The year was 1994, and the RPG was just getting through its early Golden Age. Final Fantasy 4 had raised the bar on gaming narrative. Seiken Densetsu provided a rich plot with a unique weapons and magic system. Lunar: Silver Star was showing the world that the future in RPG's laid in animated cut scenes and voice work. And finally, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest showed the industry that the old standards just weren't gonna cut it anymore, that the RPG gamer was now much too sophisticated for what was acceptable less than 7 years ago. People wanted more: they wanted a deep story, they wanted unique characters, they wanted a rounded cast, they wanted a unique fantasy world that could engross them, they wanted to lose themselves in the narrative, they wanted a good guy they could root for, they wanted a bad guy they would want dead and hopefully in the best boss fight possible. However, the North American market, one of the biggest video game markets in the world, second only possibly to Japan at the time if it was ever second to anyone at all, still had the RPG as a niche genre. That was about to change with Square's darkest, grimmest game yet, Final Fantasy 6.
More popular in America than in Japan
The game starts off with an amnesiac girl named Terra, who is being bossed around by two military dudes to attack a town named Narshe, because the town has excavated an ancient being named an "Esper". The soldiers belong to this entity known as the Empire (apparently the sole empire of the world), and they want the Esper. They reach the Esper, which, though encased in ice, manages to destroy the two soldiers and knock out the girl, who then wakes up in a room. The girl remembers her name: Terra. She tries running away, but collapses in a cave, where a man named Locke saves her. Locke is tasked to take the girl towards Figaro Castle.
In Figaro, the king, Edgar, promises to take the girl to the hideout of the Returners, a rebel group that seeks to put a stop to the Empire's ambitions...
A pause, please. I am sick to death of that plot line. Oh, the good rebels! The eeeeeevil empire! Puh-lease, this is not Star Wars. That story line is trite, and unless you pull a Suikoden and MAKE me care about the rebellion, don't expect me to give a crap about the conflict!
Back on topic. Edgar receives a visit: the Imperial General, Kefka, is seeking Terra. Edgar lies, saying she's not around, but Kefka doesn't buy it. Kefka decides to set the entire castle on fire, but Edgar pulls a fast one on Kefka and simply escapes from the crazy general's clutches with a well timed chocobo escape.
A chocobo
The trio are attacked by Imperial Magitek Walkers (basically magic tanks that walk), but Terra drives them off with her special magic skills. Though Locke and Edgar freak out a little, they are understanding of Terra's plight, and resolve to help her.
The three make their way towards the Returner's Hideout, and on the way they find Edgar's twin brother, the martial artist Sabin, who decides to join them on their quest. In the hideout, located on some mountains, the Returners form a plan: they need to keep the Esper in Narshe out of the clutches of the Empire. However, at that time, there come troubling news: the town of South Figaro has been occupied by Imperial forces! Locke volunteers to help out South Figaro, while Edgar and Sabin decide to take Terra with them to Narshe so she could communicate with the Esper. However, while sailing the river, Sabin falls from the boat and is separated from the group!
The game follows three stories from here on out until the group reunites. These stories occur at the same time...
Edgar and Terra make their way towards Narshe, along with the leader of the Returners, Baron. They go up the mountains, where the Esper, Tritoch, rests frozen in ice. Edgar muses that the Esper could very well be either their salvation, or their ruin.
Meanwhile, Locke infiltrates South Figaro, which is crawling with Imperial troops. As he makes his way through the troops, Locke discovers that one of the Empire's top generals, Celes, has defected and is now imprisoned. Seeing that there is nothing he can do about the town, Locke opts instead to free Celes and take her with him to Narshe. Though she's not thrilled with the idea, Celes relents, and accompanies Locke to Narshe...
At this same time, Sabin washes upon the shores of Doma, where he encounters the Empire attacking Doma Castle. While there, he witnesses Kefka pour poison on a local river, which completely kills the entire Castle's population, save for one man: Cyan, the samurai. Enraged, Cyan challenges the entire Imperial army present in Doma, and in his defense, does well enough for himself, but soon needs to be rescued by Sabin. The two escape the Imperial camp and head on off to the Phantom Forest, where they encounter the Phantom Train. After escaping the train, Cyan encounters the ghosts of his wife and son, who bid him farewell in what can only be called one of the most somber scenes in gaming history.
