Final Fantasy VI

I am about to be "very harsh" on this beloved game. If you love it too much to read criticism, stop here. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinions, just expressing my own and venting a bit while I'm at it.

• Genre: RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: No, I talk about the story a bit. I try to be a bit vague though.
• Time Played: 35 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine, I drew it out a bit trying to do/find everything, but it's also helped by some of the QOL of the Pixel Remaster.
• Did I cry: I almost teared up once.
• Soundtrack: It's pretty typical Final Fantasy fare. Maybe it seems like nothing special because I've played plenty of games that reused the themes, and though a few are noticeable and recognizable, I don't think it really stands out too beyond others. 
• Why I played: It's been on my list of games to replay for awhile. I never finished it and I was having a discussion with a friend about how I could barely remember the game and he seemed to think I played far less than I claimed. To be fair I estimated at about 3/4. I was closer to around 60% - I just forgot so much of the game because it had been so long since I played. We're talking 25+ years.
• Jank: It's not too janky, I imagine the current iteration accounts for a lot of the old bugs. That said, I still had the game lock up on me a couple times in weird ways that required me to restart it.
• Difficulty: Kind of a weird one. I'd almost say it was pretty balanced for an old RPG. At least earlier on it felt like it wanted me to use everything at my disposal, but it quickly fell into the trap of old rpgs where special enemies aren't affected by anything other than pure damage, so the only real answer to your problems is grinding + maximizing damage output. I didn't use 80% of the spell list because 90% of the time they were useless.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm... disappointed actually. I didn't think I was going to completely change my mind - I considered it a mid-tier Final Fantasy of what I had previously played, but I think after finishing it, I may drop it a few places. I was hopeful that upon finishing the game I would see what so many others do, but I just didn't.
• Recommend to others: Honestly, I would not. There are plenty of people who sing the praises of Final Fantasy VI and I don't need or want to be one of them. If someone asks me if they should play it, I would say they should if they have exhausted almost all other options. There are about 4 Final Fantasy games I would still recommend it over.

I have a lot of friends that are huge fans of Final Fantasy VI, so much to say it's one of the best games of all time, and at the very least the best Final Fantasy, and whether they know they're blinded by it or not, I'm chalking it 100% up to nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, I understand nostalgia plays a part in some old games I enjoy as well, and I try to recognize that when discussing them, I try to speak with a subjective tone "This is what I like" rather than "this is the best" but I also think it's easy to distinguish whether it's purely nostalgia or not, when some games can be introduced to someone for the first time to positive reception. Granted this isn't technically my first time playing Final Fantasy VI, but I had a better outlook toward it when my memory of it was much more hazy.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad game and I'm sure, especially for the time, it was fantastic. It predates most of my favorite SNES RPGs(Except for the other Final Fantasy games), even if just by a little bit, but I think for people who were just a bit older than me, following the series as it was released, when you go from Final Fantasy, the first one, being what it is, and jumping all the way to the incorrectly titled Final Fantasy III, in the west, there is a lightyear of difference. Sure our SNES Final Fantasy II(FFIV), was a bit of a stepping stone, but something can seem so much more impressive when you don't have to take as many steps to get there. Look at other long ongoing iterative series. The annual releases of sports games and Call of Duty. Year-to-year indistinguishable, but take out more of the released in-between and I'm sure the advancements look far more impressive.

