A couple of disclaimers first to get out of the way. First, my previous exposure to JRPGs was limited to a few momentary glimpses of people playing Pokemon. Second, while this really was an old game (released 20 years ago) with the few brush-ups of the mobile re-release and its more or less full 2D design it didn't feel noticeably dated so none of my criticisms are directly affected by its age. In fact, since the game has all the markings of an EPIC(!) I assume it had a pretty high budget and a high profile when it was released.
Now, to the actual game. What a colossal waste of ~40 hours of my life. I only finished it due to sheer determination. The game could accurately be summed up as "Infantile Tedium". The second part could have been excused, even in this extreme manifestation, had the first not been true in such a literal sense. I can't even say that I had high expectations (but I sure wonder
what is wrong with these people) I mainly played this before Chrono Trigger (which is rated by more competent crowds) to get used to the genre's conventions. Due to the reputation that Final Fantasys have I expected something catered to teenagers but in this case FF6 was clearly targeted at pre-teens.
Style - Characters - Story
I'm not saying the game is childish in the way that an action flick or an action game can be accused of being. Neither as opposed to the grim-dark trend in media. Neither as when speaking about something which is trying to be witty through fart jokes. No, this is in a very much literal sense.
The style, writing and behavior of characters are the biggest culprits of this. This is a game in which characters and NPCs,
literally jump up and down at the slightest instance of happiness,
giggle like schoolgirls,
blush or pose-
I'm cool-finger for the camera. You get constant breaking of the fourth wall for infantile humor as one of the characters is awkward about one of his romance attempts and winks or literally momentarily blushes for the camera. Physically painful cringe. The numerous party members are all so insultingly cliche that they are actually introduced through a few lines describing their particular stereotype. The
protagonist is a CONFUSED™ moody girl that is so hopelessly whiny that she makes the worse Bioware whiner (see Carth, Alistar) seem as cool as Manny Calavera. Some of the members include a
women protecting rebel with guilt issues,
brash youth,
stoic warriors who lost everything, aloof
ex-enemies who really care and really all they could find in their cliche book without anything resembling a competent attempt to diverge from the stereotype or develop. Perfectly suitable to digest and identify with if you are in the right age-group. All those characters
including the arch villain are dressed up and in fact
look likedressed up
8 year olds (and act like 8ylds do in anime?).
The arch villain by the way, deserves his own distinction as the worst achievement when it comes video game characters. We're talking about an utterly terrible caricature that would make bad cartoons look good.
Kefka, a clown-dressed 8 year old that
literally jumps around the place due to his evilness,
literally goes
muahaha at every chance and
literally talks to himself and reveals his plans (SPOILER ALERT destroy the world). This is a game where the player is (attempted) made to hate the bad guys through
literally exposure to
unicorn mistreatment. He's easily as bad as any video game villain I've seen and it's only made worse by all the exposure he gets. I honestly cannot comprehend how a
grown person could suggest
something like this.
The writing, when not simply used to complement the childish animations and the general pre-adolescent behaviour devolves into grandiose or melodramatic lines that would be bad in any context. Here are a few shining examples:
As there is
absolutely no development, build-up or suitable context around or behind them, they stick out like a sore thumb and merely provide a different type of ludicrousness. In the general abysmal treatment they appear to be mere tokens of failed seriousness. Even the dragons of this game look like drakes and are absurdly coloured in pink, purple, orange etc.
The story itself is not that terrible. It's still your textbook save the world from the evil empire fare but that's more acceptable. It does feature a BIG BETRAYAL™ an, a BAD GUY changing heart and an apocalyptic event but all that does is provide a turning point that suggests the game may graduate into adolescence which however never fully happens. Eventually childish features begin creeping back in and the annoying bits remain as bad as ever. The whole premise of the world changing event is the party falling into the most predictable and obvious trap witnessed. There's still complete lack of place in the forced sentimentality in absurd circumstances and the various cases of (suicidal) 5 year olds lecturing monsters amidst battles. They even threw a pedophilic joke in there! There's actually a sense of a wasted opportunity since the post apocalyptic premise provides a great platform for strong scenes but all you get is blatant icarus metaphors, symbolic doves, and the most possibly cliche realization by the protagonist (to continue fighting) delivered in the most possibly cliche way, all centering around the done to death
magic is risky! theme and leading to thankfully not literally kumbaya singing.
