Changing Infernal Strike's Animation Will Softlock the Final Battle

[BleuVII]

Hi guys, I just wanted to make a note of something here that took me about a month to troubleshoot and figure out.

Ability slot "00B8 - Infernal Strike" pulls double duty in the game. The ability data (ie - range, MP, formula) applies to Infernal Strike, but Infernal Strike's animation will always copy whatever you have in slot "00A4 - Duskblade". So if you change the animation for Duskblade, that will copy over to Infernal Strike. The animation slot for 00B8 is listed as "0C0 - Summon Angel", and it is the animation that Ultima uses for her movement. If you change this animation, the final battle will softlock when Ultima tries to move. From what I can tell, it's waiting to display the HP/MP damage, but since that value is null, it can't complete the animation.

The animation copying happens also with "002D - Sanguine Sword". That ability will use whatever you set as the animation for "00A5 - Shadowblade". The animation for 002D is "11F". I have not noticed any adverse effects from changing this, but to be safe you should probably leave it alone.

[Nyzer]

Yeah, that's a known issue in the PSX version too. In TLW, that was fixed by moving those special animations to the Math Skill slots instead. I guess Square came up with a different sort of fix for WotL.

I'm pretty sure there are other skills that do have duplicate animations in the base game, such as the Monk and Goblin both having a Spin Fist sorta deal, or the way Reis has her own copies of the various Breath attacks IIRC - you could potentially move those around to take advantage of this hardcoded duplicate animation setup, if you wanted to add some extra animations.