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Ive read here and many other forums, that people just generally dislike Gau. I see how people don't think he adds to the story, or how he has very little to fight kefka for, yet i love him. I think he has good reason to fight kefka, he is threatening his entire lively hood by changing the world. He is looking for acceptance since he was kicked out as a kid. He finds people that are willing to be friendly to him, and who on a somewhat general note like him. I have also read that people detest his over song, or they think its the worst in the game. I on the other hand find it to be one of the best songs in the game. I have a remastered version from eiko on youtube (eiko acoustic version) that I listen to all the time. I think it is beautiful.

Now, I don't use Gau in my party so much, but i enjoy his story, how depressing it is that he was thrown out as a baby, but how strong he is to have survived. I don't know, perhaps i just have seen him being put down so much that i just couldn't take it anymore, but i needed to defend him.

And I digress...

This post has been edited by thewho10 on 13th February 2013 16:59

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*"Wait," he says... Do I look like a waiter?

In terms of gameplay and usability, Gau is definitely one of the three or four best characters in the game. People just don't like him because they like equipping weapons and dislike the lack of control.

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Agreed with laszlow, it's hard for people to "let go" of some of that control you're used to with just about every other character (Umaro excluded). To me it was always fun collecting attacks and figuring out what each of them did. It gave you a wider range of options than just the usual "fight, magic, item" crowd of every other character. I'm guilty of it too in just using the old hack and slash attack mode for fighting though the general enemies.

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"Arthur Dent?"
"Yes."
"Arthur Philip Dent?"
"Yes."
"You're a total knee biter."

At first I thought that Gau was rather inflexible since you couldn't change his attack pattern after selecting one.

Then I realized that (1) most battles are short and single-strategy enough that it doesn't matter, and (2) you can teach Gau magic and have him use magic if you need attack pattern variety for different points in the battle.

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Well, I guess the lack of control can come back to bite you in unlucky situations. Also it can be a time consumer getting Rages. But I love his story. It may be the least amount of story in the game, outside the three bonus characters. But it's got so much emotional power in spite of that.

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I disagree; I think that his story is one of the weakest for the main 11, with Relm following closely behind him.

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But gau's rages are extremely useful if you take the time to learn them all.In the world of balance, rages are extremely overpowered, and in the world of ruin, they are still quite useful.

Its like vincent's limit break, except more powerful, because you have so many different attacks.

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 14th February 2013 13:56

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I'd say it's more likely the lack of context. His deal is that you basically get access to the game's bestiary and have the monsters fight for you though him. A sort of proto-pokemon. The problem is that the game gives you no information as to what each animal does or what their good for, so 'gotta-catch-'em-all' accomplishes nothing since you don't know what your catching short of memorizing every. single. leap. The work faaaaaar outweighs the benefits unless your doing a self-imposed level run of the game. In which case, he's the only way to win.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 14th February 2013 18:04

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Quote (Narratorway @ 14th February 2013 14:03)

I'd say it's more likely the lack of context. His deal is that you basically get access to the game's bestiary and have the monsters fight for you though him. A sort of proto-pokemon. The problem is that the game gives you no information as to what each animal does or what their good for, so 'gotta-catch-'em-all' accomplishes nothing since you don't know what your catching short of memorizing every. single. leap. The work faaaaaar outweighs the benefits unless your doing a self-imposed level run of the game. In which case, he's the only way to win.

Exactly and if they had done some kind of level-up feature. Having fewer ones, maybe even eight like the other skills do, but with time leaping on the Veldt you can level up those Rages. As for the story, it's sparse, but what's there is really good. It's not what you're going to the show for, so to speak, but it supports the main story.

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Praise Be To Helix!

His use kind of wanes in the WoR, though, when other characters can match or exceed Rage's offense. While he's the best defensively, this game tends to favor offense, so his defensive ability is of limited usefulness.

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Quote (Lord Bob Bree @ 14th February 2013 18:26)

His use kind of wanes in the WoR, though, when other characters can match or exceed Rage's offense. While he's the best defensively, this game tends to favor offense, so his defensive ability is of limited usefulness.

Son of a submariner, it's LBB! I don't see you post on the CoN forums nearly enough.

But yeah, you have a point about Gau's usefulness being more toward the defense side. As much as I love FFVI, I wish it was more well rounded as far as defense/offense. Most of my battle strategies dealing with non-boss enemies is "hack n slash".

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kame, tortue, tortuga, schildkröte, tartaruga, turtle

"Arthur Dent?"
"Yes."
"Arthur Philip Dent?"
"Yes."
"You're a total knee biter."

Thing is, though, this was well into the now-taken-for-granted JRPG gameplay model of frequent and quick random encounters. Introducing strategic depth to those random encounters would make them more interesting in the short term, but would get annoying very soon.

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1. The character most people are currently identified with when they meet Gau is Sabin, as they are playing through Sabin's scenario. Sabin is annoyed with Gau when they first meet and for some time after.
2. Gau can be very annoying. He often doesn't come back when you want him to, and just as often comes back when you were hoping to get the free Veldt swag that the encounter gives up.
3. Gau is a one-note character. Of all the characters in the game, to hope for personal growth for Gau is ridiculous. He wouldn't be funny if you developed his character. Because that's what Gau is in Final Fantasy VI for; he's the comic relief.

