Final Fantasy 6 (the jRPG Gauntlet continues!)

Final Fantasy 6 - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

I'm going to say this once - best Final Fantasy, no nostalgia. Let's try to clear this up with something besides the usual points fanpeoples make in defense of the game.

The problem with most Square games, which was born all the way back in oh, FF4 but not really problematic until FF6 and then found economically viable with FF7, is that above all they strive to be cinematic experiences more than actual games. This isn’t a Hurrdurr interactive movie slur; if the games actually pulled off their cinematic dreams well then sure, it’d still be an interactive movie, but damn it would at least be a good interactive movie. This is a root problem because the cinematic look is strived for above everything else, and overrules every other idea within the game. RPG’s were born as a series of placeholders waiting for technology to catch up; nowadays the reason I’m still picking “attack” off of a battle menu in FF13 is because the battle system is still a placeholder which serves the cinematic look of the game. Things must look cool. A problem arises because there is no central theme or idea which the game serves, rather an idea or theme is shoddily tacked onto the game after all the concept art is drawn up, all the cool angles are figured, and the fighting system is hammered out. FF8, as stated in the previous review, is a perfect example of everything done wrong. FF10 is a close runner up though.

Final Fantasy 6 bleeds its cinematic aspirations every turn of the world map and every unfolding of plot progression. It wants so badly to rip the controller from your hands and play the game for you so that it can get you to the next overdramatic scene with hammy dialogue and go “LOOK! LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL PIXEL ART! LOOK AT THIS DETAIL! LISTEN TO HOW THE MUSIC STIRS THE MOST BASE REACTION IN TANDEM WITH THE WAY THE SPRITES ARE DIRECTED!” Yes, the game is overwrought with drama; the limited space of a Super NES cart means characters have to be direct, no meandering allowed. At this point RPG’s were still niche and expensive; I feel that there was a somewhat honest attempt to make a story here. Unlike PS1 era games with their limitless space and multiple discs and pre-rendered scenes requiring you do nothing but sit and watch, the game needed to be lean and direct with the player. Maybe that’s why actual themes and motifs are present. Hamfisted and clumsy, but present nonetheless. Final Fantasy 6 works because it doesn’t work the way Square wanted it to work.

Thanks to technical limitations, all their cinematic aspirations were cut short and the player was forced to play the game. There was no space to make prerendered scenes, and the game was big and ambitious as is so you could cut space by having the player just play out the plot. Interesting idea. You actually have to participate in the Opera house, or witness the poisoning of a town, the raiding of a mystical fantasy land, or burning of a warlock town. It’s a simple change that makes the player actually participate rather than watch the game, and you develop an actual interest in what’s going on. The cinematic chokepoints of other FF games become points of player interaction rather than detachment – they’re pretty damn well crafted pieces of 2D pixels that hold up to this day too. No blocky character models – game does great within the limits of its technology. Mario wouldn’t have a mustache today if not for similar reasons (hell, he wouldn’t even be a plumber probably).

As I said before, there is an actual theme that repeats throughout the narrative – the game has an ensemble cast with no central protagonist, a melodramatic plot, and sports possibly the best soundtrack in a Super NES game. Repeatedly things play out like an Opera or Musical – flashy, direct, and sometimes tongue in cheek. You literally find yourself within art houses and opera houses or upon stages throughout the journey – I would like to believe this was intentional. It both solidifies a narrative theme and creates context as to why you control so many damn characters that isn’t “content for the sake of content”.

So finally I am brought to the actual mechanics of the game; time to discuss what the player actually gets to play. Yes, it is your typical ATB system of choosing “Attack” or “Item” or “Magic”, etc, placeholder battle system. It is through this battle system that we get to know the characters. You see, there are 14 characters in total and each has a specific set of skills which they use in battle. As stated above, the characters fit within the context of the story and don’t feel like “content for the sake of content”. Aside from the dialogue which as stated must be lean for the sake of space, the battle system works to flesh out the characters. The buff renegade has street fighter combos, the prince uses a wide variety of expensive tools, the thief can steal items off opponents, so on and so on. This works to give the player a feel for what each character is capable of in and out of battle, rounding their character out beyond the mere lines of dialogue they speak. Due to the tech limitations you’re controlling them during plot advancement, due to the battle system that control is given a whole new dimension.

And I haven’t even gotten to the system of magic that dominates most of the game. FF5 has the Job system, FF7 Materia, FF8 the Junction system, and so on and so on. Square and Square fans love the feeling of strategy such systems give, but they seldom make sense in the context of the game universe (does the sphere grid exist off in some other pocket universe or something? How does junctioning even work? Does Squall know what his Attack Stat is valued at?). The Esper system in FF6 works like this: you attach an Esper to a character and the Esper teaches said character specific spells. When all spells are learned off an Esper, you can switch Espers to different characters, in effect slowly teaching that one set of spells to every member of your party. Eventually, you WILL, if that dedicated, have at least four characters that know every spell you can teach them. You WILL come to that common FF phenomena in which two or three of your characters become indistinguishable hulking behemoth spellcasters. Context is the name of the game though. The Esper system is derived directly from events that occur in the game and move the plot. They’re a huge player in the story, from early on in the game all the way to the end the Esper system is consistently used and mentioned in the plot. Taken a level deeper, the slow growth of each character ties in thematically with the ensemble cast idea that the game runs on; your party grows close to each other and you grow close to these 14 characters, creating a shared identity. The magic system isn’t just there to make numbers crunch, it reinforces a theme. You invest in a party and they meld together into a unified fighting force, and then the game pulls one of the greatest tricks in the genre.

You lose everything.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

You lose everything. The world is reshaped in the image of a jester turned mad god. Up until this point FF6 has been a refreshing take on an evil empire story. After this point the game becomes sheer gold. You have to restart, but not from scratch. Your characters have scattered across the now ruined world and it has torn your very heartstrings. All that hard work was for nothing, and now the world lies broken. Someone’s gotta pay.

You know the mechanics, you have a handle on the world, you don’t need your hand held anymore. Go venture forth and get the gang back together, show the world that hope still exists, and kick that laughing madman’s ass. The game turns open-ended and leaves the goal up to you. Final Fantasy 6 is very replayable and revistable because of this. All that investment pre-apocalypse now fuels your travels post-apocalypse; and the post-apocalypse is beautiful. Regrouping the gang and gaining the ultimate equipment to help you on your quest is non-linear and builds upon the principals the game had been teaching you up until everything went to shit. This is effectively the end of the game when all the sidequests open up, and they are contextualized and integrated into the world of ruin. You see, you have been gone for some time since Armageddon and a new set of myths and legends have sprung up across the land. Spending time listening to drunks in bars or the crazy old beggar in the streets points you one way or another, and you will find old comrades and new tools in unexpected places if you listen and look. Everything is sensibly placed in-universe; there is no strategy guide referencing needed to figure out how chocobo breeding works or where the strongest material of the game is hidden. The game becomes a broken world which you must figure out how to fix, which you want to fix after all the fun times you had in it, and there are limitless combinations of characters and equipment which can fell the final boss. Get to it.

A good idea works. Final Fantasy 6 was a game made in the right time on the right technology; it works around the shortcomings of the technology in ways the developers didn’t exactly intend to create something they didn’t quite expect – and for that I smile. Play it sometime, why don’t ya?

Seriously, play it. Game has been ported and rereleased multiple times.