Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy VI Part III. “You sound like lines from a self-help book.”

It’s honestly impressive how well this game holds up over 30 years. All of the games I’ve played in the past month (Jesus) have had some kind of caveat of “it was a little different at the time.” They still hadn’t quite gotten the formula down until IV, so II and III still had issues with narrative and structure. V, of course, hadn’t quite figured out how to give the characters full arcs and stories, and as such, Bartz, Lenna, Galuf and Faris feel a bit flat compared to other Final Fantasy characters. However, VI, everything comes together. It’s hard to grasp just how ambitious this game was, from narrative to graphics to music, everything here is trying at doing something bigger, doing more, telling a greater story. Everything here is done to tell a grander, more epic and more personal story than has ever appeared before in a Final Fantasy. Even then, very few really manage to match the story after this. From the characters to the villains to the systems, this game has eared its place in the pantheon of great games, and games that helped define the genre as a whole. Even now, thirty-one years later, people are still using this game as a template, and not just for retro throwbacks.

So, it does hurt my heart to start with some of the downsides, but the game isn’t perfect. This is a game with a lot of characters and a lot of systems, and the real solution to the game is to get everyone a maxed out Magic stat, Ultima, and blast the ever loving shit out of everything that moves. I genuinely spent the last act of the game just blowing the shit out of everyone with Ultima, and loading up on 99 Ethers so I could keep doing it until the dungeon was over. Even when they fixed Cyan’s Bushido skill so you didn’t have to “charge” it, I still found him better as a pinch healer than someone who was cutting fools apart with a katana, and that’s disappointing. It really would take Square a long time to get that balance, and I think that’s part of why X is so well regarded even if it’s story is a bit wonky. Like, I’m not sure I used very much of Straggo’s blue magic, even though I had a bunch of spells. It was way easier to have him just blast people with Firaga, Flare and Ultima. I also never used a summon. At least I knew how to do it this time, I just didn’t.

There are also a lot of characters. I don’t expect anything from the secret characters, Mog, Umaro and Gogo, but I do expect something from Gau. His little story was nice and emotional, but it was also one scene and I never got him above level 13. Training him up on the Veldt has potential, I know he can be game breaking. However, you know what made the game really easy? Ultima. Also, I would like a little bit more with Straggo and Relm. They’re introduced pretty late, and while they have some good scenes in the Word of Balance, they don’t have a lot in the World of Ruin. They do have a quest that adds to their characters, and it’s a fun one. Very unique, actually, with the random teleportation and the coral, but it was also all we got. Hell, Straggo’s recruitment was just talking to him with Relm in the party at Cultists’ Tower. That’s it. At least Relm got a full boss battle and a dungeon.

That said, those are nitpicks. Everything about this game is phenomenal, from the somber intro to the heroic finale, with Terra flying to save her friends as the last of her power dies out. Setzer saving her from the fall is also great. As great as the narrative is, and it is, the one thing I want to talk about first is how great the graphics are. First, Kazuko Shibuya did a great job with the sprite work as always. This was her last Final Fantasy game for a long time, and it was one where she really tried to marry as much of Yoshitaka Amano’s surreal character and monster designs to her own art as possible. She also wove in so much of the modern (well, ultra 90s) aesthetics of Tetsuya Nomura as well. However, it’s not just her character art, but the entire team’s ability to build environments, the use of Mode 7 and all sorts of other graphical tricks to develop a world that makes the adventure feel epic. Everything about this game serves the narrative, and that includes the graphics. Each kingdom is distinct, even with the reused assets, and each character is filled with personality. Different combat stances, different casting stances and even different weakened stances do so much to give character to the characters even while they’re fighting. Edgar’s cape swept out in front of him as he smirks during his cast which is different from Terra’s prayer or Celes’s offensive stance. It’s all great. Then you have the twisted remains of Vector turned into Kefka’s tower. Hell, you even find the Ultima Buster in the prison Ghestal put Kefka in.

