Final Fantasy VI released 20 years ago today!

[Frag Mortuus]

It's fun, a well-made RPG, but (in my opinion) not worthy of all the hype it gets.

I disagree, not because I'm a fan, but you have to look at it in the context of the time of release. Never before had a game delivered such engrossing story telling, rich music, or been built to the scale of FFVI. The graphics were unparalleled for the time. The subject matter the story touched on unheard of (Kefka poisons the water supply of a town killing tons of people, Cyan seeing the ghosts of his family boarding the ghost train then left heart broken and weeping).

These types of things may be considered run of the mill by today's standards, but 20 years ago people hadn't seen anything of that caliber. Granted, a timeless game shouldn't have to been looked at in the context of it's release date, because then is it really timeless? IMO, the story and gameplay are timeless and hold up even today. Perhaps had you played it around the time of release you may have appreciated it more.

[SNESdrunk]

Very cool to read people's experiences with this game at the time.

I had a different one though, it started with Final Fantasy II (IV) back when that first game out. My friend and I at the time had never played or even really understood what an RPG was, but we decided to rent FF4 one weekend because the screenshots on the back of the box looked cool.

So we get home, turn it on, and proceed to... sit there. For 20 minutes, reading this horribly botched translation. 20 minutes is a LONG time for a 10 year old. By comparison, 20 minutes is like 3 or 4 levels in Contra 3, or at least a dozen levels or so in Mario World, or an entire game of Madden.

Man we were pissed. I can still hear him saying, "This isn't even a game! You don't DO anything!" So yeah, I was soured on the Final Fantasy series after that. It wasn't until much later when I was exposed to other RPGs on PC that got me into the genre. As a result, I didn't discover FF6 until the late 90s. I loved it, I still do.

As for the game itself, it remains a brilliant exhibition of game design, structure and storytelling. But still an exhibition -- it's still trapped in its time a bit, because it so badly wanted to show off 1) what the SNES hardware was capable of, and 2) how video games could be utilized to tell such an in-depth story. The story is huge for the sake of being huge.

[Ack]

I found the enemy encounter rate to be highly frustrating

Never play any Breath of Fire games.

[SNESdrunk]

I found the enemy encounter rate to be highly frustrating

Never play any Breath of Fire games.

Or Lufia and the Fortress of Doom

[prfsnl_gmr]

Best game ever created. Absolutely brilliant. Nothing even comes close.

I probably would have agreed with this opinion for a very long time, and it remains - IMO and despite its flaws - the best game in the Final Fantasy series. It blew me away when then 13-year-old prfsnl_gmr played through it (twice!) shortly after its release.

[dunpeal2064]

Hapy Birthday FFVI. You are a cool little game. You've probably gotten more action than I could ever dream of. I hope that some day you finally figure out who your main character is.

I disagree, not because I'm a fan, but you have to look at it in the context of the time of release. Never before had a game delivered such engrossing story telling, rich music, or been built to the scale of FFVI. The graphics were unparalleled for the time.

Just a couple of comments on your post, good sir:

Although I think VI's story is nice, I would not say it is the first to tell an engrossing tale (which is, of course, subjective anyways). Lunar is a game that predates VI by 2 years, and although the tale it tells is very different, I still found it to be quite engrossing. Music... well, there are certainly games that predate VI and have soundtracks that I prefer, from pretty much any genre. The graphics are quite nice though. Again, this isn't a knock on VI as a game, but I think it gets a little too much credit here. Whats more likely is that all of the things you listed were true for the average gamer at the time, who would have never played Shin Megami Tensei, Ys, Lunar, etc.

A short comment on your 2nd point, which I did not quote. I do not find the gameplay in FFVI to be timeless at all. Its actually a fairly broken and unbalanced game. Everything is just so fun to mess with when you've never had such a complex system at your fingertips, that this is hardly worth noting when playing the game near its release. If we are talking about it as a timeless game, though, I do not think its battle system holds up.

