FF6 is an interesting game where I have to review it from two angles: from the perspective of a SNES game released in 1994, and of course my own enjoyment in 2023.
Coming from FF5, which is more ambitious in terms of its gameplay systems, FF6 is ambitious, well, everywhere. Graphically it's clearly pushing the SNES to its limits, with complex minigames (for the time), pseudo-3d environments, in-battle dialogue, every character having their own wacky mechanic (granted some of them are watered down jobs from 5 but still), a ridiculously large cast of playable characters with full party customisation, and very wild amounts of freedom late game. Most dungeons feel visually and sometimes even mechanically distinct, and I was quite surprised with how little this game reused its own assets to pad out play time—it rarely feels stale, which is unusual for an older RPG.
In terms of the narrative, good lord is it ahead of its time. It takes the approach of a sprawling epic with an ensemble cast, and somehow manages to do a decent job at giving almost every playable character an arc. There are also a notable amount of side characters that feel decently fleshed out, and the background of the story is more explored than ever, right down to having interactable flashbacks.
I won't go into explicit spoilers, but needless to say the structure of the second 'half' of the game is really unique, and clearly influenced the genre for a long time to come.
Cast-wise, they sort of attempt to give each character focus, but its hard to deny some get more than others, with Terra, Celes, Locke and Edgar being the most prominent. It's especially interesting how Terra tends to represent this game as the protagonist, when Celes ends up being the most central character in the story (and my favourite!). In a sense, Terra does kind of get the short end of the stick with surprisingly limited screen time despite her memorable introduction and relevance to the core plot.
Villains... mostly sucked, honestly, though Kefka is an obvious exception. I found him kind of disappointing at first after all the hype and praise I'd heard from him, but by the end I think I would have to agree he is quite strong, and a very unique villain at the time. The only SNES RPG that I personally found to have a stronger villain was Tales of Phantasia, but even then I wouldn't say it's directly comparable to FF6, as they take a fairly different approach. His motives are simple yet oddly realistic, and I think he could really shine if this game ever got a significant remake (especially after seeing a certain scene in Dissidia).
In terms of twists, I wouldn't say this game really has many compared to say 4, but these days I don't really value plot twists as much as I used to, so I didn't find this to be a problem (especially since the twists in 4 are... questionable to put it nicely).
Now you've probably noticed that I'm slowly sliding more into my general enjoyment of the game, so I think it's about time to get fully into that by going into the aspects that did not age very well for me. One of the two biggest elephants in the room is the obvious downside to having such a sprawling cast in a game that gives you endless freedom with party structure: non-mandatory characters simply aren't allowed to influence the story in the scenes they're in. Even worse, there are a lot of hive mind dialogue boxes said by nobody and everyone at the same time, sending me right back to the FF3 experience—which I think is unacceptable in a game with a much stronger emphasis on narrative and developing distinct characters.
This ends up especially depriving the story of character chemistry, as your party just is not allowed to interact with each other and end up feeling more like a disjointed military unit than an actual ragtag team. At first I don't think it's as much of the issue, as characters are allowed to interact with each other plenty early on, but the further you go through and the more your party expand, the less actual dialogue of value you get. Coming from FF5, which features a ragtag group with surprisingly strong chemistry for a SNES game, along with a lot of unique and fun dynamics, I was more than a little disappointed to see that aspect de prioritised so heavily here. This especially hit me during an optional quest with Gau near the end of the game, which features one of the rare times we're able to see the party's chemistry, and made the lack of it elsewhere all the more disappointing for me.
Another major issue I had was the gameplay—it got old for me fast. The magicite system is neat in theory, but ends up making the party feel extremely homogenous while also butchering the summon mechanic into being mostly useless and situational. Balancing wise, it feels like the game expects you to turn everyone into a magic powerhouse, as individual character abilities become more and more useless unless your name is Sabin or Terra. Most character abilities are also very frontloaded, and you'll generally have most of what they can offer super early on, killing variety as you get further into the game. I also was not a fan of the busy work that many characters expect to get you to build them up, with Gau being the main culprit. Not to mention Strago and Relm are respectively butchered versions of the Blue Mage and Beastmaster jobs from FF5. Overall, I do think the gameplay systems were poorly thought out despite how cool they seem initially, and by the end I had completely lost interest in the gameplay and was abusing boosts/the encounter toggle more than any other pixel remaster.
This isn't to say I think these aspects make the game terrible or something, it's more that FF6 is an undeniably ambitious game that revolutionised the genre (before FF7 came in to do it again), and sometimes it trips under its ambition. It's unfortunate that a lot of newer RPGs take what FF6 forayed into and do it better, as you end up with a bit of Seinfeld Effect while playing it as a modern gamer.
Overall I have to say while I appreciated how impressive this game was for its time, I still came out of it finding FF5 a much more enjoyable experience, as one of the rare old RPGs that made me actively engage in more random battles to experiment with its systems more, along with its significantly better cast chemistry. It's a shame that it generally gets more disrespect in the West for having a deceptively simple exterior and taking a lighter approach to its storytelling.
That being said, I completely understand the love for 6, it's a very special game and there's some stuff that truly stands the test of time: the legendary OST (Dancing Mad is... ??? how did they do this on the SNES???), the gripping premise, a varied ensemble cast that gives (almost) everyone a chance to shine, and one hell of an opera scene.
Overall, this gets a strong recommendation from me for anyone who wants to check out a legendary classic, while being mindful of the time it was released and what the RPG landscape was like back then.
