FF6 review
Here's a FF6 review I did for a friend's website (now SpellChecked):
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Final Fantasy 6...a re-release of FF3 from the SNES included in Square's Final Fantasy Anthology along with Final Fantasy 5. FF3 was the last Final Fantasy game to hit the Nintendo consoles before Square defected to Sony, making their Sony Playstation console a huge hit and with Final Fantasy 7 and reviving the RPG genre. The graphics, music, and game play are virtually untouched from it's SNES counterpart...but is it really better?
The plot starts out standard fare with a mysterious woman leading 2 Imperial soldiers to capture a magical creature called an Esper. Once the Esper "wakes" the woman up, the real game begins as she travels the world to find her place in it, and her past. Joining her is a cast of outcasts, an Imperial general or two, royalty, a ninja, a Moogle, a Yeti and something that still to this day, no
one knows *what* it is. As they travel, they encounter other Imperial soldiers, some not so evil as they thought who join forces with them, and in the end, the betrayal of a madman ruins the world in his bid to overthrow the Empire and gain power himself...dooming the world.
The Active Battle System from Final Fantasy 4 returns, more refined this time around allowing your party to think fast or take their time. Magic is learned through the magical creatures both sides are looking for, Espers. The Esper system of FF6 is probably one the best magical systems of the Final Fantasy games. When an Esper is equipped, that creature will slowly allow you to
learn its magical spells. When equipped also, the Espers can provide offensive and defensive attacks in battle, and sometimes raise your character's attributes and HP/MP levels when you gain levels. Sadly, most weapons, armor, items and all Espers can be equipped by all party members,eliminating the different Jobs of FF4 and later games. FF6 is sometimes considered the "Seinfield"of the Final Fantasy series for this reason.
The graphics and music are the same from the SNES counterpart we know and loved. No new 32-bit upgrades except for the cinema scenes sprinkled here-and-there to help move the plot along. The cinemas are beautiful and shows that if Square really wanted to, they could have given this game the facelift it deserved. The music is the same from it's 16-bit counterpart also, except
it sounds a little twangier then the original. Gameplay is the same also except gameplay also leads to FF6 and even FF5's biggest flaw- the loading time delays between battles. Now there's not much of it in the later FF games, but the lag-time between loading from the overworld to battle and vice-versa is a bit longer then in later versions, leading to frustration while building up your
levels and magical abilities and having to wait through lag time. even saving your game results in some lag time, which is understandable as you're saving your game data to the memory card. Square could have done a perfect emulation of the game, even with the cinema scenes and extras, but they chose someone else to do the conversion from cart to cd, which caused these problems. Square has the money, but they choose to do it the cheap way out.
Extras included are bestiaries of all the enemies in the game, options to view the related artwork and story boards of the cinema scenes, and options to view other areas of the game once you beat FF6.
In all, FF6 is a worthy title to bring to Playstation to introduce newer gamers to Final Fantasy's roots, but more could have been done to make this title a worthy contender.
Final Verdict
Fun Factor: 6
Originality: 8
Replayability: 6
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Overall: 7
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