I wrote about Final Fantasy 9 being in my top 4 games of the series and it kicked off a lot of nostalgia.
Now it feels like I should be voting for Final Fantasy 7 or 8 as my favourites because there are some major pluses to them.
They came out during a newer generation so had the luxury of being on CDs over cartridges, but I feel like 6 marked the end of the 'absolute classic' final fantasy games, where the original soul of the series was placed.
Focusing on Final Fantasy VI though, it follows my 'end of a generation' statement from the previous article.
- Characters
First up, this game has some of the coolest characters the series has ever featured.
Setzer Gabbiani - The Gambler - Fights with cards and other gambling paraphernalia, has an awesome look with his silver hair and robes.
He is also a pilot with an awesome ship called The Blackjack, another ship that I'd love to buy a replica model of.
Shadow - a Ninja Mercenary who oozes coolness.
One of the best parts about the game is being able to either save or lose him as a character depending on how you play and what you decide to do.
His mysterious background story is drip fed throughout the story, making him a superbly understated character that you can delve into in bits and pieces.
Gau is another character like this, he is a feral child who learns the moves of various enemies around the world.
You can almost stumble into his back story while scrambling around the game, but when you do find the next part it is totally worth it.
Lastly (as I don't want to go through every single character here!) Terra makes for an excellent main character.
She is the heroine of the story. Someone who spent her life being trained as a weapon for the evil empire.
Music
The music to this game is amazing, I used to frequently listen to the OST on Spotify because it was so relaxing and beautiful.
My daughter would fall asleep to some of the amazing piano pieces that were made for this game.
My three favourites, played out on piano here, are:
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The World and its Story
This game is set in a world that for the first time in the series, feels like it is changing as you play the game.
Every game since has been relatively static, bar some specific areas being destroyed, or characters moving around.
Final Fantasy Six tried to make the world seem like it was alive and involved in the great war that was going on.
It is large and free roaming, and events transpire to change the entire map during the late game.
As a result of these changes, it is also one of the only times a Final Fantasy game has not been afraid to just allow bad things to happen.
Characters do die in Final Fantasy games, but in this one you seem to have more control over whether it happens or not.
You can choose your own difficulty level late on when the main party are split apart, and your choices and efforts dictate how many characters rejoin your team.
You could in theory attempt the ending with the bare bones of a team. Or - if you always aim for 100% like me, you can go out of your way to recruit 14 characters in total.
Three of which are relatively random, a Moogle, a Yeti and a mysterious mimic who you meet inside the stomach of a giant monster worm.
The ending battle lets you utilise your full team, something Final Fantasy 7 attempts too. Most of the other games don't really do this and force you to decide who would be involved.
That seems kind of mad when you factor in that these people are travelling the world to try and save it, and then when the final fight comes, they let a small subsection (usually 3 or 4 of their crew) go into the final fight by themselves, while the rest chill out back on the ship..
I would love to see a return to this kind of style really.
15 only had a small team, so it made sense. But I believe every game since has limited your squad throughout, and left the final battle with that slight plot hole, just to shoe horn the game mechanics in.
Speaking of final battles, and well - villains. Kefka is widely considered one of the best villains.
He is certainly one of the most brutal and ambitious.
The series as a whole does have some excellent villains, off the top of my head I don't think many have gone as far as Kefka.
He can be summed up (and is in that article apparently...) as a villain much like Mark Hamill's Joker, which may have influenced his design in the early 90s.
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Design
Every character has a special 'attack' that can be carried out in different ways.
Some can throw your inventory, some have special moves that you unlock by tapping a specific button sequence.
You have summons, enemy moves, steal items, and lots of other options.
When you consider how much detail and individuality they give to fourteen different characters.
All whilst having a ridiculously good sound track, and a massive world that changes as you progress through the game, and on top of that the various options for being able to play the game with or without different members of the party.
It feels insane that this all fit into one SNES cartridge.
What's more insane, is the fact that this game took one year to build. They had various teams creating the characters, with the mindset that all of them were the 'protagonist' and they spun out the story from there.
This makes a lot of sense, compared to some of the games where it feels like the motivations for people being there are a little questionable or weak, and that sometimes they really do seem to be there to make up numbers rather than because they're potentially the star of the show.
I will round things off here. You should really check out Final Fantasy 6 if you haven't already played it.
You can buy it on PSN, GB Advance, Mobile Phone, PC, Wii Virtual Console and in original SNES format, or PS1 if you buy Anthology. The styles are different each time because they've tried to tart the game up a bit. I first played it as its pure SNES incarnation, and so I say stick to that.
Let me know your thoughts. Thank you for those of you who have been tweeting me comments. I'd like them here too if possible, but tweets are good. Any requests?
If you're done here then why not go back and listen to those awesome piano pieces? Or read another article!