As I've said in my Top 100 Games series, Final Fantasy V is my favorite mainline entry in the series. It may lack the large scale, operatic feel, and mature storytelling of most of the later games, but I find it to be the most involved, engaging, and replayable games in the series on a mechanical level. That being said, having replayed Final Fantasy VI recently, I don't think gave that game enough respect. FFVI is my second favorite mainline Final Fantasy game, and it really excels at everything FFV lacks, and vice versa. It's a bit of a mess mechanically, but it delivers one of my favorite narratives in the entire medium with an incredibly well-produced presentation that I'd argue even puts Chrono Trigger to shame.
Structurally, Final Fantasy VI is a fairly unique entry within the series as you can easily divide it up into two halves. The first half is a linear rollercoaster that frenetically tosses you from one scenario to the next. In the span of less than eight hours, you will have already participated in several strategic battles, taken a raft ride, swam underwater, explored and eventually battled a ghost train, took part in an opera, ridden around on a Chocobo, and met at least ten of the game's whopping 14 party members. Grinding often isn't particularly necessary, and you can usually press forward without much difficulty, making it one of the briskest-paced stretches in any Final Fantasy game in my opinion. The second half, on the other hand, plays out more like an early Breath Of The Wild. You can access the final battle whenever you want, but it's for the best that you set out into the world, gather up all your party members and complete their arcs, and train yourself for the coming battle. This segment is a lot slower-paced and boasts the majority of FFVI's optional content. Personally, I do vastly prefer the first half, but it is pretty restrictive. For much of this part of the game, there really isn't much freedom for builds or player expression and you may even have a party member forced onto you that you don't want to use (cough Gau cough). The World Of Ruin isn't as thrilling as the first half, but you do get a lot more freedom to assemble your party and tackle the character paths in whichever order you want which I find really enjoyable.
I wouldn't say that Final Fantasy VI is necessarily a bad game in terms of its gameplay, because it really isn't. It's a solid turn-based RPG at its core with a decent amount of class variety, a neat relic system that allows you to give each character unique perks, a wide variety of memorable enemy types, and the ATB system at what is arguably its most refined form to date. And as I said, it's probably the briskest game in the series rarely feeling like it's padding out its runtime which is always a plus. I'd easily take all that over the first four games, along with VIII's stupid junction system, X-2's sluggish transformations, and the simplified real-time gameplay the later games had. That being said, when compared directly to Final Fantasy V, there are a noticeable amount of downgrades. The overworld design is quite a bit worse in my opinion, as despite technically being more linear, FFVI doesn't do all that great a job at pointing a first-time player in the right direction. Sometimes, progressing the story without a guide can even feel a bit arbitrary, with you needing to talk to the exact right people in the right order which is an RPG trope I never liked all that much. As I mentioned, the general level of freedom you have for building your party is a lot weaker than in FFV as well. There's no job system this time, and aside from the relics and picking your party members in the World Of Ruin, I just feel there isn't nearly as much depth to the combat here. There is the esper system, but you can mostly just use it to allow everyone to cast magic equally so you could argue it gives the game even less depth.
But worst of all, Final Fantasy VI has a number of kinda baffling character gimmicks that feel like they're more trouble than they're worth deal with. Gau only being able to learn moves on the Veldt by leaving the party is a direct downgrade from the classes in V that could learn moves like the Mystic Knight. Shadow randomly leaving the party every time you battle is really annoying to deal with. Having to memorize Sabin's blitzes is a real pain, the sheer amount of important attacks that don't target enemies cripple characters like Mog, Setzer's slot machine isn't especially fun either, both of the optional party members kinda suck ass, there are so many arbitrary restrictions combined with how limited these characters are that FFVI feels incredibly unbalanced, especially compared to its predecessor. Though, that's not to suggest the game is unfairly difficult by any means, Final Fantasy VI's poor balancing goes both ways. Certain characters can easily one-shot most encounters if you set them up correctly, and that can help give the game an extra level of enjoyment, but is it really fair for me to praise the game for getting enjoyment out of it through exploits and cheesing the system? Well, yeah, of course, but it doesn't help the general messy feeling that FFVI's gameplay can give.
And yet, despite all these issues, I am willing to overlook all of it because the story Final Fantasy VI manages to tell with the SNES's hardware is phenomenal. It's a perfect blend of high stakes plot and intimate character drama. On one side, there's the global-scale narrative involving a war between the humans and the magical Espers, a rebellion trying to stop a fascistic empire from reviving that magic for their own means, and a sadistic clown named Kefka who attempts to and succeeds at destroying the world. It all seems quite bleak, but Square also knows exactly when to sprinkle in some genuinely funny moments of levity and that classic Final Fantasy goofiness to keep the tone feeling balanced. Despite the world literally being destroyed halfway through the game, it's balanced out by the heartwarming payoff of seeing the cast reunite after that event and get their revenge. On the other side, there's how nearly every party member has their own individual character arc, backstory, and journey that they go on over the course of the game, which of course is where the World Of Ruin comes in with its many individual subplots. So not only does FFVI have one of my favorite plots in a Final Fantasy game, with one of the series' cruelest antagonists to date and a fair share of truly iconic twists, but it also has several of my favorite Final Fantasy characters.
