Frankly, Final Fantasy 6 should not work well at all.

It's a game that hinges on the strength of its cast, but was designed for a system where there was hardly room to explore these characters. Moreover, the actual interactions between the cast are mostly paper-thin. Its combat is mind-numbing sludge, bogging the player down at every turn with unmemorable and tedious random encounters. And for a game about picking up the pieces of a broken world, that very world is so flat and sparsely populated that I struggle to care about it.

But. You see the score. You know I love this game. In spite of all these complaints, I cannot deny the sheer power 6 has over me.

Any time I listen to "Searching for Friends," I remember the Falcon taking flight and skimming the ocean's surface, painted orange by the setting sun. When I listen to the credits theme, I think of Terra letting her hair free, finally unburdened by trauma and having found a reason to live. I often think about the image of the Phoenix superimposed over Locke, a man finally rising from the ashes of his past.

And then there's Kefka. Not much I can say about him that hasn't already been said. A truly special antagonist and probably my favorite thing about 6.

Uematsu's score takes all of these narrative elements and moments to new heights, imbueing them with a real sense of fairytale wonder that I keep coming back to. Frankly, if the soundtrack wasn't as strong as it was, I think my score would lower substantially. But no, Uematsu worked his magic.

So yeah, I love this game, despite all my grievances. It's greater than the sum of its parts, with almost every narrative element feeding into its messages on trauma, bonds, and moving on from the past.

It's a truly great thematic tapestry- I just don't hold it to the same pedestal as many others.