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FFVI: Divergent Paths
Moogle
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@PowerPanda
This is my Divergent Paths 1.1 review. We're about to assault Kefka's Tower for real this time, having used Moogle Charms to loot the place early without killing progression bosses.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
[WHY I PLAYED THIS MOD]
I have played through FFVI in some form many times now, having played it initially in 1994 or 1995. Spending report card money to get it was, for me, obvious. FFVI also provided me with the first difficult decision that I recall: Should I continue playing it (and I was in the MagiTek Research Facility), or should I go with my family to Chuck-E-Cheese? I realized I could return to playing this after Chuck-E-Cheese, which was a rare treat for me.
I played this mod because of the story. I was already well familiar with its vanilla story, and experiencing the new dialog and story beats was a pleasant upgrade from the original game. I also liked being able to play this on a PC with fast forward and rewind capabilities. (Fast forwarding was especially useful when grinding.)
|OTHER NOTES|
My preferred FFVI mod has been Brave New World since it greatly overhauls the mechanics, retranslates the dialog script, and fixes a bunch of low points and inconveniences from vanilla. Divergent Paths has included some of these convenience tweaks (like faster Bushido), but still hasn't gone far enough in my opinion.
- - NEGATIVE - -
-THERE'S STILL NO CONVENIENT WAY TO MASS TRAIN MY ARMY! THIS IS MY BIGGEST GRIPE ABOUT VANILLA TOO! At least vanilla let me use Game Genie codes to skip hours of AP grinding for my party of a dozen people (or 3 parties of 4) who can learn spells. Divergent Paths keeps vanilla Intangirs as-is for easy Vanish/Doom kills for 10 AP each, but even then, it's -still- tens or hundreds of wins to teach ALL characters in the World of Balance who can benefit from this grind spot all spells available at this point. A simple fix would be to make all vanilla WoB espers again available in the WoB and increase the spell learning rates of ALL spells to at least x10. The game has contradictory design goals of giving the player such a large army for such a short game with the expectation that players will grind for a -long- time to make up the difference. As a child I LOVED FFVI, but I also used Game Genie codes to quickly learn all relevant esper spells because mandatory or strongly encouraged grinding for me has always been and will likely always be BORING!
Brave New World solves this AP grinding problem by only allowing each character to learn from a small number of espers, and the entire esper system is overhauled. This forces specialization and goes against the spirit of FFVI where every character who can learn spells can learn every spell.
-Strago's Lores aren't alphabetized. Brave New World fixed this, and maybe other assembly patches do too.
-What the mod author calls "restraint," I call not going far enough. I'm adjusted to Brave New World's new, rebalanced fights, new enemy formations, and other improvements over vanilla. This may be personal taste, but I can better understand why people call FFVI an easy Final Fantasy game, though this leads me to my next point.
-The game felt awkwardly balanced. Maybe this is a vanilla thing too, but after grinding for hours in the World of Balance, our party was super powerful for the Floating Continent, then we faced a significant difficulty spike around the start of the World of Ruin! Things became easy again after we got more party members, espers, and got into a pleasant groove with our VIPs (Terra, Locke, Strago, Gogo, and whoever was necessary for the next area).
-World of Ruin locations that require 2+ party members should be very clear as to their triggering conditions. This Old Castle bugged me until I watched PowerPanda's YT video on it. Before then, I brought Terra to the castle, but was told it was esper-sealed. If none of the required characters are in the party for the event, text should tell or strongly hint which character(s) should be there. If one of the required characters is in the party, that character should mention wanting the other character (like Leo wanting Terra or Terra wanting Leo) to proceed.
-This mod didn't include the overhauled Fanatics' Tower command patch which allowed characters to use all their normal commands in the tower, though foes were immune to the Fight command due to super high physical evasion - just like they were Cactrots. This patch would have made Leo's Runic ability wonderful!