Then you have the unbelievable soundtrack. This isn’t Nobuo Uematsu’s greatest soundtrack (that still goes to VII), but it’s so good. Each song is perfectly tailored to the scene, with Terra’s theme used as leitmotif for certain thematic elements in different songs is a great touch. Celes’s theme tying in with the Opera songs, which of course is a moment that parallels her own story is just pitch perfect. The songs swing from somber to heroic. I mentioned last time about how the music in the World of Ruin transitions from Dark World to Searching for Friends, and that’s a great example of the music matching the themes of the story. Every bit of sound design is built to tell a story, to evoke emotions and to make the player see things that the game might not have the technical aspect to see. We can’t see the characters faces, they can only make rudimentary movements, and yet, the music manages to evoke what they are trying to feel. It’s the difference Uematsu makes. Most of the time, the music is there to make you feel what the media wants you to feel, but the music here, and in several other Final Fantasy games, is designed to make you feel what the characters are feeling. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s important.

Of course, the narrative here is king. With a game that has 14 different playable characters, it’s amazing how few get lost in the shuffle. Even Shadow gets a few emotional moments, and more if you see all of his dreams (which I never get). The game is built all around telling this story about rising up from the darkness, about building life and community from hope. Even the final dungeon is built to serve the very themes of the game. This a game about building community, about how friendship and love is what gives us life and how cooperation is more important than domination, and the final dungeon has the party split into three groups and each group has to help the others. There’s no super soldier handling everything here. The team is at their strongest when everyone is blasting the shit out of the bad guys with Ultima. Except Sabing and Gogo. He can Phantom Rush and they can Mimic the Phantom Rush.

The finale is a twenty minute epic where each character gets a moment to close off their story. It’s far more than what any other game gets, except maybe XII and XIV. Seeing Locke save Celes in the way he couldn’t save Rachel was great, or Shadow not allowing himself to live in a World of Hope, and letting Interceptor go. I just wish he was on the airship with Relm. Relm and Straggo showing their love for each other and Terra being willing to sacrifice everything for the people who gave her a life and taught her about love, only for them to swoop in to make sure she got a chance to live. In the end, she takes off her hairband and allows the wind to take her hair, as she returns to Mobliz to help raise the orphans.

I know this was a bit of a ramble, but I’m still a bit amped up after finishing the game. It’s so good, even if Kekfa was a bit easy. It is cool that I used a Megalixir right after he hit me with Heartless Angel. That was cool.

Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy VI Part 2. “Right. First things first. For once I feel hopeful!”

It’s amazing how the best Final Fantasy games can pull hope from the darkest of places. As I near the end of this, having now reached all of the games I’ve played before (not counting XII and I), a pattern I’ve noticed is that my favorite games in the series are dark, but not bereft of hope. In fact, it is hope that drives them onward, despite the darkness, to build a better world. Whether it’s Clive going to face Ultima, Basch not losing his honor despite constantly losing in his wars against the Archadean Empire, the Scions against the Endsinger or Celes staring out across the wasteland of the World of Ruin, all of these stories are about the Warriors of Light overcoming the darkness by bringing hope back to the world. It’s like the Scions said, “We will stand against fate, no matter the cost. We’ve been here before, many a time, thus do we know to never give up, for hope will shine again.”

There is no point in any Final Fantasy quite as bleak as the World of Ruin. The Starscourge-laden land in XV definitely tried, they even called the chapter “World of Ruin,” but Eos is still rather whole, it’s just a land of eternal night with tons of monsters everywhere. It already had a bunch of monsters to begin with, now it’s just dark. I guess the monsters are worse, but same with the World of Ruin. The World of Ruin had continents ripped apart, lands torn asunder and towns completely wiped out. Legendary monsters sealed during the previous calamity rise up from the very earth itself to run amok and horrible beasts, stronger than anything before, roam the land. Crops don’t grow properly, the sea is purple and the sun hides in an orange sky just above a sick horizon. Also, Kefka blasts people with his Light of Judgment whenever they make him angry, or speak blasphemy against him or when he’s just bored. And he is bored a lot. The overworld theme, Terra’s Theme, is already a somber melody reflecting the heroine’s angst and uncertainty with life, but the overworld theme when you first begin to cross the World of Ruin, Dark World, is bleak and hopeless. Just like the broken landscape and twisted continents it reflects, Dark World is the most hopeless of overworld music in the series.

