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.