Final Fantasy VI, Industrializing

Alright, FFVI! Sorry about the absence, holidays are always hectic but it's time to get back to the grind if I want to keep my steady pace. Though I'm on track, I can easily get derailed if I delay too much longer.

Background: Final Fantasy VI was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshitaka Amano and Hiroyuki Ito of Square in 1994 for the SNES system. Now, as you might recall, thus far the North American audience had only received the original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IV (sold in NA as FF II). So as to not confuse the NA audience, Square release FFVI as Final Fantasy III in the states. It was later re-released on the PlayStation in 1999 as a package with FFV which is the version I will be playing. This was a hugely successful title in the series, a landmark really. And coincidentally, it is also the first in the series not directed by the original creator Sakaguchi.

The end of FFV showed some isometric views of things and this title finally tries to utilize the full capacity of the SNES system. While not very much, they worked with what they had and it shows. The game is crisper, faster, and smoother. The backgrounds are better blended and the dungeons have multiple layers which scroll at different speeds as if looking down from a great height. It's not much, but it's improvement.

The game itself is already more interesting, handing us the series' first seeming female lead character. At least the first character I GOT TO NAME was female. So far I've named like 5 other characters as well and each character is unique with a given set of unchangeable skills. So it seems like this game has gone back to the form of FFIV in having a large cast with set jobs. I've also been introduced to a few new game mechanics, such as Blitz which is a game fighter type system in that I hit a button sequence to execute an attack combo. As for other "classes", I have one mage, the main character, and it appears she might be the only magic user I get since the plot line is essentially about the extinction of magic. Most of the technology is the industrial revolution type steam punk that was mastered in FFVII. Here we also see another preview of FFVII in two characters in the opening scene, Biggs and Wedge. This game also already has a darker overtone which I very much like.

Lastly, while I did split my party into two groups of two for like 10 minutes in FFV, this is the first time in the series where we truly see a split party going off in different directions, completing multiple parts of the story arc separately, as we will see again in FFVII. Gooooood stuff.... We also see here the first occurrence of having story line options. While I'm not sure if they will affect the overall story or what I'm able to accomplish in the game, there have been several times where I've gotten a pop up menu and a few choices to make in dialogue or paths. Also reoccurring in FFVII. It's really cool to see some of the seeds of FFVII develop in this game and I can already see why FFVI was so critically acclaimed in it's time. Looking forward to the rest of it.