And yet! When Celes arrives, she rescues a boy from a burning building. She finds Sabin and helps Edgar save his people. They find Setzer, drunk in a bar, and convince him to not just get over the loss of the Blackjack, but to remember the spirit of his love Darril and live the life she wanted him to life. When you find the Falcon in the depth of Darril’s Tomb and it rises up from the ocean, the song changes from Dark World permanently to Searching for Friends, one of the most beautiful overworld themes in the series. All four of the characters you have thought they couldn’t find any hope in this world that Kefka has destroyed, but now together again after a year, they search the world for their friends because they know they can end Kefka, and the War of the Magi, forever.

It does take a bit of the edge off that I saved Cid this time. The first time I played the game, years and years ago, I didn’t even know you could, but this time I made sure to do it. It was kind of irritating. I must have fed that old man thirty fast fish or something (probably just like 10) before he was like “oh, yeah, I made a raft, go find your friends.” Dude doesn’t even have lines for you if you talk to him again. However, I think it’s important that I saved him this time because so much of the World of Ruin is overcoming that ruin. Every character you recruit has a story, some a little bit more complex than others. Cyan kind of trying to ease his grief for his wife by pretending to be that woman’s boyfriend and realizing what a mistake he’s made. There is Terra coming to realize that the orphans who she’d taken care of taught her about love, the thing she wanted the most. We have Gau learning his father is alive. Fucking crazy, sure, but alive and that made Gau happy. Even Rachel coming back for a moment to tell Locke to move on, bittersweet though it is, is about overcoming that darkness of the world. Hell, Locke lived in longer than anyone except Terra.

Final Fantasy VI is powerful, and it’s amazing how well it holds up. It is a little easy, though. I’ve gotten all of the party members back and I’m already blowing through the dragons. I have the Ragnarok sword and the Cursed Shield, so I’ll need to find a podcast or something to do while I walk around and try to get the curse lifted. 256 battles is a lot. I did it once, but I was 18 and in high school. Maybe 17. I can do it again, though, and then get everyone Ultima by killing Cactuars in the desert while I have Game Grumps on or something. This is a game where I want to do everything (except get the Blue Magic), although it’s not like I’ve skimped on the side quests in the Pixel Remaster games. I know I didn’t do them in IX or X (or XII, although I do plan on doing them now that I have my copy back), but mostly because it’s a lot easier to do them in this game. Same in VII, although I probably won’t be killing Emerald Weapon or anything. I don’t know if I’ll even get Knights of the Round, although that’s mostly because I don’t like Chocobo Racing.

Anyway though, VI has a lot of good side quests, and most of them are packed with character moments or are just very cool about the world. Cultists’ Tower (or considering I’m an old, I remember it as Fanatics’ Tower) is one of those dungeons that doesn’t really tie in with any character, but makes so much sense with the world. Some people have given up all of their hope they now worship Kefka, and they’ve all become powerful mages. It’s an entirely magical tower. It’s very cool. However, most of them are character side quests, and that rules. Defeating Wrexsoul to help put the people of Doma at ease is great. Slaying the dragons, sealed by the world before, is another cool one. Plus the Ancient Castle giving us some insight on the world during the War of the Magi, and a bit on the Figaro brothers is something I’m definitely hyped for. This is a wonderful game. I’m glad I’m playing it again.

Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy VI Part I “I’m a GENERAL not some opera floozy.”

