Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VI is the best game in the series up to that point by far, and actually, probably the best game in the series period. It boasts some of the greatest presentation in video games up to that point, with almost top-notch 2D graphics (only held back by the overall sparseness of animations), an amazing score (and in this series that's really saying something), and a dark, sprawling narrative with a wide cast of "main" characters to the point that the game doesn't really have a true main character the way most video games do. Compounding with this narrative theme of everyone being important to the story is that after you unlock Espers, all of these characters can learn any magic spell and have their stats influenced, meaning the cast is very customizable.

Each character still has their own affinities as well as their own unique battle command, so they're still distinct from one another and have ideal roles; Sabin is the ideal offensive tank, while Terra is the ideal spellcaster who can still equip all the best weapons and armor. These unique battle commands are quite diverse, too; Sabin does one of many powerful special moves based in the martial arts, but only if you can get the fighting game styled button inputs correct. Relm draws a sketch of your enemy which does their own abilities back at them. Setzer has a slot machine which can give very favorable or unfavorable outcomes. Cyan rewards patience and the risk of letting the enemy get attacks in (remember that this game is ATB and thus not "true' turn-based!) with increasingly devastating sword techniques. Most characters can equip most good weapons, most characters can equip most armor, and every character can equip most of the in-game Relics (like Accessories in other JRPGs, only each character gets to equip two!), so if you know what you're doing, it's not that hard to build a badass party, with really only the reliance on EXP and an old-school grind session or two preventing impatient players from being able to easily break the game. But you know what? I like that this one's mostly easy as long as you put some thought into it, because this game is satisfying to break. If you decide to give everyone optimal equipment and teach them all Ultima/Atma, Esuna/Heal, Curaga/Cure3, and Arise/Life2, you're basically playing on easy mode, but if that's your priority then so be it. Learning spells through Espers is much faster than the famed Materia system in Final Fantasy VII, which keeps the grinding more manageable.

About that grinding though...the biggest hindrance in my enjoyment of this game is that you pretty much need to have all your characters up to a decent level to beat the final dungeon, as it requires three four-person parties, and thus, nearly all of the 14-character roster must be utilized. The first time I attempted to beat this game, I neglected to level up the "lesser" characters, so I of course had a pretty rough time. There is a boss named Goddess fought with your secondary party on the way to the final boss that is, to be frank, incredibly cheap; she's stacked with favorable status effects you can't remove, and she dishes out tons of really harmful status effects on your whole party; and said status effects ignore your immunities to them, so there's no way to really block them. Even on my most recent playthrough where I did level everyone up a lot more in preparation for the endgame battles, I think I ended up beating her pretty much by sheer luck.

Related to that complaint, the random battles are often annoyingly frequent. If you play your cards just right in one of the game's most interesting narrative excursions, the Imperial Banquet, you can get something that halves the random encounter rate. Mog can equip a Relic which turns off random encounters entirely, the caveat being you can only use it while he's in your party and he's one of the less useful/more gimmicky characters. But if you turn random encounters off, you won't be high leveled enough for the final dungeon. It's honestly a real pain in the ass sometimes getting stuck in one of the game's few challenging puzzles with random encounters making sure you don't get enough time walking back and forth to fully think about the solution. Even beyond that, it can be irritating to want to get somewhere in a dungeon, only for the game to stop you in your tracks for you to fight some worthless easy enemies that take ~30 seconds to kill. Most recently I beat the game in an emulator which had a fast forward function, so this wasn't a huge problem, but before that, I played it on the Wii's Virtual Console, which has no such function, so you can imagine how tedious things got sometimes.

There are other complaints with gameplay I could bring up, like the many bugs in the original release, the fact that the original SNES version of the game requires you to equip a Relic to be able to move any faster than a crippled elderly tortoise, and the fact that you can only move in the four cardinal directions on a grid, which feels weirdly restrictive and archaic given how state-of-the-art (for 1994) everything else in this game is. So why's my rating still really high? Well, it simply cannot be overstated how big a deal in terms of story presentation this was for the time. The huge plot twist involving Kefka (which everyone else has spoiled, but I won't), the large amount of tragic events which take place, and the steampunk setting (contrasting with the more traditionally medieval/fantasy settings of the previous games) are examples of Squaresoft taking some big new risks with this one. FF4 had a mostly serious plot that still had a campy feel to it, while FF5 generally brought things back to a cutesier, more whimsical and comical end. But with this one, they really had a lot of balls with certain sequences and elements of the narrative. Even aside from the events of the plot, the far more detailed graphics and generally darker color palette (the latter aspect missing from the inferior GBA version) serve to accentuate this game's heightened maturity.

