Final Fantasy VI. Widely considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Certainly one of the greatest games of the 16-bit era, does this still hold up today? I came into this playthrough disagreeing with this notion. I still think the game is not as flawless as is widely believed, however, I have relented in some of my complaints about the game. Let's take a closer look.
Let's begin by taking a look at the story. In a world where 1000 years ago, magic ravaged the land... a magic using girl walks into Narshe in Magitek Armor. Yes, that's right, Magitek Armor. Anyway, the evil empire is trying to extract magic power from espers, a type of creature that can willfully change itself into magicite, a type of stone that can give the bearer great magical power. Anyway, a clown general of the evil empire's army takes control and finds the source of all magic and then makes a tower for himself. That's the basic story. The story is very nicely fleshed out with a myriad amount of characters, an opera scene, as well as some lovely side characters such as the Emperor and General Leo... and then we hit the second half of the game. Here, the story is non-existent with merely a few minor looks into the characters as you're forced to re-recruit you're entire team... of 14 characters. Oh yes, and we've decided to tell the second half of the game using a completely different main character. All in all, I consider the story a weak point of this game. Yes, there is a good narrative with a very strong villain, however, the lack of story encompassing the entire second half of the game is completely inexcusable.
Moving on to graphics and music. There are very few games from the SNES that can truly compare to this game. Only one comes to mind, and that is Chrono Trigger. The opera scene was truly an achievement in video game graphics and music for the time, with the amount of sprites displayed, as well as the quality of the music including approximated singing voices... in 16-bit sound!!!! Anyway, this is the first Final Fantasy to deviate from a high fantasy setting and move into more of a steampunk setting. It works well, and there are a large variety of areas from snow filled towns to classic dungeons to factories to caves to castles. The attack animations are colorful and varied, though I still say the animation for Meteor is completely out of place. The music I would vote as the best music to appear on the SNES. The sheer volume of tracks is enormous, and it is difficult to think of one that is not memorable in some way. I've already talked about the Opera scene, however, there are also many others. Terra's theme, Zozo's Theme, Dancing Mad, just to name a few.
Now lets move on to the battle systems. As I mentioned earlier, there are 14 characters in the game, each one having their own special ability. These range widely, from being able to absorb magic, to inputting keyboard commands for special attacks, to learning various monster attacks, to sketching enemies to copy their attacks. Basically, almost all the different Final Fantasy V classes are represented in VI in one of two ways, thtough these special abilities, or with relics. Relics function as either something you can equip to gain an ability, such as a Dragoon's jump command, or can increase power or stats or reduce magic costs, etc.
The other major system of the game are Espers. Equipping an esper, which can be done on any character (save Umaro the berserk yeti), will teach the character specific spells after defeating enemies and gaining AP. Also, if a character levels up while having an esper equipped they can gain bonuses to their stats. This actually is the only way of increasing a characters stats, and if used correctly can be one of the most overpowered systems in all of Final Fantasy. (Yes, I realize the single most broken system will be rearing its ugly head pretty soon).
Levelling is done normally through experience, and the game does a pretty good job in keeping the power level of enemies on curve with your power, I will say, there is one point where this is not optimal. When you get into the World of Ruin, you get your final airship pretty quickly. From here, the next few areas all have underpowered enemies, to account for the fact that you may not have used the specific characters forced upon you in the beginning of the World of Ruin in the first half of the game and therefore may be underpowered. The point is, there's not really a great point that directly proceeds the difficulty of the end of the World of Balance. It is not really a big deal, but it has always been something that bothered me.
The postgame consists of a large dungeon called the Dragon's Den, where you must split into 3 parties to unlock paths and defeat 8 dragons, each of which will make new sections of the cave available. After defeating these dragons you will come to the first Super Boss of the game, the Czar Dragon. He combines the powers of all the dragons with a barrier change type ability. Defeating the Czar Dragon unlocks 2 items. The first is the Soul Shrine, an area that is an 128-fight gauntlet, including the 8 dragons of the Dragon's Den and the Czar Dragon himself. The second, is the true super boss of the game, Omega Weapon. This is a true super boss with deadly attacks and counter attacks. Overall, the postgame content is really good. The fights in the Dragon's Den are all of a high difficulty level with different twists. In one you have to survive a series of attacks until it literally drops dead. Another you have to drain all of its MP, etc. In the Soul Shrine, you get the ability to obtain multiple copies of otherwise unobtainable items and equipment, plus the challenge of having to fight 9 very difficult bosses back to back with no chance to heal or re-equip items in between. Finally, Omega Weapon is a very good super boss... maybe not on the level of Final Fantasy Dimensions... but it is up there. Very good difficulty, and was very satisfying to defeat.
In conclusion, I can understand why this is considered such a great game. A very good story, paired with wonderful graphics and music and some highly engrossing systems. However, it is hard for me to get over some of the things that happen in between the two worlds. There are some things that lead me to believe that the two halves of the game were developed entirely separately, maybe even as two games. I will say, if that is the case, than these would be two of the best games ever on the SNES. Together, though, they may not be entirely perfect... close though
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