People don't get that; that's why they hate on Gau.

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I like Gau--especially when he's interacting with Cyan--but as a number of people have already noted, it's rather annoying to have no control over one's characters.

This post has been edited by Kane on 25th May 2013 04:55

People rip on Gau?

News to me. I always thought he was a fun character, and it was also fun to explore all the animals' attacks.

I understand the lack of control and the uselessness of rages later in the game, granted some are over powered but a majority just lack any sort of usefulness. My original question I guess was geared towards his story mainly. I see on mainly other forums as well as this one on occasion that people hate his story. They say there is no reason for him to be in the game, other than providing another character. They say he has the least reason to fight kefka, if any at all and etc.

I guess i have to come clean and admit I was kinda on that train as well, but i think i didnt like him again for the lack of control. As I played the game more, and played more for the story and less for the gameplay i began to really enjoy Gau's story. I could appreciate how sad his story really was, and how naive he is. He was thrown out basically as a baby, and he has no harsh feelings to his father. Granted he probably cant grasp that he was abandoned, but that adds to his innocence. Perhaps the whole reason he is fighting Kefka is simply to feel normal, or to fit in, or simply he has found friends. He is so innocent, he has such heart. I can honestly see him as a representative for pure emotion in this game.

In conclusion i have gained respect for Gau, his story, his reasons, and most of all his Theme music

Also, thank you all for your replies!

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*Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? ...Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?

*Oh? Then...welcome to my barbecue! Hee-hee-hee!

*"Wait," he says... Do I look like a waiter?

My reason has always been that Gau and Sabin look emo to me. They both have that punk hair thing going on and I've always been turned off of them. Sad part of the game though is I was forced to use Gau because of his Rages.

As a kid I always ran away from battles so at the lowest I beat the WoB at level 10. Gau has a rage learned from the M.Tek Factory which casts Life 3 which protects him in one of the battles I couldn't beat on my own.

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Quote (Spooniest @ 15th February 2013 00:25)

Gau is a one-note character. Of all the characters in the game, to hope for personal growth for Gau is ridiculous. He wouldn't be funny if you developed his character. Because that's what Gau is in Final Fantasy VI for; he's the comic relief.

Did...did you actually play through his sidequest in WoR?

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Gau is a awesome character, outside of battle. During battle he can be a little frustrating and hard to control leading to some frustration and not many characters are keen on the berserker type of characters. Because of things go wrong, you're screwed.

However his character outside of battle is pretty nice. He's a misunderstood, kind and humours type character. His Father was a total ass , which just makes me want to hug and embrace him. I don't know why FF Fans are so mean towards Gau outside of of battle. His past is one of the darkest and most tragic out of FF history and yet he gets treated like dirt by the fandom.

Is he in my party ? No. Do I like him and his character ? Yes, very much so.

Poor Gau.



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Gau has and will always been one of my favorite FF characters. Although I can understand that a character you can't control once you've hit 'Rage > Stray Cat' can be frustrating but it was never an issue for me. I didn't get on with Umaro but perhaps more because I didn't feel like he added anything extra to my team.

I enjoyed his story and always found it a good combo to have him tearing my enemies apart with 'Catscratch' while I selected attacks with the others. This way while I was faffing around selecting attacks I'd have old faithful Gau dealing some useful damage.

I wouldn't say that people rip on Gau in the sense of actively disliking him, but more in the sense of just not being a huge fan of him. I would fall into that category, and it's largely because of his lack of character development.

Gau does, as people have already mentioned, have a neat backstory, clearly good enough to ensure that he's a unique addition to the team. The problem is that it doesn't move anywhere from there. His section in the WoR is a lovely addition, don't get me wrong, but even that is basically just adding to backstory. We know more about how he came to be, but not what he came to be. And in a game all about character growth, so beautifully orchestrated over the transition from WoB through WoR, Gau's stagnancy really stands out. It puts him in a category along with Mog and Gogo - neat, but fairly empty.

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Gau is just way too much work to build him to the standard of a great end-game character.

I, for one, absolutely hate strolling around the Veldt for hours on end waiting to go through the pattern of enemies just to find that one enemy to leap.

Now, if you could control Gau and use Rages at will, he'd be the absolute shiznit.

I used to hate Gau. Now that his rages have been well documented (thanks random people on the internet who did all the work for me!) it is easy to train and gear him to be an absolute monster (h'yuck yuck)

Over the past couple of years, I've been more interested in doing challenges anyway. Natural magic makes the game much more interesting and you really start to see the value of some of these characters. Gau has pulled my fat out of the fryer plenty.

I had a guide magazine back when i played ff6, so i could look it up in the big illustrated guide for what to do and where.


Its really not that bad if you have the official strategy guide with you giving you details of everything, but sucks if you don't.There are far worse offenders.

I would say that:Most of his attacks aren't too useful, but there are a handful of ones that are, and some in very specific areas.Example:Pteradon is op as heck in world of balance, not so much in wor.Cat scratch is one of his best ones.Toecutter is quite good too as it hits real hard.

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.