It’s really kind of hard to write about this game. See, the thing was, Final Fantasy VI was the first Final Fantasy I beat. Not the first I played, that was the original on the NES at my cousins when I was 7 or 8. I did kind of play IV back when we thought it was II at daycare, but I was 5, so it was a bit beyond me. I had played VII, VIII, IX and X before I got a chance to play this, but in my last year of high school, I finally got my own copy of Final Fantasy Anthology for the PlayStation and I played through it. Weirdly, I never touched V, but I played the hell out of VI throughout my senior year and I fell in love. The game was beautiful. I had heard about the World of Ruin, the Opera House and Kefka in general, but all of it was in whispers, the way things used to be teased at back in the late 90s, early 2000s era message boards, but I didn’t know about them exactly. Watching Locke break combat when he saw Terra cast a spell, or Celes sing, or just waiting for Shadow on the Floating Continent were all things I’d never experienced before, even with the earth moving power of the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube.

What makes it hard to write about is that now, 21 years later, the game is having the same effect on me. In this era of the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy, the Pixel Remaster of this game is making me feel feelings that have stuck with me for two decades. This game is over thirty years old, it has graphics for a Super Nintendo, and somehow, it’s still able to move me in ways even modern RPGs can’t. Part of it is the sheer ambition on display here. The developers wanted to send off the Super Nintendo with a bang, and just like Chrono Trigger, this game is beyond anything else they did on this console or, in a lot of ways, the next. However, there’s also an element of care and detail on display for this game that other RPGs, other games, just don’t always have. They wring so much character out of these tiny pixel people, and it’s not just Kazuko Shibuya’s top notch sprite work, although she is on the top of her game in this one, but the writing, the sound design, the desire to do and say something with this game that they haven’t done before. Final Fantasy VI isn’t the first RPG to be more than a game that has a simple town-dungeon-event-repeat structure, it’s not even really the first in the series, but it’s the first to do it in a way that we recognize as an RPG today.

So, my first, and only real complaint, is that the Esper system isn’t quite as good as I remember. I don’t know if I am misremembering or if it was just in the PS1 version, but I thought when you equipped an Esper you got to use the spells contained within as long as you had it equipped. Once you learned them, they were permanent, but before that, you could use them once they were equipped. In the Pixel Remaster it seems you can’t use the spells until you’ve mastered them, which has caused me to do some Magic AP grinding just so Terra can keep up with the rest of the party, and that’s kind of annoying. However, it’s been the only issue. The rest of the game has been insane.

In the World of Balance, I’m surprised at how well they have managed to juggle the large cast of characters, ensuring that most of them get their own chances to grow, change and share a bit of the spotlight. Some of them, Gau and Mog specifically, don’t really get much outside of their introduction, but the rest of them do have arcs and stories. Not just the PCs, but several non villain NPCs get story and character time as well, which is very cool. Bannon and Arvis at least get some time to shine. Early on, the game divides the party up to ensure all of the characters get introduced and have a chance to have their own arcs before coming back together as one big group to fight Kefka in a real time strategy battle. There’s so much mistrust and uncertainty as Locke, Terra and Sabin’s group come together in the end, yet they band together to fight, all for it to fall apart again when Terra’s Esper side comes out.

Throughout the whole World of Balance, they did a good job jumping from group to group to make sure everyone can level up, have narrative importance and learn spells from the magicite. I get why they take Terra away from you for a long time, because the other characters need to catch up with her, and then Celes has to leave because she’s probably already surpassed Terra in terms of levels and spells. Plus, Terra has spent several hours, narratively, in a coma so she needs development. It’s great. Plus, it allows all of our characters to get big scenes. The Opera House in particular is one of the best. It was great when I was 18, Hell, they made a damn CGI video for it for Anthology, but the HD-2D update, with fully voiced singing is on another level. I got a little emotional, I’ll admit, bitten a bit by the nostalgia bug, just listening to Celes sing “I’m the Darkness/You’re the Starlight.” Then, Celes sacrifices herself to the Empire so we can escape Vector and we get an HD-2D update of the minecart escape. Hell, seeing Vector over the horizon the first time you ride the Blackjack is very cool too.

