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FFVI: Divergent Paths

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Just as a heads up, if you see something with obvious corruption, or you get to a point where nothing you do will progress the story, then assume first that it is a patching issue. Many people have completed Divergent Paths at this point, and the bugs, though they exist, are such that they may not even occur in your playthrough. Gi Nattak has been researching some of the bugs, and a version 1.2 will be coming at some undetermined point in the future.


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FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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That’s music to my ears. Keep up the good work fellas. Version 1.2 should be the TITS.

Once I’m done with my script update, I’ll get serious about hex editing and give that new game + patch a go. Of course, anyone who wants to beat me too the finish line and start working on a new game + patch before then...by all means. Needless to say, Divergent Paths with a new game + added would be mind bogglingly gooooooooood.
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In 1.1, how to beat Wrexsoul? Killing the mini foes (SoulSavers) repeatedly did nothing, and only by killing ourselves purposely did he reappear. This seems like a critical problem to fix!
@PowerPanda
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That's how it is in the original game as well, for the Wrexsoul fight - once he uses Zinger, you need to get a random party member near-fatal or wounded status for him to reappear, in order to inflict damage. Break/Petrify works as well. Wrexsoul should explain this gimmick when the battle starts.


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  • PowerPanda (09-16-2021)

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Admittedly, Wrexsoul is harder, because you have 4 party members instead of 3. But yeah, not even close to a bug, and explained in-game.


Projects:
FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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I realized how to beat Wrexsoul via experimentation.  In vanilla, I just used X-Zone and killed him easily.

I also realized that ARVIS became the WoR equipment manager.  He should also come with an in-flight healer to heal the team just like that one guy from the Blackjack.  That and a discounted item shop.  All on the main deck for convenience.

I'm unsure what other hacks implement this, but I would much prefer that learning spells from espers makes your entire party learn the spell, even if they haven't joined yet.  This would drastically reduce the grinding!  (I normally use Game Genie or Pro Action Replay codes to make learning everything from an esper very fast - like one win per person per esper - because of the grinding involved.  (I only mention this as a problem because this hack lacks any compatible codes to make learning spells (nearly) instantaneous.)  Multiply the number of characters who can learn from espers by the number of espers that teach unique spells and you get a combination of hating the game.

I know I can use Moogle Charms to skip random fights, but bosses still exist.  Multi-party areas are more conveniently done as multi-party areas, instead of just using my best 4 characters to beat each boss.

Adding this quick learning function for spells - at least as an optional patch - would improve the game for many people who just want to play the game and not be concerned about grinding. Maybe make this an instant esper mastery relic.

Thankee!
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You could always learn some hex editing and make a patch that would involve the whole party learning spells from espers. I’m rather conservative with my spells. So I’d opt-out of a patch like that. But, there IS a need for the patch.
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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!
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You do know that you can recruit 5 more NPCs for the Falcon, right? They do everything you are asking for.


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FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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I read that in your documentation about recruiting new Falcon NPCs after I wrote this, and I noticed that only because I was trying to find ways around the critical error (softlock) listed above.

i'm VERY grateful that you included SRAM saves. I used your stats to beat Kefka. I counted that as victory since I was bugged.

Thankee!
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