Game:

Final Fantasy VI (1994)

Duration: 12:10

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5

Rules reminder:

-Battle Message Speed 1 at all times
-No Jump
-No Step Mine
-No Merit Award
-No Quick
-No Joker Doom
-No incapacitating status effects on bosses
-No MP milling bosses
-If there's a gauntlet of fights, the same character must be used for all fights in a row

First off, Sabin has joined the party now. He's one of the worst characters in all honesty. In the WoR, he gets some of the worst defensive options, with relatively low defense and no Evade/Magic Evade bonuses from his weapons. Therefore, he'll be used up as early as possible in this challenge during the point where all characters are pretty similar defensively. You may think his ultimate Blitz, Bum Rush, would be useful in the endgame, but we can teach Ultima to everybody at the same time that he can learn it, so he doesn't really get much of an advantage there.

As for the WoB, Sabin's main attribute is being able to throw out a moderately powerful Holy-element attack at no cost. His physical Blitzes are almost never stronger at levels this low, and most of his Blitzes are tied to his level, so he'll never learn them. In truth, Sabin has already peaked in this very video.

This is a series of fights against Ultros. As promised at the start, any time a character cannot be killed off through conventional means before the start of a fight, they are removed from the party or killed via hacking, and Banon is no exception.

However, this battle is notable in that it's the only time where this hack is actually helpful to us. Usually the extra targets actually help in some way, even if the only thing we do at the start of the fight is killing them off. However, removing Banon is essential here, as it's not realistic to keep him alive with only one character, and as soon as Banon dies we get a Game Over. It's an interesting parallel to Garland's run that eliminating a character through hacks is mandatory for a fight at about this point in the playthrough.

However, I realize that removing Banon may feel a bit unsatisfying, so I played with the rules a bit and included some bonus fights against Ultros. The first fight is the "canon" one though, as it's the one that follows the rules.

Anyways, here's some info about Ultros' script that's needed to understand the fights. On his first three turns, he'll do the following:

-Regular attack
-Tentacle Terra (will retarget to hit the whole party since Terra is dead)
-Tentacle Sabin

After that, he'll enter a three-turn cycle:

-MT Tentacle plus 1/3 chance of ST Tentacle
-1/3 chance of ST Tentacle plus weak physical
-Tentacle Banon

For the canon fight, we can get two turns in a row with Sabin by using the Running Shoes for Auto-Haste, allowing us to heal and get one additional action for every turn that Ultros takes. This makes the fight mostly straightforward, but we do have to watch out for the first turn in the cycle once Ultros starts looping. On this turn, we need to have full health and Defend to ensure that we don't get killed by two Tentacles in a row. On the second turn of his cycle, running away helps to stall the ATB to ensure that we take two turns in a row every time. All in all, it's a pretty simple fight.

For the second fight, I decided to allow Banon to stand up and act, on the rationale that if he's mandatory, we may as well get to use him. This doesn't feel much like a solo challenge though. Still, this is a tad harder than the first fight, as Banon needs to defend on any turn where Tentacle is used. Defending allows him to survive MT Tentacles reliably, and makes it possible to survive ST Tentacles at all.

To enable this to work, we need Sabin to have the Running Shoes again, and Banon needs to heal first. If Sabin opens the menu during Banon's animations, and then uses Aurabolt after Banon has moved, then both Sabin and Banon can take two turns to Ultros' one. This allows for Banon to heal and Defend while still allowing Sabin to attack more. We need to stall the ATB by running to take full advantage of this.

This fight is a tad sloppy since I missed a Blitz input (I blame my controller's wobbly D-pad) and threw out a useless heal at the end that wouldn't have saved Banon from the upcoming turn anyways. Still, I had counted the damage correctly (not that it's hard in this case), so Ultros goes down without a hitch.

However, what if Banon has to stand up, but isn't allowed to move at all? Continued in the comments below.

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