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| Final Fantasy VI copyright Square Enix. Images used for educational purposes only. |
Opera House
- After outfitting your team with magicite, head back to Jidoor. Check out Owzer’s home in the north of town and you’ll find a letter waiting. It belongs to another future teammate, default name Setzer. You need to lure him out into the open so you can use his airship to fly elsewhere in the world.
- (If you didn’t pick him up earlier, you can recruit Shadow in Kohlingen for 3,000 gil now. Don’t pick him up. If you try to take him into the Opera House he’ll take off, cheating you of 3,000 gil and leaving an empty spot in your team. Sigh…)
- You’ll find the Opera House to the south of Jidoor. Speak to the Impersario inside the doors and you’ll trigger a lengthy cut scene that will take you through the first act of an operatic performance. Culture and video games in one package? Blasphemy.
- Eventually you’ll gain control of Locke. Leave the balcony of the Opera House and visit the room where you saw Celes go in a previous cut scene. Speak to her to swap characters, read the score on the table, and exit through the north of this room to begin Celes’s part of the opera.
- You now have to act out a scene in the opera. Your first step in this is to recite Celes’s lines properly, and to do so in before they come up in the opera. Fail to do so and the opera will end, forcing you to restart the whole shebang. The proper lines you must recite are:
‘O my hero…’
‘I’m the darkness…’
‘Must my…’
Eventually you’ll climb to the balcony above, and another actor will appear. Interact with him and follow him around the stage, eventually picking up the flowers he drops. Then climb the stairs to a higher balcony and walk all the way to the end. Do that and you’ll end the performance successfully.
- Afterward you’ll jump back to Locke. Leave the back room and look at the letter on the ground, then return to your seat and speak with the Impersario. This will bring your whole party in for the fun (sans Celes, she’s a little busy) as you try and stop an old face from ruining the opera.
- Run up and to the right once the timer begins. Speak to the man in the far room and hit the switch he indicates (the far one to the right). Any other switch will just waste your time. Next, rush back to your seats and head to the door on the left.
- Beyond you’ll find a catwalk patrolled by visible rats. Touch one and you’ll have to fight a group of Stunners (green rats) and Goetia (gold rats). Kill the Goeta first, as they’ll summon more Stunners if you clear the screen of the greenies. Not difficult, and generally just a waste of your precious time. Get to Ultros in the north as quickly as possible.
- Knock him down to trigger a cut scene. That done…
Ultros
Round two! Ultros is a bit easier this time around for two reasons: first, you probably have more characters who know the spell Fire, and second, you have him automatically caught in a pincer attack. Anyone facing Ultros’s backside will do double damage with physical attacks. Ultros will smack you around with an array of status-inflicting attacks (confuse, blind, even imp) that can prove very annoying if he’s left unmolested, so you’ll want to trash him quickly with your strongest special abilities and spells from the get-go. Don’t give him a chance to attack more than a few times. Ultros’s HP recovers completely whenever he, uh, ‘dives’ into the stage, so you’ll want to inflict as much damage as necessary (a little over 2,500) before he slips out of view.
- Beating Ultros will get you onto Setzer’s ship, the Blackjack, and after a quick conversation (one that changes a bit if you have Edgar and Sabin on your team) you’ll be on your way to the south… in other words, the home of the Empire.