I have a confession: I don't really care for JRPGs of the NES and SNES generations. Final Fantasy 4 and 5 did absolutely nothing for me, I found them to be slogs and nothing about them compelled me to persevere to the end game. Before going into Final Fantasy 6 I had to do a little prep to hype myself up, reminding myself that this was one of the best, topping many people's "best of" lists alongside Final Fantasy 7. I kept telling myself that I couldn't not like this one, it just wasn't allowed. I've already got too many bad opinions about 7 (I'll get to it...), could I physically survive having bad opinions about 6 too?
Well thankfully it turns out Final Fantasy 6 is a really good game and I don't need to worry about it. Ok, that's the review, byeee!
Ok, so my thoughts are a little more complicated than that, but only just a little. See, Final Fantasy 6 is in fact a very good game, and genuinely impressed me with its scope. There's nowhere this is more apparent than metric ton of playable characters the game drops on your lap. Everyone knows about this, it's like the one element of the game even the uninitiated have absorbed through osmosis (second only to suplexing a train.) You may even wonder as I did if such a bloated cast would make it all too easy to lose the thread on how characters fit into the larger narrative, or whether your team will be saddled with too many party members that lack any real utility. Well, you'd be wrong. Square does a surprisingly good job of keeping each and every party member relevant and engaging.
One of the ways they accomplish this is built right into the game's structure. You're never given a ton of characters and told to compose a team, at least not for quite some time. Instead, your party is mostly metered out to you as you progress through the story, with new and old characters swapping in and out as their own personal stories loop through the main plot. You get just enough time with everyone to know who they are, to invest in their story, and to build them into a useful member of your team. Each party member also plays substantially different from one another, drawing a clear line between classes (or "jobs" in Final Fantasy parlance), which is welcomed given the rudimentary nature of the game's core battle system.
Not much has changed there, unfortunately. It's still Final Fantasy, which means you have your basic elemental magics that can be safely ignored due to the under-reliance on affinities, and stat buffs/debuffs that might as well not even exist. Final Fantasy 6 is at its worst when it can be played like any other Final Fantasy game, which is to say mashing out the same attacks ad nauseam because the lack of depth means nothing matters. This is, however, a rarer occurrence here, and I found FF6's combat to be a lot more engaging than past and future entries.
The story is much more character-driven than other Final Fantasy games, which get too bogged down in contrivances to really resonate with me the way 6's does. Your party's bond is at the heart of the game, and everyone's little vignettes are compelling in their own ways. The opening is of course iconic in its own right, but the way the game closes out is just as indelible in my mind. I don't want to give a whole synopsis of it. By this point you're already familiar with the game and know, or you've managed to stay just as blind as I did and should go in unspoiled.
While it may not be my favorite Final Fantasy, it's still a damn good one and easily among the best. Despite my reservations and my bias, I can see what people appreciate about this game and find plenty to love myself. This is well worth checking out if it's somehow passed you by after all this time.
Well thankfully it turns out Final Fantasy 6 is a really good game and I don't need to worry about it. Ok, that's the review, byeee!
Ok, so my thoughts are a little more complicated than that, but only just a little. See, Final Fantasy 6 is in fact a very good game, and genuinely impressed me with its scope. There's nowhere this is more apparent than metric ton of playable characters the game drops on your lap. Everyone knows about this, it's like the one element of the game even the uninitiated have absorbed through osmosis (second only to suplexing a train.) You may even wonder as I did if such a bloated cast would make it all too easy to lose the thread on how characters fit into the larger narrative, or whether your team will be saddled with too many party members that lack any real utility. Well, you'd be wrong. Square does a surprisingly good job of keeping each and every party member relevant and engaging.
One of the ways they accomplish this is built right into the game's structure. You're never given a ton of characters and told to compose a team, at least not for quite some time. Instead, your party is mostly metered out to you as you progress through the story, with new and old characters swapping in and out as their own personal stories loop through the main plot. You get just enough time with everyone to know who they are, to invest in their story, and to build them into a useful member of your team. Each party member also plays substantially different from one another, drawing a clear line between classes (or "jobs" in Final Fantasy parlance), which is welcomed given the rudimentary nature of the game's core battle system.
Not much has changed there, unfortunately. It's still Final Fantasy, which means you have your basic elemental magics that can be safely ignored due to the under-reliance on affinities, and stat buffs/debuffs that might as well not even exist. Final Fantasy 6 is at its worst when it can be played like any other Final Fantasy game, which is to say mashing out the same attacks ad nauseam because the lack of depth means nothing matters. This is, however, a rarer occurrence here, and I found FF6's combat to be a lot more engaging than past and future entries.
The story is much more character-driven than other Final Fantasy games, which get too bogged down in contrivances to really resonate with me the way 6's does. Your party's bond is at the heart of the game, and everyone's little vignettes are compelling in their own ways. The opening is of course iconic in its own right, but the way the game closes out is just as indelible in my mind. I don't want to give a whole synopsis of it. By this point you're already familiar with the game and know, or you've managed to stay just as blind as I did and should go in unspoiled.
While it may not be my favorite Final Fantasy, it's still a damn good one and easily among the best. Despite my reservations and my bias, I can see what people appreciate about this game and find plenty to love myself. This is well worth checking out if it's somehow passed you by after all this time.