We’ve arrived at the Final Fantasy game I was most looking forward to. It has a reputation for being one of the best in the series. 30 years later, it’s still the number one pick for many fans. I can see why!

This game was fantastic. I have some nitpicks (which I’ll get into below), and it may have been a tad too ambitious, but it’s absolutely the best Final Fantasy game in the series so far. That makes it the best of the 2D pixel art Final Fantasy games. I believe this was also the last game for which Sakaguchi was sole director/story-lead. He stuck around as a producer and occasionally shared some story credit, but as far as I know this was the last time he had this amount of sole creative control. So, it could be considered his masterpiece.

What really shined was the story, especially early on. This game impressed me with its cinematic flare. It put far more effort into storytelling than any previous Final Fantasy game. This game had an incredible, ambitious vision—one so well crafted that it doesn’t feel like it aged at all. The storytelling techniques it employed are still very effective by today’s standards.

Unfortunately, I have a handful of problems, mostly (but not exclusively) related to the gameplay systems. Nothing was so bad that it actively harmed my experience. There were just a few things that felt neutral. Stuff that holds me back from calling this a perfect game, even if the high points are very high.

There are a few elements of previous Final Fantasy games that I wish were used here, instead of it branching out to experiment. I’m glad it did experiment—it was important for the franchise as a whole. I just think that if they had saved this story for FFVII and used one more experimental game in between, it could have been an easy 10/10 masterpiece for me.

Still, as I said, this is by far the best Final Fantasy I’ve played so far as part of this project. I can see why so many people consider it their favorite. It sets a very high bar for the rest of the series.

The Review#↑

Audio & Visuals#↑

Once again, see my thoughts on the Pixel Remasters for general notes about how these games look and feel. I’ll focus on the stuff unique to this game.

This game not only maintained the expressiveness of character sprites that FFV had, it surpassed it. So many characters had really good custom animations for various emotions. They were very effective at assisting in telling the story. Even better, it did so without over-emphasizing everything cartoonishly like FFV did. There are still some charming animations that dip into it a little bit, especially stuff like rapidly flashing two poses to show intensity, but it’s done tastefully. They struck a great balance here.

I really appreciated the visual and audio tone set by the game. They stuck to it very consistently. All the colors have a cooler temperature than previous games in the series. The soundtrack is fantastic, and really helped sell the emotional moments.

The backdrop art was universally incredible. I really appreciated all of it. As I understand it, the Pixel Remasters helped a lot with this for this game in particular. Everything is full of so much consistent detail and so many small touches.

There was also some awesome enemy art, especially for bosses. The final boss was a great spectacle, and is deservedly iconic. Even if a random enemy here or there wasn’t great, the sprites in this game were all better than those of previous games. Gorgeous.

This game had some amazing cinematic moments.

The intro to the game has that long, slow walk. Mechs marching across a snowy field. The music is somber, but determined. For a long time, the snowfield yields no landmarks, until slowly a mountain rises on the horizon. Then, the first glint of warm light, coming from a town that is being slowly revealed. That warm light is a spark of hope against the bleak backdrop, but you already know you’re marching with intent to snuff it out. It’s stirring.

The musical performance put on by Celes is giving me goosebumps as I relisten to it as I write this. The fact that they put on an opera performance during the game is amazing. I can’t believe something like this made it into an RPG in 1194, in 16-bits! It perfectly demonstrates how much passion went into the artistic aspects of this game. That part is what I’ll remember more than anything else.

Everything is fantastic. Perfect.

Story#↑

I loved the writing of this game.

Spoilers throughout this section. Skip ahead to Gameplay if you want to avoid them all, though I’ll spoiler-tag the really big things.

Towards the end, I started to dislike the pacing and some of the general writing, but I think that’s partially my fault. The game opens up in the latter-half. There’s a lot of side-content to do. You can gather up the full cast, go on quests for powerful pieces of equipment, finish the side-stories of each of the part members, and so on. I wanted to see it all, so I did. Some of it was great! Some of it…

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy large portions of that content. Part of it is that I just wasn’t invested in a handful of party members. I would have had a better time with the game if I focused more on completing the main story and whatever side stories actually engaged me, and skipped the stories for characters I didn’t really like.