-There was so little new story. I was expecting some sort of 3-way divergence at the start of the World of Ruin just like with the LEET RIVER party split.
-No Dragoon Boots? I missed those. I know Palidor can make anyone !Jump, but this is different.
-Banon lost his Health/Prayer command. This hurt early-game, but also helped ensure we didn't just auto-farm our way to level 90+ early. <sigh>
-Tools are breakable! This demoted Edgar from one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite because the point of The King's tools is that THEY DO NOT BREAK! Edgar is meant as an easy, reliable way to win random encounters and expedite grinding! I heard some people liked this change, but I didn't. I also haven't liked the Throw command in FF games much either because that means transforming reusable items into one-use consumables.
-Gogo's command menu still has a line. One of the Brave New World patches fixes this.
-The success rates for Steal and Sketch and Dance are still too low! My thought process: Steal and Sketch and Dance should simply automatically work every time unless the target is immune. Spells and certain other abilities don't have this failure chance.
-Due to technical limitations, all limit breaks are the same and there's no way to learn spells from items.
-The Falcon doesn't automatically come with a shop, an item manager, and a healer! This was approximately my third-strongest gripe. At first I thought the game was bugged, but learned that ARVIS whom I'd totally forgotten about until I found him in Narshe was. These characters should be continually on the TOP DECK of the Falcon for player convenience. (Omit them from cutscenes as prudent. They're vending machines.)
-There's no Doom Gaze GPS! Brave New World has a dialog option when using the Falcon to find Doom Gaze. When I finally found him in Divergent Paths, I just used Vanish/Doom so I could kill him and get back to playing the game. I didn't want to have to hunt for him annoyingly.
-The auction house was less useful than I remembered. I got the Auction House espers, one set of Marvel Shoes, a Hero Ring, and a bunch of items that only NPCs could buy. (How many 1/200ths of a Blackjack ARE THERE?) I'd rather the auctioneer just offer more Marvel Shoes and Hero Rings instead of joke items the party can never buy because it wastes time.
-Setzer's Slots weren't as useful in this edition compared to Brave New World where he can be specced for healing with Mugu Mugu.
-There's STILL no way to control party members in the Colosseum. Some FFVI hack whose name I don't recall allowed for player control here.
-Using the Phoenix esper in battle still doesn't give mass Life3 like I expected, nor even mass Life2!
-Still no place outside of Serpent Trench (at least to my knowledge) to learn Water Rondo.
-The author of this mod (PowerPanda) seemed to overvalue Gauntlets. I only found these late in the World of Ruin, and Bracers/Genji Gloves and the Offering were far superior due to getting more attacks. Sometimes, attacks missed, but, more importantly, each attack gives a chance to Mug (Locke/Gogo) and proc weapon abilities (Ragnarok/Flare, etc.)
-I missed the Brave New World relic overhaul. It may be preference, but I liked the notion of all relics potentially being useful.
-I also missed Brave New World's more detailed item and esper and spell descriptions.
-Leo's musical theme just felt weak compared to other music in the game. Contrast Edgar's theme or Cyan's theme or Shadow's theme and Leo's theme just felt uninspired and quiet.
-For characters with multiple statuses, not all of them are shown like in Brave New World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByhsPVQj...ainStryder
-No gold star or other indicator on the esper screen to show who has mastered what espers.
+ + POSITIVE + +
+New story beats! I also could tell where the new story text was. For example, I could tell that when Edgar suggested the party visit Doma it was a new line. I also liked seeing Celes and Leo working together to save Vector during the esper assault on the city which acted as a Leo tutorial.
+I got to play far longer as Leo and Banon!
+Terra can use Morph every fight! I saved it for bosses, but she's still the best boss killer, even more than 20 years after release!
+Some espers were improved. There was no vanilla Raiden/Odin split. Weak esper level bonuses were improved. Certain espers teach additional spells.
+Quake (and seemingly also Molten/Metron) won't hurt the party too!
