The big favourite of this era of the series and for good reason, I still prefer FFV but it's not difficult to see why this one is put up on such a pedestal either. FFVI essentially takes the more maximalist elements of the previous entries in the series and takes them to even greater heights to make for one of the coolest games on the system. It's not strictly the ambition present here that makes me adore this game, as much as it is the fact that this specific brand of ambition is so off-kilter. There are a ton of ideas here that are just downright strange or at the very least, feel like a vaguely absurd undertaking, and seeing all of those converge in this ultimately results in something far greater than the sum of its parts.
The presentation is easily the element of this game that feels like it's taken the biggest jump from previous entries with the way that it's as if it took advantage of basically every capability that the SNES had in order to craft something that felt truly cinematic for its era. This most clearly show up in the way that there even the smaller plot points will often really pile on the extravagance in one way or another, with the first half of the game especially feeling like a string of extremely memorable setpieces where even the smallest of moments can feel exciting and memorable. It never really gets old either in this regard, both because of the fact that the most significant parts of the game are still greatly elevated compared to everything else here, and that it seems somewhat uninterested in the idea of it all perfectly fitting together.
So many instances across this experience where there will just be a random, neat idea thrown into the mix that doesn't quite pan out in an especially polished way, especially with a couple of chase sequences that make use of mode-7, but end up feeling like an indistinguishable mass of dark pixels that make you barely able to decipher what's going on at the best of times. While I definitely could see this being a negative for some people, it all adds to the experience to me to see how many different directions these conceptually cool ideas go in. A similar thing can be seen with the combat mechanics of the characters being all over the place, with the blitz commands especially standing out as being a bit of a baffling choice to just throw in, not to mention everything about how Gau works. It's all a bit unbalanced and weird, but I can't really find much fault in it when that gets balanced out by being able to mess about with that weirdness.
One thing that I do find fault in however, is how a lot of the combat and party composition tends to flow thanks to the way magic and espers work here. The customisation that this provides is interesting to an extent, essentially allowing any character to do whatever magic stuff they want, but it ultimately homogenises the party a fair bit, especially since magic is undoubtedly the dominant force in the game. While FFV also allowed the player to change each character into whatever they felt like, the limit on how many job abilities could be carried over ended up leaving the player in a situation where they'd almost always have some sort of blind spot in their party that you'd have to compensate for in some way, or even change jobs around to suit particular situations. In comparison, this FFVI just lets any character do everything at once with magic if you put in a bit of time into grinding those spells out, and it's the type of choice that makes me just, stop caring much about the dynamics of combat when I can give everyone level 3 spells and a couple of characters Ultima without needing to do any additional grinding or strategising, they can just get it as long as you remember to swap out espers regularly enough.
While the game is more focused on the narrative and spectacle of everything, this doesn't even bother me too much, as it acts more as a backdrop to the elements of the game that I connected with far more, but with the shift in priority that these two elements are in the 2nd half, where dungeon crawling etc. is far more prevalent, it starts to fall apart a bit. Without much effort, you can hit the point where almost everything in your path entirely crumbles as you're getting multiple characters up to the point where they'll be hitting the damage cap every turn without having to have put in any real effort to hit that point. It's a bit dull in itself, but when it's the vast majority of what you'll be doing in that 2nd half, it just drags, and is one case where I'd also say that the game suffers a bit from the massive cast of party members you can amass, since it does lead to there being sooo many places you need to explore without anything really progressing.
Another way that the big cast ends up having its issues is the way that it hits a point where a lot of the backstories end up feeling the same with how it feels like half of them have a dead loved one of some sort that has led them to internalise certain things in the rather similar ways to one another, and while the first couple of these instances work exceptionally well, especially with everything surrounding the phantom train, by the time you've hit the 2nd half and there are still more people revealing similar backstories, it gets tiresome. I also think it's a bit strange how Cyan's big moments of character development in the 2nd half occur while he's not even fully present, along with the fact that he ends up serving a pretty minor role despite having such a strong introduction that gives him some incredible motivation to have been far more actively involved in the plot. Kefka is cool though, he bears a lot of similarities to some past villains with how he's just, absolutely evil and will not hesitate to ruin everything surrounding him on a whim, but he is my favourite of the FF villains so far because of how unhinged he is about it all, replacing the more stoic disposition that the previous ones had with one that's unsettlingly gleeful and volatile without losing that threatening aura.
