[Mardur]

Now that I'm approaching the World of Ruin, I took a look at the Readme:

There is a specific way the World of Ruin is meant to be played: Run from every monster to get all the heroes back, but don't get the chests until you can kill the monsters, and then fight monsters until you can beat Kefka. The problem is that I didn't want the heroes to level up before you get other characters back (screwing esper stat progression). So all of the bosses which must be defeated to get heroes are all the same difficulty, but the monsters and treasures around them are increasingly better. This allows gamers to play with whichever hero they want, and still have areas with increasing difficulty. There is one chest you must open regardless of your level---the one holding "Striker", South of the switched passage in the Cave on the Veldt.

Also this:

I encourage the use of fast-forward, & save-states with your emulator, and don't forget that Znes can rewind as well, which can allow you to test things easily or just never die, if you want to make things really easy.