+Many bosses can still be killed with Vanish/Doom, or if they're Undead, Holy Water/Phoenix Down/Life spells. Sometimes I wasn't in the mood to fight the intended way.
+Players are given Ragnarok AND Ragnarok instead of Ragnarok OR Ragnarok. And Terra rejoiced!
+Gau is more convenient, being able to learn Rages outside the Veldt just by winning fights against Rage-enabled enemies!
+I like the notion of having new spells (like Purify), but didn't use them.
+Color-coded HP & MP gain & drain.
+Early-game Moogle Charm equippable by all! A total of 3 Moogle Charms in the game for multi-party sequences! Simply being able to toggle encounters in the options menu (replacing the STereo/Mono sound option) would have been better, but this was a pleasant backup!
+Sabin's scenario felt faster. I very approve of this, as normally Sabin's scenario felt very slow compared to the other 2 scenarios (Terra/Banon & Locke)!
= = NEUTRAL = =
=We have a secret character. Impa as I called her was amusing, but was simply one more teammate who needed lots of grinding to be useful in an already army-sized cast! She also required I rely on Google and databases to get the 4 pieces of Imp gear (equip-imp) for her to join and be useful. I really thought this secret character would be, well, a secret. Maybe it was Gestahl. Maybe it was Piette who had somehow healed and survived the end of the world. Maybe it was Banon back from the dead. Maybe it was Vargas or Duncan. These other characters would have had a stronger story connection and reason for their inclusion, but this gimmick character was included because the art was already done. I get it.
(FINAL VERDICT)
Better than vanilla, and worthwhile for the new story beats. I just wish experiencing them was more convenient and that there were far more of them!
@PowerPanda
CRITICAL BUG!
Kefka's Tower: If I activate the chest shown on the east side of this picture then leave Kefka's Tower, it can't be used again and which means I can't get past the rubble to reach Kefka! I learned about this because going through the tower thrice with my MVP party would have been faster than training 3 parties to go through it once.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sp=sharing
Thankee for fixing this!
This is my Divergent Paths 1.1 review. We're about to assault Kefka's Tower for real this time, having used Moogle Charms to loot the place early without killing progression bosses.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
[WHY I PLAYED THIS MOD]
I have played through FFVI in some form many times now, having played it initially in 1994 or 1995. Spending report card money to get it was, for me, obvious. FFVI also provided me with the first difficult decision that I recall: Should I continue playing it (and I was in the MagiTek Research Facility), or should I go with my family to Chuck-E-Cheese? I realized I could return to playing this after Chuck-E-Cheese, which was a rare treat for me.
I played this mod because of the story. I was already well familiar with its vanilla story, and experiencing the new dialog and story beats was a pleasant upgrade from the original game. I also liked being able to play this on a PC with fast forward and rewind capabilities. (Fast forwarding was especially useful when grinding.)
|OTHER NOTES|
My preferred FFVI mod has been Brave New World since it greatly overhauls the mechanics, retranslates the dialog script, and fixes a bunch of low points and inconveniences from vanilla. Divergent Paths has included some of these convenience tweaks (like faster Bushido), but still hasn't gone far enough in my opinion.
- - NEGATIVE - -
-THERE'S STILL NO CONVENIENT WAY TO MASS TRAIN MY ARMY! THIS IS MY BIGGEST GRIPE ABOUT VANILLA TOO! At least vanilla let me use Game Genie codes to skip hours of AP grinding for my party of a dozen people (or 3 parties of 4) who can learn spells. Divergent Paths keeps vanilla Intangirs as-is for easy Vanish/Doom kills for 10 AP each, but even then, it's -still- tens or hundreds of wins to teach ALL characters in the World of Balance who can benefit from this grind spot all spells available at this point. A simple fix would be to make all vanilla WoB espers again available in the WoB and increase the spell learning rates of ALL spells to at least x10. The game has contradictory design goals of giving the player such a large army for such a short game with the expectation that players will grind for a -long- time to make up the difference. As a child I LOVED FFVI, but I also used Game Genie codes to quickly learn all relevant esper spells because mandatory or strongly encouraged grinding for me has always been and will likely always be BORING!