Making their way through the Veldt, a Savannah of sorts, the two encounter a feral boy named Gau, who knows of a way to get to Narshe. He shows them a diving helmet, big enough for three, which can carry them across the ocean and towards South Figaro, where they can walk back to Narshe...
In Narshe, the three groups converge and help fend off an Imperial attack on the Esper. Terra approaches the beast, where she suddenly screams, turns pink, and flies off into the mountains of Zozo, nearly at the other side of the continent! The team decide to save her.
After finding Terra, the team is shocked to see another Esper, Ramuh, sit beside her. Ramuh reveals to them the Empire's ambition: take Espers, drain them of their magic, and use the magic to conquer the world. The group decides to put a stop to the Empire once and for all, and save the Espers.
To this end, they enlist the services of Setzer, the one man in the world to own an airship (seriously!?) The crew heads towards the Empire's capital of Vektor, where they enter the Magitek factory, where the Espers are hidden. Though they are too late to save any Espers, they do discover a shocking secret: Terra herself is half Esper. Getting the idea that the Espers can help the Returners, with Terra as proof that humans and Espers can get along, they set off to find the Land of Espers.
Upon reaching the gate, they instead find an army of enraged Espers who get out and set off for Vector as soon as possible, completely destroying the city. The Emperor, Gestahl, claims a change of heart, and seeks peace between humans and Espers. Hiring the Returners as his ambassadors, the points to the isolated island of Thamassa as the location of the Espers in hiding. Joining them is the hired mercenary, Shadow.
In Thamassa, The group meet the mage Strago, a descendant of the humans who were able to use magic, and his granddaughter Relm. While there, they find the Espers, who agree to a truce. However, it turns out that Gestahl lied (shocker, not) and has instead attacked the Espers! Kefka and Gestahl attack the Land of Espers, mess around with its magic, and turn the land into a flying continent, aiming to conquer the world.
However, Kefka stabs Gestahl in the back, and instead uses the magic of the Warring Triad (a trio of statues who supply the Espers with their power) to decimate the world! The world lays in ruins, and the party is helpless to stop the mad man...
A year passes, and Celes awakens from her coma. She finds herself alone in a deserted island. Feeling like the world has ended (it pretty much has, for all intents and purposes), she attempts to kill herself. However, a small discovery gives her renewed hope: Locke's bandana! Determined to save what's left of the world, Celes sets out to find her friends and stop Kefka once and for all!
After a LOT of wild meandering, the group make their way towards Kefka, who acts like he's God or something. Then they kill him. The end.
Final Fantasy 6 is a game that is loaded with a LOT of hype. It is often hailed as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest RPG of all time. Why is that? Well, there are plenty of reasons, and not all of them stand up to logical reason, I am sad to say.
It must be admitted that a lot of the love Final Fantasy 6 gets, as with Final Fantasy 4, comes from nostalgia. This game has marked the childhoods of many gamers, as well as magazine editors, online and offline critics, and even many game makers. Many magazines as well, such as IGN, rate this game as the single greatest RPG of all time, and Gamefaqs ranks this as the tenth greatest game of all time. The game was released during a time where many, many classics of gaming were being released, such as Star Fox, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Donkey Kong Country, and many more. This special time period is often fondly remembered by Millenials, the kids who grew up in the 80's and early 90's, who are now the driving force of the gaming industry, not just in sales, but also in development. Because of this, it's obvious that Final Fantasy 6 would gain a sort of "nostalgia shield" that its predecessor would not have access to.
And yet, does the game stand on its own merit? Once you take the nostalgia away, what do you have? To fully appreciate what kind of game FF6 is, it is necessary to divorce it from the yearning of yesteryear, but to not divorce it from the realities of the time of its release. What did FF6 bring to the table that was new? After all, a cast of rounded characters, a deep story line, a constructed world, that was the standard of the time!
