I originally played Final Fantasy VI on an emulator when I was like 12 years old. I got up to the opera house segment and hard bounced off, probably thinking something along the lines of "this is stupid when do I get to fight more monsters." Now, over a decade later and having played hundreds of games since then I've returned to FFVI only to find out the parts where you're not fighting monsters are the best bits!
The first half of FFVI is filled with so many unique events and setpieces that sometimes I was actually bummed out when they wanted me to fight some enemies. Not because the combat is bad, far from it, but because all the other stuff is so unique for a JRPG from this time. There's just so many interesting bits with hardly any combat - the aforementioned opera house segment, the part where your party splits up and you have to sneak around as Locke, the dinner party, and I could go on. This is without even mentioning the amount of variability each scene has depending on who's in your party. I think these sections are the reason that people remember this game so fondly, and why it still feels fresh even almost 30 years later.
The second half of FFVI is not the generation defining experience that the first half is, but it's still pretty good. Stripping back the story to its barest essentials allows the gameplay to breathe in a way it hadn't had the chance to in the bombastic first half of the game. It was here that I grew to appreciate the Magicite system to its fullest. The combination of Magicite and relics along with the wide array of party members to choose from really allows you to tweak your party to a level almost as satisfying as the job system from FFV, and that's a huge compliment because the job system owns my soul. I also really appreciate how many dungeons in this half of the game have a little gimmick to make them more interesting, even if some of those gimmicks suck.
The first half of FFVI is filled with so many unique events and setpieces that sometimes I was actually bummed out when they wanted me to fight some enemies. Not because the combat is bad, far from it, but because all the other stuff is so unique for a JRPG from this time. There's just so many interesting bits with hardly any combat - the aforementioned opera house segment, the part where your party splits up and you have to sneak around as Locke, the dinner party, and I could go on. This is without even mentioning the amount of variability each scene has depending on who's in your party. I think these sections are the reason that people remember this game so fondly, and why it still feels fresh even almost 30 years later.
The second half of FFVI is not the generation defining experience that the first half is, but it's still pretty good. Stripping back the story to its barest essentials allows the gameplay to breathe in a way it hadn't had the chance to in the bombastic first half of the game. It was here that I grew to appreciate the Magicite system to its fullest. The combination of Magicite and relics along with the wide array of party members to choose from really allows you to tweak your party to a level almost as satisfying as the job system from FFV, and that's a huge compliment because the job system owns my soul. I also really appreciate how many dungeons in this half of the game have a little gimmick to make them more interesting, even if some of those gimmicks suck.