Final Fantasy VI - Review

Review Breakdown
Battle System	3
Interaction	3
Originality	3
Story	4
Music & Sound	4
Visuals	3
Challenge	Easy to Medium
Completion Time	25 to 80 hrs.
Overall
Detailed backgrounds... Fairly basic sprites.

Widely believed to be the quintessential RPG, Final Fantasy 6 has a great many things in it's favor, not the least of which is a unique and powerful narrative. However, certain aspects of Final Fantasy 6 have not aged gracefully, particularly the visual style and especially the combat system.

At this point in the history of the Final Fantasy series, the Active Time Battle system had only been in place for two previous games, and in a recognizable form for only one. Final Fantasy 6 made only a few changes from the system of Final Fantasy 5, replacing a fairly extensive Job Class system and four main characters for an extended roster of characters with fixed jobs. These changes, unfortunately, do little or nothing to make Final Fantasy 6 an improvement from a tactical standpoint. Where Final Fantasy 5 offered mounds of possible character customization - and therefore a huge amount of tactical situations to consider - Final Fantasy 6 offers instead a fairly predictable set of circumstances and very little customization. The ATB in this incarnation requires little strategy beyond See Foe, Hit Foe, et cetera. Although the Esper system does provide certain interesting possibilities, the limits placed on this system by the game make it almost an afterthought in combat.

One of the game's stronger points lies in it's plotline. Though the setup is fairly standard - an evil empire plots to take over the world - the way the narrative works is something special. In Final Fantasy 6, there is no obvious main character. Compelling arguments can be made for nearly every playable character, but there simply is no one character who stands above the rest as the Paragon of Virtue or the Warrior Who Rises from Humble Beginnings. Every character is flawed and surprisingly human; they make mistakes. They aren't so much heroes as people who get caught up in a very strange period in history, and this is what makes the story of Final Fantasy 6 so powerful. So often in RPGs the characters you play as are invincible paragons guided by some higher force or purpose, entirely invulnerable to human error or human weakness. It's very refreshing to play as characters who feel human. It is, ultimately, the characters of Final Fantasy 6 and the player's ability to relate to them which makes it such an enjoyable game.

The control of Final Fantasy 6 feels a little laggy in nearly every respect. It's a little unclear what causes this, but it isn't a major problem as nothing in the game really requires a great deal of fine control. Menus are fairly well constructed and link to one another in an intuitive fashion - Relic menu to Equipment menu, and so on.

You all know the tune!

Compositionally, the music is considered some of Nobuo Uematsu's best work ever, and with good reason. The themes of Final Fantasy 6 work very well not only as a pure soundtrack, an impetus and magnifier for the events and emotions displayed onscreen, but also on a more visceral level. The soundtrack of Final Fantasy 6 is simply very good music, and would be regardless of whether or not it had been featured in a game.

Although the visuals and soundtrack of Final Fantasy 6 are of high quality, there isn't anything particularly unusual about them. Likewise, the combat system is very similar to previous incarnations of the ATB, and though Final Fantasy 6 lacks a Job Class system, it's Esper system is little more than a variation on magic-learning systems found elsewhere. The plot, however, makes a number of choices that would make it unusual even by today's standards.

A tricky business in general, Ted Woolsey has done a decent job with the translation of Final Fantasy 6. It does, however, come off as inappropriately funny at times, and even a little slapdash. It appears Mr. Woolsey took to a fair number of liberties with the original Japanese, inserting American slang phrases and replacing curses with such ridiculous substitutions as "Son of a submariner". Although this phrase-swapping can be irritating at times, they don't overpower the story or get in it's way enough to be truly irritating, and in general works well as an example of decent early translation.

Final Fantasy 6 provides very little in the way of replay value. Character customization is very limited, and the game forces you to use nearly every character at several crucial moments in the game, thus demanding that you level up each and every one of them. There are only one or two mini-games, and although nearly all of the second half of the game is technically side quest, it is unlikely to say the least that a player would intentionally skip them.

The opera scene holds fond memories for many gamers.

For it's time, the visuals of Final Fantasy 6 were absolutely stunning. While the sprites were not that highly detailed, the enemy combat stills as well as the games' many backdrops were, and still are, considered by many to be the pinnacle of SNES artistry. Compared to modern technology, the visuals are a bit pixilated, and probably more accessible to those who played the game when it was first released. Character design may or may not be a sticking point for some people - designs by Yoshitaka Amano tend to be willowy and pastel in nature, something not everybody is going to go for. For my part, I found the overall visual style to be a little fractured, and found that the character sprites didn't mesh well with or really even resemble very much the more detailed character portraits.

Generally speaking, Final Fantasy 6 is not a difficult game. With preset character affinities and abilities, a player who pays a bit of attention to party makeup and equipment will find no difficulty at all in breezing through most of the game unscathed. Due to the large number of side quests - practically the entire second half of the game is optional - Final Fantasy 6 can be completed in anywhere between twenty five and eighty hours.

Along with some of it's contemporaries, Final Fantasy 6 marked the beginning of a renaissance era for RPGs. They began a slow climb out of obscurity and hopeless cliché towards a more compelling, cinematic approach to gameplay and story. Although RPGs, and video games in general, still have quite a lot to answer for in terms of general lack of originality, Final Fantasy 6 shows definitively how much of an effect a single game that dares to do something different can have on an entire section of the gaming populace. Final Fantasy 6 would make a great introduction to RPGs for beginners, as well as a good history lesson for most of the rest of us.