It was not the characters, that's for certain. Though they are well developed, the sheer size of the cast guarantees that not all characters would develop equally. Furthermore, it must also be admitted that, with the passage of time, this cast simply doesn't stand up to the standards we are used to these days. Furthermore, the villain? He's not THAT amazing, but more on him later.
There are a lot of elements to the story that are simply, well, unoriginal. You have the standard rebels versus empire, for starters, but there are also a lot of story elements that really bog the game down. You have the mysterious girl with amnesia, the gentleman thief, the animal mascot, the atoner, the evil emperor, the town with a secret past, the war mongering general, the man who lost his family, etc. A lot of these tropes are so common, so cliche, that you can actually guess where the story is going just by seeing a hint of these tropes being played.
And yet, I think the game actually DOES stand out. And we need to actually look back to what Final Fantasies 4 did, to see what makes 6 stand out. Although FF4 brought story telling to a new level in the RPG, it was still told through a lot of expository banter. Final Fantasy 6, however, while it does have exposition as well, also makes use of subtleties in order to convey the story.
I mentioned before that one of the most somber moments in gaming is Cyan saying goodbye to his wife and son on the Phantom Train. Allow me to expand on that. Cyan and Sabin have just escaped the Phantom Train, exhausted. Suddenly, Cyan sees the souls of Doma entering the train, including his wife and son. He rushes towards them, but they have already boarded the train. He tries running alongside the train, calling out their names. His wife bids him farewell, and his son assures him he will take care of his mother. As Cyan runs out of ground to run on, he watches as the train leaves him behind, disappearing into the horizon. Cyan just stands there, looking at the train. At this moment, you can control Sabin and try to talk to Cyan, but he won't answer. Commonly, a silent character will respond with ellipses to convey silence, but Cyan doesn't. There is no background music, no dialogue, nothing. Cyan just stands there, and the scene fades to black as the train whistle blows. No dialogue was needed here, the player could feel the absolute devastation Cyan felt.
Game play wise, Final Fantasy 6 also brought some innovative ideas. To handle its large cast of characters, Final Fantasy 4 simply rotated them, taking them out of the party once their role ended, often in the cheapest ways possible (like Cid's. Yes, I am still sore about that). In FF6, you CHOOSE who you control. You are allowed four characters at a time, and at the end of the game, you can choose who you want to play as, and who gets left behind. And once you get tired of those, you can go back to the airship and exchange them! This was a big deal back then.
I'd rather not analyze the characters (too many), but I do wish to analyze Kefka.
Making their way through the Veldt, a Savannah of sorts, the two encounter a feral boy named Gau, who knows of a way to get to Narshe. He shows them a diving helmet, big enough for three, which can carry them across the ocean and towards South Figaro, where they can walk back to Narshe...
In Narshe, the three groups converge and help fend off an Imperial attack on the Esper. Terra approaches the beast, where she suddenly screams, turns pink, and flies off into the mountains of Zozo, nearly at the other side of the continent! The team decide to save her.
After finding Terra, the team is shocked to see another Esper, Ramuh, sit beside her. Ramuh reveals to them the Empire's ambition: take Espers, drain them of their magic, and use the magic to conquer the world. The group decides to put a stop to the Empire once and for all, and save the Espers.
To this end, they enlist the services of Setzer, the one man in the world to own an airship (seriously!?) The crew heads towards the Empire's capital of Vektor, where they enter the Magitek factory, where the Espers are hidden. Though they are too late to save any Espers, they do discover a shocking secret: Terra herself is half Esper. Getting the idea that the Espers can help the Returners, with Terra as proof that humans and Espers can get along, they set off to find the Land of Espers.
Upon reaching the gate, they instead find an army of enraged Espers who get out and set off for Vector as soon as possible, completely destroying the city. The Emperor, Gestahl, claims a change of heart, and seeks peace between humans and Espers. Hiring the Returners as his ambassadors, the points to the isolated island of Thamassa as the location of the Espers in hiding. Joining them is the hired mercenary, Shadow.
