Return of the Dark Sorcerer (Rerun) #31 - Ironvale City Escape & Aurora's Past

Return of the Dark Sorcerer is a hack for Final Fantasy 6 by Gi Nattak. New characters, new portraits, rebalanced spells/moves, a new overworld map, new events, and multiple difficulty levels are just some of the features of this hack. The latest version can always be found in one of the following two locations: https://www.ff6hacking.com/patches/ro... http://ngplus.net/index.php?/files/fi... As usual, you'll need to find a proper ROM on your own to patch with. Version being played: 2.0.6 Almost out of Ironvale City, but you'll want to sub out those Holy Amulets for a Mystic Ring each to help with the upcoming last boss fight in this sequence of events. Upon reaching the point where the guards once were, Otis comes rushing on it, wonders where Tifa is, then instructs everyone to haul ass onto his airship. Too bad Kefka is a sore loser and doesn't want any escape shenanigans to occur. He sends a Flameskull & Shockskull duo to attack the party. The two colored Lost Souls of Doom fame catch the party in a pincer attack, meaning any physicals targeting a character's back do additional damage. 400-500 is nothing to sneeze at here. Besides that, they focus on a heavy elemental assault favoring the tier 2 spells of their respective element. The catch? If enough time passes, they can and will start using tier 3 spells which really sting. A focused tier 3 spell + one targeted at the whole party might just take someone out from full health. Also of note...they like to use Magnitude Eight from time to time. This is easily countered with casting Levitate on everyone as quickly as possible though. When one skull goes down, it'll counter with a single target Chaotic Disaster. Not the worst thing that can happen, especially when you can pop a Remedy on the afflicted character and lift most of the ailments off. You'll want to stick to non-elemental attacks unless you're Oboro or someone who can use the Ocean Spear. Both skulls are weak to water as well as holy. For Oboro, he's going to want to pull off some stealing. Flameskull (left skull) has a Diamond Helm while Shockskull (right skull) has Diamond Armor. Both nice defensive pieces of gear to use for sure. Finally, Neko is not participating in this fight, but local dragoon turned pirate Otis is. He comes with some basic magic to utilize, namely Cure & Cura, if he so wishes. He also does some decent physical damage thanks to a killer relic he has, the Slayer Glove. This relic allows the bearer to equip two weapons at once. Kills your defense which could be very fatal in the endgame, but the sheer damage potential more than makes up for it. Once the skulls are no more, the team finally escapes from Ironvale City and have one simple goal...to hoof it back to Aurora at Rogue City and see how she's doing. As it turns out, freeing all those espers seemed to kickstart something in Aurora...a flashback depicting how she was born. Basically, an esper & human fell in love and produced her, a half human, half esper being. There's also Gestahl invading and causing shenanigans because why not. Once Aurora's flashback ends, the next goal becomes clear...hoof it back to Fraust to see how everyone's faring. Thankfully, Aurora rejoins the party and pick up a new ability in the process, Morph. This takes a huge chunk of her mp, 99 points to be precise, to change into her esper form and have boosted damage and I believe some damage resistance too. This is only temporarily though so best to use it during boss fights. Back at Fraust, the team meets with the mayor and a potentially insane idea sprouts forward...to combat the empire, the team is going to find that gateway to the esper world and force it open to have the espers invade the human world. Only Aurora can do this so if even though she's not exactly forced into your team, you will need to make sure she's in your team before going on. While I could go to the next dungeon, the airship access opens up several little detours to go check out. We'll check those out next time.