Final Fantasy VI Advance - Complete 5/1/22
I finally finished this game after starting it a couple of years ago. I had played through most of the game as a kid during the SNES era but never quite beat it on my own. I did with my dad's saved data. After multiple play through attempts spanning decades, I eventually gave the GBA version a shot. I went through half the game ( to the World of Ruin) on a GBA and then came the Retron 5. I finished it up on the Retron 5 on the big screen and loved it. Also after all these years of talking about it being one of my favorite games ever, my wife could finally hang out and watch me play and enjoy it with me.
I made a couple errors along the way, leaving the floating island without waiting for Shadow, which I had to finish the 2nd half of the game without him. I also didn't have Mog in my party when I went on to get Midgarsormr Esper, which would of allowed me to play with Umaro the rest of the game. I did however make a save point before beating the floating island so when I come around to do another play through, I can pick up with that save point and do a run through with Shadow and Umaro, the latter I have never played with.
It took me about 60 hours to complete. I probably could of done it in about 45 hours but, once I got ready to go to Kefka's tower, I decided to level grind in the desert getting every character from the low 40's to around 64-70. This allowed everyone in my party to learn Ultima which was the nuke that ended Kefka's pathetic life. A good strategy to mop up all the bosses in the tower is to get all your characters to learn Ultima and Quick. Using Quick will allow the user to have two turns, combining that with Soul of Thamasa relic (allows user to cast two magic spells back to back) and you can really do some damage. Cast Quick and Ultima, then because you get another turn you can cast two more Ultima spells. This kinda locks the enemy down since they have to wait for your turn to end. So you can just repeat this on most characters. I will come back to the game and defeat the Dragons Den which is unlocked after beating the game. Also there are a couple Espers that I still havent seen.
Final Fantasy VI Advance didn't let me down, adding some new Espers and extra areas to the original SNES version. I will continue to call it my favorite Final Fantasy game in the series. Now, on to Breath of Fire, a new experience for me.