In Thamassa, The group meet the mage Strago, a descendant of the humans who were able to use magic, and his granddaughter Relm. While there, they find the Espers, who agree to a truce. However, it turns out that Gestahl lied (shocker, not) and has instead attacked the Espers! Kefka and Gestahl attack the Land of Espers, mess around with its magic, and turn the land into a flying continent, aiming to conquer the world.
However, Kefka stabs Gestahl in the back, and instead uses the magic of the Warring Triad (a trio of statues who supply the Espers with their power) to decimate the world! The world lays in ruins, and the party is helpless to stop the mad man...
A year passes, and Celes awakens from her coma. She finds herself alone in a deserted island. Feeling like the world has ended (it pretty much has, for all intents and purposes), she attempts to kill herself. However, a small discovery gives her renewed hope: Locke's bandana! Determined to save what's left of the world, Celes sets out to find her friends and stop Kefka once and for all!
After a LOT of wild meandering, the group make their way towards Kefka, who acts like he's God or something. Then they kill him. The end.
Final Fantasy 6 is a game that is loaded with a LOT of hype. It is often hailed as one of the greatest, if not THE greatest RPG of all time. Why is that? Well, there are plenty of reasons, and not all of them stand up to logical reason, I am sad to say.
It must be admitted that a lot of the love Final Fantasy 6 gets, as with Final Fantasy 4, comes from nostalgia. This game has marked the childhoods of many gamers, as well as magazine editors, online and offline critics, and even many game makers. Many magazines as well, such as IGN, rate this game as the single greatest RPG of all time, and Gamefaqs ranks this as the tenth greatest game of all time. The game was released during a time where many, many classics of gaming were being released, such as Star Fox, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Donkey Kong Country, and many more. This special time period is often fondly remembered by Millenials, the kids who grew up in the 80's and early 90's, who are now the driving force of the gaming industry, not just in sales, but also in development. Because of this, it's obvious that Final Fantasy 6 would gain a sort of "nostalgia shield" that its predecessor would not have access to.
And yet, does the game stand on its own merit? Once you take the nostalgia away, what do you have? To fully appreciate what kind of game FF6 is, it is necessary to divorce it from the yearning of yesteryear, but to not divorce it from the realities of the time of its release. What did FF6 bring to the table that was new? After all, a cast of rounded characters, a deep story line, a constructed world, that was the standard of the time!
It was not the characters, that's for certain. Though they are well developed, the sheer size of the cast guarantees that not all characters would develop equally. Furthermore, it must also be admitted that, with the passage of time, this cast simply doesn't stand up to the standards we are used to these days. Furthermore, the villain? He's not THAT amazing, but more on him later.
There are a lot of elements to the story that are simply, well, unoriginal. You have the standard rebels versus empire, for starters, but there are also a lot of story elements that really bog the game down. You have the mysterious girl with amnesia, the gentleman thief, the animal mascot, the atoner, the evil emperor, the town with a secret past, the war mongering general, the man who lost his family, etc. A lot of these tropes are so common, so cliche, that you can actually guess where the story is going just by seeing a hint of these tropes being played.
And yet, I think the game actually DOES stand out. And we need to actually look back to what Final Fantasies 4 did, to see what makes 6 stand out. Although FF4 brought story telling to a new level in the RPG, it was still told through a lot of expository banter. Final Fantasy 6, however, while it does have exposition as well, also makes use of subtleties in order to convey the story.
I mentioned before that one of the most somber moments in gaming is Cyan saying goodbye to his wife and son on the Phantom Train. Allow me to expand on that. Cyan and Sabin have just escaped the Phantom Train, exhausted. Suddenly, Cyan sees the souls of Doma entering the train, including his wife and son. He rushes towards them, but they have already boarded the train. He tries running alongside the train, calling out their names. His wife bids him farewell, and his son assures him he will take care of his mother. As Cyan runs out of ground to run on, he watches as the train leaves him behind, disappearing into the horizon. Cyan just stands there, looking at the train. At this moment, you can control Sabin and try to talk to Cyan, but he won't answer. Commonly, a silent character will respond with ellipses to convey silence, but Cyan doesn't. There is no background music, no dialogue, nothing. Cyan just stands there, and the scene fades to black as the train whistle blows. No dialogue was needed here, the player could feel the absolute devastation Cyan felt.