This left me feeling torn after finishing the game. It’s taken me a long time to write this review, because there was this lingering feeling. I was conflicted. I felt like the story really fell off in the second half, and that made me want to lower the score, but I also remembered loving it at the start, and I was satisfied by the ending. I do think that having a load of side-content I don’t enjoy is a negative, but since it was my stubbornness that made me play it all, I won’t let that affect my opinion of the game overall too much. After coming to that realization, and accepting that the highs of the game were truly high enough to outshine any of the lows, I’m back to thinking this is one of my all-time favorite games.

Thinking back on the main events and the most important party-members’ stories, it was a fantastic experience throughout.

My main criticism of the main story is that I don’t feel like we got quite enough out of the Espers. It was a very character-focused story, so I can understand that there wasn’t much room for anything else. I just would have liked to learn more about the Espers and their world. They’re left as this mystical, mostly unexplained thing. We know who they are, what they can do, and bits of their history (though largely through the human perspective). That’s all cool, and it serves the story well—I just wish we learned more about their culture. It would have made me care about them more. Speaking of caring about them more, very few of them felt like anything more than an anthropomorphized piece of equipment. I enjoyed exploring the stories of those that received more detailed writing. I wish we got more of that. It’s really the missed opportunities that get to me. I’d love to see an expanded version of this game someday, like the FFVII remakes are doing.

On to the good:

I adored most of the cast. They were full of personality and good characterization. Their individual stories were engaging, and their interactions with each other were really endearing. There were many touching character moments and arcs throughout the story:

Celes constantly trying to prove her loyalty, sacrificing herself for the others, and succeeding even in the most dire situations

Sabin and Edgar reuniting, and reconciling their pasts

Cyan dealing with the grief of losing everything and everyone he loved, his allies fighting through his trauma-based nightmares, and ultimately choosing life

Terra going through an identity crisis, finding her place in the world, and finding her own identity instead of one that was forced on her

Locke being generally the party’s spark of hope and cheer, while also coming to terms with his own grief

…and all of that is just what happened to come to mind while writing this.

I also really enjoyed the places where the story split into smaller groups. It let the story focus in on fewer characters, and let those personalities shine through. It also allowed the story to have much more content, and gave me much much more time to get to know the characters, without making it seem like the events of the main plot were taking a long time (since it all happened simultaneously).

The main story was very enjoyable as well. It’s hard to separate the “main plot” from the characters, as it’s a very character-driven story. You might even say it’s Kefka’s story. Regardless of how you categorize it, there are some core themes I picked up on, which I will refer to as the main story.

It tracks that this is such a character-driven story, because it’s also a very personal one. This is a story about grief, trauma, and other internal struggles. It’s a story about the meaning of life, healing, perseverance, and supporting each other through the toughest times. It’s a game about hope.

Kefka is a bit of a paradox. I don’t think he’s actually a nihilist so much as he represents nihilism. He cares too much about his ambitions and goals. He wants to show the world that nothing matters. He wants everyone to despair, as he despairs. Kefka represents a creeping doubt about anything having meaning. His rising influence represents that doubt growing. The destruction he causes along the way represents the pain that doubt causes. His betrayal and choice to destroy the world represents the despair of that doubt taking over.

I had something spoiled for me before I started the game. It was innevitable. I knew Kefka was the true villain (though this seemed obvious to me anyways, I’m clearly not in a position to say it was actually obvious without knowing it ahead of time). I knew that Kefka won, temporarily , but I didn’t know any of the details.

I don’t think that second thing was actually true.

Kefka never won. He simply made his argument, mic dropped, and watched. Yes, many people died. Yes, he caused an extreme amount of suffering. Those things were just a part of his plan, not the end goal. Kefka wanted to show that nothing mattered. He wanted to crush the “meaningless” hopes and dreams of the people by showing that everything has an end, and that end can come in an instant. So, he destroyed the world, caused as much suffering as possible, and waited to watch everyone give up.

