Final Fantasy VI (1994) (VG)

Directors:

Hiroyuki Itô
Yoshinori Kitase

Writer:

Hiroyuki Itô (story)

Release Date:

4 April 1994 (Japan)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

A mysterious woman joins a group of Mercenaries in order to find about her destiny and find means of saving the world from an evil madman.

Plot Keywords:

Empire | Goddess | Final Fantasy | Role Playing Game | Sequel

Also Known As:

Final Fantasy Anthology: Final Fantasy VI (USA) (reissue title)
Final Fantasy III (USA)
Final Fantasy VI: War of the Magi

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese | English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

UK:12 | Australia:PG | France:-12 | Hong Kong:IIB | USA:T

Company:

Square Company

Trivia:

The last Final Fantasy game made for a Nintendo system prior to Squaresoft's shift to development for the Sony Playstation.

Goofs:

Continuity: In the world of ruin, in Narshe, it is possible to get the Ragnarok Esper, and have a one-of-a-kind sword made out of it. Later on in the game, it is possible to steal the same sword from an enemy.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: Long ago, the War of Magi reduced the world to a scorched wasteland, and magic simply ceased to exist. 1,000 years have passed... Iron, gunpowder, and steam engines have been rediscovered, and high technology reigns... But there are some who would enslave the world by reviving the dread destructive force known as "magic". Can it be that those in power are on the verge of repeating a senseless and deadly mistake?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Kingdom Hearts II (2005) (VG)

A classic, with some greatness, but its age is showing

You have to understand, I first played this game when I was 11 years old and it was one of the most amazing and emotional things I'd gotten involved with at that age. Sure, I read books all the time, but video games added the element of interactivity and that made me feel more involved in the story. I cried, I cheered, I fell in love with the characters. I scribbled quotes from the game all over my notebooks and dreamed about being part of the cast of characters.

That said, this game is from the SNES days, and if you've played RPGs from that era, you may understand that the standards for writing and translation were significantly lower than they are today. Dialogue is frequently awkward and badly-written, and the scenes that once moved me to tears are (seen from more mature and experienced eyes) very brief, often too brief to really have the necessary emotional impact. It's like someone had a really good idea that was lost in translation, but as much as I like to make fun of the translator, I suspect that the writing in the original Japanese wasn't much more sophisticated. That, I think, is where this game really suffers. If you are playing it for the first time today, comparing it to modern games, please bear in mind that its writing was excellent for the time but has not aged well. Everyone fixates on how graphics have changed over time, but I think that the level of writing is a more significant and noticeable difference and I think that if people want to judge a game by fair standards, they have to take that into consideration as well.

The music, as many people have said, is one of the strongest points in the game. There's really not much else to say except that it's really good and adds necessary emotional oomph to key scenes. The graphics were great for the time, and I think they're still pretty solid for what they are. The gameplay is ... well, it's Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy gameplay is always solid and never amazing, but at least there's nothing horrid about it like the FF8 Draw system. If you've played any Final Fantasy game, you have some idea of what to expect.

I kind of wish that they could remake this game and help it live up to its potential. The characters (many of them) have the start of excellent development, enough that some of them remain my favorite characters of all time, but the writing does not do them any favors. If the writing could be brought up to modern standards, I think there's enough of the human soul in this game to forgive its save-the-world storyline.