Game play wise, Final Fantasy 6 also brought some innovative ideas. To handle its large cast of characters, Final Fantasy 4 simply rotated them, taking them out of the party once their role ended, often in the cheapest ways possible (like Cid's. Yes, I am still sore about that). In FF6, you CHOOSE who you control. You are allowed four characters at a time, and at the end of the game, you can choose who you want to play as, and who gets left behind. And once you get tired of those, you can go back to the airship and exchange them! This was a big deal back then.
I'd rather not analyze the characters (too many), but I do wish to analyze Kefka.
Simply put, Kefka is someone whom is difficult to truly understand. So, let's try to understand his actions. We get our first glimpse of Kefka in a flashback Terra is having, where she is murdering several Imperial soldiers while under Kefka's control. He's seen laughing while his soldiers burn to a crisp. When we next see Kefka he's leading what can best be called a small group of soldiers while running an errand for the Empire, but he sets fire to Figaro Castle once he sees that Edgar is not cooperating. After that, we see him for the vile beast he is, when he poisons the rivers of Doma, for no reason at all. It was not a tactical decision, it was simply something he did with glee. Kefka then leads an attack on Narshe, but is driven off easily.
Kefka is then seen at the Magitek factory, talking to himself. He brags about how he's all powerful, and how he'll collect the Warring Triad. After that, he ambushes the team at the Land of Espers, where his presence causes the Espers to become angry and attack Vector. Kefka is seemingly put into a prison, but he is let out by the Emperor, who orders him to lead the attack on Thamassa, where Kefka gleefully kills many Espers. After that, he accompanies his emperor to the Floating Continent, kills him, and disrupts the balance of magic in the world, bringing forth ruin and death. Why? Because he's that insane.
"Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? ...Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?”- Kefka, before fighting him for the last time.
Kefka is nuts. He is crazy, he is insane. He is pretty much Batman's Joker in an RPG. He exists to kill, to destroy, and nothing else. Nothing about him makes sense, and that's the point. He is chaos incarnate, the absolute abyss of human nature. He is what a man is once you take out all traces of decency away from him, leaving nothing but the worst attributes a man can possess. Kefka cares for nothing and no one, not even himself, and there is nothing that can ever excuse his pathetic existence.
So, does Kefka stand out from the average RPG villain? Yes. Unlike most RPG villains, like Golbez or Exdeath, who are always one step ahead of everyone until they are beaten at last, Kefka is always beneath either the heroes or the Emperor until he played his wild card,and then he WON. Kefka actually achieved his goal: he brought the world to ruin. He murdered thousands, set the world in dis-balance, and the only reason the world wasn't utterly destroyed was because he didn't feel like destroying everything in one go! Kefka won, and there is no two ways to go at it. The first half of the game is you trying to stop him, and you fail. The second half isn't even you cleaning up his mess, it's you getting rid of him so that the world MIGHT recover. No other Final Fantasy villain could even come close to something so similar, until Venat in Final Fantasy 12, but we'll get to that when we look at that game.
Final Fantasy 6 is a game that you really have to approach with an open mind. And yet, this is also one of the finest 16 Bit RPG's you'll play. Fast paced battle system, beautiful graphics, and of course, the standard deep story and rounded cast of characters make this a Must Play for every enthusiast of not just the genre, but of the Fourth Generation of gaming as well. Own an SNES? Play this game. Own a Gameboy Advance? Play this game. Got Playstation Network? Play this game.
With the 16 Bit Era coming to a close, Squaresoft not only had a strong franchise to their name, they had a considerable presence in the RPG industry. After FF6, they would release such timeless classics as Seiken Densetsu, the SaGa series, Chrono Trigger, and in one of their finest moments, they would collaborate with Nintendo to make Super Mario RPG. Yes, Square was at the top of their game in the 16 Bit era. Not bad for a company that was dying just seven years prior! And yet, their best era was about to begin with their next big, big hit. Oh come on, you know what game I'm talking about!
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