Prologue: A Descent into Madness

I spent the Xmas week trying to convince ZombiePie to play Final Fantasy 6 next, since it's obviously the best one in the series, only to see him descend into madness after being gifted 9 Final Fantasy games. However, by that time I desperately wanted someone to log a playthrough of FF6. ZombiePie was the obvious choice, but he was busy trying to get out of his straitjacket, and the only other person willing to do such a thing is... me.

You know, I never did actually finish that game...

Introduction: Old School

My introduction to RPGs started with the best magazine offer I've ever seen: subscribe to Nintendo Power and get a free copy of Dragon Warrior.

Ah, that brings back memories... anyway, I never got close to finishing it because it grew boring. However, it introduced me to other RPGs, which I quickly dove into, such as the original Final Fantasy...

...which I never finished, either, because the game was a damn grind to get through. I played numerous RPGs through those years, including Dragon Warrior 2,

Dragon Warrior 3,

Dragon Warrior 4,

Final Fantasy 2Final Fantasy 4,

and Robotrek.

Honestly, given this track record, I'm surprised I became a fan of RPGs. Or maybe I was a fan of the first 20 hours of RPGs.

Anyway, Final Fantasy 3 Final Fantasy 6 blew me away when I got it. The graphics crisply showed a grimy world, the plot was good, and the gameplay was engaging.

I quit playing right before the final dungeon.

When Final Fantasy moved over to the Playstation, I didn't follow; I was a Nintendo fanboy through and through. The next Final Fantasy I played was Final Fantasy X,

and I quit that soon after I burst out laughing at the romantic pool scene. I decided to give the series another shot with Final Fantasy 12...

...That didn't go well. I gave up on the Final Fantasy series before Final Fantasy 13 came out... which, I gather, was a good choice. ZombiePie's playthrough of FF8 makes me suspect I didn't really miss out on anything in the Playstation era, and between FF7's rabid fanbase and Square Enix milking it for all it's worth, I doubt I'd touch it with a 10-foot pole now.

My Nostalgia for Final Fantasy 6

Final Fantasy 6 holds a strange spot in the FF series: a magnum opus overshadowed by its "sequel's" popularity. The last FF without 3D graphics and pre-rendered cutscenes. A self-contained story, unburdened by the numerous prequels/sequels/media Square Enix loves making. (Not even FF4 was spared.) The last Final Fantasy game I enjoyed, and one I usually have trouble discussing with fans who came on-board with FF7...

...And now I'm gonna rip off the nostalgia filter and play through the whole damn thing. And rip apart the game I love, if it comes to that. Go me...

How I'll Be Playing It

I'll be playing a ROM of the original North American release of FF3 on the Windows version of SNES9X. While FF3 has 2 remakes, the Windows one does some... rather horrid mishmashing with the sprites...

...while the GBA remake changes the translation to be more faithful to the Japanese version. Normally this would be a good thing, but the original was translated by the legendary Ted Woolsey, who tended to add a... bit of spice to his games.

Part 000: It Begins

Final Fantasy 6 knows how to make a first impression: the title is presented as fiery letters, lightning crackling in the background as an organ plays ominously.

As I start, it launches into some expository text.

That's the whole thing. It takes about 2 minutes. With that, it introduces us to our starting party:

And with that, they set out and the credits begin to roll over some impressive spritework and Mode 7 scrolling.

Total Length of Intro: 4 minutes

With that, we're thrown right into the first "dungeon" of the game: the remote mining town of Narshe.

The locals aren't too happy to see us, but our Magitek armor lets us mow through them with relative ease.

Final Fantasy 6 was the second game in the series to use the Active Time Battle system (FF4 was the first), where action meters filled up in real-time and monsters would keep attacking while you were checking your menus to choose a spell. (You could choose to have them Wait instead in the Options, but where's the pressure in that?) Between that, the lack of loadtimes, and a 2-frame victory animation, most battles in FF6 ended rather quickly, within 20-60 seconds. Some of the later games had summons that lasted longer than that.

We quickly reach the first boss of the game: a giant snail that fries you with lightning if you attack its shell. Unfortunately, it also likes hiding in its shell right after you've assigned attack orders, which leads to the occasional mistake...