Nevertheless, I think it's worth point out that there are in total about a handful of scenes featuring competent to decent drama. There's an attempted suicide, a heroic sacrifice (of a predictably stoic warrior) and even racist purges. Unfortunately they are thoroughly outnumbered (less than 5% of the scenes) and overshadowed by the general tone and quality.
Gameplay
If I spend the first 12-15 hours being shocked by how infantile FF6 was the rest was mainly spent being annoyed about how terrible its systems were and how the most mundane
grinding was the main cornerstone of its gameplay alongside content so padded out I was almost impressed.
The game features 3 distinct "screens": exploring the world map, which is little more than moving around a 2D map from one location (town/cave) to another, exploration which involved strict 4 direction movement on tiles with some minimal interaction with NPCS (trading, quest advancing) and items (get goodie from container) and finally the battle screen in which about 80% of the time is spent.
What's interesting about the battle screen is that 2 of the 3 choices immediately (they are mostly buried under horrible nested UIs) available to player are about
NOT actively fighting the battle. The options are [1] Attack [2]
Fast-Forward (=autoexecute previous attacks) [3]
Run Away. There is actually a good reason for that.
First, random battles are a constant
annoyance that never stops. Anyone ever even slightly annoyed by the random battles occurring during seemingly harmless map movement in Fallout or Baldur's Gate will realize how negligible that was in comparison to FF6. I'm talking about every an average of 3 battles per half a minute of simple movement, one battle every ~7 tiles. All happening in almost all ingame locations and the world map. Over 80% of the battles are the party randomly running into some sort of monsters while simply walking from point A to point B. A true test of patience.
Second, the vast overwhelming majority of the fights are ridiculous easy. At worst, in some exceptions they are a test to the endurance of the party as fighting 10 random battles while moving through a room can get your HP or MP down. The game is, in general, quite easy. There is apart from the party selection, very little reason to diverge from a working tactic and for a turn-based game, the depth is appaling. I had a couple of
boss fights where after setting the attacks of each party member in the initial round, I pressed Fast-Forward and the fight was so long-winded and easy that
the iPad screen turned off during me watching the fight as I had gone one full minute without any clicks.
Therefore, there was really every reason to skip battles, at a marginal HP cost, most of the time and quickly go through them the rest of the time. The thing that the player spends the most time doing is actively encouraged to be avoided. Level ups were also pretty much blatant barely stat-boosting non-events which I found rather odd for an RPG.
The only case where skipping battles doesn't work is a few boss fights which brings mandatory grinding into the picture. A good 20% of my time with the game was spend on pure grinding, fighting random battles in order to get usually some levels to have enough HP to avoid being one-shotted by a boss. The fights themselves don't pose much challenge so it's all about going through the motions a number of times rather than any genuine difficulty. In fact after those (4) cases of grinding I was always surprised by how quickly the boss went down. A lot of time was obviously also wasted due to the (I guess technology-imposed) checkpoint system as boss encounters took much longer than needed.
The rest of the gameplay is ranges between mundane and formulaic. The few towns available are extremely similar, have no content aside from static containers or NPCs who speak the same line and have nothing to do apart from shopping/resting. There is no quest branching, side quests or choices at all. The game is littered however with useless levels, events and battles which serve only to prolong its length. One notable example of such an attempt are the battles that make absolutely no sense like the evidently retarded octopus that seems to frequent opera houses and high altitude caves and airship space. The minor one-off gameplay instances include true platformer-style hopping on chests, avoiding magical ceiling and grand tasks like informing soldiers that the war has ended through fighting a guy who was in the toilet.
As far as art assets go, since I'm not too big on either 16 bit art or anime style I found the music either overly dramatic or repetitive and the maps either boring or obscure and unclear.