I finished
Final Fantasy 6 Pixel Remaster, meaning I finally completed a game I guess I started 20-odd years ago and have been meaning to go back to ever since.
The remaster's just as good as 5's was, although I don't think this one needed quite as much work as it was already (debatably) the best looking 16-bit era game ever made. They've added 3D sections to the opera scene, and the newly recorded soundtrack has said opera's lyrics which obviously couldn't be done on the SNES sound chip.
But despite this being lauded as the best of the 2D Final Fantasy games, I didn't enjoy it as much as 5. The story is far richer than its predecessor, sure, the player characters actually have personalities and backstories and progression, but there's nowhere near as much gameplay. FF6 was famously launched as FF3 in the US because the folks at Nintendo thought that three of the preceding games were too difficult for a Western audience and just didn't translate them, and the sixth instalment was designed to be more palatable for this reason, but I think there was maybe one boss in my 36 hour playtime that gave me much of a challenge. It feels more like an interactive novel than an RPG.
And it doesn't help that the game features more than three times as many playable characters as 5 had. I made absolutely sure to grab all of them (I used a guide for some of the more hidden ones), and if you do likewise you actually have to just entirely ignore two of the fourteen in the final confrontation. You split the team into 3 parties, and each one takes a different route towards the final boss, at which point you set an order for them to appear with you controlling four at any one time. I knew it was pretty likely that I wouldn't actually lose anyone given the ease by which I was destroying bosses at this point, so I had to pick my four favourites (Terra, Locke, Celes and Relm for anyone that's interested) which was actually quite difficult. But the problem is that if you want to keep your entire team equally levelled, as I did, you're going to be too powerful for the game's difficulty. It's not as if I even had to try particularly hard to get to this state; there's nowhere near as much grinding required as in 5.
But damnit if I didn't get a little weepy-eyed at times. The game really does make you feel for your little pixel people, and it's a story full of tragedy and regret. The entire second half of the game takes place in
gives it a very different feel to 5. Sadly it doesn't quite hit the mark in the ending; there are just too many characters to have a fulfilling epilogue, and while 5's ending gave you a glimpse of the world a year after you saved it, 6 just shows you the characters escaping from the final dungeon followed by a flyby on the airship.
I'd still highly recommend this though. Pixel art games have made a huge comeback in the last few years, so why not treat yourself to one of the games half of them have nostalgia for. It's still extremely playable and the story's worth the time investment. I reckon I'll probably pick up the Pixel Remaster of 4 (which I half-completed on the Vita years ago) at some point because these are perfect Steam Deck exercise bike fodder, but I'm probably going to move onto the PC port of Final Fantasy 7 next. As with every Final Fantasy game I played in my youth apart from 5, it was left half-completed, and given it's regarded as one of the best videogames ever made (and the remake doesn't look like finishing within the decade), I suppose I really ought to actually play it all the way through.
