Review sovaRaven 5/5 · Apr 2, 2026
🥳 Happy 32nd Birthday to FF6 🥳
IGDB integration regrettably updated Final Fantasy VI's page to display its original North American title of Final Fantasy III, further reinforcing the same confusing generation gap felt between boomers and zoomers throughout the past 30 years, not realizing they were raving about the same game. This, combined with the lack of a singular main character for marketing purposes, …
IGDB integration regrettably updated Final Fantasy VI's page to display its original North American title of Final Fantasy III, further reinforcing the same confusing generation gap felt between boomers and zoomers throughout the past 30 years, not realizing they were raving about the same game. This, combined with the lack of a singular main character for marketing purposes, has left FF6 further from the spotlight than your average GOAT candidate. Despite my passion for video games, I somehow maintain difficulty summarizing why FF6 is my favorite one succinctly due to its holistic nature. Nobuo Uematsu's self-proclaimed magnum opus soundtrack would be an easy selling point, as would the lovely and timeless pixel art aesthetic from the height of the 16-bit era. Traditional turn-based gameplay goodness, refined through the trial and error of a series already on its sixth entry by early 1994, would be another good answer, but the brightest FF6 shining star will always come back to the story. This isn't the earliest high quality plot in gaming history, but mostly to this point, any of the asterisks "good for a video game", "good for the 90's", or "good for the SNES" could apply. With FF6 though, I found something of a turning point, and the first multifaceted character-driven narrative from a video game that I would consider great by any definition, the catalyst for myself and so many others discovering that this medium had something special and unique to offer. The choice to include a cinematic-style opening credits in the iconic intro cutscene suggests the development team may have felt similarly, at a time when this was mainly reserved for movies.
But if you're reading this then you already know all of that, or at least, you should. I'm going to avoid outright spoiling this game, but will be talking about certain aspects of characters and scenes that I love. FF6 is still amazing even for those who have already familiarized themselves with the plot, as this is foremost a game about the characters within, but regardless I feel a civic duty to urge anyone to play it before reading an extensive review.
Narratively, the decision of an ensemble cast is a bold choice, meaning it's not inaccurate to state FF6 doesn't even have a main character. In 2008, the Dissidia spinoff series' entire premise was Final Fantasy 1 through 10 heroes versus villains, and the developers flip flopped their choice of who to represent FF6's protagonist from Locke before eventually settling on Terra instead, so the good guys wouldn't be entirely men. An ambiguous protagonist might seem an odd choice, but it opens the door for what makes video game storytelling distinct, the player decides who they want the main character to be. Celes, Locke, and Terra do stand out as more central to the plot than the others, but out of what is to this day still the largest FF playable cast of 14, almost all of them have a compelling character arc, and in many ways give back just as much as the player chooses to put into each of them. Playing through the main events of the story with one's favorite party of four and never straying off the beaten path is already an excellent RPG experience on its own, but the optional scenes or dialogue are what truly elevates FF6 to feeling like it was brought back to 1994 by time travelers from the future. One classic example is surely the Figaro twins, the beloved Edgar and Sabin, and their optional flashback if the player brings both back to the castle. This is something I never even saw until my second playthrough, but witnessing Edgar flip a coin to decide which brother has the freedom to live the life they want makes for a powerful scene, doubly so once the same coin is revealed to have both sides as heads in a future scene when Celes uses it to trick Setzer. If Sabin is in the party for the latter, one extra line of dialogue shows the light bulb switch on in his head, realizing that his brother selflessly accepted the unwanted burden of king on his behalf while making it appear up to chance.