But it's not just grimdark and edgy; there are a lot of fun, lighthearted comic relief moments too. And a lot of the narrative's maturity isn't just because it's "dark" but also because of the care and attention to detail that went into the cutscenes. Many scenes (and the world map exploration) utilize the Super Nintendo's Mode-7 capabilities for 3D effects, and the character sprites do have a lot of expressive animations to give the cutscenes extra luster. Also noteworthy is that many of these cutscenes, despite taking usually taking place in the same top-down viewpoint, often feel surprisingly cinematic, partly because of the aforementioned sprite animations, but also because of tricks like camera panning, shots within shots (used to great effect in the scene where Setzer is going to retrieve the second airship), and altered color palettes (giving some flashbacks a sepia tone). They really didn't have to go that extra mile, but they still did, dare I say just for art's sake. Also, It's not much of a stretch to say that Celes being stranded on the isolated island, with only pathetically weak animals to fight and having to walk around a small area catching fish over and over, is one of the first examples of intentionally "slow"-playing but highly immersive sequences in a game purely for narrative purposes. Adding further to immersion, the graphics also sometimes utilize what appear to be digitized illustrations, used to impressive effect in this game's fantastic ending. And the bosses and summons are some truly spectacular displays of pixel art, especially the final bosses who are just stunning for the time.

The fine folks at Square really did their best to make a game that felt like this huge work of art. It's fitting, then, that one of the most iconic sequences in this game is the interactive opera, a scene which seems to leave an impression on every player. That grand opera sequence, with its surprising poignancy and overwhelming presentation, is a reflection of what this game feels like to me; an epic magnum opus and an intentional grand statement on the part of its developers of what video games are truly capable of. When you're moving along a grid getting stopped in your tracks for a pointless battle that'll take half a minute of your time of just mashing the attack command, it might not feel like it's worth it. But moments like the harrowing intro sequence of the Magitek Armors trudging through the snowfield to Narshe while Nobuo Uematsu's music sets the tone for the whole adventure, or when Celes steps out of Cid's house to deathly winds and lonely pipe organs, make Final Fantasy VI a journey worth taking.

Final Fantasy VI is my favorite game of all time. I first played it knowing the twist in the middle, but even with my prior knowledge the game still blew me away in terms of story. If you haven't played FF6, you gotta do it blind. I'll admit, the first few hours aren't that special and the game takes a bit to get going, but this is all just setting up the characters and places so the story can expand exponentially in the second and third acts. I played FF6 for the first time maybe two years ago, and the graphics and music have aged perfectly. It's one of the most beautiful 16 bit games ever made, with amazing sprite work and environments. The soundtrack is a contender for the best video game soundtrack ever, with tracks like Terra's Theme, the Battle Theme, the Opera, Searching for Friends, and the mini symphony that is Dancing Mad. The style and atmosphere of the game just pulled me in, with the steampunk fantasy aesthetic, and the different locales are all pretty nice. The battle system isn't among the best, but it works and the unique abilities that every character has are fun to use. The real best part of the game is the story and characters. With a staggering cast of 14 party members, about 10 of them have their own meaningful and emotional character arc. All of these amazing party members, and yet you have the villain overshadow them all.

SPOILERS!

Kefka is the greatest video game villain of all time. A sick, maniacal, nihilistic clown who just wants to watch the world burn (sound familiar?). He ends up destroying the whole world as we know it, in my favorite sequence in any video game. FF6 is great in the first half, but honestly, the second half is what makes it my favorite game. Reuniting your friends and seeing the struggles of the people after the world gets destroyed is great, and resolving all of their arcs is gratifying. Cap it off with an epic final boss and a cathartic ending sequence, and you have one of the best games ever made.

You know this game is going to be good right from the intro sequence. Probably the best one ever done so far back in 1994, when decently made cinematics were a thing, but rarely make you feel emotional about them as this game's opening.

The first half of the game is quite similar to Final Fantasy IV and V. It has better characters and dungeons than those, and the music is also slightly better. The story flows decently enough, also an improvement over the slight mess that was previous FF games, but still certainly not on the level of modern game storytelling. It's a bit of a shame because sequences as good as the opera or the house in the island are, they feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the game (in the sense that they could have got a better build up).