Coming from FF5, which is more ambitious in terms of its gameplay systems, FF6 is ambitious, well, everywhere. Graphically it's clearly pushing the SNES to its limits, with complex minigames (for the time), pseudo-3d environments, in-battle dialogue, every character having their own wacky mechanic (granted some of them are watered down jobs from 5 but still), a ridiculously large cast of playable characters with full party customisation, and very wild amounts of freedom late game. Most dungeons feel visually and sometimes even mechanically distinct, and I was quite surprised with how little this game reused its own assets to pad out play time—it rarely feels stale, which is unusual for an older RPG.
In terms of the narrative, good lord is it ahead of its time. It takes the approach of a sprawling epic with an ensemble cast, and somehow manages to do a decent job at giving almost every playable character an arc. There are also a notable amount of side characters that feel decently fleshed out, and the background of the story is more explored than ever, right down to having interactable flashbacks.
I won't go into explicit spoilers, but needless to say the structure of the second 'half' of the game is really unique, and clearly influenced the genre for a long time to come.
Cast-wise, they sort of attempt to give each character focus, but its hard to deny some get more than others, with Terra, Celes, Locke and Edgar being the most prominent. It's especially interesting how Terra tends to represent this game as the protagonist, when Celes ends up being the most central character in the story (and my favourite!). In a sense, Terra does kind of get the short end of the stick with surprisingly limited screen time despite her memorable introduction and relevance to the core plot.
Villains... mostly sucked, honestly, though Kefka is an obvious exception. I found him kind of disappointing at first after all the hype and praise I'd heard from him, but by the end I think I would have to agree he is quite strong, and a very unique villain at the time. The only SNES RPG that I personally found to have a stronger villain was Tales of Phantasia, but even then I wouldn't say it's directly comparable to FF6, as they take a fairly different approach. His motives are simple yet oddly realistic, and I think he could really shine if this game ever got a significant remake (especially after seeing a certain scene in Dissidia).
In terms of twists, I wouldn't say this game really has many compared to say 4, but these days I don't really value plot twists as much as I used to, so I didn't find this to be a problem (especially since the twists in 4 are... questionable to put it nicely).
Now you've probably noticed that I'm slowly sliding more into my general enjoyment of the game, so I think it's about time to get fully into that by going into the aspects that did not age very well for me. One of the two biggest elephants in the room is the obvious downside to having such a sprawling cast in a game that gives you endless freedom with party structure: non-mandatory characters simply aren't allowed to influence the story in the scenes they're in. Even worse, there are a lot of hive mind dialogue boxes said by nobody and everyone at the same time, sending me right back to the FF3 experience—which I think is unacceptable in a game with a much stronger emphasis on narrative and developing distinct characters.
This ends up especially depriving the story of character chemistry, as your party just is not allowed to interact with each other and end up feeling more like a disjointed military unit than an actual ragtag team. At first I don't think it's as much of the issue, as characters are allowed to interact with each other plenty early on, but the further you go through and the more your party expand, the less actual dialogue of value you get. Coming from FF5, which features a ragtag group with surprisingly strong chemistry for a SNES game, along with a lot of unique and fun dynamics, I was more than a little disappointed to see that aspect de prioritised so heavily here. This especially hit me during an optional quest with Gau near the end of the game, which features one of the rare times we're able to see the party's chemistry, and made the lack of it elsewhere all the more disappointing for me.
Another major issue I had was the gameplay—it got old for me fast. The magicite system is neat in theory, but ends up making the party feel extremely homogenous while also butchering the summon mechanic into being mostly useless and situational. Balancing wise, it feels like the game expects you to turn everyone into a magic powerhouse, as individual character abilities become more and more useless unless your name is Sabin or Terra. Most character abilities are also very frontloaded, and you'll generally have most of what they can offer super early on, killing variety as you get further into the game. I also was not a fan of the busy work that many characters expect to get you to build them up, with Gau being the main culprit. Not to mention Strago and Relm are respectively butchered versions of the Blue Mage and Beastmaster jobs from FF5. Overall, I do think the gameplay systems were poorly thought out despite how cool they seem initially, and by the end I had completely lost interest in the gameplay and was abusing boosts/the encounter toggle more than any other pixel remaster.
This isn't to say I think these aspects make the game terrible or something, it's more that FF6 is an undeniably ambitious game that revolutionised the genre (before FF7 came in to do it again), and sometimes it trips under its ambition. It's unfortunate that a lot of newer RPGs take what FF6 forayed into and do it better, as you end up with a bit of Seinfeld Effect while playing it as a modern gamer.
Overall I have to say while I appreciated how impressive this game was for its time, I still came out of it finding FF5 a much more enjoyable experience, as one of the rare old RPGs that made me actively engage in more random battles to experiment with its systems more, along with its significantly better cast chemistry. It's a shame that it generally gets more disrespect in the West for having a deceptively simple exterior and taking a lighter approach to its storytelling.
That being said, I completely understand the love for 6, it's a very special game and there's some stuff that truly stands the test of time: the legendary OST (Dancing Mad is... ??? how did they do this on the SNES???), the gripping premise, a varied ensemble cast that gives (almost) everyone a chance to shine, and one hell of an opera scene.
Overall, this gets a strong recommendation from me for anyone who wants to check out a legendary classic, while being mindful of the time it was released and what the RPG landscape was like back then.