Heh, yeah, since Kefka's party instance only exists for the purposes of animating him in battle window cutscenes, he has no stats or abilities, so it's not like you can run around with him casting Trine or Forsaken or such. He's mostly just a trophy you can do silly things with. Leo is a better catch since he behaves mostly like a normal party member and has good stats, plus Shock is nice for a free AoE attack.

Haha, thanks. Credit where credit is due, most of the legwork of figuring this out was done by Rain in the video linked in the description: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/esV6g7WDsrDRpJs.html. Their original video was a much longer run where they wanted to beat the game with a party of Biggs, Wedge, Kefka, and Gestahl. I was only interested in getting Kefka, so I gleaned the necessary conditions for just that portion from their video and did my own run in English to confirm.

Thanks! The end goal is fairly simple: have the game set Leo as the guest character and then go to a point where it puts the guest character in the party. All the steps are just being able to get to that point without getting stuck, haha.

It’s one of the greatest RPGs of all time. For 30 years it’s regularly been ranked as one of the top FF in numerous rankings as it found new fans. In 2021 it was voted 33/100 best ever game in a large national vote on a Japanese TV channel. All these measures of success and popularity are strong indicators of its quality. You are either troll (congrats-got me, I guess) or just the minority who didn’t get on with a great game. It sucks but it happens to all of us at some point. Many loved the game, so they would play it again to get a character.

@@makasete30 lost interest

Thank you! It's amazing that getting Leo back was the subject of so many rumors back in the 90's, only for it to turn out you actually COULD, and then every time they port or remake the game, there's STILL a way to do it, lol.

@@patches365 Not the old mobile/steam ver.

Kefka doesn't appear to have a leveling table, so I'm not sure you could hack him to a higher level in Pixel Remaster. Leo has a leveling table simply because he's level-averaged to your party's level and needs the table to calculate that, even though he never fights a battle where he'd gain experience. Biggs, Wedge, and the Phantom Train ghost I believe are similar to Leo in that they have stat tables, and they're all also kidnap-able via the same methods as Kefka and Leo in PR. But Kefka and Gestahl's battle window sprites only exist for cutscene purposes and therefore have no stats associated with them. In the SNES version, the battle scripts called party member slot IDs to execute sprite animations, which is why all sprites animated in the battle window had to be assigned a party member slot. You'll notice that every time Kefka appears as a sprite in the battle window, there's also an open party member slot for his sprite to fill (this is why Terra is temporarily removed from the party at the Sealed Gate, to make room for Kefka).

@@patches365 That makes a lot of sense actually. Instead of asking myself if Kefka could gain levels if simply hacked that way, I should have thought about why he isn't able to level up in the first place, that being the lack of a leveling table. Though I would imagine you probably could arbitrarily grant Kefka tons of stats anyway with the right cheats, I also imagine his stats would probably quickly revert back to the default values due to said lack of that leveling table. Also it's always fun to learn when certain story elements happen simply because the game required it on a technical level. In a way it's an artistic way to get around technological limitations and I think that's really cool. Thank you for the explanation!

@@YosherYoshi Getting Leo into the same save file as Kefka was actually quite a bit more involved than the little compilation shown in this video. Sure, doing just those steps will get you Leo in his base state, but if you watched my other video specifically about getting Leo, in Pixel Remaster you have to pick up his equipment separately and have it in your inventory in order for him to come equipped with it. Which necessarily meant I had to go pick up the Master's Scroll from the Ancient Castle. But there's a problem. The Kefka save warped directly from Thamasa to Darill's Tomb. So even though Edgar is still in the party because he was still available at the time Thamasa happened, Figaro Castle isn't accessible until you run the Edgar re-recruitment event. So I had to do that first. But then there's ANOTHER problem. Because this save skipped the Floating Continent, the flag that tells the game you're now in the World of Ruin never got set. There are certain maps like Narshe, Zozo, and yes, Figaro Castle, that don't have separate instances for the World of Ruin, because they have no grass to recolor. So those maps use that World of Ruin flag to determine which overworld map to spit you back out on when you leave. So, I went back to run the Edgar recruitment event even though I already had him, went down to the Ancient Castle to get Leo's relic, came back out... and I was back in the World of Balance. With no airship because when I left the World of Balance it was still crashed at Maranda. So, that meant I had to run the Darill's Tomb warp AGAIN to warp my party back to the World of Ruin with airship access. All to get Leo's stupid relic so that I could have a 30-second punchline at the end of this video about how much more utility Leo has if you glitch him into your party than Kefka does, lol.