Still, I really think that the second half of the game is where this game really shines. The character archs are completed, and your freedom to recruit your former comrades in the order you want, by experiencing short stories centred in one character or another, is, unlike the first half, great videogame storytelling (and again, particuarly coming from 1994, when well written games were already a thing (like Star Control 2...), but not a common thing yet. In fact, this whole second half reminds me of nothing else than Mass Effect 2: recruit someone, do a "loyalty mission" (in the case of the important characters) to boost them and follow up on their personal story, and finally get your team together to assault the big bad's base.

Perhaps the most ambitious game on the snes. Final fantasy 6 was years ahead of its time and completely changed how we looked at rpg’s. Even today going it’s incredible how cinematic the game feels, despite the limitations it’s developers faced. An expansive open world, extensive cast of characters, and a complex combat system. It’s not just every jrpg that owes something to Final Fantasy 6, but perhaps every game that came after it. Yet it’s for that same reason that I couldn’t bring myself to love Final Fantasy 6.

Despite how mind blowing this game is for 1994, everything it’s done has been expanded far beyond what the original team was capable of doing.

The cast, while beautifully designed, are incredibly underdeveloped and lack character development. I did love the exploration that was done with Locke and Terra’s past. But rarely was that treatment given to the remaining cast. Who barely received any meaningful side quests or flashbacks (Compare the quality between Cyan and Strago’s WOR sidequests for example.) This, of course, isn’t the only way to expand a character’s personality. But often the cast hardly interacted with one another outside the main story. Dialogue was often kept generic and vague in cut-scenes. A clear limitation created by the team being too careless with adding characters and not willing to write the dialogue to match that ambition.

The game feels like it had a team that was incredibly passionate about it, but no real direction on how to implement their ideas. For example, the game is an absolute visual treat to look at. Incredible character designs, enemies, and environments. With even one of the greatest final boss fights to ever be placed in a game. So how do the enemies feel out of place in the environments you explore?

Is there a reason why a ninja is fighting me on top of a floating island? How does this tie into my understanding of this world and its inhabitants? Most often they don’t and feel generic as a result.

The magicite system is a fascinating idea at first, teaching any ability you want to your party is a great idea. But often new magicite were sparingly introduced and hard to obtain. It just leads to you using the same pieces over and over, making the concept feel incredibly dull. The game on top of that, gives you no indication when a character is finished with one. So you end up constantly opening your menu to check as a result.

I love the fact that each character had different abilities to encourage you to try out different party combinations. But often moves were hidden behind annoying mechanics. Such as fighting inputs for Sabin’s Blitz or pulling a slot machine for Setzer. It gets old quick when the only reason you died in a fight was because your input was incorrect. Not to mention the game requires you to memorize those inputs on top of that. Not a huge deal when it’s only 8 moves for someone like Sabin or Cyan. But when Gau has 50+ moves, each with their own distinct ability, you end up just not using characters as a result.

This frustration with combat is only expanded by the absurd random encounters. They are everywhere and happen so frequently you’ll find yourself not wanting to explore. Halfway through the game I started using a guide, not because I got lost, but for the fact that I wanted to minimize the amount of time I was wasting in fights.

It’s a shame because with a few changes this would’ve been a fantastic combat system. I love the ambition and the complexity it brings with all its moving parts. But often the game just gets in its own way.

How am I supposed to check the item I picked up when you’re making me carry relics, weapons, items, and armor for 12 characters?

How am I supposed to keep track of exploring this huge world, when you don’t give me a map with the town names on it?

I understand that a lot of my issues have been changed with later editions which I’m glad to hear. But some of these issues (the dialogue, enemy placement) aren’t things that can be changed easily. I don’t dislike FF6, in fact, I think it’s pretty dang good and I appreciate it for everything it did for rpgs. I just think most people see it with rose tinted glasses.

This is my ALLTIME favorite game!!!!

Além de todas as tecnicalidades que o fazem um jogo maravilhoso, Final Fantasy VI é especial porque toma tempo para desenvolver os personagens e um universo com um nível de atenção e carinho que eu poucas vezes vi em qualquer lugar.

Juntos, os arcos individuais - incluindo o do Kefka - dão um caráter cinematográfico para uma narrativa exposta em 16 bits.

E claro que nada disso funcionaria tão bem sem a brilhante, estupenda, descomunal trilha sonora de Nobuo Uematsu.