The writing/story is just not that great, it's disjointed and just wants to throw a bunch of events at you. There are a couple stand out moments that do feel truly good, but others just felt like they were stuffing as much as they could into the game. It could be perceived as ambitious at the time, but to me it just feels like it lacks direction. The huge cast of "main characters" is somewhat telling of it too. There are RPGs with bigger casts, sure, but often those treat many of the cast as "soldier", someone with a line or two of unique dialog to give them personality but otherwise not integral to the story, or just a quirky character to give the world more personality. This tries to do both, as so many of the characters are optional at various points of the game and for a lot of these times they wouldn't even specify who was speaking, I imagine it's just a standard dialog spoken by whoever is present. The characters both mattered and didn't, and that adds to the lack of direction. It doesn't feel natural in the way a modern game would usually play this type of scenario by having dynamic variations of the scenes. I know it might not be fair to compare a game that is over 30 year old to a modern game, but this a 30 year old game that people still today claim is one of the best of all time. One that has some of the most zealous fans. One whose fans hundreds of times told me that MY favorite rpgs are garbage by comparison. I like to think that doesn't sway my perception of this game, especially considering I held it in a somewhat positive view before playing it this time around, but I couldn't help but look at it with a critical eye as a I played it.

I think the game has some really fun stuff, but I also think this is far from a perfect game. I certainly don't think it's the BEST... anything. I think it's cool they tried to give every character a unique thing to do. I think it's not cool that later in the game the best thing to do is almost always the highest damaging spell with the exception of some "game breaking" strategies. I think it's cool they had a bunch of unique characters. I think it's not cool that because there is no actual "main character", which should have definitively been Terra, that there is a lack of focus on character building and they feel straight up poorly written. Some are better written than others, just because they're more fun and they do special things with them, but those are the character interaction that have nothing to do with the rest of the party. Overall it feels like this was a draft, something someone made where they just tried to put all the things they thought were cool in it and went with it without trimming the fat or refining it.

Based off how so many people perceive this game, I expected some excellent writing, great character development, engaging stories, these are usually the things I value in an RPG. Also I expected Kefka to be more than just a power hungry clown and that's 100% all he is. The way people spoke of their hatred for him and how great of a villain he was, I expected there to be something multi-faceted about him, some great acts of villainy to make me seethe. Instead it's just a cartoon villain played straight, and he doesn't even do anything that makes it feel so personal that I want revenge against him personally. The characters you COULD care about him doing in are people you barely even meet before they are gone, or just otherwise are someone you've seen or heard a couple times. Sure he's bad, but the story isn't personal and everything he did was exactly what you expected him to do. Pretty cool final boss fight though, that was a cool way of doing that. It would be even more cool if the system supported more experimentation, or required you to do specific things the game had trained you on earlier, it had potential to be a lot more, but that's more something to expect out of a more modern RPG, I understand, but it wasn't outside the capabilities. That said, because of how their system works, because so many characters are optional, because so many espers/spells are optional, there are so many strategies you can't actually require of players without soft-locking the game. Another detriment of having so many things by "optional", even if it makes it more "dynamic".

Regardless, one thing I do wanna praise, I think is a well known aspect of the game - the art. Even though some of the art is enhanced for the "pixel remaster", I know from previous iterations and even this one - as you may be able to tell from my screenshots I played in "classic mode" to imitate scanlines and such. The art is fantastic, and one of the most impressive aspects is how they worked within limitations to make so much of it appear hand drawn or painted. When viewed in HD you can see all the pixels and some sections just look like weird splatters to texture thing or weird variations of dithering. When viewed in a "classic" view, the art's intent pops. This isn't necessarily unique to Final Fantasy VI, but I think it stands out as a notable example. It's one of the games that makes an argument for those who still bother using CRT TVs.

And to mention a couple other things I like, even though I complained about the overall writing, there are some very cute cheeky and fun moments. I also appreciated how they would have the closest equivalent to an in-battle cutscene from time to time. Characters interacting during a battle, and walking around. They should have used this bit a bit more, as it would have really added something to the identity of the game.

Despite the venting I didn't hate the game. I just didn't love it and was hoping for so much more from such a highly regarded game. I have to vent because when I think of nearly every criticism I've heard of any of my like... all my favorite rpgs, they almost always came from someone who regards Final Fantasy VI as one of the best of all. People whose favorite RPG is some other random rpg, I generally don't get these kind of comments from. Well except those who only play computer rpgs, or western rpgs and hate "JRPGs", but that's a whole different discussion.