There are few games that I've played recently that have such a legacy as Final Fantasy VI. I've been playing most of the classic Final Fantasy titles for the first time with these Pixel Remasters (barring IV, the first one I played, and V, which I'd played most of via the old SNES fan translation a number of years ago), and this was easily the one I was the most curious about.
...Well, maybe aside from II due to its unique leveling system, but nonetheless. VI is very much one of the most well-known games in the series, so going into it I tried to temper my expectations; going in with the idea that this was a classic RPG and one of the best on the SNES could set my expectations too high, after all.
I'll begin with the story, though due to the nature of this game's particular structure I won't go too in depth. Many, many years ago, there was a massive war known as the War of the Magi, after which magic almost completely vanished from the world. In the present day, an Empire led by a man named Gestahl has created "Magitek," an artificial way to imbue people with magic, and is planning to conquer the planet with his massive army, led by the insane clown Kefka. Terra, a girl under the control of the Empire and forced into a suit of Magitek armor, is taken on a mission to the rebelling town of Narshe, where she and two other soldiers find a frozen creature called an Esper, which quickly dispatches the two soldiers and frees Terra from her mind control. Terra then escapes from Narshe, meeting the treasure hunter Locke, a member of the Returners - the main group opposing the Empire. From there, the story unfolds with many different focus characters, with twists, turns, and the occasional opera in-between.
VI goes for a different approach to its plot structure than the rest of the series (at least, as far as I'm aware - I haven't played XII or XV) by having more of an ensemble cast instead of a strict main character. You begin the game as Terra, the Magitek pilot who has lost her memory and emotion thanks to manipulation from the Empire, but not too long after you finally accrue a four-man party the game gives you the choice of three scenarios, each with a different focus character. No part of the game really focuses enough on one character to make them feel like the central protagonist, which I think is very interesting.
That isn't to say that there aren't characters the game focuses on more than others. Terra, as stated before, begins as the "protagonist," and is given a majority of the focus in the game's first half. Locke, master treasure hunter, Edgar and Sabin, kings of Figaro Castle, and Celes, former general of the Empire, are also given a lot of time in the sun in that first half. This leads to them being the more memorable party members in terms of actual character, but due to the game's large roster of party members, many fall by the wayside. Cyan, last warrior of Doma, Relm and Strago, two of the last remaining Magi, Shadow the ninja/assassin, Gau, the boy living in the wild of the Veldt, Mog the...Moogle who dances, and Setzer the airship pilot all get small moments in the spotlight, but don't do much after said moments in terms of plot significance. While the game's overall story is still rather solid in this first half, the use of its large roster seems a bit lacking.
The game's second half is where things get more interesting. Without going into plot details, the world map essentially opens up in the second half, with the game allowing you to either do character-specific sidequests to give some resolution to their arcs or go straight to the final dungeon. While this change does stall the rather well paced story from the first half, this openness is something no other FF game had done before it, and it makes FFVI stand out for that reason.
While I enjoy the structural switch up, there is still an issue I have with the game's second half. The individual character sidequests are great, but there's a problem with all of them but one - the nature of the second half of the game means that you can theoretically have ANY party when you do these sidequests, which means that the dialogue during these scenes is rather...generic aside from the focus character. Celes has no particular reaction to finding Locke alive, Edgar and Sabin don't have any particular words to say to one another when they reunite, etc. There is one - ONE - point where characters will actually all contribute to a sidequest: Gau's sidequest. Depending on how much of your party that you have during this point in the game, you'll get scenes involving the whole party that are genuinely funny and heartwarming for one of the game's least important characters. It's something that would've been nice to see for some other characters as well.