Despite my complaining, I also can't deny that this game rules, especially in terms of how everything is presented. It's unafraid to throw weird shit at the player just because it could potentially be cool, and I appreciate that borderline reckless maximalism, especially when it's varied enough in those ideas to keep you on your toes throughout, and all of this is further enhanced by the masterful soundtrack, with Dancing Mad especially being as good as everyone says.
The presentation is easily the element of this game that feels like it's taken the biggest jump from previous entries with the way that it's as if it took advantage of basically every capability that the SNES had in order to craft something that felt truly cinematic for its era. This most clearly show up in the way that there even the smaller plot points will often really pile on the extravagance in one way or another, with the first half of the game especially feeling like a string of extremely memorable setpieces where even the smallest of moments can feel exciting and memorable. It never really gets old either in this regard, both because of the fact that the most significant parts of the game are still greatly elevated compared to everything else here, and that it seems somewhat uninterested in the idea of it all perfectly fitting together.
So many instances across this experience where there will just be a random, neat idea thrown into the mix that doesn't quite pan out in an especially polished way, especially with a couple of chase sequences that make use of mode-7, but end up feeling like an indistinguishable mass of dark pixels that make you barely able to decipher what's going on at the best of times. While I definitely could see this being a negative for some people, it all adds to the experience to me to see how many different directions these conceptually cool ideas go in. A similar thing can be seen with the combat mechanics of the characters being all over the place, with the blitz commands especially standing out as being a bit of a baffling choice to just throw in, not to mention everything about how Gau works. It's all a bit unbalanced and weird, but I can't really find much fault in it when that gets balanced out by being able to mess about with that weirdness.
One thing that I do find fault in however, is how a lot of the combat and party composition tends to flow thanks to the way magic and espers work here. The customisation that this provides is interesting to an extent, essentially allowing any character to do whatever magic stuff they want, but it ultimately homogenises the party a fair bit, especially since magic is undoubtedly the dominant force in the game. While FFV also allowed the player to change each character into whatever they felt like, the limit on how many job abilities could be carried over ended up leaving the player in a situation where they'd almost always have some sort of blind spot in their party that you'd have to compensate for in some way, or even change jobs around to suit particular situations. In comparison, this FFVI just lets any character do everything at once with magic if you put in a bit of time into grinding those spells out, and it's the type of choice that makes me just, stop caring much about the dynamics of combat when I can give everyone level 3 spells and a couple of characters Ultima without needing to do any additional grinding or strategising, they can just get it as long as you remember to swap out espers regularly enough.
While the game is more focused on the narrative and spectacle of everything, this doesn't even bother me too much, as it acts more as a backdrop to the elements of the game that I connected with far more, but with the shift in priority that these two elements are in the 2nd half, where dungeon crawling etc. is far more prevalent, it starts to fall apart a bit. Without much effort, you can hit the point where almost everything in your path entirely crumbles as you're getting multiple characters up to the point where they'll be hitting the damage cap every turn without having to have put in any real effort to hit that point. It's a bit dull in itself, but when it's the vast majority of what you'll be doing in that 2nd half, it just drags, and is one case where I'd also say that the game suffers a bit from the massive cast of party members you can amass, since it does lead to there being sooo many places you need to explore without anything really progressing.
Another way that the big cast ends up having its issues is the way that it hits a point where a lot of the backstories end up feeling the same with how it feels like half of them have a dead loved one of some sort that has led them to internalise certain things in the rather similar ways to one another, and while the first couple of these instances work exceptionally well, especially with everything surrounding the phantom train, by the time you've hit the 2nd half and there are still more people revealing similar backstories, it gets tiresome. I also think it's a bit strange how Cyan's big moments of character development in the 2nd half occur while he's not even fully present, along with the fact that he ends up serving a pretty minor role despite having such a strong introduction that gives him some incredible motivation to have been far more actively involved in the plot. Kefka is cool though, he bears a lot of similarities to some past villains with how he's just, absolutely evil and will not hesitate to ruin everything surrounding him on a whim, but he is my favourite of the FF villains so far because of how unhinged he is about it all, replacing the more stoic disposition that the previous ones had with one that's unsettlingly gleeful and volatile without losing that threatening aura.
Despite my complaining, I also can't deny that this game rules, especially in terms of how everything is presented. It's unafraid to throw weird shit at the player just because it could potentially be cool, and I appreciate that borderline reckless maximalism, especially when it's varied enough in those ideas to keep you on your toes throughout, and all of this is further enhanced by the masterful soundtrack, with Dancing Mad especially being as good as everyone says.