Final Fantasy VI is widely regarded as the greatest of the original six FF games. Its decision-based story events, fully customizable magic system, and gritty sci-fi/fantasy setting set the standard for the series moving forward. The enormous cast of characters and elaborate plot-line built on the promise of FF4 (“Final Fantasy II” in the U.S.), shedding many of that game’s cliches (while sticking with the tried-and-true Evil Empire trope) in favor of something more adult. The game’s villain, Kefka, embodies evil, playing on the sci-fi trope of the person driven mad by experimental technology.
Final Fantasy VI begins with an amnesiac girl named Terra (you can change her name, of course). Controlled by a psychic “crown”, she pilots a magic-driven suit of tech armor (called “Magitek”). After forming a psychic connection to an “Esper” (what were called “Summons” in FF4), she breaks free of the empire’s control. A thief named Locke, who belongs to the resistance group known as the Returners, offers to help her, kicking off the game’s epic story of good versus evil. Basically, the empire is playing with fire trying to exploit the power of the Espers, heedless of the danger of a repeat of the catastrophic, ancient War of the Magi. Terra is the key to the plot; she turns out to be the offspring of a union of an Esper and a human woman. The villain, a court jester named Kefka, was the first person to be artificially infused with the power of an Esper. The experiment warped his mind. He becomes god-like by the end of the game: absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In a twist, the heroes fail to stop Kefka, who, by disturbing the magic “Warring Triad,” causes a world-shattering apocalypse. The world map is radically reconfigured as the “World of Balance” becomes the “World of Ruin.” It falls upon the defector general Celes (who was also infused with the power of magic) to use an airship to regather all the scattered characters one by one, and then launch a three-pronged assault upon Kefka’s Tower. With three separate parties, you get to use all twelve characters in the game’s final dungeon! During the final battle with a deified Kefka, whenever a character goes down, they are replaced by the next person in your line-up! This was an innovative way to make use of many characters.
I won't get into all the various plot points, like the ghost train or the side story about Locke’s long-lost love, or the comic relief villain Ultros and his sidekick Siegfried! Bottom line: the plot is fun and funny, with lots of twists and places and events to explore. It balances the humor and the serious stuff (like Cyan’s poisoned wife and little daughter boarding a train to the afterlife!).
FF6 contains many story moments where you have to make choices. Early on there is a branching storyline, where you get to choose the order in which you tackle three events. There are many occasions where you get to pick your party from the characters you’ve gathered so far. There are numerous story events where you have to interact with others and choose what to say. Some of these are timed. Depending what you do and how you respond, different rewards are meted out, or you may have to redo the whole thing. This introduces a level of role-playing into the game that had never been seen before.
The two most celebrated story events come in the middle of the game. First there is the opera scene: you control Celes, who happens to be the spitting image of a famous opera singer who is about to be kidnapped (a cliched contrivance, I’ll grant). You have to remember the correct lines during the opera and, at the end, toss a bouquet of flowers at the right moment. A little later there is a political dinner at which the emperor tries to make peace with the rebels (or is it a ruse?). Impolitic responses will lessen the rewards you get afterwards! As a kid, I had no idea how to tell which responses were supposed to be correct or why, because kids suck at politics.
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| The opera scene has me excited for Dragon Quest III HD-2D next month! |
The game has some Mode 7 gimmicks, like a first-person segment on a rollercoaster-like cart. No single event makes the game, but the cumulative effect of the game repeatedly asking you to do something other than read dialogue or kill monsters makes it more than the sum of its parts. It’s the first FF game that actually kind of feels like role playing. These elements go a long way toward evolving the series and explain why it became so beloved.
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| Mode 7 is used for the airship. |
FF6 also has a unique magic system. At first, it seems conventional: each character has their own class with its own unique abilities, some of which are level-based magic spells. But then, around the halfway mark, you gain access to the Espers in the form of pill-like “Magicite.” Each character can equip one Esper at a time. You steadily accumulate a large number as the plot unfolds. Each Esper teaches a handful of spells, at various rates (1x is the slowest and 20x is the fastest). This allows you to fully customize which characters learn which spells; there are no class-based limitations! In addition, some Espers grant certain bonuses whenever the character levels up, such as gaining extra HP or stamina. Finally, once per battle each Esper can be summoned (like Rydia’s ability in FF4). This robust system led to such systems being common in later RPGs. At the time it was a totally new way to learn magic and was as fun as it was powerful.
If you don’t want all your characters to become spell-casters, you can always stick with their built-in unique abilities. The martial artist Sabin is the most unusual: he learns blitz techniques that are basically the super moves from Street Fighter II. You have to input the correct sequence of button presses, and if you mess them up, he does nothing! Sabin’s “Aura Cannon” is literally the sequence to perform a Hadouken in Street Fighter II, and the effect looks almost the same! Interestingly, the game lets you activate a second player, where you assign certain characters to player 2. So you can, for example, play with a friend and have them control Sabin or other characters
Edgar, a machinist prince who is also a womanizer and Sabin’s brother, uses powerful “tools”. His crossbow hits all enemies for a lot of damage; later he can find a chainsaw in a weird town called Zozo! It has a chance of Edgar putting on a hockey mask (like Jason) and instantly dispatching an enemy. Even when it doesn’t, it does massive damage.
Cyan the samurai, unfortunately, has an annoying ability. His sword techniques require you to wait while a meter builds. The more powerful the technique, the longer you have to wait. Oof. The Pixel Remaster fixes this by letting you input other characters' actions while Cyan waits.