However, there are tons of little moments that are so good. Relm trying, and failing, to hide from you in the Esper Cave or Kefka trying to run away from Sabin in the camp. “‘Wait’ he says, do I look like a waiter?” Or every time that mother fucker Ultros shows up and just causes problems. The smaller things that add character, such as Locke’s blushing whenever he talks to Celes, or her inability to look at him once they’re reunited on the trip to Thamasa. Also Kefka just being an asshole in every scene he’s in. Like, I forgot how much of an asshole he is. I kind of remembered him as the Joker, but he’s a bit more like the Joker by way of Donald Trump. Nihilistic and cruel, but also petty, childish and kind of stupid.

Still, nothing quite compares to the Floating Continent. It seems like it’s the final dungeon. On the way up there, you pick up some late game weapons from previous games, you fight a creature called the Ultima Weapon and it’s got that mid-90s organic tileset that was so popular in final levels at the time. Also, you’re on your way to stop the Emperor. This is like, where Final Fantasy II ended. And yet, you actually fail. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like watching the continents split apart as the Warring Triad’s magic goes haywire in a 16 bit game, and I’ve played Phantasy Star II.

The game does such a good job at making every bit feel important and connected. Every scenario has story and character as well as a dungeons and magic and boss fights. Everything feels connected, every character feels important (except maybe Gau) and all of them have personality and interesting things to do. It surprises me just how much I remembered about this game, and how much the emotions stuck with me all these decades later.

Final Fantasy Challenge: Final Fantasy XVI Part I. “Come to Me, Ifrit!”

This one is going to be a little bit different. I played Final Fantasy XVI when it came out, and I even wrote in my journal about it, but I forgot all about it. In the interim between Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, I got kind of burnt out on the series, which was why it took me two years to write a new entry. I have a bunch of aborted essays on my hard drive, but they won’t be going up. I don’t like them. However, I never stopped thinking about Final Fantasy XVI, and starting Final Fantasy VI has got me thinking about it even more. So, this will likely be a part one, but it might be the only part. I said I would likely replay the game when I finish XV, but I also still have all of my recollections and I’m kind of replaying it with a buddy of mine at the same time. Well, he’s playing on stream and I’m jumping on the call to be a dick. So, I think I’ll do a bit of a stream of consciousness recollection and see if I need to write another post on the game when I get back to it.

So, I’ve mentioned a couple of times since I came back that I really enjoyed Final Fantasy XVI. It wasn’t one of my favorite games, but it’s the game that straddles the line between the S-tier games, XII, VI and XIV and the A-Tier games, VII, V and IX. I don’t know where it falls on either spectrum, because while I think it’s good, I do think that a lot of the criticisms of the game (not the narrative) are valid. This is a game that is at once beautiful and gripping, but slow and tedious at the same time. It’s a game that takes forever to get done, but it’s not long enough. Ultimately, I think the good parts vastly outweigh the bad, especially in comparison to other games in the series, but it is not a perfect game.

What got me to write this, though, is fascination at how much story they packed into Final Fantasy V, and how much more they’re packing into Final Fantasy VI. Yes, those were games that helped pioneer the genre, but they have so much character and story, and yet they are limited to pixel characters and text boxes. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy XVI has fully motion captured cutscenes with naturalistic anime artwork and voice work by Ben Starr and Ralph Ineson. It’s hard to compete. Cid’s death is a work of art, the best death scene in the series with a bullet, and it’s largely due to the fact it’s got Ralph fucking Ineson giving a hell of a Shakespearean soliloquy. No matter how well done Galuf or Tellah’s deaths were, they were all sprites, dialogue boxes and combat screens. Even the famous death of Aerith cannot hold a candle to a fully voice, fully realized cutscene in a modern game powered by a Playstation 5.

