Final Fantasy VI Advance

I knew that I was going to like the next Final Fantasy in my backlog, but it took me a long while to finally take the plunge. Most of the Final Fantasy's I've beaten in the past have taken a good long while to finish, always in part due to a mid-game motivation slump. To try and avoid that, I wanted to start playing when I knew I had the time to finish it properly. Now, I have good and bad news. The bad news is that I horribly misjudged this game's runtime and didn't even make it to the second half before Xenoblade Chronicles X came out and inevitably split my attention. The good news is that I still beat it, and it managed to become my favorite in the series so far!

Final Fantasy VI, like the other even-numbered 2D entries in the series, places a high priority on the game's narrative. However, it also implements some degree of the mechanical freedom seen in FFIII and FFV's job system. I didn't go back to my previous reviews to confirm this claim, but in my memory, I prefer a focus on story rather than strategy, which I associate more with FFII and FFIV. While I enjoyed the class/job system and the freedom it offered, I felt like it took too much of my focus away from my favorite aspects of the series. Final Fantasy VI somehow found a compromise that, while imperfect, resolved almost all of my issues with the old systems to create a true follow-up to both branches of the franchise.

The game starts off strong by establishing an interesting world, creating sympathetic characters, and throwing you right into the action with an overpowered character before stripping it back for you to start in earnest. After that, there was no question that I was hooked! Like FFIV, the story takes center-stage here, so the characters and their abilities are handcrafted to support it. Because of that, it wouldn't make sense to allow you to change their jobs on a whim. Instead, a special variety of items, known as relics, allow you to modify how a character behaves.

Relics have a wide array of applications, from passively adjusting a characters stats when in a battle to changing how they travel when outside of it. However, those varieties were typically universal and could be equipped to any of the 14 characters. With only two attachment slots available per party member, I usually latched onto their exclusive relics as soon as I found them. With each character having their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, it was a lot of fun to focus on using them as more than just a bunch of generic damage-dealers.

These unique relics felt related to the old job system in that they adjusted how the characters actually played. A favorite of mine in the early game replaced a thief's "steal" command with "mug," allowing him to deal some damage while he lined my coffers. Paired with an ability that improved his success rate in thieving and suddenly I was mugging every enemy instead of sparingly chancing a "steal" command. He remained thematically appropriate, yet he was suddenly a completely new character in my control. It wasn't a full replacement for switching jobs at any time, but relics weren't the only thing added to this game.

FFVI is truly the master of surprise. All throughout the game, new mechanics, locations, characters, and plot points are introduced, and it's not until about a third of the way through the game that you get to see the other half of the job system's replacement. Up until this point, you only have access to a few magic users that get you familiar with the system, so you just don't get to use it much. Then Final Fantasy VI presents you with espers. Without delving too deep into spoiler territory, these are another type of special equipment that allow your characters to learn spells.

The biggest surprise to me was that, although each character has their own affinity for magic, everyone can learn and use every spell, they just need to take the time with the right esper to do so. This felt similar to giving everyone the ability to master every job in FFIII and FFV, but was far more approachable and manageable, in practice. While I didn't end up finding every esper in the game, I did make sure that most of my characters learned most of the spells available to me, opening up a ton of strategies in the final dungeon and putting me on a pretty serious power trip.

In a series I primarily play for the story, I wasn't expecting to write a whole review focused on mechanics, but that just stands as further testament to the expert design on display. I know they aren't a perfect replacement for jobs, but I found relics and espers to be an excellent solution to the tug-of-war we've seen in the previous games. It's a well-crafted balance between giving players the freedom to customize their party and developing a narrative with characters that retain their individuality. The resulting game ends up being the most polished pixel Final Fantasy, in my opinion, beautifully rounding out the hexalogy. While I don't have as strong of feelings about it as I did the other games in the series, I can't argue with how much better FFVI was at holding my attention than its predecessors. With that in mind, I guess it probably is my favorite Final Fantasy so far? We'll have to see if the legendary seventh entry holds up as well as people say it does.