Insane Difficulty: Blindfolded FF6 LLG - Insane Difficulty

This is cool stuff man, why haven't I watched this before? Well, I'm snowed in solid so here's a good time to get caught up. Do you stream this live at all, or just put the video together after a successful segment?

I'm not sure that this would be great to stream either way, but I really can't whether I want to or not. I'm at my grandmother's house, and I can only get internet through Ethernet in the basement, but I can only record in my room since I won't disturb anybody there. I don't understand why, but I can't get Wi-Fi on my laptop here for some reason. It's strange because my laptop gets Wi-Fi everywhere else that I've tried, and everything else I've tried gets Wi-Fi here. I've tried all the tips that I could Google for, and tried calling tech support, but no dice either way. So I can't really stream except on weekends when I'm back in my hometown.

I also can't really interact with anybody during the stream (since I can't see Twitch chat, and people would inevitably drop hints about what is happening too), so I don't feel an enormous benefit from using Twitch as a medium.

Also, if you've played BNW, I'd consider watching the sister series to this instead. This series often just feels like the practice series for the BNW segment in a lot of ways.

Segment 41 - Ifrit and Shiva



Wall Rings make you pretty much invincible.

Hit Ifrit five times to make Shiva come out.

They are immune to Lightning, so use the Bomb rage.

And that's all you need to know about this segment. This boss fight is shorter than most of my fluff segments!

Segment 42 - 24



It's a fight that seems very simple in theory, but it's somewhat trickier in practice.

Segment 43 - Mines are Dark



Wow, a BFLLG segment being harder and more interesting than its BNW counterpart? That's a new one. >.>

Each fight here looks similar but carries its own unique challenges.

Battle 1: Murder his face.

Battle 2: Killing off Cyan and Locke here is a pain in the butt because it's hard to tell when they are dead. I also mess up moving them to the front row, as instead of moving Locke and Cyan both to the front, I accidentally move Locke to the front and then to the back row again. There's not much chance of dying here though, barring confusion on a grand scale, because as long as Gau continually heals himself with the humble Tonic he can't be killed, really.

Battle 3: Having only Gau to revive makes this one tricky as well, but the fact that there's only one enemy is a lifesaver. My strategy is theoretically near foolproof if I am fast enough, but I was too slow with the blindfold to pull it off. Oh well, luck carried me through anyhow.

Battle 4: Having two people makes it much easier to revive, but having two enemies makes the enemy team less predictable. If Cyan gets killed just before the battle ends, I lose, so I have to be careful here.

Battle 5: I do my best here to be at full HP for the boss.

Number 128: This guy is mostly a luck-fest. I don't think that I can write anything here that will add to the video.

Segment 44 - Crane are Made for Killing, Right?



This was the hardest segment up until this point in either run, no questions asked. In fact, it still has the highest blooper count in either BNW or this run (provided we exclude that stupid segment where I try to ride a chocobo), even compared to BNW's Atma Weapon (which had about half as much). Blooper counts are hardly a perfect metric though. It's still certainly not the hardest by any means, but it's probably still third. While normally I recommend reading video descriptions, the video is almost somewhat of a tl;dr here, so I really only recommend reading this if you like reading things. Anyways...

Basically, they have some relatively strong offense, so it's best to kill them quickly. I don't have Bolt 2 out of laziness (although surprisingly, it wouldn't have been worth the time to grind it out anyhow), nor do I have the Thunder Rod because I chucked it at TunnelArmor. It would have been likely worth the time to save the Thunder Rod for here, but honestly I'm not sure. A Tek Laser on Locke can end a TunnelArmor run easily, and restarts through the Cave of South Figaro are both much longer and more dangerous than the restarts from the Save Point here. The Anguiform Rage would have helped a lot too, but getting that would have been even worse than either of the above options. So while I may seem stupidly unprepared, in reality my short term gains were likely greater than my long terms losses. It doesn't hurt either that this is more interesting than watching me grind out TunnelArmor, or having me say "I did off-screen grinding and now it's easy".

Despite having a bunch more HP, the right Crane dies more easily thanks to the fact that I can exploit a weakness. One Giga Volt boosted to the max with Earrings can almost do it alone. The Thunder Rod would have had the same effect, and so would three Bolt 2s, without having to deal with the 1/4 chance of it going off properly. Locke does just enough damage to finish the Crane off after the Giga Volt. Or at least, he usually does; he will for sure though if I get a proc or a crit. This Crane has to die fast for me to beat this, as this will cut their offense significantly. Between the lack of Pincer attack allowing for evades and nobody getting hit from behind for extra damage, and only having one opponent who will also waste a turn casting TekBarrier, and whom is likely to waste yet another turn in the near future with Fire 2 due to the mechanics of the battle, the danger from their attacks gets nerfed by perhaps three quarters.