All that aside though, it is a neat game. Even if I don't see it in the holy light that some do, I still had fun with it.

[Retrogamer0001]

Finished Final Fantasy 3 a little while ago after about 30 hours of gameplay (the last eight of that was just grinding all my characters up to level +40 and teaching each one magic) and can't help but be a little disappointed. This game gets so much praise and hype that my expectations were probably overblown anyway, but I still expected more out of the game. What didn't I like?

1) Lack of any meaningful storyline. The story starts off strong but rapidly falls apart about halfway through, right about when you enter the World of Ruin. After that, it's just putting your party back together and grinding levels. This wouldn't be so bad if it was only the last hour or two, but it was about fifteen hours of just running around and fighting battles. The end isn't great by any stretch of the imagination either.

2) Frustratingly high enemy encounter rate. This is one of the worst games I've ever played as far as the random battles go. Absolutely horrendous. Constant and irritating, and really dragged down the entire experience for me,

3) Poorly designed map system. I found it incredibly annoying that the map system didn't display the names of towns and important places on the map itself, and had to resort to finding a digital copy on the internet just so I would know what town was where. Seems like a minor complaint, but travelling between towns is really important in this game and it's very frustrating being lost because of a poor design choice.

4) Impossible-to-find secrets and characters. Adding to the paper-thin storyline complaint, it is very difficult to figure out how to track down some of your original party members, new party members, and many of the end-game items. There are very few hints in the game telling where certain characters can be found (Locke and Terra, for example) and none at all about others (GoGo). The only way to find many of the items and Espers is to use a guide, which I feel isn't something that should be required.

That being said, I think the game is pretty decent but definitely not worth a lot of the praise it gets - I finished Chrono Trigger earlier this summer and I think that is a much, much better all-around RPG experience. I think FF3 is an above average game, but only an average RPG, and certainly not the best in the series.

Here are my final impressions/criticisms of the game after beating it over the summer - keep in mind this in the context that I liked the game. I think Bone and I actually had a similar discussion about this post at the time, and he made a lot of good points in its defense.

[dunpeal2064]

keep in mind this in the context that I liked the game.

I should probably just stick this at the end of all my posts.

If I am complaining about a game, its almost always because I liked it, and therefore have these things I wish it did to make it even better. If the game is just garbage, I wouldn't even bother posting about it... unless its really, really bad.

The one common complaint I don't really get is the enemy encounter rate. It seems like there are many games that are much more offensive when it comes to encounter rates.

[Ack]

The one common complaint I don't really get is the enemy encounter rate. It seems like there are many games that are much more offensive when it comes to encounter rates.

Yeah, I don't understand this one either. It depends on the area, sure, but there are very few places in FFVI where the encounter rate really frustrated me, and that is only because those were sections I was never very fond of or because there were enemy types there I preferred to avoid. When comparing FF6 to other games I mentioned previously, it seems a lot more forgiving. Especially compared to the likes of Breath of Fire 2, where in certain places I encountered enemies every three steps(and that was early on. Apparently that one gets even worse in the final dungeon).

That's not to say that there aren't other RPGs on the SNES with better encounter rates. I just don't remember FF6's being all that stressful.

I also don't really get the complaint about the minimap. Were there RPGs with maps that showed town names and such in this era? I don't recall any of the Breath of Fires, Lufias, or any Enix RPG doing that either.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I think it was hearing Terra's theme and the Phantom Forest that really captured me with its magic.

I still get chills when I hear Terra's theme. I remember the first time I heard it - Christmas morning 1995, around 4 am... Stepping into the lush green overworld and hearing that track come on I just knew the game was going to be epic.

This truly is to most perfect RPG in my collection. It's rare in an RPG where I genuinely care about my party members.

This one by far has the best characters of any FF game. Characters in the earlier games were either blank slates or had some very minor dialogue and development. From FF VII onward we saw the awful spiky-haired perpetually-smirking angsty teenager trend. And of course Amano's character designs in this game are just perfection.