being a unique blue mage since he can learn enemy abilities, which is a blue mage ability, though he doesn't lose MP so there's that.
Also, replay FF6 before comparing FFVII to FFVI because they are not the same in plot. mechanic wise they are technically the same but plot wise. Be prepared for how each character grows in the game.
Which version of the game is this? It looks gorgeous
This is the pixel remaster.
This game is really great, but unfortunately hard to make challenge runs for just because of how the first part is formatted.
>Magic only
>Uses items
What did he mean by this?
Magic only -> in combat
Mog actually has a great magic stat 💔
I had no idea you could beat the game without Terra, who is, in idea, the protagonist. Makes me wonder, can you beat FFVI without recruiting any additional characters? (So, only getting those who are absolutelly mandatory for progression)
The only characters you have to recruit in the World of Ruin are Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. So you can beat the game with just 3 characters. Everyone else is a bonus.
I've always been of the opinion that FF7 was just a higher budget but ultimately worse FF6. FF7 was also the turning point for Square Enix to start their long slow slide into mediocrity. A slide mostly brought by pursuit of spectacle over substance. There were still some gems between then and now but they've become less and less common with time.
The last Square game I genuinely enjoyed was Bravely Default and that was mostly due to the cues it took from FF5's job system.
L??? Holy is based off the last digit on your GP count.
Frozen allies can be unfrozen by casting Fire on them.
Hilariously, you didn't even find the most broken things. FF6 is so easy that you can leave X-Magic and Quick at the door and still crush it with Magic only.
Yeah, I remembered vaguely from playing the game once many years ago that there are still more broken options. I just didn't want to bother with how strong ultima was. Lol
Lvl ? Holy is such a weird spell. It hits those whose level is divisible by the last digit of your Gil counter. Yeah...
Which likely means his Gil counter ended in 1 for that Dullahan fight since it was hitting the whole party.
@@rruhland Or Zero because lvl ? holy just says fuck it, and hits everyone anyway, even though it's impossible to divide by 0.
Ah, that makes sense. Checked the footage, and yup, my gil counter ended in 1.
You really want to magically break the game?
Gem Box + Economizer + Quick + Ultima
3 Ultimas a turn for 1 MP each!
Now that's just silly. I love it
i thought ff6 was magic only lol
The one time I "seriously" tried to play Final Fantasy VI in the form of Final Fantasy III, it decided to hang after the Locke/Sabin/Terra split and I couldn't figure out where I was after reloading so I just dropped it completely.
Ah, ff6, not really my fave but I do see the appeal
Whats good my nigga
I prefer FF4 and 5 over 6.