Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...
Yes, Please make this my home page!
Final Fantasy VI
Review by Hiryuu
The Final Fantasy series, quite possibly, no
definately the greatest video game series ever made. The story,
the characters, the music, the myth, the magic, Final Fantasy
games have it all. And it's no surprise when people say that they
like the sixth installment, in many cases more than the
graphically superior seventh. It's hard to say what makes this
game so great. It could be the characters, who (unlike SOME
games) have personality oozing out of every orifice. Or maybe
it's the story line that's so intriguing nobody can avoid being
resisting it's splendor. Or maybe it's the incredible graphics,
that even to this day, seem excellant. Or it could be the music,
the music in this game is by far the best music from a video
game, period. Or maybe it's a combination of all these things
that make Final Fantasy VI a treat. Add all of that plus
beautiful CG movies of all your favorite events in the game, and
you'll have the best gaming experience you could hope for. The
evil empire is trying to take over the world by using magicite,
which is the remnants of dead espers. The same things happened
1000 years ago, with apocalyptic results, would it happen again?
Not if the 14 (yes 14) characters that form your group have
anything to say about it. The characters all have their own
personality, strengths and weaknesses, and you'll just fall in
love with some of them. There's Locke, the courageous
"Treasure Hunter" who can steal items from the enemies.
There's Terra the mysterious woman born with the ability to use
magic, and wants to know what love is. There's Edgar, the king of
Figaro who can use many tools, like a power drill and a chainsaw!
There's Sabin, Edgar's muscle bound twin brother, who can use
powerful Blitz attacks. There's Shadow, the mysterious ninja, who
can throw old weapons at enemies for surprising damage. There's
Celes, the Empire General who joins with your group. There's Gau,
the beast child, who can learn attacks from enemies he faces.
There's Cyan, the noble Knight, who has mastered the art of
SwordTechs. There's Setzer, the gambler and owner of the world's
only airship. There's Relm, the prodigious young artist, who can
use her artistic talents as a potent offensive weapon. There's
Strago, Relm's adopted grandpa who uses blue magic. There's Mog
the cute Moogle who dances enemies to death. There's Umaro, the
uncontrollable sasquatch, and finally there's Gogo, the
mysterious being who can mimic any of the other character's
moves. With all of these characters (sorry if I bored you with
them) all have distinct personalaties (except perhaps the last 3)
and are all controlable characters until the end of the game (if
you can find them all). The plot is absolutely great in Final
Fantasy VI, and I won't delve into it, for fear of giving away
any spoilers. However great the plot is in the World of Balance,
it loses momentum in the World of Ruin, as WoR is completely non
linear (which many people view as a bad thing, but I view it as a
good thing) Of course, any Final Fantasy game wouldn't be
complete without a treasure trove of weapons, armor, and items.
You can't have it all either, as you must choose between getting
the best sword in the game, or getting the esper that teaches you
the best spell in the game. This adds a bit to the challenge, but
the game really isn't all that hard, but trying to get all the
stuff in the game will drive you bonkers! There are many magicite
pieces hidden throughout the World of Ruin that teach you magic
spells, but many of them are hard to come by. You'll have to
search high and low to get all of the Magicite pieces, not to
mention finding all your friends, all whom disappear when the
World of Ruin appears. Another novelty that this game has is the
fact that you can equip accessories on your characters. These
accessories allow your character to run faster, be stronger,
defend better, or even give you character different battle menus
(for example, the Thief Glove, when equipped on Locke, allows him
to use Capture instead of Steal). With the ability to equip two
accessories per character, the possiblities are almost endless.
(for some real carnage, try a Genji Glove/Offering combo!) The
graphics of this game are absolutely spellbounding. Remember that
this game was originally released for the Super Famicom, and
you'll be surprised how wonderful the graphics look. And the
sound is just...pure bliss. You'll find yourself scouring the
internet downloading midis of all your favorite tunes. In fact, I
even bought the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack! (available only in
Japan, I got it at eBay). One important thing that the
Playstation version of Final Fantasy VI has is CG movies of some
of the best parts of the game. You can't help but shed a tear of
joy when Celes performs opera in 3-D, and you can't help but
shudder when Terra enters Narshe for the first time, on a cold
snowy day on Magitek Armor, and watch as the hapless guards try
to fight her off, to no avail. When you start playing this game,
you won't want to quit until it's beat. Once you beat this game,
you'll want to play it all over again. It's that good. I've
played it countless hours, and it never gets old. Well, I guess
it COULD get old, but for a console RPG, its replay value is
surprisingly high. If you've ever even enjoyed an RPG, even to
the slightest extent, you owe it to yourself to play this game.
If you've never played an RPG, this game will get you hooked on
them. And if you don't like RPGs, this game will change your mind
about them. This game was only released on the PSX in Japan
however, so you might want to get the Snes version if you want
to, but you'll be missing out on some great CG movies. Or you can
just a wait a few months for Final Fantasy Anthology to be
released to America, as it not only contains VI, but V as well,
and V has never been released to the American public. To put it
simply, this is the greatest game ever made, and you're a fool to
pass it up.
Reviewer's Score: 10 / 10
