One of the Most Video Games of All Time.
Final Fantasy VI is the type of game that comes from the mastery of creative skills and the willingness to experiment and mess around with what’s been done before, which ends up with some mixed results.
The story and presentation are using the limit of abstraction and making it work. The story isn’t that complex, fitting with what one might think of as a generic “fighting against the evil empire” story. But the character writing and scenes are what brings a defined form to it. At first, the thumb sized sprites hopping around as a form of animation might seem outdated, but there’s something charming seeing the pixel art and animation after what came before when the story came from sprites standing or pacing around with sparse text boxes covering what events and actions were there.
My sentiments around the gameplay are still present with it being really cool while also unbalanced. Each character has their own special ability that manifests in different ways other than just having one different attack or spell pool. A lot of them bring something different to a team that links together with other party members. The spell learning system adds even more to this concept as some characters could be made into different builds. The thing is, I said “a lot,” not all. With how many party members there are in this game, there are plenty that go to the wayside just because they’re ability or stats aren’t that useful when you get them. With some party members and the nature of the spell system itself, you would need to put in a lot of work to make some characters worth using. Part of this would likely come from how the game's second half was made unexpectedly in less than a year under a lot of crunch.
That said, the work is worth putting in to get the bespoke, amazing experience all throughout the game. There is a wide amount of stories, dungeons, and characters that you could miss if you weren’t looking out for it. The idea of this even happening is unimaginable nowadays. Why this came about was likely because the developers had just enough experience and capability to create the content they did while it still was cheap to create such content in the first place. In a way, Final Fantasy VI is the last of its kind in being such an open, unique, classic RPG.
Final Fantasy VI is the type of game that comes from the mastery of creative skills and the willingness to experiment and mess around with what’s been done before, which ends up with some mixed results.
The story and presentation are using the limit of abstraction and making it work. The story isn’t that complex, fitting with what one might think of as a generic “fighting against the evil empire” story. But the character writing and scenes are what brings a defined form to it. At first, the thumb sized sprites hopping around as a form of animation might seem outdated, but there’s something charming seeing the pixel art and animation after what came before when the story came from sprites standing or pacing around with sparse text boxes covering what events and actions were there.
My sentiments around the gameplay are still present with it being really cool while also unbalanced. Each character has their own special ability that manifests in different ways other than just having one different attack or spell pool. A lot of them bring something different to a team that links together with other party members. The spell learning system adds even more to this concept as some characters could be made into different builds. The thing is, I said “a lot,” not all. With how many party members there are in this game, there are plenty that go to the wayside just because they’re ability or stats aren’t that useful when you get them. With some party members and the nature of the spell system itself, you would need to put in a lot of work to make some characters worth using. Part of this would likely come from how the game's second half was made unexpectedly in less than a year under a lot of crunch.
That said, the work is worth putting in to get the bespoke, amazing experience all throughout the game. There is a wide amount of stories, dungeons, and characters that you could miss if you weren’t looking out for it. The idea of this even happening is unimaginable nowadays. Why this came about was likely because the developers had just enough experience and capability to create the content they did while it still was cheap to create such content in the first place. In a way, Final Fantasy VI is the last of its kind in being such an open, unique, classic RPG.