Lavos's Reign ? Not really, we see it at a distance, it's a very powerful ennemy, a hopeless battle but it's still seen at a distance nevertheless... Which is why i have this opinion. On the contrary what happen in FFVI is seen as the player's failure. The World of Doom affected each member of your team in a very different way which is why it has more personality to me.
... I'm talking about a "reign", not the character. (Well i COULD talk about the character too but it's a more subtle debate)
Lavos's Reign ? Not really, we see it at a distance, it's a very powerful ennemy, a hopeless battle but it's still seen at a distance nevertheless... Which is why i have this opinion. On the contrary what happen in FFVI is seen as the player's failure. The World of Doom affected each member of your team in a very different way which is why it has more personality to me.
... I'm talking about a "reign", not the character.
I'm agreeing with you. Wasn't clear in my prior post i guess but seeing your party get torn apart as the airship goes down and then slowly reuniting with them *and* seeing all that you mentioned blew my mind, especially when you can totally choose to skip most of them.
I can agree with this. FF6 gameplay wasn't bad or anything, just standard for the time and *mostly* forgettable. But the FF6 story is so good, even moreso considering the size of the cast. And CT was no slouch there.
To all of you who are mocking FFV, it is a better game than FFVI if you take into consideration gameplay only. All the possibilities you can have with the jobs system makes each replay interesting and never boring. There is a reason why each year we have the FFV Job Fiesta. Storywise, obviously VI is MILES ahead than V... although the simple story of V and the characters aren't a detriment. Butz Bartz and Faris are great characters.
Back on topic, I have to give the edge to Chrono Trigger; it is a way much more enjoyable game than FFVI and much more straightforward. You don't have to learn how a character works or input combos for maximize the use of the characters.
Regarding the story... personally, I find FFVI is better in that aspect. But the characters on both games are stellar.
I've started playing with Relm, and it's pretty cool to be able to heal through the "Attack" command, but now I have to be extremely careful I'm not accidentally healing the enemy because the UI barely gives any indication of who's battle menu is currently open, while at the same time pushing me to attack quickly with the active time bars. I don't get it. Does the weird timing of attacks really help the game?
I haven't been experimenting with the different magical abilities because 80% of the time I use some characters weird ability, it misses - so it's just a waste of time. Posioning or blinding enemies or confusing enemies or whatever, it seems arbitrary when it's effective or not and most of the time it's not. Why bother with Gau's weird random list of monster moves, or Relm's "sketch" ability that goes unexplained and usually just misses, or remembering what the "123456789" is in Cyan's move list, or what Sabin's button combos are? It's just a mess of random battle options in a cramped ugly UI. And the status effects, let's hope I remember exactly what every colour code means. And when I want to heal mid-fight, which randomly named item is the cure for the unnamed status. I also have little idea how the Esper system even works to be honest, but it feels like anything more than straight damage dealing will involve following a heavily researched walkthrough and following some recipe to the letter.
This big chunk here really kind of highlights how you've missed multiple fundamental parts of the game. Going though it all in order.
Relm is healing your other party members with an attack because she has a Healing Rod equipped. It's a trait of the weapon, not the character
The UI has a giant grey arrow over the person who's menu you have open. Not to mention each characters unique command generally means that it would be trivial to figure who you're directly controlling.
You can't have done anything with any character's unique ability. Because to say 80% of the time it misses is absurd, the majority of the characters unique commands aren't exactly esoteric. Edgar's Tools are very simple and powerful, Locke's Steal is self explanatory, etc.
You just seem kind of lazy. It's very easy to remember Sabin's basic commands and what Cyan's moves do.
Again, good thing FFVI is easy. The point of all these other options is experimentation. Yeah, you can beat the game with brute force, but you can do it faster and lower leveled if you bother to figure out the intricacies of the command
The game both A) Explains what each item does, and B) What effect is already absurdly easy to figure out from their names.
Holy crap how do you not know how the Esper System works. It is literally the easiest thing in the world. You Equip an Esper, you gain AP as you fight, get enough AP and you learn the spells the Esper teaches you.
I dunno. My memory of Chrono Trigger might be a bit off in regards to the cinematics, I'm sure there's some cheesy tone stuff mixed in there like the Ozzy fights. Maybe it was more fresh because it was my "first real JRPG". But I feel like it conveyed a much stronger sense of a world under threat?
Holy crap how do you not know how the Esper System works. It is literally the easiest thing in the world. You Equip an Esper, you gain AP as you fight, get enough AP and you learn the spells the Esper teaches you.
Not really. I mean I surely consider VI's graphics and writing to be obviously superior, but I think V's combat and character progression are evidently better and it's not even close.
Games are things you play to have fun, and if one is more fun to play then I don't see what's so crazy about considering it better. It's the same with modern cinematic AAA games compared to more gameplay focused games.
Because the argument was that the opera song was better when I was arguing that CoT was? My argument was that the song itself didn't carry the scene but was supported by the whole thing so why would it be better than CoT?
It's a great game but nothing compares to Chrono Trigger OP, so I understand. Just keep at it and try to love it for its own charm; I mean it's the best FF of all time right next to Tactics so it deserves your time.
I'm playing through Chrono Trigger on the DS now. The mere fact they did away with random battles makes it so much easier to go back to this game. The spritework is also a level above what got in FFVI. I'd even put it above SD3 which used to be my favourite spritework in 2D RPG.