This first part is the hardest, as the blindfold makes ST healing require some tricky guesswork, and I have to weigh a ton of different factors quickly. I need to make decisions based on which characters can survive what, which characters are at what HP, what moves will give me a better indication of what is going on, which characters should have gotten a turn recently but didn't, where my cursors need to be to tell Locke/Setzer apart, how much lightning the left Crane has absorbed, how many hits the left Crane has taken (he counters with Fire 2 after three), where my cursors are already and whose turn should come up soon (or else I may not move fast enough), and which characters have done their jobs at the start of the fight. The run-on sentence there was deliberate for emphasis, BTW. In the successful run I nail it nearly 100%, but if you want to see runs where I don't get it right, there's at least one in the bloopers where all of my "deductions" are horribly wrong. Of course, there's always those runs where I played well, but Gau decided to punch the Cranes over and over, and there's at least one of those in my Bloopers too.

Once I get past that part, I have to kill Gau off immediately, as he'll charge up the left Crane and get my party nuked by Giga Volt. Which is bad (Thank me, Captain Obvious, for that message). This can be hard or easy depending on how many characters I have alive at this point, and whether Gau has been hit by a counterattack. One thing that's a given is that it's hard to tell when Gau actually kicks the bucket. Having Gau at the top slot in the party makes this easier. Fortunately, the Crane will buy me a turn by using TekBarrier when the the other Crane dies.

And finally, after Gau is revived, I need to finish the left Crane with Blaze. Cyan is my only character with room for a Wall Ring as a Relic, so he's Gau's support here. The other two have fulfilled their roles in life, and it's more important to keep my core duo alive than to try and save their sorry hides. Too many reflected Thunder spells is the most likely cause of death in this phase. Which means that the fate of the fight at this point mostly depends on how the fight went earlier, as well as Gau firing off enough of Blaze.

With the Cranes defeated, we now have the Esper World, which is just as bad as BNW. Whoops, did I say just as bad? It's actually even worse, because of the auto-dash. I can't seem to consistently take one step at a time while blindfolded, which meant that I had to do my best to exorcise every instance where I had to count out a single step. And actually, I got pretty close, leaving only one risky moment in the run (and the risk was cut significantly because I had two chances to get my movements correct, with the way that I laid them out). This leads to some deliciously circuitous routing.

Segment 45 - Weird Side Episode



In this episode I get really lucky. That's all there is to say.

You are insane. o_O;

Segment 46 - Don't Dig Down



Fairly standard, I walk through a cave. No goofy mistakes in this episode, so if that's what you were hoping for... there's nothing for you here.

Segment 47: Didn't See this Coming



This happened. At least there's commentary this time.

Segment 48: Filler Ahoy!



Same deal as BNW, only more awkward because it is even shorter. The blooper reel managed to be about a third of this entire video.

IRL, I'm tearing through the WoR in this game before touching BNW's. Owzer's House, Narshe part 2, Mt. Zozo, Phoenix Cave, Narshe part 3, Cyan's Dream, Ancient Castle, Fanatics' Tower, Ebot's Rock(?), and Kefka's Tower are the remaining destinations on my list, and probably in that order unless I change my mind for some reason. Everything after Narshe part 2 will make gratuitous use of the Moogle Charm though, so dungeons that would otherwise be long will seem a lot shorter.

Segment 49 - Social Events are Difficult



If you thought this segment might be comparable to BNW in difficulty, you are dead wrong. There is nothing it terms of rewards that falls simultaneously into the categories of both "reasonable to get" and "useful to get", so there's really nothing to try for here. So instead, you'll pretty much get about a bad a performance as anybody has ever gotten at this banquet short of actively trying to fail it. Seriously, if negative "invisible Gestahl points" were a thing, I'd have dived far into the negatives.

Segment 50 - Off to "See" the Wizard



I walk to Thamasa.

Segment 51 - Blind Spending



I walk around Thamasa.

All that's left from my perspective at this point is Ebot's Rock and Kefka's Tower (in the BFLLG at least).

Segment 52 - Blinding Smoke



Dang, it's been forever since I've posted one of these... school has been pretty consistent with dumping on me lately.

Here, have an easy segment that I messed up many times.

There's only one piece of navigation left.

"Walk Up".

Segment 53 - [Insert Episode Title Here]



Nothing to see here.

Segment 54 - Uncle Ulty Returns



Ultros is pretty well stonewalled by Vanish and Stop. But Sketching him with Relm is a pain in the butt.

Segment 55 - Leo... That is all



The title doesn't lie. That bit with Leo is the only real gameplay in this 30 minute segment.

Segment 56 - Look Before you Leap



This segment has some interesting bits, but much of it is a luck-fest.

Segment 57 - I Can't See my House From Here



This segment is all about getting lucky. I need to cross the Floating Continent, and not see a single Ninja. It's not particularly difficult, but it requires its fair share of restarts.

I don't grab Shado because he'll re-average to level 7 as long as Gau is here. I have to jump off the Floating Continent, leap Gau onto the Veldt, and come back to have him rejoin at level 6. Then if I want Gau and Shado on the same team, I need to jump off again, go get Gau, and get Shado on my team again (he won't re-average this time). So I technically did this portion of the game three times, although this is all you'll see. Full disclosure though; I did use Save States (only on the subsequent runthroughs, the one in the video was legit), since:

a) This part is a boring luck-fest and there's nothing I can do to mitigate the luck
b) I already did it once legit, and the other runs are off camera anyhow (you'll just see me start at the same Save Point next time)
c) It won't affect the rest of the game
d) I left my blindfolded restriction on, so it actually required *more* thought, as I had to avoid making bad saves