Final Fantasy VI Bosses

Earth Dragon was once not so terrifying. That was before he got his two feet firmly planted on the ground. Disregarding its own menacing looks, it was a floating monster that you could gently put to sleep and wash away like so much mud on your jeans. Having been pushed around one time too many (this being one), Earth Dragon (Redux) pulled a Batman and swore to avenge his previous weakness by training his body to perfection and getting real good at science. Except for the science.

Earth Dragon (Redux), knowing full well that the element he got stuck with is the only one both vulnerable to elemental protection and generally avoided with an easily applied status - Float - has taken his own weaknesses into account. Earth Dragon (Redux) has enough physical strength to have an army of Greater Mantii soil themselves. Normally it'll just attack physically and with the occasional supremely powerful Earth-elemental attack. Quake is the nastiest; not only is it barrier-piercing and easily the most powerful one, it will also hit Earth Dragon (Redux), healing it for an average of 4400 damage. Obviously, there's an Attack omni-counter.

Whenever Earth Dragon (Redux) detects the Float status, he'll forego his normal AI script in favor of a combo attack of 50 Gs, Magnitude 8 and a Quake spell. This means that if you have even one character with unremovable Float due to Angel Wings or a Float-inducing Rage, this is all you'll see for the first part of the fight. Note that there are no physical attacks here except for the counterattack, so if you have a single permanent Floater, Gaia Gear will be more than sufficient. This is a life-saver if you find yourself, against my recommendations, without enough Angel Wings.

When Earth Dragon (Redux) hits 25600 HP, he'll get enraged. This means that your life is over. Nah, just kidding. He will drop his Earth-elemental attacks, as they obviously didn't succeed in killing you. Enraged, the Earth Dragon (Redux) unleashes a physical barrage unlike any other in the game. He'll start by four Attacks after the initial message, then start his new AI script. It's four Attacks in a row, then four physical attacks of which the last one has a 2/3 chance of being the !Savage special, and two !Savage attacks every third turn. He'll counter any damage done with either attack or !Savage. If you're not outright immune to physical attacks, this will kill you.

Here's the thing. With Angel Wings or Float-inducing Rages, you'll need to stick him in his 50 Gs loop, where you'll just have to deal with Earth-elemental attacks which are easily dealt with Gaia Gear and Angel Wings. An alternate strategy is using the Maginot Line paired with Gaia Gear to survive the first part of the fight. Now, unleash the damage until he gets mad at you for it. Now, quickly cast Vanish on the survivors of the first round of attacks. If you manage to turn even a single character Invisible, you've won the fight as it's just dealing damage from this point on.

As far as damage is concerned, Earth Dragon (Redux) is weak to Water- and Wind- elemental attacks. The introduction of the Flood spell makes life a lot easier for the spellcasters of your team, while Strago's Aero is stronger than his Grand Delta attack versus this foe. Any Float-inducing Rage will make a 255 Defense Gau unbeatable in this fight, but Marchosias has the best offense in Aero, which is also a tip for Gogo if he lacks Angel Wings. If you're having trouble beating the initial healing of Earth Dragon (Redux), you can cast Esuna on him so Quake will no longer heal him. In addition, it will be a painful reminder to him that once a floating sissy, always a floating sissy. Expand Full Strategy

This hulking brute will just attack physically two times every turn, and will counter any attack you use against it with !Megaton Punch, which kills anything it touches. If you cast Vanish, you can avoid its effects easily enough. Stop also works against it. If you Sketch Earth Eater, it may have a 25% chance of instantly killing it with its own attack. Expand Full Strategy

Fiend is one heck of an ice queen, I tell you. Not just a shell, this one! Luckily, she's also pretty predictable and one-dimensional, which in my opinion makes her quite easy to defeat (certainly easier than Goddess or Demon, even ignoring Stop). Her normal moves include the ever-present Battle, Blizzaga spells, Absolute Zero, and the annoying Northern Cross attack, from which one can be easily recovered by a simple Fire spell. Of course, she gets extra mean when you damage her enough. Once Fiend hits 32640 HP, the message "Fiend's aura is trembling violently!" appears, and, my goodness, so it appears.

By doing this, Fiend self-applies the Image, Reflect, and Haste statuses, meaning that you will want to cast Dispel to get rid of all three of them and quickly cast Slow or Slowga to reduce her speed even further. From this point on though, she will ignore her single- and multi-target Ice-elemental options and focus on a few select attacks.

Every twenty seconds, Fiend will use the Force Field attack, which is a Lore Strago will only be able to learn in this battle. Force Field takes an element (one not previously selected by Force Field, if using it a second time) and renders it completely ineffective. It doesn't matter how strong the caster is or if the target is weak to said element: Once the element has been picked, this element will do exactly 0 damage for the duration of the battle. Once all eight elements have been rendered useless, Force Field will do nothing. Aside from Force Field, Fiend will use Battle and Targeting. Targeting does absolutely nothing more than 'store' that target in her memory, and the very next turn she will use !Fiendish Rage on that person, period. Should this person suddenly be unavailable, !Fiendish Rage will be used on a random person. Of course, the game would have us believe that the Targeting move somehow makes !Fiendish Rage unblockable, but !Fiendish Rage is unblockable in itself, so the act of using Targeting is really just for show.

