Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Final Fantasy VI. We are deeply into the world of ruin, seeking out our friends, and relating our strange adventures, before turning to feedback. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: More of the World of Ruin

Issues covered: breaking the Internet, reaching the Dream Stooges, naming Cyrano, The Dark Chuckler, Tim's plan going off the rails, exploring Zozo, returning to places from the World of Balance, the sad story of the woman's departed beau, getting a lot of mileage out of small amounts of animation, not enjoying the battle system enough to avoid the feelings of interruption, the challenge of the dragon, Brett's unchanging strategy, Celes's Runic action, searching the map for Locke, the hidden stuff in Doma, getting into Cyan's dream, defeating the Dream Stooges, puzzles on the Phantom Train, being begged to save Cyan by his dead family, the tough battle against Wrexsoul, combats that challenge you more and play against expectations, combinations that lead to unexpected results, hidden bosses in Kingdom Hearts, secrecy of bosses changing over time, being at the top of their game, establishing an expectation of secret bosses, "the Internet ruins everything," pulling off more adult themes, having the unexpected in tabletop and in a JRPG, the big unresolved moment in Cyan's life, Esper management, exploitable combos, not knowing the usefulness of the other spells, picking out a weapon at the secret base... or not?, poking at the Tower, not liking the distance melee attacks, mechanics you bounce off the first time, not enjoying the disempowered controls of certain games, the focus on story in JRPGs, being co-located to play co-op, bugs and exploits in the game, Eastern European takes on Tolkien.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Mark Garcia, Cyrano de Bergerac, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy (series), Chrono Trigger, Dungeons & Dragons, Hironobu Sakaguchi, The Two Towers, JRR Tolkien, MattSattam, Fallout, Ocarina of Time, Super Mario RPG, Square Enix, XenoGears, Dark Cloud 2, Ni No Kuni, Shadow of the Colossus, Reed Knight, Resident Evil, Nathan Martz, Fumito Ueda, Artimage, Pokemon, Diablo, Baldur's Gate, World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls (series), BioWare, Mass Effect, Darren Johnson, John Stafford, Derek Filippo, Icewind Dale, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, Interplay, Earthbound, Brave New World, John Webb, Divinity (series), The Witcher (series), Death Stranding, Get Out, Us, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers.

Next time: Even more of the World of Ruin

Links: https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Vanish-Doom_bug https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Sketch_bug https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Evade_bug https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Psycho_Cyan_bug

Twitch: brettdouville or timlongojr, instagram:timlongojr, Twitter: @timlongojr and @devgameclub [email protected]