That’s what makes Final Fantasy XVI work so well, because it takes advantage of that. There are some dumb arguments out there about Jill not getting enough character development (because people don’t know what character development is) or that Clive is a limited character (yeah, I can at least understand where they’re getting that about Jill even if they’re wrong but that is insane), but in reality, the game is heavily focused on writing, narrative and characterization. Everybody gets a huge amount of character development. Not just your party members, not just Clive or the villains, but side characters like Charon, Goetz and Tarja. I rewatched Tarja’s side quest about her mentor and it was heartwrenching. Fucking Blackthorne gets an indepth character study and he’s the blacksmith. Jill has the whole game to develop her character, and while we can talk about how much of her character development is dependent on her romantic relationship with Clive, but first we’ll need to talk about Tifa Lockheart, but then we’ll need to talk about how she also has an entire arc about growing into the leader who will lead the world into a better tomorrow. Regardless of what you think happened at the end, it’s going to be Jill that brings the world into the better world, one without Bearers and Dominants. Without threats from monsters, where the world can grow beyond into something good.

The narrative is wound up into a lot of different places and I feel like it’s so strong, possibly the strongest in the entire series, but it requires doing everything. This is exactly what people said they wanted from JRPGs, where sidequests aren’t just means of getting super swords to hit super bosses with, but something like Chrono Trigger, where they develop the characters and give them arcs. These sidequests are beautiful, well written and fucking tedious as Hell. I did all of them, I loved them all, but even I can admit that a lot of the side quests really are “go to a place, fight some guys, watch a long cutscene, go back to the Hideaway and watch another long cutscene.” At the time when I played it, it didn’t matter because I loved these characters, I loved watching how they grew and I wanted as much as I could with them, but I also kind of see where people are getting the idea that Jill or Joshua or Dion don’t have any character growth. I don’t see how you can say Jill has no lines (yep, that was a real Kotaku article, everyone, literally saying Jill had no lines in the entire game), but I can understand if people think she doesn’t get development if they didn’t do her sidequests.

It’s a shame, too, because the missions and sidequests get better as the game goes on. I’ve said that, much like the Last Jedi is a second half film, Final Fantasy XVI is a second half game. Even the most boring sidequests are far more compelling once you pass the timeskip, mostly because there aren’t any quests where you have to give people food or whatever (although, no joke, I genuinely love that sidequest). The combat also gets more engaging as Clive picks up more Eikons to battle with. Phoenix and Garuda do not really show off what you can do, and I’ve seen some people say the game doesn’t really open up until you get Odin. I don’t agree, but man, once I got Zantetsuken, I really couldn’t put it back in my toolbox.

Still, I feel like the game’s pace works well. Early on, it’s a bit muddled, but it all eventually comes together and leads to some of the most insane, most climactic fights in the series. However, they’re only like this because they’re fully 3D rendered, fully voice acted, full action combats. There’s no way the fight with Bahamut (IN FUCKING SPACE) would be as cool with an ATB meter. Yes, it would have blown my mind if, midway through the fight, Phoenix and Ifrit merged together like the conversations in the middle of some Final Fantasy VI fights, but it has nothing on what we see with the spectacle on display in this game.

The fights with Titan, with Bahamut and with Barnabas are some of the best in the series. The duel with Barnabas at the top of his castle, over his ruined kingdom, is one of the best Final Fantasy moments ever. I was on the edge of my seat the whole fight. It was up there with the fight against God Kefka, Rebirth’s Sephiroth fight, Elidibus at the Crystal Tower, Emet-Selch and the bosh rush at the end of Ridorana Lighthouse, and none of them compare with the fight with Bahamut. Nothing in any game is quite like the fight with Bahamut.

It’s a spectacle of a game, but it’s also slow, sad and bittersweet. It was my second favorite game of 2023, far better, I thought, than Baldur’s Gate 3, but not quite as good as Tears of the Kingdom. It came close, though.