FFIV is kind of The JRPG Ever. It’s not bad, I didn’t dislike it, but it hasn’t actually done particularly much to stand out and has some very old RPG elements to it that somewhat stick out.

The plot, for the first two thirds of the game, is a decent surface level appropriate for the game. It’s hardly revolutionary, and even plays into some very classic tropes, but it doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, yet there’s just enough kernels of information to dig a bit deeper into the story and truly enjoy the narrative. While Cecil is a very generic protagonist, some of the supporting characters are very fun – I was very fond of Cid, Tellah, and Porom. Here’s the problem though: they don’t stick around.

FFIV has a strongly rotating party. You’ll always have Cecil, but the rest of your group is constantly switching in and out – the only person other than Cecil to join and never leave again is Edge, even though some of the other characters’ reasons for joining and leaving are very contrived. I’m considering playing the GBA version at some point just so I can keep Cid in my party, who I think would make more narrative sense than some of the characters you do have in the original/pixel remaster. Of course, some of the characters are more justified in why they leave/return – I find Tellah has a very satisfying arc over the course of this game and I wouldn’t change that. On the other hand, Rydia shows up in the underworld, says “hey I’m an adult now” after spending time in the Feymarch, and no one ever mentions it again. What did that add, exactly? Yang is also kind of the anti-Tellah. He’s cool when he’s around, but him surviving is an absolute deus ex of bullshit that should not have happened after his heroic sacrifice.

You’ll notice I mentioned “the first two thirds of the game”. Everything surrounding the moon and the Lunarians is kind of just completely unhinged and just destroys the suspension of disbelief. I genuinely think this game would have been better if the writers committed to Golbez being actually just evil and the villain of the game, rather than it being some guy we meet in the last 10 minutes of the game and Golbez was actually Cecil’s brother the whole time. The moon and Lunarians are foreshadowed a bit, but not nearly enough to have any sort of payoff and it seems like escalating the stakes for the sake of it, rather than for good storytelling.

Gameplaywise, I’m not sure that the devs of FFIV knew what a difficulty curve was. There are parts of the game which progress smoothly, but also some difficulty curves out of nowhere, and some particularly easy zones as well. This observation holds for regular encounters, bosses, and dungeons as well. You gain access to the Land of Summons and Sylvan Cave at the same time and they are completely mismatched in difficulty (Land of Summons is very easy, Sylvan Cave has batshit difficult random encounters). Bosses like Rubicante exist that can form change making it hard to time ATB around. And for every well-designed dungeon, there’s something stupid like Magnetic Cave. The endgame is also an enormous difficulty spike with Zeromus being a very difficult final boss even if you’ve breezed through the rest of the dungeon.

The rotating cast of characters also remove part of what I consider to be the fun of Final Fantasy, building and customizing your team. You don’t really get to let your party grow outside of Cecil. No matter what you do, your endgame party will consist of a paladin, white mage, dragoon, summoner/black mage, and ninja. It’s balanced, but there are other characters in this game and they’re ripped from you due to the plot (even though most of them are okay at the end). If you like Yang the monk or Edward the bard, Too Bad, you can’t use or grow them. You also lose both your sages who get both black and white magic, making Rosa your only (reliable) source of magical healing, and Rydia your main black magic user (Edge can use black magic but it’s hardly his main tool).

Ultimately, it’s fine. I’m glad I played it, I probably will be curious enough to try the GBA version someday (I really wanted to bring Cid to endgame), but as far as games go it’s Literally Okay. I had a baseline fun time (which is good, video gaming is my hobby and I hope I’d enjoy that!), but I’m not really sure that FFIV will be a game I look back on and remember fondly as much as have the sentiment “yeah that is a game that I have played” about. The highs just aren’t high enough and the lows just aren’t low enough to bring this out of The Game Ever status.

I did not grow up with FFVI. I did not play it as a child or as a teenager and I have zero nostalgia for this game. And frankly, this is unfortunate. I want to see what so many people do in this game, but I just couldn’t. I overall did not have a great time playing FFVI and I think it was kind of a bad game.

There are several problems I have with FFVI, and I’ll get into them, but I think it’s main overarching problem that just has tendrils everywhere is that it wants so badly to be taken seriously but fails to present itself in a way that actually warrants that. The plot is painted as high stakes. In World of Balance, there’s a war. In World of Ruin, the world has “ended” (quotation marks that will get an entire paragraph later on) and everyone is in despair. World of Balance is very passive – you never push along the plot, the plot happens to you as you go. Your characters’ actions are virtually never in control and the plot is very reactionary to things other people do. World of Ruin is, on the other hand, kind of just plotless for the most part. Some characters have arcs, for all I complain about the writing I think Terra’s arc is genuinely very good and I did enjoy Strago’s, but you largely go around collecting characters and getting a couple of magicite and items until you are ready for Kefka’s Tower.

The actual details of WoB especially, but also WoR, are frequently undercut by silly and/or cringe moments (special shoutout to Ultros being disgusting. I’m sure they were trying to recapture Gilgamesh but Ultros is just gross), nonsense logic, or important events happening entirely off-screen (such as the fake peace negotiations where the characters you left behind just teehee suddenly dealt with it and met up with you). Multiple times you get lore-dumped at, and then a character suddenly has a big change of heart and does something drastic that ends up in your favor (this happens with both Setzer and Ramuh).

Speaking of Ramuh, the way magic is handled in this game is also sort of nonsense. I’m already bothered by Ramuh watching over Terra and then once you show up, deciding “hey I’m going to kill myself and turn myself into a stone so that you can have magic, rather than directly helping you” – only for it to be revealed later (sort of) that magicite isn’t quite dead but a spirit willing themselves to you. But if they’re not dead, how does the empire turn espers into magicite? And why is magic only part of the world because of the Warring Triad, later Kefka, when there is an entire esper world and also blue magic is separate but “forbidden”, but also not actually forbidden but a secret. Again, the game wants you to take it seriously. It’s deep, but you have to trust that as a vibe and never look into it because it’s actually as shallow as a puddle and completely fails under even the slightest scrutiny.