They never did. It starts with a great, poetic scene:

You start the broken world playing as Celes, who has been pulled out of the sea and resuscitated by Cid. Cid doesn’t give up. He works to keep Celes alive and improve her health for a year, while also working on a raft. He has hope that they’ll survive, escape the island, and find their friends. Celes and Cid trade places. She wakes up, while he falls into bedridden sickness. You then spend a bit of time doing the same tasks every day in a montage. You go to the ocean, you catch a fish, and you feed it to Cid. Celes has hope that Cid will recover. She works through the monotony of survival just for the chance that he’ll recover. Though the situation is grim, she pushes forward, one foot in front of the other. Eventually, Cid recovers¹. He finishes the raft, and tells Celes, now full of hope, to go and find the others.

That’s how all of the broken world goes. Celes and Cid showcase the themes of the second half of the game, boiled down into the simplest, purest forms. You spend the second half of the game repeatedly witnessing that people are picking up the pieces. The people you come across have hope. They never gave up. They choose life, even in the darkest circumstances. As you travel, you spread even more hope. and crush even more of Kefka’s despair.

Kefka wanted people to despair, give up, and admit that it was all hopeless and pointless. They never did. Kefka never won. Not even for a bit. In fact, Kefka needed the power of the gods and a master plan full of betrayal stretching back years, only to be defeated by the plain human spirit and shared bonds. In fact, at the very end, humanity rejects magic and seals it away forever, choosing to rely purely on their fellow humans going forward. Kefka didn’t just lose, he lost in the most spectacular fashion.

There are even elements of hope in the gameplay, too. For example, when waiting for Shadow, instead of accepting his sacrifice . That’s an act of pure hope. The Desperation Attack mechanic is an expression of hope as well. A character on the brink of death can rise above the odds to unleash a massive unique attack.

The final fight also emphasizes the themes, especially those of your shared bonds supporting you against despair. You can queue up 12 party members. When one group goes down, another takes their place. What used to be a fail state in the rest of the game becomes a full replenishment of the troops. Now you’ve got a fresh party with all their resources at full health. It’s brilliant. For that reason, it’s easily my favorite final fight in the series so far (even including the future games I’ve already played).

This is a timeless story. A masterpiece in storytelling through games. It’s still impressive now, but it’s even more impressive that it was created 30 years ago.

Gameplay#↑

Unfortunately, this is where things dip a bit for me. The gameplay is what keeps me from giving this a 10/10 and elevating it into my top 10 list.

It actually starts out really good. I just didn’t like the direction it took eventually.

Let’s start at the beginning, in that really good part:

Early on, you’re told that magic is dead. You learn the reason later. You start the game as a girl who somehow has magic. She’s being controlled and used as a weapon, but escapes. At the start, she’s unsure of her identity. She was a soldier, a weapon. She also wants to protect and save people, as she was protected and saved. Her magic reflects this. It’s a very neat bit of characterization. She starts with one damage spell, and one healing spell.

Later on, you encounter another magic user, and add her to your party. She has a similar internal conflict, and her magic reflects this in a similar, but distinct way. She does a different kind of damage, which is one easy difference, but she also can absorb magic attacks to protect the party. Terra, the first girl, doesn’t have a unique ability until much later when she learns more of her own backstory.

That’s neat! The narrative and gameplay intertwine with each other and create a story that’s better than the sum of its parts.

There’s lots of other great characterization like this.

Locke is a thief². It’s what he’s good at. He kinda sucks at everything else in combat, but stealing things is very useful. He even gets a solo mission where his ability to steal is made the focus instead of any combat potential. It’s really cool.

Edgar and Sabin both have special moves that functionally do similar things, but are interacted with by the player in very different ways. Edgar buys or finds new tools, while Sabin needs to learn his abilities through experience. Sabin’s abilities are widely applicable and strong, but require button combination inputs. Meanwhile Edgar’s abilities are easy to use, but each have more specific uses. It’s an interesting way to show two brothers who went down different paths.

It goes on an on. There are tons of cool examples of this if you look for it. Even the characters whose abilities feel less connected to the narrative are at least interesting, unique playstyles. Every character’s moveset is very thoughtful and well crafted.

…until we get into some spoiler stuff: Espers .