Brave New World solves this AP grinding problem by only allowing each character to learn from a small number of espers, and the entire esper system is overhauled. This forces specialization and goes against the spirit of FFVI where every character who can learn spells can learn every spell.
-Strago's Lores aren't alphabetized. Brave New World fixed this, and maybe other assembly patches do too.
-What the mod author calls "restraint," I call not going far enough. I'm adjusted to Brave New World's new, rebalanced fights, new enemy formations, and other improvements over vanilla. This may be personal taste, but I can better understand why people call FFVI an easy Final Fantasy game, though this leads me to my next point.
-The game felt awkwardly balanced. Maybe this is a vanilla thing too, but after grinding for hours in the World of Balance, our party was super powerful for the Floating Continent, then we faced a significant difficulty spike around the start of the World of Ruin! Things became easy again after we got more party members, espers, and got into a pleasant groove with our VIPs (Terra, Locke, Strago, Gogo, and whoever was necessary for the next area).
-World of Ruin locations that require 2+ party members should be very clear as to their triggering conditions. This Old Castle bugged me until I watched PowerPanda's YT video on it. Before then, I brought Terra to the castle, but was told it was esper-sealed. If none of the required characters are in the party for the event, text should tell or strongly hint which character(s) should be there. If one of the required characters is in the party, that character should mention wanting the other character (like Leo wanting Terra or Terra wanting Leo) to proceed.
-This mod didn't include the overhauled Fanatics' Tower command patch which allowed characters to use all their normal commands in the tower, though foes were immune to the Fight command due to super high physical evasion - just like they were Cactrots. This patch would have made Leo's Runic ability wonderful!
-There was so little new story. I was expecting some sort of 3-way divergence at the start of the World of Ruin just like with the LEET RIVER party split.
-No Dragoon Boots? I missed those. I know Palidor can make anyone !Jump, but this is different.
-Banon lost his Health/Prayer command. This hurt early-game, but also helped ensure we didn't just auto-farm our way to level 90+ early. <sigh>
-Tools are breakable! This demoted Edgar from one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite because the point of The King's tools is that THEY DO NOT BREAK! Edgar is meant as an easy, reliable way to win random encounters and expedite grinding! I heard some people liked this change, but I didn't. I also haven't liked the Throw command in FF games much either because that means transforming reusable items into one-use consumables.
-Gogo's command menu still has a line. One of the Brave New World patches fixes this.
-The success rates for Steal and Sketch and Dance are still too low! My thought process: Steal and Sketch and Dance should simply automatically work every time unless the target is immune. Spells and certain other abilities don't have this failure chance.
-Due to technical limitations, all limit breaks are the same and there's no way to learn spells from items.
-The Falcon doesn't automatically come with a shop, an item manager, and a healer! This was approximately my third-strongest gripe. At first I thought the game was bugged, but learned that ARVIS whom I'd totally forgotten about until I found him in Narshe was. These characters should be continually on the TOP DECK of the Falcon for player convenience. (Omit them from cutscenes as prudent. They're vending machines.)
-There's no Doom Gaze GPS! Brave New World has a dialog option when using the Falcon to find Doom Gaze. When I finally found him in Divergent Paths, I just used Vanish/Doom so I could kill him and get back to playing the game. I didn't want to have to hunt for him annoyingly.
-The auction house was less useful than I remembered. I got the Auction House espers, one set of Marvel Shoes, a Hero Ring, and a bunch of items that only NPCs could buy. (How many 1/200ths of a Blackjack ARE THERE?) I'd rather the auctioneer just offer more Marvel Shoes and Hero Rings instead of joke items the party can never buy because it wastes time.