Terra is the shining standout for me, her journey of self-discovery and accepting her half-esper identity makes for a really compelling and fresh "sort-of-protagonist". Locke and Cyan have some truly screwed up backstories that made me desperate to see them find closure. Edgar and Sabin have a lot less baggage, but they feel like a really comforting presence whenever they're on screen, always giving off the sense that they have control of the situation. And as much as its role in the gameplay kinda annoys me, I'll admit that Shadow popping up and dipping out on what feels like a whim, only going where the wind takes him makes for a pretty endearing anti-hero. And then, of course, there's Celes, probably the game's best character. She has some similarities to Terra in that she can use magic and used to join the Empire, but unlike Terra, she was a general of the Empire out of her own will and as such has a lot more to prove and atone for. It's both really endearing and heartwarming to watch Celes warm up, develop a connection to Locke, shrug off her past in the Empire, and start expressing herself a bit more. But on the other hand, Celes also gets pushed to darker places than most of the other characters and watching her power through that is as heartbreaking as it is powerful.
What elevates the story is the immaculate presentation, which I'd argue might be the best out of any SNES RPG. I know, that's a really high bar, Chrono Trigger and Trials Of Mana certainly come very close and even surpass FFVI in certain areas (environments and music for Chrono, character art and colors for Trials), but Final Fantasy VI has my favorite presentation collectively. The artwork is absolutely stellar, with a somber but bold color palette that helps this unique fantasy/sci-fi world really stand out, and Mode 7 is used often to visually striking effect (that opening sequence especially). The character designs are all instantly recognizable and boast a ton of varied expressions and sprites, the backgrounds are utterly gorgeous, and there are so many little hidden details everywhere. I love the freezeframes whenever a new character is introduced, the inventive ways the game shifts perspective, it's all so slick. But even beyond just the visuals, the character acting in FFVI is absolutely incredible, breathing so much extra life into these fairly simplistic sprites. The cast is constantly moving around, emoting, and interacting with the things around them and it almost makes playing FFVI feel like watching a play.
And then, of course, there's the music. I don't know if I've mentioned this but Final Fantasy VI has my favorite soundtrack out of any of the mainline games. VIII and XV come close, and Crystal Chronicles obviously has my favorite overall, but I think FFVI's soundtrack easily stands out as Nobuo Uematsu's magnum opus. It's a sweeping orchestral score that pushes the SNES's sound hardware to its absolute limits. The character themes are obviously the highlights, with the ones for Terra, Edgar & Sabin, Celes, Relm, and Shadow being especially powerful, though the battle themes are also pretty stellar across the board, from one of the series' best Normal Battle themes, to the absurdly catchy Decisive Battle, to the tense Battle To The Death, to of course, the absolute 20-minute behemoth that is Dancing Mad.
There's one moment in Final Fantasy VI in particular that manages to perfectly combine every single aspect that makes this game great. It's a moment that combines an operatic sense of scale, charming levity, engaging and dramatic character work, fun and varied gameplay setpieces, music that punches far above its weight, stunning visuals, stellar character acting, and a slick, confident delivery. You probably already know what it is at this point, it's the opera sequence. Remember when I said playing FFVI feels like watching a play? Well, the opera scene is pretty much the purest form of this. Square managed to get the SNES to pull off a convincing 10+ minute opera, with multiple acts signaled by a shift in music, a massive opera house setting that manages to create an impressive sense of depth, actual lyrics that perfectly parallel Celes's internal development, and a bunch of genuinely fun gameplay interactions like trying to remember the lyrics, performing a dance, and running across the rafters to stop Ultros from ruining the play. It's a perfect video game moment, easily one of my favorites in any RPG, and a wonderful showcase of what gaming is able to accomplish as an art form.
As I've repeatedly stated before, a game doesn't need to excel at everything to be one of my favorites. As long as it manages to stand out in at least one aspect, that's already enough. I could complain about Super Metroid's somewhat stiff controls, but the fact that its world design still surpasses every other metroidvania means I don't really care. I could complain about The Origami King's battle system for lacking depth, but it has some of the most heartfelt writing I've seen come from a Mario game so I don't really care. So while I could totally write a laundry list of all the little issues I have with FFVI's gameplay, it gave us the opera scene, and it displayed a mastery of using every aspect of the medium to deliver a compelling character-driven narrative that still outclasses most others I've seen. That's already enough for me to call it a personal favorite, perfect in its imperfections.
5/5 Stars
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