Hey fellas, let's have a discussion about the merits of Final Fantasy VI as a video game. I'll go first:

It's a very good game but I don't believe it's a masterpiece. However, there are many beautiful moments sprinkled in throughout the game (the opera, the phantom train, Locke reuniting with Rachel). The characters aren't the most complex I've seen in a video game, but they don't have to be, save for a few. And there's so much optional bonus stuff in the second half that it's just amazing. However, my complaints with the game lie with the difficulty, random encounter rate, and the second half of the game. Not that it's a bad game in anyway, but one of the greatest games of all time? Maybe not for me, but it's a damn fine game.

The music and graphics manage to stay consistently beautiful tho

FF6 is one of my favorite games, probably my favorite JRPG. I believe the sum of its parts make up for its individual flaws. I find its difficulty to be one of its best merits. It is difficult enough to give you a challenge but not enough to frustrate you. It doesn't require you to grind much unless you want to complete bonus material or arbitrarily max out stats. The playable characters are diverse and fleshed out enough that you can find at least one to identify with as your "main" character. For the first half of the game, the narrative is basic but very well paced; I don't really feel like there are any lulls in the story throughout the "world of balance." The second half of the game, for better or worse, trades the well-paced storytelling for allowing you to explore its open world as much as you want before tackling the end of the game. I actually think designing it that way was genius for its time, especially for a game in a genre which tends to overstay its welcome.

I think FF6 was the first Square game to really nail the Active Time Battle system. Fights felt as action-packed as a turn based input system could. Characters were given soft classes in the first half of the game but by the second half you could pretty much customize them to your liking. Every character having a unique ability made forming your party feel like a fun experiment. Discovering really powerful item combinations like Offering+Genji Glove felt great.

Keep in mind I first played FF6 when I was maybe 10 years old and didn't have access to earlier FF games like 4 or 5 which may have altered my opinions, especially in the case of 5 which may have softened me on the character customization aspects of 6. And I acknowledge that a person, especially a younger person, picking up the game for the first time in 2018 would probably find it much more difficult to sympathize with small sprite characters who don't talk and don't animate much than I did.

I have replayed the game multiple times since then as various ports were released and it has always held up. It is pretty much a comfort food game for me at this point. I really do think it is one of the best of its genre.

I last played it four years ago. I've been playing Chrono Trigger and I'm in the last half of that. I need a palate cleanser of some sort and then I think I'll be up for playing FFVI again.

When I did play it, I thought of it as a "master-class". Well-rounded characters, a great story, presented in a wonderfully imaginative and creative way, and all delivered at a pretty good pace. Random encounters are something I'm maybe not so hot on, but by the time those start getting on my nerves I know it's time for me to stop playing for a little while anyway. I don't recall the game being particularly difficult, aside from a few areas, but then I also played it after playing a long line of Shin Megami Tensei and Etrian Odyssey games. I also thought Chrono Trigger was way too easy when I first finished it in 2012, so maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

In any case, FFVI certainly holds up better than the vast majority of FF games.

There are certainly kids and teenagers out there who are legitimately interested in old video games, especially ones that have reached a status as lofty as Final Fantasy VI. As long as video games are here to stay - and it looks like they'll be here for a long time - someone, somewhere, will be trying to play through FFVI. Whether people who are only just now picking up video games will be into it is a different story, but I think some people will like it. There are plenty of people out there who are new to games and prefer the easier movement of 2D games but want the mechanical depth of some bigger RPGs and I could see some of them getting way into it.

Excuse my wording, but my only problem with the "difficulty" lies with the placement of a few checkpoints. It ends up being more frustrating than actually challenging, save for the Cultists Tower (holy shit).

While having all the characters with unique abilities was actually pretty awesome. being able to teach most of them spells sold it for me. It's already a lengthy game without the need to grind, but the Espers mechanic pushed me to do that so I can build my own teams. It was fun watching them form up.

However, the big change from a story going from a very well-paced, linear adventure to an open-ended pitstop was kind of overwhelming. Apparently it was pretty much known if you bought the game back then (came with a map showing off both worlds) but playing it in 2018 irked me. After getting a few characters I pretty much used a guide for a bit of it.

This is my second RPG I've ever played through (first one being EarthBound when I was a baby boy), and I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed, save for getting somewhat salty over the second half.

The random encounter rate is still annoying when exploring caves though

@cmblasko

@cappak: Encounter rate is definitely be bad until you get the items that mitigate it. Random encounters are bad in general. After Chrono Trigger, the JRPG genre should have done away with random encounters.

@cmblasko: If people think the encounter rates here are bad, they should try either SNES Breath of Fire, Lufia II, or 7th Saga. Actually, no, don't try 7th Saga. Why in the world they actually made that game harder for Western audiences is beyond me, but that is easily the worst grinding I have ever experiences in a Japanese RPG. Just awful.

Though there is something pleasant about grinding in a good game. I recently played through the NES Dragon Quest games, and there's a certain zen to the grinding. It's like playing one of those tapping games on your phone. Once you get into the flow, you can easily kill 20-30 minutes just peacefully grinding. I suppose that is much less fun if your goal is to just get through the game, but I'd argue that some of these JRPGs are more about the journey than the destination.

Except 7th Saga. Screw that game.

funny i just bought this on my phone. i played through ff6 almost 20 years ago and i don't remember much about it and i've got a long flight coming up so i grabbed this to play on the plane.

regarding the talk about random encounters: i just played a bit of the Octopath Traveller demo on the Switch and it has random encounters which bums me out because everything else about that demo seems awesome.

FF6 has a fairly interesting story and a great soundtrack on the plus side, on the negative side its character development isn't quite on par with later entries. It was really the first time Final Fantasy made a serious effort at developing characters, and in most cases, they don't get past basic archetypes. I also really didn't like Kefka; just a silly mustache-twirler whose badassness was entirely unearned and unexplained. I guess that's an unpopular opinion.

@veektarius: It wasn't unexplained. He was one of 3 magitek knights(Leo and Celes being the other two), and the process that they used to infuse the magic in him made him insane. I don't recall if he was the first and that's why they messed it up or if things just went wrong.

@warlordpayne: So why was Leo totally unable to harm him? Where did he get that power?

Yeah, I totally feel that way about the original Dragon Quest. The flow of the game is so simple and calming; go to the next area, find the dungeon/boss you are supposed to defeat, grind until you can do so. If you die, no problem, you keep all your progress and start over from home base.

Breath of Fire 2 random encounters are maddening. That whole game is kind of nerve wracking. Lufia 2 is actually one of the games I have lined up to play after I finish my current set of games so I hope the encounter rate isn't TOO bad.

I gotta play through 7th Saga one of these days just so I can say that I did.

Quick tip: Pick up the cleric as your companion, otherwise you can soft-lock yourself out of the second half of the game if you overlevel. That's right, a game that forces you to grind more than any other JRPG will be impossible to complete if you don't pick one of the seven characters as your traveling companion and actually level to a point where the game won't kick your ass. It's got issues.

@viking_funeral:

7th saga was so great conceptually, but yeah, screw that game. Someone needs to reboot the concept of partners/competitors out in the world and actually make it into a game that people can play without the risk of hitting an unbeatable dead end.