Coin of Fate is of course just one of many optional little scenes that add an extra layer or two to the characters involved, but my favorite of these has to be everything involving Shadow. Predating the hedgehog by about 7 years, Shadow's design as a ninja with a loyal dog is great purely on the surface level, but the deeper the iceberg goes, the more it feels like the developers ran wild having fun with this guy's complexities. Initially, if the player finds his hiring fee of 3,000 gil to be too high, Shadow can be easily walked past and ignored for most of the game. Once hired, Shadow has a 1/16 chance to decide he's earned his pay and leave after each overworld battle, but even outside of this, at several points in the story he will leave only to return later. The craziness comes whenever the player sleeps at an inn with Shadow in the party, there's a chance to view one of his nightmares, unexpected and honestly kind of disturbing the first few times with the dissonant bass sound effects and black screen. It's something out of a creepypasta, but each reveals a small slice of Shadow's backstory, author Sebastian Deken describes Shadow as "a man on the run from himself", his constant coming and going making progressively more sense the more the player unravels. The puzzle can be pieced together further through Shadow's dog's lack of hostility towards certain characters he seems to have met in the past, and overall I find it mind-blowing how much can be detailed for a 1994 SNES character the player can otherwise go through the whole game only reading a few lines of dialogue from if they so choose. Shadow might not even survive into the second half of the game depending on player choice, I'd wager many players pre-internet had no idea there was a way to save this guy at all.
This might be giving off the impression of a high-volume, wordy script, but more modern RPG players returning to review the genre's religious texts may be surprised to find FF6 is lighter on dialogue than more modern counterparts. The important scenes feel more meaningful when they do happen as a result, leaving plenty of room throughout the in-between for a great and somewhat overlooked gameplay experience. Headlined by all fourteen playable characters sporting some sort of thematic unique ability that sets them apart from each other, players are sure to appreciate Edgar's auto-crossbow throughout the entire early game, and Sabin's blitz commands are a fun example of more involvement from the player than simply just pressing A to select an attack. Terra gradually gaining more control of her Esper transformation throughout the game is a ludonarrative mechanic I'll always be a fan of, and Setzer makes sure the gambling addicts don't feel left out with the option to play slots in the middle of battle for a variety of results. These individual traits, coupled with the equip-able relics functioning as accessories, achieve a solid balance of characters feeling distinct within their own archetype, while still allowing freedom for the player to experiment with different roles within the party too. Adding to the case for FF6's gameplay, to this day I've never seen any game do multi-party dungeons this well. Bolstered by the large cast, the player is tasked with splitting the party up into two or even three groups multiple times throughout the story, allowing for cute opportunities to pair up the twins, or the love interests, or whatever other fun headcanons the player has, while also offering further incentive to utilize and train more than just a party of four.
My favorite trend FF6 started for the series is every character getting their own theme song. It demonstrates an increased emphasis on each of their roles in the story, and as always, Nobuo Uematsu ensures the player learns about their vibe before any dialogue comes out of their mouth. Shadow's theme has a badass yet mysterious aura befitting 1960's Hollywood westerns, Cyan's has that eastern feudal and regal touch, while Celes' is slow, quiet, and sad. The melody of Terra's theme pops up several times throughout the soundtrack, and doubles as the ethereal overworld theme that has gone on to become one of gaming's great iconic works, but even completely outside of character themes, I don't feel any hesitation calling FF6's soundtrack my favorite ever. The big problem with FF6 is every song is the best song in the game, Uematsu accidentally invented Reggaeton cooked hard with the beat on "The Veldt", as well as with "Magitek Research Facility" and "Slam Shuffle", the latter of which is for a town filled with great people who would never lie or steal. "Searching for Friends" is up there with powerful moments in the Final Fantasy hierarchy for that long-awaited sense of hope when the past few hours had been profoundly depressing, but the most memorable musical moment involving Celes is obviously the opera sequence. I've talked to people who haven't played this game in close to 30 years that say the opera is the main thing they still remember, but for me it was the pivotal moment discovering that game music could be more than just background, and the entire focus of a beautiful scene instead.