Gau, Relm, and Strago can use monster abilities, each in a different way. Strago, an old man, is a blue mage (a class from FF5), which means if he witnesses a monster use an ability, he learns it after battle. Some blue spells are very powerful.
Gau, a feral child, learns to imitate monsters by spending time with them in an area called the Veldt. All monsters from the game appear on the Veldt, and if Gau "leaps" off with monsters (he may not come back for several battles), he learns to mimic them. He can learn the abilities of every monster! However, once he has selected a "rage" ability in a battle, he is locked into it for the rest of the battle. Furthermore, Gau makes his own choices about how to attack. Personally, I have always found the amount of time it takes to train Gau on the Veldt to be tedious.
Lastly, Relm, a young girl, is an artist who draws magical pictures of monsters. Her ability is called “sketch,” and it produces a random attack from the monster it targets.
Mog is a Moogle who dances. His ability is a twist on the geomancer from FF5. Whenever Mog fights on a terrain type he has not previously encountered, he learns its corresponding dances. The dance's possible effects are thematically tied to the terrain type selected. He can use any dance he’s learned in any battle: it turns the background into that type for the rest of the battle. For example, the snowfield dance can cause snowball, avalanche, snare, or arctic hare.
Celes is a white mage who also has the “Runic” command, which absorbs magic spells to restore MP. This is a powerful defensive technique against those monsters that rely heavily on spells.
Shadow is a ninja who can throw stars and elemental scrolls. His dog, Interceptor, sometimes randomly attacks or defends. Shadow pops in and out of the story at various points, because he marches to the beat of his own drum. The second time you encounter him, again at a bar (his theme music is western-tinged) you can recruit him if you happen to have brought only three party members. If you don’t wait for him till the very last second when the world is about to be destroyed, you permanently lose him!
Setzer is a gambler and the owner of the airship. He can play a slot machine in battle to trigger random effects, with a small chance of killing your own party instantly. The relic Heiji’s Jitte [Coin Toss] changes this to the Gil Toss ability, which turns money into damage, an ability the samurai had in FF5. Seltzer is the owner of the airship, who planned to kidnap the opera star.
Once Terra discovers her true nature, she gains the ability to temporarily transform into an Esper. Her stats are greatly enhanced while she remains in her “trance.” The longer you go without using this ability, the longer it will last when you finally do use it, so you want to save it for boss fights.
There are also two hidden characters: an uncontrollable yeti and a mimic named Gogo. The mimic was an overpowered class in FF5, and it’s also strong here, as you can assign him any two abilities from all the other characters. His mimic ability repeats whatever action the previous character took, an ability that can easily be abused since it doesn’t use MP.
FF6 expands the barebones relic system from FF5 (the system was entirely new to U.S. audiences, of course). Each character can equip two relics, and there is a wide variety of them. Some combinations are powerful. For instance, the Celestriad [Economizer] makes spells cost just 1 MP, while the Soul of Thamasa [Gem Box] lets a character cast two spells at once. You can spam Ultima spells (or whatever you need), and then, for good measure, have Gogo mimic it!
I played FF6 multiple times as a kid. Like FF4, it’s a game I bought with my own money. I replayed it on Game Boy Advance in 2016, and now in 2024 I played the beautiful Pixel Remaster version on Switch. Because I’d played it so many times, I set the “boost” mode to 50%, so that characters gain XP and money at half the usual rate. The game isn’t difficult (though a couple boss fights can be challenging), so I’ve really enjoyed the challenge. It makes combat a lot more interesting. As I mentioned, the powerful abilities and Esper system can make combat a breeze. I expect that someday I’ll play FF6 again, because it holds up perfectly even after three decades.
FF6 has excellent graphics and music. Earlier FF games also had great soundtracks, of course. But the graphics in FF6 are vastly superior to FF4, which looks primitive by comparison. The character sprites consist of a top half and a bottom half, which makes them much bigger and more emotive. The sort of “steampunk” aesthetic of the world makes the game stand out from its predecessors and appears to have directly led to the kind of world we see in FF7 (the two games have much in common).
FF6 was the first Square game that got a proper English translation. FF1 and FF4 were rife with clunky, poorly translated dialogue. For FF6, Square employed a properly credentialed translator, Ted Woosley (whose efforts you can read about here). He came up with some memorable lines, like “Son of a submariner” and “She’s loaded for bear” (when Sabin first sees Terra use magic). They have become so iconic that the Pixel Remaster translation keeps a few of them.
FF6 trailblazed so much of what has become common in role-playing video games to this day. It's arguably the best of the classic FF games and maybe even the best classic RPG, though that honor perhaps should go to Chrono Trigger.
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| Grade: A+ |
Linked Reviews
"A fairly big step up from that of Final Fantasy II, and ultimately an RPG adventure that's everything a good sequel should be and more."
— Corbie Dillard, Nintendo Life, 9/10
"This RPG offers a high-level experience across every aspect, from the expressive sprites and varied backgrounds to the emotional music and cutscenes for excellent storytelling."
— Kyh Yang, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the SNES Library, 5/5
"Final Fantasy VI raised the bar for JRPGs in the '90s on nearly every level. Visually, acoustically, and mechanically, FFVI was leaps and bounds ahead of the competitors."
— IGN, #4 of Top 100
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| Original SNES title screen |
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