Episode 25:
Final Fantasy VI: Part II—Atma Ponders on the Toilet
Platform: SNES,
PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, Wii/Wii U, and Android and iOS.
Release Date:
Japan: 4/2/1994
NA: 10/11/1994
(As Final Fantasy III)
Difficulty: Moderate
Pricing: Play
Store: $7.99 (during 50% off sale), Wii: 800 Wii Points/$8
Terra’s Review
Kefka’s Tower: At least there’s a place
to take a shit!
The Good
- I don’t even
know where to start with the good, I love this game so much.
- The sense of
scale. The world is large, the story is epic. The places in the storyline that
require you to split up the party to deal with simultaneous enemies adds to the
feeling that you’re dealing with a threat that is truly world spanning. It also
gives you a reason to care about leveling up and using all of your characters
instead of letting all but your favorite four fall by the wayside. You’re going
to need almost all of your characters by the time you get to Kefka’s tower!
- Speaking
of…Kefka is one of my favorite villains. No sob story, no angst and whining,
just pure joy of destruction and making people’s lives hell.
- You fight a
train. And an octopus. And mini bosses named after the Three Stooges. For a
game that’s dealing in some very heavy subjects—Terra and Celes have basically
been raised to be weapons, the deaths of almost everyone in Doma, the Empire’s
experiments on Espers, and THE END OF THE WORLD—FF6 doesn’t lose its sense of
humor or sense of the absurd.
- There’s a
strong emphasis on character development and giving each character a time in
the spotlight and a backstory. The only ones that don’t get some focus are the
optional secret characters. The second half of the game is especially focused
on backstory and character motivations. With the world basically destroyed and
Kefka in charge, what motivates these characters to keep fighting?
- The Opera House
sequence.
The Bad
- Even though I
was just praising the character development, there are some things I wish the
game had done differently. Relm and Strago showed up too late in the game to
have much of an impact. I also would have liked to see more of the characters
interacting with each other. Imagine the conversations Terra and Celes could
have had!
- The battle
menus could be unwieldly, especially once you’re further along in the game and
have accumulated more spells and items. Scrolling through those, trying to find
what you want can take valuable time, especially if you’re using the Active
Battle System.
- PlayStation
only: The long load times.
The Ugly
[No comment.]
The lowdown: I love this game and everyone should play it!
Music Credits
FF6 OST
RPG Roundup Theme Song: "Video Game Theme," J. Arthur Keenes Band. Creative Commons Attribution License.