Nevertheless, we quickly beat it and reach our goal: the frozen Esper. It begins to glow ominously...

Total Time from Start to Here: 15 minutes

One explosion later, the girl wakes up being tended to by an old man, who has removed the Slave Crown that turned her into a magic-using zombie soldier.

Unfortunately, one of the side effects is that most (in)convenient of plot diseases: amnesia!

Luckily, she hasn't forgotten how to fight or blow up things with said magic, which you would assume are more complex to remember than your parents...

Part 001: Mines & Moogles

Unfortunately, the local guards aren't too happy to have a former Empire "soldier" in their midst, so they beat on the door and demand the old man hand her over. Neither Terra nor the old man are too happy about the prospect.

You escape out the back and start making your way through the Narshe mines.

The guards quickly catch up and corner you, though. Fortunately, the ground collapses beneath you, technically escaping them but causing some nasty head-trauma-related nightmares in the meantime.

This is Kefka; he's a gleeful fellow. You'll be seeing a lot more of him soon enough.

Meanwhile, now that the guards have quit trying to break down his door, the Old Man has called for some help.

Say hello to the 2nd member of our motley crew.

The old man convinces him to rescue her anyway, then bring her to Figaro to meet the king. Locke manages to track her down via falling down the same hole she fell through, but the guards aren't far behind. Fortunately...

A dozen moogles pop up and decide to help Locke out to introduce the multi-group system. Yes, the same mechanic that gave ZombiePie fits in Ultimecia's castle originated back in FF6! The game decides to work you into it at several points in the game, starting with a simple tactical battle here: just block off every route to Terra with your 3 moogle armies and slowly advance to the boss.

I don't recall the first real boss fight in the game kicking my ass this hard. I'm rather shocked at how damned difficult it is! Fortunately, the deceased party is returned to the starting point with 1 HP, giving the Dancing Moogle Group a chance to finish the job.

Yes, I killed him with a frog. This is Volgin's worst nightmare.

Locke makes a blatant mention to remember how to open the secret passage he just showed you, in case it comes in handy later (hint hint), and with that, you leave within spitting distance of the edge of town.

The obvious next step is to enter a nearby building before leaving the town where all the guards are trying to kill you.

And with that done, we exit onto the world map for the first time. A bit of wandering around later, the only real place of interest is a castle smack dab in the middle of a desert.

Part 002: STEAMPUNK!

When we visit the castle, apparently they were expecting us, as they invite us in to check things out and meet the king.

The king is rather interested in their arrival, so much so he forgets to introduce himself...

Meet EDGAR, future party member and one of my favorite characters in FF6 for... well, you'll see. He mentions Figaro and the Empire are allies, so of course Terra is welcome to rest there for a bit! And he's also interested in her personally, because...

With that, you're free to wander around his castle a bit, talking to the residents. Several of them mention the king has a twin brother that left years ago, triggering a quick flashback...

Eventually, you're supposed to get bored of wandering the castle and talk to Edgar again, when your conversation is interrupted by:

Oh, joy. The cackling, power-hungry pyromaniac from the nightmare. Edgar's just as happy to see him as we are, judging by his angry eyebrows. (Just take my word they're there; the spritework gets a bit blurred in the pictures.)

Kefka states he's here just to look for a girl that "stole something of minor importance". Edgar says he hasn't seen her...

He promptly lies to the psycho's face, dismisses him, and withdraws to tell Locke to set Terra up with a room for the night. As Locke shows Terra to her room, he mentions Edgar's alliance with the Empire is a facade to hide his ties to the Returners, a rebellion fighting the Empire.

Locke suggests Terra helps the Returners with her powers, but she's not sure if that's the right thing to do. Later Final Fantasies would probably stretch this indecision to a lengthy conversation, or even a pre-rendered cutscene of her staring forlornly across the landscape. Here, it's a sentence:

The game decides even this is too boring, because in the next scene Kefka has lit the castle on fire.

Edgar, having earlier correctly deduced the psychotic clown might be up to no good, leaps from the castle with Locke & Terra onto a trio of escape chocobos.

