This review contains spoilers
My favourite Final Fantasy game of all time, it hits the sweet spot for me of length, complexity and depth. Square were really hitting their stride and able to pull off world changing twists with aplomb. I fell in love with it as a teenager and coming back to it twenty years later I am still delighted.
Revisiting it I am most struck by two things: the game’s cinematic style, and its size.
The series is better known for style in the PSX entries, but make no mistake, that style is already in evidence in VI. While just a couple of entries ago we were passing from blue caves to brown caves and back again, VI takes us on a whirlwind tour of setpieces. Some work better than others, the Opera is famous as a highpoint of the game, less successful is the perspective-bending minecart escape section. With that, the river rafting, the diplomatic banquet and the horror sequence on the Phantom Train, the game attempts to mould different genres and ideas into the RPG, another element that will only grow stronger in the sequel.
The size of the game is maybe where its age- or mine- shows the most. As a child I thought the game would go on forever, I never could fill in my list of Espers or figure out what happened to Shadow. As an adult, I was able to comfortably 100% the game in less time than it took for a barebones playthrough of XVI. It still feels packed to the gills, and if you don’t like the combat system (or try to take on the Cultists' Tower without quicksaves) it might drag, but for me it was an excellent time that just left me feeling a little sad and a little old when I realised there was nothing more left to do.
‘A little sad’ is perhaps an appropriate way to feel about the game- there’s a bittersweet tone throughout. Things like Shadow’s dreams, Cyan’s lost family, or Gau’s doomed relationship with his father all have a sombre tone. My favourite moment in the whole game is one of the saddest, and happens at the start of the world of ruin- spoilers follow.
After an airship crash you control Celes, who awakens alone on a desolate island with only Cid for company. Cid is the scientist who experimented on Espers- on people- on Celes herself, but his world has fallen apart now. And Celes, a two time traitor, rejected by her country and her friends, accepts the trust Cid is so eager to give. Cid thinks that he and Celes are the only survivors, so he nurses her back to health just before he start to succumb to his own infirmity. Playing as Celes, your only option is to try and catch fish to help Cid recuperate his strength. There’s a lot of hay made these days about “Press F to Pay Respects”, but 20 years earlier, Final Fantasy VI asks you to play this weird, poorly explained fish catching minigame to try and save Cid. It’s bizarre, it’s opaque, and in my opinion, it works absolutely perfectly. Your chances of understanding the rules of the fishing game (where you grab fish out of the water with your bare hands and then run home to shovel them into Cid’s mouth) are close to nil, so you are almost guaranteed to watch Cid slowly deteriorate, growing weaker and weaker, until finally he passes away. Completely alone, Celes attempts suicide, before finding a last letter from Cid and finding her resolve to carry on.
I think this section works so, so well. It’s dark, it’s depressing, and offering the opportunity to succeed, to save Cid, makes it feel all the more bitter when you fail, which will make your quest, Searching for Friends, all the more important. If you do look up the rules to the fishing game and nurse Cid back to health you get a much shorter and less rewarding conclusion where he recovers and sends you on your way. I don’t think any sequence in any Final Fantasy game before or after will stick with me as much as this.
Revisiting it I am most struck by two things: the game’s cinematic style, and its size.
The series is better known for style in the PSX entries, but make no mistake, that style is already in evidence in VI. While just a couple of entries ago we were passing from blue caves to brown caves and back again, VI takes us on a whirlwind tour of setpieces. Some work better than others, the Opera is famous as a highpoint of the game, less successful is the perspective-bending minecart escape section. With that, the river rafting, the diplomatic banquet and the horror sequence on the Phantom Train, the game attempts to mould different genres and ideas into the RPG, another element that will only grow stronger in the sequel.
The size of the game is maybe where its age- or mine- shows the most. As a child I thought the game would go on forever, I never could fill in my list of Espers or figure out what happened to Shadow. As an adult, I was able to comfortably 100% the game in less time than it took for a barebones playthrough of XVI. It still feels packed to the gills, and if you don’t like the combat system (or try to take on the Cultists' Tower without quicksaves) it might drag, but for me it was an excellent time that just left me feeling a little sad and a little old when I realised there was nothing more left to do.
‘A little sad’ is perhaps an appropriate way to feel about the game- there’s a bittersweet tone throughout. Things like Shadow’s dreams, Cyan’s lost family, or Gau’s doomed relationship with his father all have a sombre tone. My favourite moment in the whole game is one of the saddest, and happens at the start of the world of ruin- spoilers follow.
After an airship crash you control Celes, who awakens alone on a desolate island with only Cid for company. Cid is the scientist who experimented on Espers- on people- on Celes herself, but his world has fallen apart now. And Celes, a two time traitor, rejected by her country and her friends, accepts the trust Cid is so eager to give. Cid thinks that he and Celes are the only survivors, so he nurses her back to health just before he start to succumb to his own infirmity. Playing as Celes, your only option is to try and catch fish to help Cid recuperate his strength. There’s a lot of hay made these days about “Press F to Pay Respects”, but 20 years earlier, Final Fantasy VI asks you to play this weird, poorly explained fish catching minigame to try and save Cid. It’s bizarre, it’s opaque, and in my opinion, it works absolutely perfectly. Your chances of understanding the rules of the fishing game (where you grab fish out of the water with your bare hands and then run home to shovel them into Cid’s mouth) are close to nil, so you are almost guaranteed to watch Cid slowly deteriorate, growing weaker and weaker, until finally he passes away. Completely alone, Celes attempts suicide, before finding a last letter from Cid and finding her resolve to carry on.
I think this section works so, so well. It’s dark, it’s depressing, and offering the opportunity to succeed, to save Cid, makes it feel all the more bitter when you fail, which will make your quest, Searching for Friends, all the more important. If you do look up the rules to the fishing game and nurse Cid back to health you get a much shorter and less rewarding conclusion where he recovers and sends you on your way. I don’t think any sequence in any Final Fantasy game before or after will stick with me as much as this.