@@patches365 I tip my hat to your devotion to deliver that punchline then, that does sound like a whole ordeal. I did watch the Leo video after this one so I knew at least part of what you had to do to get him in here proper. Though even without all of his equipment he's still loads better than Kefka simply because Kefka cannot level up which is funny in its own way!

Like, it's very on-brand that if you get Kefka in your party, he's a pathetic weakling who can't better himself at all, whereas if you get Leo, he's good at everything and is an absolute powerhouse. So really wanted to take the extra step to rub that in Kefka's face and force him to watch, lol.

Oh my gosh?

Yup, and if you get the Paladin Shield, your party Kefka can equip that, too, making him slightly less killable (I decided not to subject myself to obtaining that for this video). The SNES instance of Kefka that fights Red Ifrit also has much better stats, but it looks like Pixel Remaster just has the single instance of him and simply swaps around his equipment. His Paladin Shield in the Red Ifrit fight renders him immune to all its attacks, anyway, so his stats don't really matter. I do find it interesting that he can't equip the Flail or Ribbon, which is what his instances in the Imperial Camp and Sealed Gate had in SNES. Either way, the Leo glitch showed that their equipment doesn't come with them when you kidnap them, so even if you could kidnap the Paladin Shield instance of Kefka, you won't be able to get an extra copy.

I haven't really used save editors for PR, but looking at the JSON file it spits out, it looks like all you'd need to do is set "isEnableCorps" for your desired character to "true", and that would make them available in the party menu. However, I have not actually tried this and I don't really want to manually mess with the save data myself.

Everything on nexusmods are cosmetic. Maybe there are some tables for cheat engine?

Huh, I wasn't aware of that regarding Leo in the party after the airship glitch. I did wonder if it would be the case where you could still keep him if you left an empty slot for him, since I knew the party reset code only cleared out characters 00-13. But when I tried leaving an opening for him and he was still gone from my party menu, I assumed that meant I'd still lost him. Didn't actually try getting in a battle that way, though. I also wonder if you just never really "lose" him, anyway. I had a bug when coding Antinomia, where I changed Mog to a guest character to open party position 10 for Leo, but Mog is recruitable at any point as long as you have an open slot. However, I found that if I took Mog in a full party to recruit Cyan, if I looked in Cyan's treasure chest, Cyan still popped out of my party to scold me, even though he wasn't there in the menu and it would mean I had 5 characters. I realized that when the game counts how many party members you currently have, it doesn't count guests. The game has to manually add and remove guests from the party during scripted events because the generic party update functions don't account for them. So when I had Mog + 3 characters, it only counted that as 3 characters and added Cyan to my party, anyway. But if it wasn't for the event that checks if he's in the party, I wouldn't have known he was there. If you try the PR method, also check out Rain's video, because they use the glitch to duplicate Ragnarok a bunch of times, too, by pulling the event where you get it into a save where you already have it. I was going to add that to my video, but you know how I mention that it's easy to overwrite saves when you meant to load them? Yeah.... They also kidnap a ghost from the Phantom Train to Possess a bunch of bosses to death. Rain also recently released another video that's even more convoluted, where they do a "the Empire are the heroes" run, where they get a party of Biggs, Wedge, Kefka, and Gestahl and take them to the final battle. Biggs and Wedge are the only ones who can do anything, though, since Kefka and Gestahl have no battle commands, and only have party sprites for battle-window cutscenes: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/esV6g7WDsrDRpJs.html