He promptly orders the castle to submerge.

This is so stupid. I love this game.

Kefka is pissed he's just been one-upped on the insanity, so he sics his Magitek troopers on the trio.

Now, unlike some later Final Fantasies, each character has unique abilities. Terra can use magic, Locke can steal items from enemies, and Edgar...

...uses machine-gun crossbows to riddle all the enemies with bolts. Did I mention he's one of my favorite characters?

Eventually, you'll have Terra use magic in this fight, because it's another damn hard boss fight (I seriously don't remember the early game being this difficult when I played it 2 decades ago), prompting this mid-fight dialogue:

It's an interesting, kinda funny nod to the fact magic hasn't been seen in centuries here. (It also implies Locke's a bit dense for not noticing it earlier, although he called her a "witch" earlier, so he had to have known she had magic earlier, but... ugh, maybe I shouldn't think so much about it.)

Anyway, several Cures & Autocrossbolts later, both Magitek soldiers are dead and we're free to run off, leaving Kefka alone in the desert.

A short dialogue ensues:

Actually, looking over this conversation again, it's vaguely the same kind of melodramatic dialogue that turns me off of later Final Fantasy games. I'm not sure why I tolerate it so much better here. Is it because I like the characters more? Because there's less of it? Or is it because I can just skip ahead to the next piece of dialogue once I'm done reading instead of being forced to listen to bad voice acting in a cutscene I can't skip because I'm afraid of missing something that's actually important?

Regardless, they decide to head through a cave to South Figaro to get to safety, leading to some more nifty Mode 7 chocobo-riding effects and a short dungeon.

Thus I ended my first session of replaying FF6.

Comments

What strikes me most is the snappiness of this game's pace. I've barely played over an hour and I've already explored 2 dungeons, fought 2 bosses, explored a town, met one of the villains, had several large chunks of exposition dropped on me, met 2 new party members, had them characterized, and watched a castle dive into a desert! I'd like to ask ZombiePie what he got accomplished in his first hour of FF8, or recall what happened in my first hour of FF10, because those games feel much... slower. I wonder how many hours it'll take me to finish the whole game.

Compared to the screenshots from the Windows remake, it reminds me of how good the spritework in this game is. Everything seems to fit with each other, and the color palette subtly makes it seem drearier than FF4, which is fitting given some of the places this game goes later. I'll discuss it when I get to it, but this game gets... dark.

Until next time!

I'd like to ask ZombiePie what he got accomplished in his first hour of FF8, or recall what happened in my first hour of FF10, because those games feel much... slower. I wonder how many hours it'll take me to finish the whole game.

So here's what I managed to accomplish in my first hour of Final Fantasy VIII:

1. View the "unofficial" introduction with the still images of all of the scenes you will experience in the game.
2. View the OFFICIAL introduction with the "Liberi Fatali" music.
3. Waking up in the nurse's office and being greeted by Quistis who shares how I got my ass handed to myself by Seifer.
4. Quistis asking me to meet her at the front of the Garden.
5. Giving a tour of the Garden to an inauspicious girl that will eventually be revealed to be Selphie.
6. Quistis giving me Shiva and Quetzalcoatl.
7. Quistis performing a fake junction in order to teach me how to complete a junction.
8. Me frantically trying to copy what Quistis did during the tutorial and failing miserably.
9. Killing fish in order to collect water magic
10. Making the trek to the Fire Cavern.
11. Quistis providing a tutorial on the drawing and magic system.
12. Entering the Fire Cavern and dealing with the random encounters insider there.
13. Fighting Ifrit.
14. Collecting Ifrit as a junction, and failing to understand how to properly junction him.
15. Re-entering the Garden and being congratulated by Cid.

very fun blog @mikelemmer

I think you hit on something that a lot of people overlook. The old Games were indeed quick, before Vii with its massive cut scenes and such these games had a speed to them the newer ones eschewed in favor of flashy Summon scenes etc.

To some degree I think it's unavoidable with voiced stuff as it's just slower than reading, but I imagine with more succinct writing that could be addressed.

For all it faults, that's one thing i really liked about FF X-2. Those battles really moved.