I started Final Fantasy VI at least three times now. I started it a couple of times via PC SNES emulators of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but it was the third time on the SNES Classic where I finally saw credits. It took me about 35 hours to conclude that it was “okay”.
The game started very strong and maintained a great pace until the World of Ruin. I loved meeting the new characters, seeing the new places, and the escalating absurdity of Ultros. The soundtrack was on point from the very first minute and was the timeless highlight of the entire game. It far outstripped the visuals which I found a bit dodgy in spots. Mode 7 was all the rage back then, but it did not age well at all. The same could be said with a lot of the more realistic looking backgrounds.
Chrono Trigger is the gold standard for JRPGs from the SNES era for me — especially from the visuals standpoint which I found to be very cohesive. The characters, the enemies, and the backgrounds all fit well in that classic. By comparison, Final Fantasy VI looked like they had three different artists with three divergent styles creating the backgrounds, enemies, and heroes. When they decided to mash them together, the results were inconsistent at best.
I decided to play the game with a revised translation by the Final Fantasy VI Relocalization Project because I wanted minimize the dated nature of this game. The translation patch also included bug fixes (and introduced a minor text based one) along with small rebalances, but I still found many of the characters hugely overpowered and too useful to not use. Edgar, Celes, Sabin, and Cyan were my A squad. They took down Kefka. I only used other characters because there were situations where I was forced to manage three squads of characters in epic battles or to solve environment puzzles.
Relm, Gau, Setzer, and Strago were effectively useless without magic spells so I invested time rotating characters and assigning them different Espers so they could become viable in combat. I ended up with a well rounded team where everyone can heal or revive. They weren’t all as effective as Celes, but being able to have anyone cast Arise was a bit broken.
Unfortunately, like I have done so with many JRPGs, I found myself fairly under-leveled during my run up to Kefka. I was able to fell just about every boss encounter with ease except for him. I remedied that with a couple of hours of farming, but it wasn’t fun.
I also found the idea behind Active Time Battle’s Active mode silly and stuck with Wait mode. Trying to navigate a poorly organized list of spells isn’t my idea of fun. Inputting fighting game motions in a JRPG? That was fun. I still found the idea behind Sabin’s Blitz commands to be the highlight mechanic of the game. He was a powerful or risky character to pick depending on your own proficiency with command inputs which is not something we saw much of after Final Fantasy VIII. Even then, the commands in that game didn’t ask players to pull off half circle or 270 degree motions. Oh, and they didn’t explain how input those commands so there was a lot of early trial and error.
I haven’t relied on an FAQ or walkthrough for just playing a game in ages, but Final Fantasy VI brought that back in a major way. There are things that just aren’t explained well even when you read through thick manual. Speaking of manual, the one included in Final Fantasy VI reads more like a mini-walkthrough than a manual. It even spoils a bit of the story.
Despite its shortcomings towards the latter act of the game, I’m glad I finally finished Final Fantasy VI. I was happy to have finally experienced its wonderful soundtrack in context. I enjoyed many of the battle scenarios; they made good use of the large cast of characters that many other games in this genre do not. I liked the idea of the World of Ruin, but it quickly felt like someone threw a carefully arranged deck of cards and then the game made me play 52-card pick up. It had a few bright spots, but that final chunk of the game felt like a depressing slog which is kind of fitting considering what happened.
Verdict:
It was okay