Oh wow! That's wild about getting the bad guys into the party lol! Yeah, I actually reached out to ElephantGun when I found out about Leo staying in the party during battles and the 5-character/game doesn't fully erase guests thing is almost verbatim what she said when she started thinking about why. So now I def gotta check out both the PR and your Antinomia mod!@@patches365

@@patches365 Looks like my earlier reply didn't go through lol! So yeah, I reached out to ElephantGun when I stumbled on Leo staying in the party during battles and she said almost verbatim what you did about the 5th char/party not being fully cleared in battles. Having him this way does for sure come w/ some caveats: if you add another char to 'his' slot that char will take his place until his spot is 'open' again then he reappears. He still can't change gear or learn Espers/Magick and he can only be healed in battle - inns/tents/healing tiles/etc don't work on him. And he can only appear in the 1st party of multi-party dungeons and the final battle w/ Kefka is the one battle I have not found a way to take him into since that version of the party select screen does seem to clear everyone out first. But still very cool to have him from the FC onward w/ his ridiculously broken stats lmao! Great video and I am really looking forward to both PR and your Antinomia mod!

Thank you! Unfortunately, I tend to have very narrow - and often fleeting - fixations, and only create content when they align. FFVI has stood the test of time in my interests, at least. As for the missables in Antinomia, I can understand that. Because they're ultimate weapon quests, I didn't want to make them straightforward, but I also completely understand it's kind of a dick move to make something that you did before you even started the quest permanently lock you out from being able to complete it. Leaving Leo behind on the Floating Continent is something I can assume the player would anticipate they'd end up losing out on something later, but I do agree that locking you out of a quest just because you recruited Sabin before Leo is kinda OG FFXII levels of "don't touch these random unspecified treasure chests that we never warn you about" shenanigans. But because missables have been a presence in most games in the series, I'm still inclined to keep it as such.

Thanks! You're right, I wanted to sort of ease into the open world aspect of the WoR instead of just dropping the player straight into it with no direction like the original game did. So now up until you get the airship you really have only one place you can go at each step. Doing it this way also allows for more comprehensive and meaningful cutscenes since I know for certain which characters are going to be present and where they have and haven't already gone.

Huh, your comment is gone for me, too. But, you are correct, it's "what game nowadays DOESN'T have a day-1 patch?" I played the General Leo Edition a few years ago, and while I thought it was fine, I thought it was too... simple, I guess? That you were just "given" Leo and he ended up simply replacing another character, and then pulled some "Celes is a secret Empress" out of nowhere to make him instantly switch loyalties to her. Then I saw Divergent Paths, and while I thought it was a step up, Leo still just replaces Cyan in WoR rather than being given anything new and unique for himself. So for this one, I wanted to add Leo, but I wanted to add him from the ground up, built from scratch rather than co-opting anyone else's story. While still staying as faithful to the source material as possible, since I, too, love it and don't want to pretend I can do better. I just want to do "more".

​@@patches365 I still have far more to see of your work, but it certainly seems to me you're just accomplishing that! I know PowerPanda created that hack with the expressed intent for others in the community to build upon it directly if anyone wanted, but it seems like that would've been more difficult for your vision. I was very iffy about making Celes a 'dragoon', some of his dialogue choices, making an imp a legit part member, and cutting out some minor story bits here and there to save space. Though other parts of it were certainly well-done like the interactive esper invasion on Vector (I have no idea how you address that portion yet, but something similar would fit your mod perfectly for sure). So far from the looks of things, I vastly prefer your methods on how you tackled your improvements along with Leo's inclusion. More than anything so far, I appreciate the little bits of information you add to existing scenes that make the world feel so much more believable and making for just better story-telling. I'm familiar with a couple official English translations, and it's very refreshing to see such care where its needed. For instance -- I just now saw the optional bit where Terra melts when seeing the moogles with Banon and Edgar. It's a minor but SUCH a good scene that shows a warm, light side to Terra (which she clearly has in her as we see later) -- humanizing her a bit earlier-on, but also showing how she's thinking about the entire plot in a way which never gets conveyed at this point in the vanilla story. Best of all -- it could've, and should've been there like this all along. This is incredible work, and I'm really looking forward to seeing where things go! (also thank you for keeping the classic/minor/goofball lines like "fire fire! heh heh!" IoI)

