Final Fantasy VI Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
1.25: The Opera House
Enemies: Stunner, Goetia, Ultros
Here's the plan. Instead of Maria, who hid her pretty self somewhere, Celes will perform the Dream Oath, the massively popular opera about Draco and Maria (seems like the opera star and her part share the name), a story of love, war, honor, and as bad luck gives us, a squid. Yes, Ultros followed you here. The reason is not clear; it's doesn't seem to be revenge for beating him earlier, as it's entirely possible to use a team that features none of the characters you used to fight him the first time. But let evil be evil as long as you stop it (when convenient to your other goals). Celes needs to be successfully abducted here, and we can't have any octopi ruining the plan. Celes de-equipped herself when she changed into Maria's opera get-up, so if she was carrying anything other party members might be able to use, that's great.The Impresario predicted Setzer would arrive in the first scene, and since Setzer is an undependable scoundrel who has no ties in life and has much to gain by surprising the Impresario in his abduction in as many ways possible, the prediction can be nothing but – okay, okay, you get the picture, the assumption is a bit dubious. Nonetheless, Celes needs to survive only through the first scene before she gets her proverbial homerun. Here's what she has to do: Sing. You could and should have memorized the lyrics before hitting the stage, as Locke presses you pretty hard to do so, but in case you didn't, here are the correct options - when first prompted, take the first option, then the second, then the first again. At that point, the flowers will appear, and you should run to pick them up (with the action button), as you will need to ascend the stairs, talking to Draco thrice, and reach the far end of the balcony before the interlude ends. If you fail to do this in time, Celes says: "Ah, I'm too late! So much for that..." The orchestra stops, and that's bad.
Every time you mess up the Opera (by messing up the lines, not moving fast enough, or being defeated by Ultros in combat), the Opera is halted and you find yourself outside of the building, where you can go back in to plead for another chance. After you mess up the first time, you get three chances. That's a total of four tries to get it right. If you fail four times, evolution clearly hasn't been kind to you and you receive the message "It looks like you weren't exactly born to be on stage..." along with an actual Game Over.
So, that's Celes' part. You can do it. Meanwhile, Ultros has decided to kill the woman on stage with the combined terror of weight and gravity, as he informed Locke via letter. Notifying your nemesis: Because that's useful for your chances of actually pulling it off, you see. Before you alert the Impresario, make sure to talk to your fellow characters. Amusing! The best is if you brought Shadow, against all possible odds and rules of logic: "Impresario: Your friend left. Said he'd fall asleep if he had to sit here for more than five minutes..."
You have five minutes to reach the lever on the right side of the Opera House, flip it, go to the rafters, which are accessible on the left side of the Opera House, fight your way through some annoying rats, and stop Ultros. So do it! Flip the far right switch in the room to the right. From left to right, we'll call the four switches "1," "2," "3," and "Super!" Why not? Switch 1 makes a sound like a dog barking, an essential feature of any opera facility. Switch 2 turns out the lights in the opera hall, causing the crowds to make little eyes in the darkness. Switch 3 opens a hole directly under you, causing you to slide on stage! You immediately get off by hopping on the heads of the crowd, bursting in the entrance hall of the Opera House, where the lead character will strike a pose and say 'Whew!' I suppose all three switches are pretty entertaining, but there's a threat of imminent squashing by aquatic nuisance and one can't just shrug that off, so what you'll want to flip is the Super Switch. Now, sprint all the way to the far left room (you'll pass the Impresario again) and pass the door (which would be locked if you hadn't flipped the switch in the far right room). Now, you're on the rafters. Don't fall now.
Just kidding! You can't fall down! You can, however, fight rats and get kicked out of the Opera House for another try if you lose. So, you don't want that. Each rat you run into triggers a battle - 75% of the time, you'll hit a Goetia and two Stunners; the other 25% chance gives you three Stunners and two Goetia. The Goetia monsters (yellow) are the main problem, the Stunners (black/green) the lackeys. If you take out all the Stunners while one or two Goetia still live, they'll call more, prolonging the battle. So have Edgar, Locke and
Genji Glove'd Cyan and/or Sabin go for the single-target kill on those before you try to engage in multi-target slaughter.Goetia are weak against Ice, so if Gau can Rage Veil Dancer or Darkside, that might be a good idea too. They have nothing worth stealing, so don't waste time there. Supposedly it's actually possible to get by without having to fight a single group of rats, but you'll skip both their Rages (not that good, I'll admit, but you can miss them, do you hear? miss them!) and it's a damn hard feat to boot.