That's it! Pretty easy, I'd say. Set Slow at the start of the match, throw up the barriers you like, and pummel Fiend with the strongest attacks you have. Strago might be able to get some play out of his Lv. ? Holy attack now that you've a) obviously brought him here and b) made sure to rig it into always hitting. Have Gau engage in a Rage that will have him produce non-elemental damage, since you won't be able to easily stop him once Fiend starts nullifying the elements. The Holy spell is really useful when Fiend is in her 'easy' phase, but beware that you don't waste turns casting zero-damage Holy spells when she's left said phase. Make sure you don't allow Fiend to maintain her Image, Haste, or Reflect statuses: everybody who knows the Holy spell knows Dispel too, and Terra learned it naturally at level 37. Expand Full Strategy

Here's the deal; these five have amazing Defense and will try to set all kinds of status ailments on your party, eventually turning you into the Berserked characters, likely Imped. They won't use Mega Berserk 'til their third turn, but you'll be effectively screwed when Imp Song makes an appearance. Protect yourself from all this by equipping Ribbons and taking advantage of their own status ailment vulnerabilities. Summon Raiden to take care of most, if not all of them immediately. The remaining will still fall to Banish spells, Edgar's Noiseblaster or a Silence spell. Flan Princess is an easy enemy as long as you don't try to get past their Defense. Expand Full Strategy

Gargantua's the biggest, baddest giant out there. With emphasis on 'bad'. Physical attacks are pretty powerful coming from this guy, but the Quake spell is laughably weak so no worries there. Trading blows with this guy is no problem whatsoever but Esuna/Phantom'll net you invulnerability easily enough. Expand Full Strategy

Here's a purely physical fighter that can kill a Front Row character in one go with !Throat Jab. Gigantos will start the battle off with three !Throat Jab attacks, and continue to switch between Attack and !Throat Jab while countering any damage you do with two Attacks and a !Throat Jab. That's a lot of physical damage. If you self-applied the Invisible status like I advised, you're invulnerable in this fight. Boom.

If you're fighting him, one-hit KO attacks work best. Lv. 5 Death offs him easily, as do Break, Catoblepas, Snare (Mu Rage), and Death. You can, of course, toy with him a little bit; try to steal his rare Elixir or common X-Potion. He's vulnerable to Stop as well, so for ensured victory, you can use a Stop/Death combo if you're evil enough. For all your trouble, you get a Sasuke blade, a stronger weapon for Shadow without the Assassin's Dagger's one-hit KO property. Since you should not be using Attack at all, I recommend sticking to your current blade, which should be either the Thief's Knife or Assassin's Dagger. Expand Full Strategy

Goddess is, in my eyes, the toughest of the trio to defeat. Not only are there no crippling status ailment weaknesses to exploit (not even Slow!) and no elemental weaknesses, Goddess also tends to use your own characters against the party, and that's just plain rude. Her Lightning-elemental nature isn't your biggest concern as you can easily absorb or nullify those attacks; it's her sneaky manipulation attacks you need to watch out for.

Her normal AI script features Battle, Thundara, Thundaga, Lullaby, and Entice. Lullaby is the same multi-target Sleep-inducing attack as it was when fighting Still Life, and Entice is still as grotesquely annoying as ever. Since this is the only battle in the game where the danger of Entice isn't limited by quickly eliminating the monsters that use it, it might be wise to kill off the character affected to make sure no really horrible things come shooting out of the affected character (Banish, Soul Spiral, Transfusion, Meteor, and Ultima all come to mind).

When damaged below the 32640 HP mark (that's the critical number of Ultima Buster and all three Goddesses; coincidence?), she actually becomes less of a threat. She'll focus more on plain damaging attacks: Flash Rain, more Thundaga spells and the non-elemental barrier-piercing Lore, Quasar, which is for all relevant purposes a slightly weaker version of Grand Delta. But we haven't touched the true power of Goddess yet.

When she is hit by a Fight command, she has a 1/3 chance of employing the Overture attack, which I discussed earlier (when facing Coco). It basically causes every Fight and Special attack your characters perform to hit the affected character. This is bad news for the Lockes, Gaus, and Setzers of your party. When damaged in any other way, she might counter with a Thundara spell, which is nowhere near as bad.

But here's the kicker: When damaged eight times, Goddess will use her unique Cloudy Heaven attack. It looks all swirly and features those cute little angels that have thus far been seen only when using Raise, Arise, or Reraise. What exactly does Cloudy Heaven do? Basically, two things. First off (and this would be bad enough by itself), it sets Doom on the entire party. This means that once the timer reaches 0, your entire party will die unless you managed to get rid of the timer, either by using Rippler or by dying and reviving preemptively. There's yet another catch, however. When a character hit by Cloudy Heaven dies, it doesn't simply receive the traditional Wound status, but is infected with the Zombie status instead. This means that your deceased characters may attack you as well, and that reviving them back to maximum HP is impossible.

