Still One of the Best After All These Years
I can still remember buying Final Fantasy 3 (I didn't know about 2, 3 and 5 back in the day) at my local Electronics Boutique for $79.99 on the SNES all these years ago when I was 12 years old. Needless to say, I played through it countless times and it has always had a special place in my heart. I recently played a copy of the GBA version over the holiday break to relive the nostalgia and figure out whether it still had the magic from my childhood. While there are a few things about the game that feel dated or less fun than I remember, FF 6 is one of the great RPGs of all time in my opinion even after nearly a couple of decades.
Loved
-The World of Ruin - I was one of the defenders of FF 13 that didn't take kindly to the criticism that a linear game was necessarily bad. While I still stand by that argument, the quality of the experience delivered by the World of Ruin in FF 6 is the counter argument of why having the freedom to explore is so fun. I loved how you can reassemble your party in any order you choose and how your quest takes you all over the world. One of the finer touches that I appreciated in this playthrough was the fact that you walk by Kefka's Tower (the final dungeon) near the beginning of your quest through the WOR. Seeing the goal and knowing that you need your whole team to tackle the challenges ahead was a subtle way of emphasizing the importance of your team and driving home the central themes of the game of the importance of friendship and teamwork. It is also particularly impressive that the game seems to be scaled to allow you to recruit your team in any order you choose without significant spikes in difficulty.
-The Final Dungeon - One of the best RPG dungeons and final levels I've played. I love the fact that you have to split into teams to tackle the tower and each team has to overcome challenges and remove obstacles for the other teams to progress further in the dungeon. My favorite part of the game is right before you enter the tower where you have to assign teams and choose how to equip your party. Even after all these years, I had countless thoughts about how to balance the teams and who I wanted on the same team (for me, Edgar/Sabin and Relm/Shadow are always in the same partyI). It captures the essence of what makes RPGs great in that you get to put an intricate plan in place as you prepare your party and then see it in action as you try to conquer the dungeon and save the world. It is pure RPG bliss that has only been rivaled by the Fire Emblem series in my opinion.
-Kefka - While his physical appearance is as far from threatening as you can get, I still think he's one of my favorite villains. He is equal parts crazy and wicked and it makes for a character that you just love to hate. His betrayals of Gestahl and General Leo are great scenes, but the part where he poisons the water in Doma is one of my favorites in RPG history.
-The Music - So many memorable tracks in this game that completely stand the test of time. While the GBA version doesn't sound quite as good as the SNES, you can't make these songs sound bad if you tried. My personal favorites are the World of Balance overworld theme (Terra's theme), the auction house music, the Narshe music, and clearly the Opera House.
-The Balance between Character Customization and Specialization - I hate RPGs where all the characters can learn all the skills/equip all the weapons/etc. (I'm looking at you FF 2, 3 and 5). It totally robs characters of their individuality and defeats a lot of the fun of building a party. FF 6 does a great job of giving each character a unique ability (Blitz, Throw, Tools, etc.) while letting them all learn each of the spells in the game and equip almost all of the relics to round out their skills. While the character balance isn't great (some characters are clearly more powerful), I really appreciated the diversity of the characters available and had a lot of fun mixing and matching to try different parties.
-The Equipment - While this may seem like a minor detail, I love games where I can experiment with different equipment sets to maximize each character's effectiveness. There was just the right amount of gear in FF 6 where I didn't feel overwhelmed with options, but had enough choices to try several combinations. I found some new combinations for Locke and Relm during my most recent play-through that were extremely strong. I think that is a testament to the game that I'm still trying and discovering new things after all these years and that I feel rewarded for my efforts.
-The Zelda-esque Density of the World - FF 6, particularly the World of Ruin, is full of secrets. From dungeons, to equipment, to Espers, to characters, to bosses, there seems like an endless amount of content to be discovered in every part of the world. Many games such as Fallout have lots to be discovered, but the world is so sparsely populated that you rarely have the time or energy to discover everything given the number of areas you explore that end up being boring or giving you nothing for your time. The early Zelda games also get the balance of discovery and density of the world right and few games really nail this better than FF 6.
Hated
-The Menu System - Unequiping weapons/relics/espers is a total chore and nothing was changed in the GBA version. You can choose to unequip everyone that isn't in your active party all at once, but it becomes a timely exercise to re-equip everyone given the 14 characters in the game and numerous party changes you will make during the game. Modern games tend to do a much better job of streamlining this to give you access to the whole party from one menu.
-Gau and Strago - Both from a story standpoint and a gameplay standpoint. I never liked them when I was a kid and I still don't. From a story standpoint, both characters seem underdeveloped and basically fillers in the story. They are both blue mage characters (learn spells from enemies for those without significant FF history) and I have always found acquiring skills from monsters a grind with very little payoff since the spells are all inferior to the more powerful characters. I would have preferred to limit the character roster to 12 so that you could bring your entire party to the final dungeon, but that may just be the completionist in me. I could probably lump Umaro and Gogo on this list from a story perspective, but I love them from a gameplay perspective (who doesn't love being hurled into an enemy by a Yeti?).
-The Esper/Skill System - Having played every Final Fantasy game, I think that this skill development system hasn't aged well. It is very similar to FF 9 where you learn spells from keeping certain Espers/equipment actively equipped on a character and winning battles. I far preferred the grander and more elegantly designed systems found in FF 12, 10, 13, and even 8. There are two things that really hold this system back in FF VI. First, most of the spells in the game are underwhelming to borderline useless (most Final Fantasy's suffer from this to be fair). Couple that with the fact that the good spells are only offered by a few Espers and you have a scenario where you need to grind if you want to have a good base of spells. While this does somewhat encourage you to specialize, the rate at which you learn the spells really just doesn't permit you to learn the spells when you need them without some grinding. Also, Chrono Trigger, Persona and others do a much better job of giving you the skills where you need them so that the pacing isn't adversely affected.
-The Slowdown in the GBA Version - I don't remember any in the SNES version, so the fact that the game has regressed in the latest version is not good. While the performance issues aren't horrendous and are somewhat limited, they are still a distraction.
