Final Fantasy VI Bosses

Goddess is, in my eyes, the toughest of the trio to defeat. Not only are there no crippling status ailment weaknesses to exploit (not even Slow!) and no elemental weaknesses, Goddess also tends to use your own characters against the party, and that's just plain rude. Her Lightning-elemental nature isn't your biggest concern as you can easily absorb or nullify those attacks; it's her sneaky manipulation attacks you need to watch out for.

Her normal AI script features Battle, Thundara, Thundaga, Lullaby, and Entice. Lullaby is the same multi-target Sleep-inducing attack as it was when fighting Still Life, and Entice is still as grotesquely annoying as ever. Since this is the only battle in the game where the danger of Entice isn't limited by quickly eliminating the monsters that use it, it might be wise to kill off the character affected to make sure no really horrible things come shooting out of the affected character (Banish, Soul Spiral, Transfusion, Meteor, and Ultima all come to mind).

When damaged below the 32640 HP mark (that's the critical number of Ultima Buster and all three Goddesses; coincidence?), she actually becomes less of a threat. She'll focus more on plain damaging attacks: Flash Rain, more Thundaga spells and the non-elemental barrier-piercing Lore, Quasar, which is for all relevant purposes a slightly weaker version of Grand Delta. But we haven't touched the true power of Goddess yet.

When she is hit by a Fight command, she has a 1/3 chance of employing the Overture attack, which I discussed earlier (when facing Coco). It basically causes every Fight and Special attack your characters perform to hit the affected character. This is bad news for the Lockes, Gaus, and Setzers of your party. When damaged in any other way, she might counter with a Thundara spell, which is nowhere near as bad.

But here's the kicker: When damaged eight times, Goddess will use her unique Cloudy Heaven attack. It looks all swirly and features those cute little angels that have thus far been seen only when using Raise, Arise, or Reraise. What exactly does Cloudy Heaven do? Basically, two things. First off (and this would be bad enough by itself), it sets Doom on the entire party. This means that once the timer reaches 0, your entire party will die unless you managed to get rid of the timer, either by using Rippler or by dying and reviving preemptively. There's yet another catch, however. When a character hit by Cloudy Heaven dies, it doesn't simply receive the traditional Wound status, but is infected with the Zombie status instead. This means that your deceased characters may attack you as well, and that reviving them back to maximum HP is impossible.

Thankfully, Mighty Guard covers the entire team, even when they're split across the screen. Hastega isn't quite as strategic in the area, even though you still may want to speed up your characters, especially since Goddess herself has inherent Haste status. Throw out your most damaging attacks, and know that Goddess (with her high Magic Defense and inherent Shell status) is most susceptible to Ultima, Quake, and Flare (in that order of potency, too). Your Holy Lance Dragoons are useless, as Goddess will absorb their Jump attacks. Switch to the Radiant Lance or a Partisan if you haven't already. Make sure you keep an eye out if Overture is in effect and act accordingly.

Quickly throwing out your strongest attacks, covering the party in Thunder Shields and Safety Bits, and just having a little bit of luck are the keys to success against Goddess. Lacking any one of those three elements can really break this battle in Goddess's favor, so be prepared, keep yourself healed, and make sure Entice, Overture, and Cloudy Heaven don't catch you off-guard. Expand Full Strategy