Final Fantasy VI is my favourite game of all time. I’ve played it, start to finish, at least 40 times. I’ve played it on emulator, on console, with hacks and without, with various challenges, and to the point I can almost play it blindfolded. It’s never gotten boring, and the only complaint I’ve ever had is its low difficulty level.
<3 FFVI
My thoughts exactly !! I’ll never tire of this wonderful, wonderful game 
FFVI is one of those games that I could never really explain why its so satisfying to play. Is it because of the dozen or so playable characters? Is it because of its non-existent difficulty or immensely breakable gameplay? Is it the nostalgia glasses?
I guess there are somethings the world will never know.
It def. has a special place in my heart, but it has its flaws. The story kind of falls apart in the World of Ruin(except for the final battle). I was also miffed me how customizable the characters were - it makes them have less personality, and the game is too easy when everyone can cast Ultima.
Zeppelin did an “FFVI essay contest” a bajillion years ago. I wonder if those essays are archived somewhere.
For its time FFVI was a fantastic, ground breaking game. Having finished the game relatively recently, its aged pretty well compared to many of its contemporaries. Its a shallower, simpler and shorter game than I had remembered. I think the characters’ depth is also a bit overemphasized. I was overall surprised at how easy the game was as I was able to finish the game with most characters having most magics without the least grinding involved, which I felt I was doing all the time when I was younger. I was very surprised at how broken the game was to play and how overpowered many of the characters were.
FFVI is one of those games that struck the right balance of pacing, music, story and characters even if these things have since been done better by other games and that is what left an impression on so many people.
When is that zeppelin asshole gonna finish his shrine anyway? God, what a tool. Can’t even half-ass his way through finishing a video game website. I’ll bet he amounts to literally nothing in life.
I’ve been waiting since FF6 came out for a game good enough to dethrone it. The closest so far are Suikoden 2 and Skyward Sword, but I’m still waiting.
I’m not. Xenoblade Chronicles came out last year and has become the best RPG I’ve played since FFT.
I’ve heard good things about XB but haven’t played it yet. And might not ever, because reasons.
original Nintendo Player’s Guide
Man, I remember that. If not for the Guide, would anyone have ever found out how to get the uber-powerful, but impossible-to-find-on-your-own items like the Moogle Charm and Ultima Shield? Sometimes I think Square had some deal with Nintendo and the other strategy guide companies, to put those items in the game, so that players would have to buy the strategy guides.
broken the game was to play
for sure, it seemed like they threw the gameplay together at the last minute. There wasn’t a lot of planning involved, more like “wouldn’t it be cool if we put this in?”, without any thought about how it would play out as the game progressed. Did they really think that someone was going to be able to utilize all 255 of Gau’s rages? Or all of Strago’s blue magic? Or Realm’s sketching ability? Or all of Shadow’s throwing items? With the character special abilities and all the spells, there’s too much going on. And, as you say, it just degenerates into learning the latest Fire 2/Ice 2/Lightning 2, or Fire 3… etc., then Ultima.
I wish they had just stuck with each character having a set of special abilities, no teaching spells to everybody. And given more thought to the effect the abilities and special items would have on gameplay. This would have made the game more strategic, and given each character more distinction.
I think the characters’ depth is also a bit overemphasized.
I would disagree with this. There is a lot depth to the characters, but there’s not a lot of dialogue. But that is a good thing in this instance, because you don’t have characters endlessly examining their inner life, a la FF8. However, as I said, the story collapses in the World of Ruin - stops being linear, and there’s little interaction between chars. I prefer a linear story. Seems just like they sloughed it off at the last minute.
the gameplay was sloppily put together with a lot of ideas that the developers thought would be cool, but with little thought about how it would all work.
But that being said, the story is timeless and I agree with Dragon God that I will always like FF6.
There are a lot of better RPGs than XB that have been made in the past generation. XB was an impressive piece of work and if you like single player MMOs, you will like it a lot. I wouldn’t give it more than a 3.5-4/5 though. It is however the better of the 3 controversial RPGs that were released for the Wii and it was much better than Tales of Symphonia 2. The fact we were sold crap like infinite undiscovery only makes XB look better than it actually was.
Tales of Vesperia, the Mass Effect trilogy, Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky, Tactics Ogre, Valkyria Chronicles, Ni no Kuni are better RPGs that came out in the past gen, just to name the first few games that come to mind on all systems.
Curtis: I have no idea how you came to interpret what I said that way. The skills of the characters are overpowered and actually diminish how much magic you use and as you progress and occasionally use magic, you actually learn all the magic anyway without grinding. As for character depth, dialogue is really important. The lack of dialogue means fewer interactions and less depth. There just isn’t that much that happens for each person since there are so many things. Each character is defined by a couple events and that’s it. They were fortunate to have a colorful translation that made them endearing. As I said, despite that, they struck the right balance, which makes it ok. I agree that FF8 was aggravating, but FF8’s major problem was one of pacing. As soon as you hit the 2nd CD, the game grinds to a halt and becomes really boring. The music also really didn’t help. FF6 was a more consistent and faster paced game than FF8, which had moments of brilliance with lots of space in between.