-Setzer's Slots weren't as useful in this edition compared to Brave New World where he can be specced for healing with Mugu Mugu.
-There's STILL no way to control party members in the Colosseum. Some FFVI hack whose name I don't recall allowed for player control here.
-Using the Phoenix esper in battle still doesn't give mass Life3 like I expected, nor even mass Life2!
-Still no place outside of Serpent Trench (at least to my knowledge) to learn Water Rondo.
-The author of this mod (PowerPanda) seemed to overvalue Gauntlets. I only found these late in the World of Ruin, and Bracers/Genji Gloves and the Offering were far superior due to getting more attacks. Sometimes, attacks missed, but, more importantly, each attack gives a chance to Mug (Locke/Gogo) and proc weapon abilities (Ragnarok/Flare, etc.)
-I missed the Brave New World relic overhaul. It may be preference, but I liked the notion of all relics potentially being useful.
-I also missed Brave New World's more detailed item and esper and spell descriptions.
-Leo's musical theme just felt weak compared to other music in the game. Contrast Edgar's theme or Cyan's theme or Shadow's theme and Leo's theme just felt uninspired and quiet.
-For characters with multiple statuses, not all of them are shown like in Brave New World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByhsPVQj...ainStryder
-No gold star or other indicator on the esper screen to show who has mastered what espers.
+ + POSITIVE + +
+New story beats! I also could tell where the new story text was. For example, I could tell that when Edgar suggested the party visit Doma it was a new line. I also liked seeing Celes and Leo working together to save Vector during the esper assault on the city which acted as a Leo tutorial.
+I got to play far longer as Leo and Banon!
+Terra can use Morph every fight! I saved it for bosses, but she's still the best boss killer, even more than 20 years after release!
+Some espers were improved. There was no vanilla Raiden/Odin split. Weak esper level bonuses were improved. Certain espers teach additional spells.
+Quake (and seemingly also Molten/Metron) won't hurt the party too!
+Many bosses can still be killed with Vanish/Doom, or if they're Undead, Holy Water/Phoenix Down/Life spells. Sometimes I wasn't in the mood to fight the intended way.
+Players are given Ragnarok AND Ragnarok instead of Ragnarok OR Ragnarok. And Terra rejoiced!
+Gau is more convenient, being able to learn Rages outside the Veldt just by winning fights against Rage-enabled enemies!
+I like the notion of having new spells (like Purify), but didn't use them.
+Color-coded HP & MP gain & drain.
+Early-game Moogle Charm equippable by all! A total of 3 Moogle Charms in the game for multi-party sequences! Simply being able to toggle encounters in the options menu (replacing the STereo/Mono sound option) would have been better, but this was a pleasant backup!
+Sabin's scenario felt faster. I very approve of this, as normally Sabin's scenario felt very slow compared to the other 2 scenarios (Terra/Banon & Locke)!
= = NEUTRAL = =
=We have a secret character. Impa as I called her was amusing, but was simply one more teammate who needed lots of grinding to be useful in an already army-sized cast! She also required I rely on Google and databases to get the 4 pieces of Imp gear (equip-imp) for her to join and be useful. I really thought this secret character would be, well, a secret. Maybe it was Gestahl. Maybe it was Piette who had somehow healed and survived the end of the world. Maybe it was Banon back from the dead. Maybe it was Vargas or Duncan. These other characters would have had a stronger story connection and reason for their inclusion, but this gimmick character was included because the art was already done. I get it.
(FINAL VERDICT)
Better than vanilla, and worthwhile for the new story beats. I just wish experiencing them was more convenient and that there were far more of them!
@PowerPanda
CRITICAL BUG!
Kefka's Tower: If I activate the chest shown on the east side of this picture then leave Kefka's Tower, it can't be used again and which means I can't get past the rubble to reach Kefka! I learned about this because going through the tower thrice with my MVP party would have been faster than training 3 parties to go through it once.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sp=sharing
Thankee for fixing this!
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2017