Ultros  Bestiary #289 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
None | 19 | 2550 | 500 | 2 | 0 | |
Strength |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
13 | 4 | 0 | 105 | 150 | 0 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
|||||
Common: Dried Meat | None | |||||
Status Immunities | Elemental Immunities | |||||
       | None | |||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | |||||
 |   | |||||
Lores | Command Immunities | |||||
None | Control, Scan | |||||
Strategy | ||||||
Before you try to hurt Ultros, make sure your  Ramuh-wearing character is equipped with an Earring relic (or two). If you have a  Burning Fist-wearing Sabin, he should be in the third or fourth position, as this will ensure that he faces Ultros' back at the start of the match. Make sure that your party is covered in Peace Rings/Ribbons, as Ultros has the ability to set Confuse, which is serious business.Ultros is back and he's better and badder then ever. Only not really, because he actually has fewer HP than he did when you first met him. To compensate, he has quite a few spells to throw at you, and has a nasty Command Script that gives him the power to, at the worst situation possible, actually take 10197 HP of damage before going down. Here's how that works: Ultros has four positions. He starts at Position 1. Every time he completes two turns he'll make a comment, switch to another position and start using different spells. Now the story and our eyes will have us believe that it's one Ultros, hopping about; the game, however, treats this battle as one with four Ultros's, each with his own set of 2550 HP. If you hurt Ultros but let him escape to a different position, you can  Libra him and see he will again have 2550 out of 2550 HP. At least, that's what you would see if this Ultros weren't immune to Libra. So, the trick is to kill him as quickly as possible, before he can move around at all.For the record, he will go like this: 1 - 3 - 2* - 4 - 2 - 1 - 4 - 2 - 3 (If he reaches the 3 at the end of the chain, he'll attack four times before sliding back to 2*). So what does Ultros do? He counters Blitz techniques and Bushido skills with Acid Rain, a nasty Water/Poison-elemental attack that sets Sap. I'd advise against using those skills, especially because Sabin will inflict more damage with the Burning Fist then he will with his Blitz attacks (unless it's Rising Phoenix, and only if he's hitting with the Burning Fist in the back of Ultros). After every minute of battling, Ultros will use Imp Song, which changes the living characters on one side of him into Imps. This is very annoying and yet another reason to deal with Ultros as quickly as possible.Finally, his attack pattern is this, depending on his position:
Locke is fairly useless; Ultros has nothing to steal whatsoever. If Locke knows Slow or  Thundara, have him cast it. Otherwise, just attack. Edgar's  Chainsaw inflicts very decent damage, and I've said hopefully enough about Sabin's Burning Fist already to generate the impression that I actually want you to use it. Cyan should ignore his Bushido command and act like Locke. Gau, finally, can either pick a Rage like Aspiran or Cloud for direct violence (Aspiran is godly), or Acrophies/Alacran for causing Stop if you want to prevent him from changing position rather than going for a speed kill.Unless it's equipped on Sabin, summoning Ramuh takes priority over anything else; you may consider giving it to one of the others in the case that Ramuh is paired with Sabin leading up to this battle. It's basically a Thundara spell coming from someone who probably hasn't learned Thundara yet, which makes Ramuh incredibly effective against your marine adversary. Expand Full Strategy | ||||||
Having stopped the threat that threatened the plan, the plan comes together! Setzer, quite possibly the most awesome character out of video game history as far as looks and style go, swoops down, grabs Celes, and in one awesome spin gets her out of her opera gown, into her normal clothes, and entirely tied up. Wow. Costume changes like that could have some... utility... in our world, no?
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy VI
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.