Magic is strong. I think the devs wanted to emphasize how cool it is to have magic in a world that should be mundane. Unfortunately, they not only made it strong, they tied character progression even for non-magical characters to learning magic. This means that just by trying to make your melee guy better at melee, he’s going to accidentally learn magic along the way. That magic will be more powerful than anything else he can do, even if you don’t focus on building it. Everyone becomes a mage in this game. Every single character is stronger as a mage than they are at anything else.

Every unique, cool moveset and playstyle gets washed away in a flood of magic. Even the dedicated magic users slowly lose all identity as they start to gravitate towards the same exact spell list. All the characterization fades away. The game even realizes this. You don’t see missions like Locke’s anymore, because magic is the focus now. You’ve already turned him into a mage, it would be weird to have him be a thief again. The same goes for all the other characters, and any opportunity of creating interesting challenges designed for them to uniquely solve.

Something I really like about FFIV is that every character was unique, and had unique strengths and weaknesses that the game could design encounters around. Characters would rotate in and out of the party, constantly changing the overall combat sandbox in interesting ways. It really let the unique strengths of each character shine.

This game does the exact opposite. It’s such a shame. The uniqueness of the characters at the start of the game was great. In some ways, even better than FFIV! Then it all gets thrown out.

This system also fell short of FFV’s job system. It’s clear that they were trying to fuse the best parts of FFIV and FFV, but I think they mistakenly took the worst parts of FFII-FFIII instead (and then added a killer story onto it, which makes up for it all, to be fair).

I honestly think this game would have been better without the Esper system. Just let the magic users gain magic as they level, like FFIV, and keep everyone’s toolkit unique. Allow some Espers to provide some bonus magic, like how many of the big impressive summons of the old games required big story moments or optional boss fights. Allow stats to progress more naturally, without so much micromanaging. It could have been perfect.

That all sounds scathing, but it wasn’t that bad. I’m just sad that it had so much potential, so close to perfection, and then took a misstep right at the end that spoiled it all. It was a delicately balanced and intricate tower of rocks that somebody tried to add a bowling ball to. Still, it was pretty good combat, just “fine” instead of amazing.

There were a few other combat changes I didn’t enjoy so much, mostly to do with the ATB system.

First, in this game, the ATB bars always increase. There are no pauses during animations like the previous games. Many combat animations are pretty long, so this meant that bars were generally always full. In FFVI, it felt like I had far less control over the turn order than previous games. There was no chance of ever taking double turns or ever having a fast enemy take two turns before I could. It felt very awkward and janky. More like the seemingly random turn orders of the first three Final Fantasy games. The ATB bars didn’t really feel like they communicated any information. I spent 90% of the time in combats with all 4 characters having full ATB bars, waiting on an invisible queue. By the time a few other turns passed, the first character to act would have their bar full again, and be added back into the queue. What really mattered for turn order was who got into that invisible queue first.

Second, somehow, combat still felt very slow. The ATB bar progress moved sluggishly, while still being too fast for the combat animations and gumming everything up in the queue mentioned above. Worse, during the times when you have access to fewer characters, there’s the opposite problem. Nothing ever happens. You’ve got to wait a long time for the first moves to come out in combat, and then wait a while for the second moves, and so on. It’s just always slow.

I think they wanted to tweak the ATB system instead of just keeping the one FFV used, but I honestly think the battle system of FFV was just superior. Every change they made to the ATB system in FFVI was a downgrade.

I’ll end this section on a positive note though. I really liked the relic system. Some of the relics really had big playstyle changes, and the ability to change them around as needed meant I could keep things fresh and plan builds around certain encounters. I also enjoyed how many pieces of equipment had unique effects. I found myself often selecting gear based on these effects instead of raw stats. This made it feel like I was way more involved in building each character’s combat kit.

Final Thoughts#↑

Rating: (on the high end of) 9/10
Playtime: 20 hours

I absolutely adore this game. At the time of writing, it is my #3 9/10 game. Ahead of it are only Yakuza Zero and Final Fantasy XIV. Then we get into the 10/10s.

I think this story will inspire me for a long time.

Next Up#↑

I’m actually taking a break from this series for a bit. It’s the end of the 8-bit and 16-bit pixel-art games. It’s the shift from focusing on Nintendo systems to the Playstation. I’ll be back with FFVII eventually.

In the meantime, I’m going to be finishing Mass Effect.

As always, please look forward to it.