Under normal circumstances, a four-part opera sequence interrupted by a noble thief treasure hunter to save the fair singer from a notorious gambling addict would be any other game's crowning musical achievement, but for Final Fantasy VI, there is little debate this honor goes to "Dancing Mad" instead. I try my best to remain understanding of the inherent subjectivity surrounding art, but I'm going to allow myself an exception here and confidently state "Dancing Mad" is the greatest song ever composed for a video game. A remarkably ambitious four movement symphony clocking in at a whopping 17 minutes and 38 seconds, this one really deserves its own overly long review, but being a final boss song, it's a bit of a spoiler minefield. I would argue the same awe and conspiratorial skepticism that ancient Egyptians were able to build the pyramids should apply to Nobuo Uematsu somehow composing "Dancing Mad" for the SNES sound chip. I can't find the origin of the quote, but such limited technology at hand for a project so massive was compared to Michelangelo using crayons to create the Sistine Chapel. There's too many renaissance art comparisons to make, hell, the entire final boss sequence is largely an allegory for the Divine Comedy, which couldn't possibly be more fitting.
In the present day, most Final Fantasy fans haven't even played the sixth entry, mostly remembered as just blending in with the other old 2D games, and without someone as recognizable as a Cloud Strife to draw in modern fans, though if there's a unifying FF6 icon out there, it just might come in the form of Kefka. I'm potentially committing a crime by taking so long to mention this guy, but honestly, Kefka's antics throughout this game really speak for themselves, and the legacy as gaming's greatest villain is fully earned. The Heath Ledger Joker comparisons are almost overused to the point of becoming tired, but they stuck for a reason. Solo translator Ted Woolsey taking some creative liberties for Kefka's characterization while under a development time crunch is largely responsible for both the character, and game as a whole, boasting an overall slightly better reputation in the west compared to Japan. Funny and bizarre one-liners juxtaposed with atrocities surprising to find on a 90's Nintendo console catapult Kefka to a spotlight-stealing status, accented by a 16-bit laugh sound effect that does wonders for memorability.
Director Yoshinori Kitase has stated remaking FF6 in the same hyper beefed up graphics style of the ongoing FF7 remake trilogy would take about 20 years to complete, a harrowing thought for the state of the industry. Even if this somehow ever did happen, I'm skeptical and wary of the FF6 magic ever being recaptured again. This game is funny, more so than it usually gets credit for, but also deeply emotional, something I notice more strongly with each replay. The older I get, the more the train scene crushes me inside, but FF6 players all have their own scene that sticks with them the hardest, perhaps none more mind-blowing than the series of twists at the middle point of the game. There's no way for me to detail this for spoiler's sake, but the ultimate mindfuck of switching up both the story and gameplay to such a heavy degree is so ambitious that it lands as the defining moment of the whole game. This was the first time I had ever seen a video game portray suicidal subject matter, and even if the original North American translation attempts to tiptoe around this a bit to appease the big N's censors, it's still abundantly clear what is happening on screen. This entire middle sequence is so bleak that first-time players are liable to think they accidentally stumbled into a bad ending, but in a strange way hitting rock bottom provides a more personal motivation for the second half of the game. The entire experience up until this point had been spent growing a love for this cast, leaving the player burning questions desperate for answers as they push forward in what's essentially a 16-bit sized open world. Who survived? Who can I save? Who even wants to keep trying? At its core, this unique twist on gameplay represents what FF6 is all about, an ultimately simple message about hope, a story of balance and ruin, combating nihilism, and seeing what each and every character finds as their reason for being, no matter how dark the world around them becomes.
The FF6 review was always going to devolve into me draining the vocabulary of superlatives, but it feels impossible to overemphasize this game's importance in 1994 as a keystone moment in the soon to be rapidly flourishing world of video game storytelling. One of two clear headliners of the 16-bit era, frequently stated to be the JRPG genre's golden age, Final Fantasy VI functions as something of an exhibit A in my passionate argument for old video games often being better than people think. Square was on another level in the 90's, to the point it must have seemed crazy at the time to imagine how they could possibly follow up a game at this level of quality. The answer was jumping ship to a record breaking budget, and a trip to the mainstream, but no matter how many not-so-final fantasies end up following, FF6 is sure to remain a very easy choice for my favorite video game, a masterpiece of everlasting art.
5.0/5.0