I’ve been trying to get my wife to play FF6 and Chrono Trigger for a while now (though I did get my father playing Chrono Trigger, which he likes but cannot keep up with a faster paced ATB system as well as a turn-based). I was tempted to play them myself but she didn’t want me to ruin it for her :p. Love the game, though not my favorite in the series (still to this day belongs to FF4).
XB is a really good game that I need to finish someday. As a collector as well these days I laughed when I got that game on release day and about a month later it skyrockted to over $100 in price. Gamestop tried to get me to sell it back to them for about a $10 loss and I just laughed in their face.
Bioware games are a good segue into the genre for people who might be intimidated by MMOs or something like Tales, but calling Mass Effect competitively great is a long shot. It’s more like a really good Babyz First RPG than a masterpiece. If Xenoblade is worse than watered down John Williams serenading a cast of insufferable stereotypes reading teleprompter dialogue that remembered to be branched but forgot to be moving, I feel a little less bad about not having played it yet.
That’s a pretty big “if,” though. I already know The Last Story wasted the shit out of ME (IMO, IMO! Put the boulders down you freakishly strong nitpickers) so this comparison business is already a little debased.
Man, I remember that. If not for the Guide, would anyone have ever found out how to get the uber-powerful, but impossible-to-find-on-your-own items like the Moogle Charm and Ultima Shield?
Or to wait at the end of the Floating Continent until 0:05? x_x
I would’ve since I was playing with power. Nintendo Power!
But yeah, it was a well known practice back in the day for developers to include obscure secrets so that they would get coverage within the video game magazines of the day. Although the Ultima Shield might have been stumbled upon since the game did make a big deal out of giving a Cursed Shield to you and why would a game do that to you with out it meaning something.
Going back and playing these old SNES games really highlights the limitations of the platform. Personally I think it’s amazing that Square was able to do what they did. FF6 is still my favorite in the series… FF7 was and still is a great game but now that I’m 35 and not 20 it just seems juvenile in a way that FF6 doesn’t, or at least not as much.
Also Ultros is never going to pay off his debt :D.
I agree completely, Square did more with less, and by that, they pulled off quite a feat. As I said, what made FF6 great is that it his the sweet spot, something few recent games are able to achieve. I agree that FF7 aged much more poorly.
this is a tad off-topic, but I always thought that FF7 was the most sophisticated of them all, because it dealt with modern problems and created a world which was a fascimile of our own. different tastes I guess. as this article puts it:
The world of Final Fantasy VII stands out as a remarkably bleak interpretation of the future. Released in 1997, it came long after the cold war, long before 9/11, while the economy was still booming and while environmentalism presented a concern rather than a crisis. Yet, Final Fantasy VII presents a world eating itself from the inside out, it illuminates the cracks in what appeared to be a stable point in time. Final Fantasy VII, while ultimately hopeful, presents a fragmented world of displaced people.
After much soul-searching I’d probably put 6 and 7 at the same level for myself. I’d happily play either, although I do think the polygons of 7 are less pleasant than the sprites of 6 by a long shot. Neither gameplay is the best of the series (of the ones I’ve played, I think 5 probably was the one I had the most fun with from that point of view), both are good enough. I prefer the story of 7, and like that it has a main character, and each of the others have arcs, but I think 6 handled side characters better for the most part. 7 had better mini-games, but 6 had better side-quests. I like both villains, but I think Kefka had a better final boss fight, with worse music.
Overall I just prefer the music of 7 too. It’s not my favourite music of the series though, that might actually rest with Mystic Quest.
On a sidenote, FF8 is much less annoying if you play it as the love story between Squall and Rinoa (who is Ultimicea) rather than the save the world game the other FFs are. It makes way more sense and the story isn’t so tedious then.
Also, FUCK the random rule in that card game.
Its still tedious since Rinoa is so unlikable and Squall is a bit too center of the universe for my tastes.
But yeah, VI did a hell of a lot better in terms of developing your party overall compared to VII where the first disk post Midgar was broken up into character specific regions (i.e. North Corel for Barret, Gongaga for a bit of Zack+Aeris, Cosmo Canyon for Red XIII, Nibelheim for Vincent/Cloud+Zack, Rocket Town for Cid, Wutai for Yuffie, the Temple of the Ancients sequence for Cait Sith, Icicle Inn for Aeris) whereas FFVI had a few designated backstory places for some characters (Figaro for Edgar+Sabin, South Figaro/Sabin’s House for Sabin, The House on the Veldt for Gau, Doma for Cyan, Kohlingen for Locke, Zozo for Terra/the Espers, Jidoor for Setzer, Maranda/Vector for Celes, and Thamasa for Relm/Strago) but also had some character development scattered about outside of characters’ designated development locations (like Cyan getting some on Mt Zozo, Shadow getting some at random inns, Setzer from Kohlingen and Daril’s Tomb, and Celes and Terra getting some all over the place). The “Its a small world” ride like feel to VII locals didn’t help matters either.