Final Fantasy VI All Enemies and Bosses

The Phantom Train will start with the battle with either a physical attack, !Wheel, or Diabolic Whistle. The next four turns will be spent using normal physical attacks and his Special !Wheel; the fifth turn will be Diabolic Whistle, but only if there are at least two characters still alive.

After every 15 seconds of battle, Phantom Train will use either Acid Rain (2/3) or Saintly Beam, an attack that deals multi-target Holy-elemental damage to your party. Finally, if Phantom Train has been damaged, he has a one in three chance of using !Wheel.

For trivia, Saintly Beam used to be Phantom Train-exclusive until Holy Dragon Redux showed its pasty face for the Advance release. Given it's such a nasty move in that fight, its occurrence here at least shows the Phantom Train was on the right track.

The fight against Phantom Train can be real easy and real bad, and it all depends on his Diabolic Whistle attack. This sets one random status ailment on your party out of the following: Darkness, Poison, Imp, Doom, Berserk, Confused, Sap and Slow. Due to a GBA-exclusive bug, you can circumvent all effects from this attack by equipping a Relic which protects against Imp (such as the White Cape). It should've still applied other status ailments in that case, but it doesn't.

The ones you need to be concerned about are Imp, Berserk, and Confused. If one of your characters is Imped, you'll want to use Hi-Potions to damage Phantom Train. Hi-Potions inflict 250 worth of HP damage, which is superior to your crummy Imped Attack command. Smack your Confused characters, as there's nothing more fatal than Confused characters, especially when they have access to Rising Phoenix or barrier-piercing attacks.

The Phantom Train battle is very much like the Apparition battle in the sense that using a Phoenix Down is the coward's way out, and that the strategy revolves around allowing Cyan to start the battle with his third Bushido skill, Tiger. After this, have Sabin come in with an Aura Cannon and Shadow with Shuriken. A lot of people have dubbed it 'hilarious' to have Sabin use Meteor Strike on the Phantom Train. If you want to see a tiny sprite lift a huge train, be my guest. Expand Full Strategy

Plague is a blue Ahriman that will use Doom on the entire party at the start of the battle. Plague'll use physical attacks, !Gaze and Trine to attack the party. Trine is an attack we haven't seen since Kefka's AI Script; it still sets Darkness and Silence on all party members, and it's still unblockable. When successfully hit by an Attack command, Plague will counter with a Haste spell on the offending character. That may seem nice, but realize that Haste will also speed up your Doom timer. When struck by any Magic spell, Plague will counter with a Roulette spell. Itself being immune to its effects, it'll probably just take out a party member. Good luck actually hitting Plague though, as it has perfect Evasion and Magic Evasion.

There are numerous ways to work around the full-party Doom. Safety Bits, Memento Rings and Lich Rings will all either prevent Doom from working or heal the character when the timer runs out. Having one or two characters with Haste will make them expire before the others, so you can just revive each in turn. You can even let a single character's timer run out when that character has cast a Quick spell and revive.

Equip Ribbons to protect yourself from !Gaze, Trine and general ridicule from your peers. Plague has relatively little HP, but you'll need to strike it. Flood, Meteor, Meltdown and Ultima spells are unblockable, as are most of your secondary skills. Throw Fuma Shuriken, use Phantom Rush, etc. Cyan's Eclipse Bushido, due to the unique way it sets Stop, may actually set the Stop status on Plague so you can henceforth nail it with blockable attacks as well. Eclipse, see, is unblockable in nature and simply has a rough 55% chance of setting the Stop status regardless of the target's Evasion or Magic Evasion. Once Stopped, you can set Slow, Silence or Berserk at your heart's content.

Prepare to face Doom and status ailments with protective Relics and you can't really lose this battle. Expand Full Strategy

Tiger will act very rarely, but, when it does, the effects tend to be less than desirable for your part of this ordeal. Characters that absorb Fire are relatively safe from Tiger's attacks, but it'll be rough for the others. Tiger's normal AI script reads Nothing - strong attack - Nothing - 1/3 Battle - loop, but once you pound it below 11520 it'll get mad and start using the strong attacks every turn, with a 1/3 chance of using !Zombie Fang in the same turn immediately afterwards. This frenzied Tiger is far and away the most troublesome opponent of this tier and is priority number one as a result. Since his elemental weakness is the popular and easily exploitable Ice-elemental variant, Blizzaga spells and Thrown Icebrand blades are extremely strong attacks versus the ferocious feline. Did you know: Tiger's image is the exact same one as Sabin uses when he executes his Desperation Attack 'Tiger Break'?

If you'd thought that you had seen the last of those repetitive machine moves when you destroyed the Empire's most powerful weapon, you had better think again. Machine is less than picky with its AI script and will randomly use any of its attacks in any situation with only one quirk: Once Machine hits 11520 HP, it'll stop using Atomic Rays and start using the ever-so-slightly stronger Absolute Zero attack.

Magic uses spells. A lot of them. It has all kinds of conditions too, so allow me to present them to you: Normally, it's Poison, Drain, Bio, Firaga, Confuse, Haste, Imp, Hastega. When its HP drops below 30720, it's: Blizzaga, Thundaga, Holy, Flare, Sleep, Stop, Reflect, Slowga, Reraise. Below 20096, another change: Blizzara, Firaga, Thundaga, Holy, Flare, Rasp, Silence. Below 10240, same story: Starts using 33% Graviga spell as an omni-counter. Finally, below 5120: Starts using 33% Graviga and up to two Dispel spells as an omni-counter. Note that when Magic dies, its Mute status will be removed and its final counter will definitely produce results.

Power hits you. Every turn it uses Battle. It never rests or does something remotely interesting; it just sits there and pounds every character it can get its hands on. When it dies, it uses !10-Hit Combo once and follows up with nine Battle attacks before croaking for good. Obviously you were supposed to expect a tenth hit here, but luckily you have me to suck the fun out of every single one of those little tricks.

You should still be buffed up from the previous battle, so there's no need to redo it now. Don't touch Golem/Fenrir yet. Start by killing Machine ASAP; once again, the Air Anchor really helps. Death spells are a suitable replacement. Cast the Silence spell on Magic, or use the Bad Breath Lore. If Magic managed to set Haste on Power, cast Slow to counter the effects. By this point, you should have killed Machine, crippled Magic into uselessness, and Slowed the inherently inferior Power. What's left is Tiger.

Focus all your attacks on Tiger. Like I said, Blizzaga spells and Thrown Icebrand blades really hurt it. When Northern Cross hits home, use a Fire spell to recover. Don't let Zombies roam either; cure immediately and make destroying Tiger a priority over healing as Tiger is the only dangerous opponent on the field (not to mention the fact that, if you're in trouble, he can't be more than 10000 HP away from defeat based on his AI). Once Tiger is down, recover from any wounds you might've obtained and go for Magic instead.

After you've killed Magic (there's no special tricks), you'll probably have one or more characters who have lost their positive statuses due to !Zombie Fang, dying in some other manner, or Dispel. Re-set them (since Power won't be KO-ing anybody anytime soon) before finally going for the kill on the final part. Power's !10-Hit Combo shouldn't hurt too bad; even in such large numbers, its weak and inaccurate physicals fail to impress. Expand Full Strategy