Thankfully, Mighty Guard covers the entire team, even when they're split across the screen. Hastega isn't quite as strategic in the area, even though you still may want to speed up your characters, especially since Goddess herself has inherent Haste status. Throw out your most damaging attacks, and know that Goddess (with her high Magic Defense and inherent Shell status) is most susceptible to Ultima, Quake, and Flare (in that order of potency, too). Your Holy Lance Dragoons are useless, as Goddess will absorb their Jump attacks. Switch to the Radiant Lance or a Partisan if you haven't already. Make sure you keep an eye out if Overture is in effect and act accordingly.

Quickly throwing out your strongest attacks, covering the party in Thunder Shields and Safety Bits, and just having a little bit of luck are the keys to success against Goddess. Lacking any one of those three elements can really break this battle in Goddess's favor, so be prepared, keep yourself healed, and make sure Entice, Overture, and Cloudy Heaven don't catch you off-guard. Expand Full Strategy

What does Gold Dragon do? First off, every four Fight commands, it will get especially pissed and the message "Gold Dragon begins storing energy..." will be displayed. Gold Dragon will spend a turn doing nothing (aka, charging for Thundaga) before casting a Thundaga spell on the entire party. We faced a level 3 spell with fair warning halfway through the WoB, for crying out loud! If any living character has the Reflect status, Gold Dragon will cast the Reflect spell on itself and will start bouncing Thunder and Thundara spells off at the party. Every Magic spell can be countered by a Thunder or Thundara spell normally, but Gold Dragon will not counter Magic spells when he is charging for the Thundaga spell. Normally, Gold Dragon will just attack with Thunder and Thundara spells, and Gigavolt attacks.

Gold Dragon is an incredibly easy enemy at this point; all of its attacks are either Battle or Lightning-elemental. The magic attacks are all vulnerable to Celes's Runic, and Lightning is very easily absorbed or nullified by equipment such as the Thunder Shield, Paladin's Shield, Minerva Bustier, or Berserker Ring. The bane of Gold Dragon's existence, however, is summoning Phantom in conjunction with the Berserk spell. Heck, set Berserk in some other way; the neat thing about late-game battles is that you have so many options. Expand Full Strategy

Gold Dragon (Redux) absorbs Magic exactly like Celes does. This means that most of your spells will be absorbed and have no effect. Though you'll probably immediately understand that means Firaga and such are out of the question, the real threat here is that you can no longer use support and healing spells either.

Just in case you never did pay much attention to Celes, notable spells that can't be used: Cure, Cura and Curaga, Drain, Osmose, Esuna, Float, Dispel, Berserk, Haste and Hastega, Libra, Raise, Arise, Reraise, -aga spells, Flare and Ultima. Also, note that the only enemy attack that's vulnerable to Runic's effects worth mentioning that you can use is Northern Cross, which Ragers can use by emulating Fiend Dragon.

Notable spells that you can use include: Quake, Meteor, Flood, Meltdown, Valor and Quick. You can also summon Espers without any troubles. FYI, If you have both Celes on Runic stand-by and you cast a spell, both will try to absorb it. If it's a multi-target spell, both will absorb half of the MP normally used to cast the spell. Gold Dragon (Redux) will, due to a cute bug, even use Celes' blade animation when that happens. When the spell is single-target, a dominant Runic user is picked at random and only that one will gain MP, but still half of the MP normally used to cast the spell. Man, fun stuff.

Gold Dragon (Redux)'s battle logic is pretty simple. Since it can't use the most prominent Lightning-elemental attacks (it would absorb them), Gold Dragon (Redux) is pretty much stuck with Plasma and Wave Cannon. It'll use physical attacks a lot, countering with them and possibly with !Mighty Claw as well, which sets Confuse. Make sure to summon Golem or otherwise null Confuse effects, since you can't restore affected characters with Esuna for obvious reasons. Once past 25600 HP, Gold Dragon (Redux) will set Protect to buff up its Defense and will start to attack more, adding Wave Cannon to the list. Very simple and not threatening at all!

So yeah, Gold Dragon (Redux) is absorbing magic, which isn't that big a deal since about the strongest spell you can use against it not called Ultima flies past Runic: Flood! Flood spells are very powerful and feed off of Gold Dragon (Redux)'s weakness to water. Very sweet. In addition, Valor-centric set-ups are powerful, since you can cast Valor no problem, then unleash Fang, Drill, physical attacks, you name it.

This is such an easy battle compared to the previous one! Spellcasters should just focus on Flood and Quake spells (Flood is stronger). Shadow and Gogo can Throw Water Scrolls or Tridents, depending on your ammunition. Other Water- elemental attacks such as Aqua Breath and Tsunami are too weak to really take into consideration, and Dancing the Water Harmony is nowhere near as powerful as Dragon Horn Jumping. Hastega is out and you can't cast Reraise, but it doesn't matter. Summon the Maginot Line which all suffer no ill effects from Gold Dragon (Redux)'s Runic status to make sure !Mighty Claw doesn't become a problem. Absorbing all Lightning-elemental attacks and having negated physical ones, there's no threat so we can just kill the thing. Expand Full Strategy