A non-trivial part of the narrative just completely falling through a sieve is centered around Kefka, who actively makes every scene he’s in worse. This absolute buffoon of a clown is never shown to be taken seriously in World of Balance. All the imperial soldiers hate him. Half the time he’s on screen he’s flopping about and is showing his upside-down sprite or laughing like a madman. You fight him and win on several occasions. Yet somehow he always gains the upper hand through cowardly actions or very contrived scenarios.

And then he “ends the world”. You get a cutscene, and then awaken to Celes on the solitary island. You go to the mainland, seeing the continental plates have all shifted, get Sabin (he’s technically optional but you’d be a fool to skip him if you’re not speedrunning), get Edgar, then get Setzer/the airship. You realize pretty damn quickly between Castle Figaro and Kohlingen that.. everything is mostly fine? Then when you get the airship there are multiple towns which are completely unscathed: Jidoor, Zozo, and Thamasa have not sustained a single scratch of damage. Though NPCs talk about how shit everything is (though funny enough one points out things are actually kinda better because the Imperial soldiers aren’t occupying their town anymore), you only see this really in Mobliz, and in Tzen where Kefka uses the Light of Judgement to… destroy a single house. Really? Then the entire time you are mucking about in the world Kefka just does absolutely nothing about it even though he’s allegedly God now and is all-seeing. Even his last speech, the (thankfully) only time you see him in WoR, is him having a toddler’s tantrum because you still have hope. This isn’t nihilism, that’s a spoiled brat.

But despite all this, FFVI has good gameplay, right? Well, no, actually.

The magic system somewhat fails to be compelling narratively, but mechanically it’s even worse. Early on when only Terra and Celes have magic, it’s okay, but then you unlock espers, and then all of the characters you’re using begin a rather-quick march to become an all-powerful master of All Magic, and realistically by the end of the game you can have your important units all become omniwizards with access to every important spell. Terra and Strago have a bit more going for them – Trance becomes ridiculously overpowered later on and leads to her doing 9999 damage with virtually everything, but is useless at first because it depends on her spell repertoire for some reason. Strago’s blue magic is very useful early on especially if you get Grand Delta & Magic Guard as soon as you’re able to, but eventually you’ll just have Strago using Ultima for 9999 damage too. An honorable mention to Sabin’s blitzes which have very good longevity especially for how early in WoR you get Phantom Rush, but by the time you’re fighting Kefka his time is better spent casting Ultima/Reraise/Curaga.

Most other characters don’t have abilities worth using when they can just use magic instead. Gogo and Umaro are their own things, but things like Edgar’s tools, Relm’s sketch, Shadow’s throw, and Cyan’s bushido all get outclassed by magic earlier than the ones I mentioned above. Some abilities are also not useful at all, like Locke’s Steal/Mug (you do not need to optimize for stealing in this game, there is no point in farming consumables), and Celes’ Runic (can be used to cheese some bosses but has severe drawbacks). Then there’s Mog, who takes the worst parts of FFIII’s evoker and geomancer and combines them into one class.

Then there’s Gau. Holy hell, Gau is abysmally bad. He’s not controllable outside of “selecting a rage”, and acts as a berserker. He learns these rages on a special area of the map, the Veldt, where encounters are selected from “anything you’ve encountered up to now” and everything awards 0 EXP. So to get rages you have to grind out here. For the parts you’re required to use him, and one part you can bring him, you’re actually completely unable to access the Veldt which means he can’t learn anything new. And then for some reason in WoR when you re-recruit him, he doesn’t autolevel at all and joins at whatever you had him at at the end of WoB. Every single thing about Gau is just awfully thought out and awfully implemented where you’d think he’s a joke character.

Dungeons quality is all over the place. Most are okay. Several of them are gimmick dungeons where all enemies can inflict a specific status effect. Awful if you’re unprepared, trivial if you go to the nearest town and buy the relics that prevent against that status effect. The Cultist’s Tower is particularly abysmal, with lots of bs enemies, the reflect status, and only being able to use magic. And you can’t run from enemies or use smoke bombs. Also blue magic doesn’t count for some reason. And you can’t trance. (Which again raises the question “what is magic, exactly?”). Great dungeon. Phoenix Cave and Kefka’s Tower also are multi party dungeons which have their own problem because the game does nothing to encourage you in WoR to rotate or balance your party and level multiple guys (critically, making people you don’t use not gain new magic), so you have to drag characters around who range from not as good as your main team to actively dead weight.

The boss fights also vary wildly in quality, with some real stinkers in there. Many of the same problems with dungeons: some bosses are status-heavy and immunity can cheese them but you’ll get crushed if you’re not prepared. The Tentacle boss in Figaro Castle is bad, unless you have Hermes Sandals. The Ultros fight in the Opera House is awful because of the party you’re supposed to use, and Ultros casting Level 3 confuse which is a right killer at that point in time. Ultima Weapon sometimes just users Mind Blast then you Lose. Any and every boss that can inflict the frozen status on your party, which you can’t protect against.

These things all add up to a game that’s very hard to enjoy even at the best of times. I know this is a really popular Final Fantasy game but I just absolutely could not get into it and didn’t find it any fun. The plot is actively kind of bad and nonsense, but at the same time so heavy. FFVI would be a lot better if it were lighthearted, but it isn’t that, and we have a game that’s story just kind of doesn’t work on its own axioms that it sets up, and without the gameplay to make it worthwhile to play for that alone. Very disappointed in this entry.