When it comes to the gameplay of FFVI, there's only a few major differences from the previous two games. Gone is V's robust job system, as the characters in this game are relegated to one job much like IV. Locke can steal things, Edgar can use tools, Relm can sketch enemies to copy their attacks, Gogo can mimic, etc. However, every character has access to magicite, crystals containing the souls of Espers that will allow them to learn magic and gain stat buffs depending on the magicite equipped. This mechanic is a precursor to VII's much more well known Materia system, and...I'm not the biggest fan of it here. I find that thanks to the magicite system, many characters become...mostly useless? At least, when it comes to their specific skills. Take Gau, for example. He's a variant of a Blue Mage, able to leap onto enemies in his homeland, the Veldt, and learn their entire movesets (known as Rages). When you use rages in battle, Gau becomes uncontrollable, but will use those enemy skills. A very interesting idea, but one that I believe is undercut by being able to just teach him powerful spells and then keep him on, say, the Zona Seeker magicite which gives +2 to the Magic stat when leveling up. Many characters in the game suffer from this issue, especially once the game reaches (again) the second half. Magic very much overpowers the rest of the game, and while it is fun to use, it causes most fights to get repetitive. In my final party, I deliberately made one character very light on magic just for the variety.
The gameplay otherwise is mostly the same as the other SNES games. The ATB system is the same, the overworld movement is the same (but this time with MODE 7 GRAPHICS!), and the only major difference is that running away is one character at a time instead of all four at once. The dungeons in VI aren't incredibly long, though I do find some of them (particularly the Phoenix Cave and ESPECIALLY the Fanatic's Tower) a bit long without using a piece of equipment to reduce the encounter rate. Overall, the gameplay of VI is just as fun as its predecessors, with its own few wrinkles to make it unique.
For the Pixel Remaster features specifically, I do like the few moments of HD-2D - the opening and famous opera scene were rendered this way, and I do love the style (still excited for that Live A Live remake, for example). I just wish the entire game had been done in this style instead of just these few scenes, but alas. The game still looks very nice in my opinion, especially the battle backgrounds. The autobattle feature is welcome, of course, and it's nice to have a music player so that I can listen to the wonderful, fully orchestrated soundtrack at any time. VI isn't my favorite OST in the series (Dancing Mad notwithstanding), but it's still phenomenal, and putting it to a full orchestra only makes it better.
To conclude, while Final Fantasy VI isn't my favorite game in the series (that honor still goes to IX), it's blatantly clear why this game is considered a classic - a well told story with an entire cast of characters, an expansive second half full of a sense of exploration, and interesting gameplay mechanics that, while they can make a character's natural abilities feel obsolete, still allows for a level of customization and encourages repeat playthroughs with different setups or party combinations (though not, I think, to the extent of V). I can see myself doing another run of this game sometime in the future, and would give it a high recommendation to anyone interested in the series.
...Well, maybe aside from II due to its unique leveling system, but nonetheless. VI is very much one of the most well-known games in the series, so going into it I tried to temper my expectations; going in with the idea that this was a classic RPG and one of the best on the SNES could set my expectations too high, after all.
I'll begin with the story, though due to the nature of this game's particular structure I won't go too in depth. Many, many years ago, there was a massive war known as the War of the Magi, after which magic almost completely vanished from the world. In the present day, an Empire led by a man named Gestahl has created "Magitek," an artificial way to imbue people with magic, and is planning to conquer the planet with his massive army, led by the insane clown Kefka. Terra, a girl under the control of the Empire and forced into a suit of Magitek armor, is taken on a mission to the rebelling town of Narshe, where she and two other soldiers find a frozen creature called an Esper, which quickly dispatches the two soldiers and frees Terra from her mind control. Terra then escapes from Narshe, meeting the treasure hunter Locke, a member of the Returners - the main group opposing the Empire. From there, the story unfolds with many different focus characters, with twists, turns, and the occasional opera in-between.
VI goes for a different approach to its plot structure than the rest of the series (at least, as far as I'm aware - I haven't played XII or XV) by having more of an ensemble cast instead of a strict main character. You begin the game as Terra, the Magitek pilot who has lost her memory and emotion thanks to manipulation from the Empire, but not too long after you finally accrue a four-man party the game gives you the choice of three scenarios, each with a different focus character. No part of the game really focuses enough on one character to make them feel like the central protagonist, which I think is very interesting.
That isn't to say that there aren't characters the game focuses on more than others. Terra, as stated before, begins as the "protagonist," and is given a majority of the focus in the game's first half. Locke, master treasure hunter, Edgar and Sabin, kings of Figaro Castle, and Celes, former general of the Empire, are also given a lot of time in the sun in that first half. This leads to them being the more memorable party members in terms of actual character, but due to the game's large roster of party members, many fall by the wayside. Cyan, last warrior of Doma, Relm and Strago, two of the last remaining Magi, Shadow the ninja/assassin, Gau, the boy living in the wild of the Veldt, Mog the...Moogle who dances, and Setzer the airship pilot all get small moments in the spotlight, but don't do much after said moments in terms of plot significance. While the game's overall story is still rather solid in this first half, the use of its large roster seems a bit lacking.
