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After five games, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, Square gave us Final Fantasy VI. For the first time, Hironobu Sakaguchi was just producing and directorial duties were shared by Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito. It recieved universal acclaim from both critics and fans and it's still considered by many classic fans (including me) to be the best in the series. It's the first game in the series that had a perfect blend of the three main elements of the Final Fantasy series: story, combat and exploration. Let's dive right in:
The Story:
This game tells the story of a world ruled by an emperor who's hunting Espers (This game's summon creatures) and plans on using their power to conquer everything. A woman named Tina (or Terra if you prefer the official American name) that can use magic and was being controlled by the empire for their evil biddings is rescued by a resistance group and joins them in trying to stop the empire. It's more complicated than that, though. As we progress in the game we learn about the past of our main characters and their motivations. The story in this game is absolutely wonderful. It's an epic tale of romance, tragedy, war and even death. It can get very emotional at times but also has its scary moments (There's a sidequest in a haunted mansion that has a quite scary atmosphere, for instance) and its funny moments.
Overall, it's an excellent story with fantastic characters.
10/10
The Gameplay:
This game takes the gameplay from FFIV and adds a lot to it. The world map is the biggest one yet and has a lot of secrets and side-quests to find. You can also equip up to two relics - acessories that give you extra abilities - per character, which gives you more freedom to customize them. But what really elevates the gameplay into absolute greatness is the new "Magicite System". In this world, there are magical stones called magicite that have the power of espers inside. By equipping them, characters get the ability to summon the esper of each stone once per battle and also can learn spells. Each time you finish a battle, you recieve magic points, which are then multiplied depending on the spell's learning rate. For example, the "Ramuh" magicite teaches Thunder at a rate of x10, Poison at a rate of x5 and Thundara at a rate of x2. If you get 1 magic point in battle, Thunder gets 10 points, Poison gets 5 and Thundara gets 2. When a spell reaches the 100 MP mark, it is learned and can be cast without the magicite equipped. You also have to mind that each magicite boosts a particular stat every time a character levels up. For example, when you level up with "Ifrit" equipped, your "Strength" stat will increase by one more unit than normal. By equipping certain magicite stones on each character, the player can control how each character grows. It's an excellent system that manages to stay acessible despite its complexity.
Other noteworthy things are that there are a lot of characters you can recruit for your team - more than any other game in the series. All of them have their own unique combat commands like "Steal" or "Mimic".
Overall, the gameplay is fantastic. It really feels like the culmination of the work done in the five previous games thanks to how it puts everything that was great about them into one game.
10/10
The Music:
The soundtrack of this game is one of the best of all time. Every track is either catchy, efficiently emotional, epic or very memorable. The standout tracks are the main theme and the final boss theme, which are amazing. This soundtrack may quite possibly be Uematsu's masterpiece.
10/10
The Graphics:
The graphics are also amazing. They push the SNES to its limits by giving us environments with a huge scope and detail never before seen in the series. The animations also reach new levels of detail and help give the well-designed characters life. The highlight of the visual presentation, however, is the monster and boss design. Tetsuya Nomura joined the battle design directing team for this game and it definitely helped to improve things. The monster design is extremely creative and gives place to a lot of "Wow, that thing looks awesome" moments. Quite possibly the best monster design I've seen in a JRPG.
10/10
Overall, Final Fantasy VI is a gaming masterpiece. It perfectly blends gameplay and story into an unforgettable experience that any fan of JRPGs should not miss.
Final Grade: 10/10
Join me next time when we enter the PSX era and tackle the Final Fantasy that needs no introduction to anyone: Final Fantasy VII. I'll see you all then ;) .