@@Hausbrauen "Though other parts of it were certainly well-done like the interactive esper invasion on Vector (I have no idea how you address that portion yet, but something similar would fit your mod perfectly for sure)." Spoiler: PowerPanda adopted that idea from me, lol. I have not actually played Divergent Paths yet as PowerPanda and I were both working on our hacks simultaneously and they were farther along than I was. But I posted a video of the esper assault on Vector on ff6hacking.com after I finished that section on my end, and PowerPanda loved it and asked if they could include something similar in Divergent Paths, and I gave them the go-ahead. I have not yet seen how Divergent Paths implemented it, but I was at least the inspiration for it, despite Divergent Paths releasing first. I do worry that due to this, people will think I was the one who copied them, but I have the receipts in terms of that forum thread, haha. And then I turned around and borrowed their idea of recruiting NPCs for the airship (though in my case, only one). It's not like I'm the first one to add Leo to the party, either, so we're all getting inspired by each other and doing our own takes to scratch our own personal itches and then sharing them with the world. And with everything, I tried to add it as organically as possible and make sure it tied in to established material rather than existing in a vacuum. It wasn't until I played the GBA translation that I really "got" Terra, and I don't know if it was because I was older, or if the translation was just clearer, but it also made me think that there may need to be a bit more explicit exploration of what she's "about". I also had to essentially build Leo and Celes's relationship from scratch since I realized neither of them ever say anything to or about each other, despite being on a mission together (that "He was so gentle" line of Celes's at Leo's funeral in the original was a mistranslation and not even about him, so, no, they never even talked *about* each other beyond "Let me introduce General Celes").

@@patches365 Well, damn. Not only are you seriously talented, but you're legitimate royalty in this community (I mean that in all sincerity)... all things considered, I guess I shouldn't be surprised! Yeah, I agree that people will probably make that assumption in regards to Divergent Paths just as I did -- and if I see it, I'll be sure to do my part in correcting them. You've absolutely earned that credit! Makes more sense to me now that PowerPanda was so generous in allowing anyone to build upon what's there if they so choose. It's great that you've bounced some incredible ideas off of each other and truly succeeded in putting them into action! I'll have to start familiarizing myself more with ff6hacking too. Like I heard you say in your first gameplay video, I was also 12 or 13 the first time I played ff6 on snes. So despite the gba translation being more 'complete', Woolsey's is a nostalgic trip that will always truly be ff6 to me. But I'm really enjoying how you've mixed the two and kept the best of each (along with incredibly-well-placed new bits of your own). Yeah General Leo and Celes almost never interacting sounds about right. From memory, I wasn't sure if there was anything more on their little boat ride introduction with Shadow. Divergent Paths has already been etched into my brain as well, where Celes scolds Leo during the Vector invasion (not sure if any of that was your input as well, or what your hack will entail with that yet)... that's such an amazing scene. Can't help but have high expectations now IoI, I've already learned so much about the coding, limitations, and other script bits from your videos regardless!

@@Hausbrauen I plan on doing some highlights compilation videos for KZfaq to have a permanent record of those commentary streams, since the Twitch ones will be gone in like a week. I'm glad you're finding them informative! I may do some tutorials in the future for more specific step-by-steps of how to do certain things with regards to hacking FF6 (or at least how I did them).

Nope, none of the Distant Worlds arrangements have it. This arrangement from a different game concert series is the only one I've found that's included it.

This is off an mp3 I downloaded 20 years ago, but after some searching it looks like someone else also has the full Orchestral Game Concert version on KZfaq: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fLVlesSo0pi9pJs.html

@@patches365 That's unfortunate. I wanted a legit copy and better quality. I can find it on amazon.co.jp if I paste the Japanese title from Wikipedia. However, I'm not sure how well ordering that would work. Maybe I'll try it when I want to spend ￥4,500 より(40.70 USD as of now). I can't find the CD any other way yet.

Or me when programming.