The game's second half is where things get more interesting. Without going into plot details, the world map essentially opens up in the second half, with the game allowing you to either do character-specific sidequests to give some resolution to their arcs or go straight to the final dungeon. While this change does stall the rather well paced story from the first half, this openness is something no other FF game had done before it, and it makes FFVI stand out for that reason.
While I enjoy the structural switch up, there is still an issue I have with the game's second half. The individual character sidequests are great, but there's a problem with all of them but one - the nature of the second half of the game means that you can theoretically have ANY party when you do these sidequests, which means that the dialogue during these scenes is rather...generic aside from the focus character. Celes has no particular reaction to finding Locke alive, Edgar and Sabin don't have any particular words to say to one another when they reunite, etc. There is one - ONE - point where characters will actually all contribute to a sidequest: Gau's sidequest. Depending on how much of your party that you have during this point in the game, you'll get scenes involving the whole party that are genuinely funny and heartwarming for one of the game's least important characters. It's something that would've been nice to see for some other characters as well.
When it comes to the gameplay of FFVI, there's only a few major differences from the previous two games. Gone is V's robust job system, as the characters in this game are relegated to one job much like IV. Locke can steal things, Edgar can use tools, Relm can sketch enemies to copy their attacks, Gogo can mimic, etc. However, every character has access to magicite, crystals containing the souls of Espers that will allow them to learn magic and gain stat buffs depending on the magicite equipped. This mechanic is a precursor to VII's much more well known Materia system, and...I'm not the biggest fan of it here. I find that thanks to the magicite system, many characters become...mostly useless? At least, when it comes to their specific skills. Take Gau, for example. He's a variant of a Blue Mage, able to leap onto enemies in his homeland, the Veldt, and learn their entire movesets (known as Rages). When you use rages in battle, Gau becomes uncontrollable, but will use those enemy skills. A very interesting idea, but one that I believe is undercut by being able to just teach him powerful spells and then keep him on, say, the Zona Seeker magicite which gives +2 to the Magic stat when leveling up. Many characters in the game suffer from this issue, especially once the game reaches (again) the second half. Magic very much overpowers the rest of the game, and while it is fun to use, it causes most fights to get repetitive. In my final party, I deliberately made one character very light on magic just for the variety.
The gameplay otherwise is mostly the same as the other SNES games. The ATB system is the same, the overworld movement is the same (but this time with MODE 7 GRAPHICS!), and the only major difference is that running away is one character at a time instead of all four at once. The dungeons in VI aren't incredibly long, though I do find some of them (particularly the Phoenix Cave and ESPECIALLY the Fanatic's Tower) a bit long without using a piece of equipment to reduce the encounter rate. Overall, the gameplay of VI is just as fun as its predecessors, with its own few wrinkles to make it unique.
For the Pixel Remaster features specifically, I do like the few moments of HD-2D - the opening and famous opera scene were rendered this way, and I do love the style (still excited for that Live A Live remake, for example). I just wish the entire game had been done in this style instead of just these few scenes, but alas. The game still looks very nice in my opinion, especially the battle backgrounds. The autobattle feature is welcome, of course, and it's nice to have a music player so that I can listen to the wonderful, fully orchestrated soundtrack at any time. VI isn't my favorite OST in the series (Dancing Mad notwithstanding), but it's still phenomenal, and putting it to a full orchestra only makes it better.
To conclude, while Final Fantasy VI isn't my favorite game in the series (that honor still goes to IX), it's blatantly clear why this game is considered a classic - a well told story with an entire cast of characters, an expansive second half full of a sense of exploration, and interesting gameplay mechanics that, while they can make a character's natural abilities feel obsolete, still allows for a level of customization and encourages repeat playthroughs with different setups or party combinations (though not, I think, to the extent of V). I can see myself doing another run of this game sometime in the future, and would give it a high recommendation to anyone interested in the series.