CT and FF6 are both amazingly fantastic games and games of their generation and both hold up today. This doesn't need to be debated really since what order you put them in or if you like one and not the other just comes down to personal preference.
However OP let me spell out for you why I think you are very wrong about FF6.
It's all about the characters and the development and depth to their characterization.
I'll mark spoilers for World of ruin as I go but lets just begin with Terra.
Terra starts out as a mindless slave to the empire, once shes freed shes lost and confused and doesn't know what to do. She follows Edgar and Locke largely because she has no idea what she should be doing or what living even really means, they find her amazing but shes just doesn't understand what she should be fighting for or if she should be fighting at all. Flash forward to meeting her Father's spirit and learning of her birth and what her parents went through and it triggers something within her, something she finds very foreign but something she is lacking, love. She spends much of the rest of the World of Balance questioning what love is and how to obtain it because its something she hasn't felt before but something she wants because love is what brought her parents together and made them have her, its the single emotion that connects her to her family and something she doesn't understand.
Now in World of Ruin (spoilers depending on how far you are into it)
When you find Terra shes found what shes been looking for. Taking care of a bunch of orphans and becoming their mother. She is finally able to understand love and has found a place to really belong and a place to come home to which she has never had before. It's not so simple though, her desire to protect these kids causes her to doubt herself, her abilities and if she should fight at all. Once Celes and co. meet up with her shes lost her since of battle and when that demon thing attacks she gets her clock cleaned largely due to her not yet realizing what her power is for. When you later return and shes recovered Terra finally understands, she loves all these kids, and the home she has found and she will do EVERYTHING in her power to protect them. Doing so she is able to awaken her true power of her Esper form and you are able to beat the Demon thing with her help. Finally having a purpose she rejoins to give everyone she loves a chance to grow up and live a life, a life she never got to experience.
What ultimately makes her character so special is that unlike so many other characters in both FF games as well as JRPG's in general is that Terra doesn't find love in a man or a relationship with another character she finds it as a surrogate mother to a group of orphans. She ultimately needs them as much as they need her and that is what gives her power. She character arc is all about finding a purpose in life, she doesn't find it as a soldier or getting back at the empire, those are goals that need to be completed to finding out who she really is and why, what she wants is to understand, first her own existence and power and after she finds that out she wants to understand what she should do in her life being what many would call a 'monster' since shes half human and half Esper. Her finding love and acceptance in a bunch of kids is ultimately what she needed more then anything else and upon realizing that and having a great desire to protect it is what makes her decide to fight.
Terra is in every way a hero, her character arc can end long before the game finishes but it doesn't diminish its importance. It speaks to what we all look for in our own lives and how finding our own purpose can be a hard fought battle but before you realize it, its already right in front of you and what do parents want to do more then anything else? Protect their children.
I can go into almost every single character and explain how distinct and unique their character arc is. OP I think one of the biggest problems I think your having with the game is that you seem to be trying to rush through it. You aren't grasping the characters because you are quickly moving on to the next scenario and aren't taking time for the events to really grab you. You mentioned using a guide for the Cid part in world of Ruin but thats the thing. Yeah you CAN save him but you aren't meant to, at least not in your first playthrough because you are meant to fail at this part because it triggers a series of events where...
Celes tries to kill herself by jumping off a cliff.
which is much more impactful then if he lives. It also helps define Celes as a character, she is very much a tragic heroine and the game does a great job of exploring the depths of her character but I'm not going to go on or else I'll spend another 30minutes typing up a long an detailed explanation like I did for Terra.
I guess the main thing is that modern games spell out many of these things for you but older games don't. If you aren't paying attention to the details and letting your mind really think about what happens in the game it can feel like there isn't a lot of character development but thats the point, the game is subtle about how it actually goes about giving many characters development and depth. Look at Shadow, did you ever stay at an Inn with him? If you haven't all of his backstory which is rather surprising will be missed and it helps to connect his life to a few other characters as well. Thats whats special about the game, if you go back to say Figaro Castle with a certain pair of brothers you see character development and its completely optional. Now anything like that is force fed down your throat and if a game doesn't do that (much like FF6) then yeah its easy to miss a lot of the bigger picture. Like do you know why Kefka is insane? Because he didn't just start out that way, but those things are explained in the game if you talk to certain characters and NPC's at different times.
If I'm misunderstanding you OP and you get all of that then I guess the game just isn't for you but thats why it holds up so well because the game has a rather large cast of main characters and its incredible how nearly all of them have so much depth which even is something today you don't normally see.
On the gameplay front yeah FF6 doesn't do anything super special like CT did but neither does FF4, 5, 7, 8, or 9 but I don't see gameplay complaints about those games. Personally I loved that each character had a unique ability like Terra's morph, Sabin's Blitz attacks, Edgars Tools (Autocrossbow does make the early parts of the game very easy), ect. It helps give each character an identity and I like how everyone can still learn magic unlike many of the other games which relegate it to specific jobs or characters. Heck the Materia system in FF7 and the customization it really gives you is largely based off of the Esper system of 6 just using both magic and commands with it.
FF6 is a masterpiece, it may not be that way for every person but I don't see how anyone really suggests it doesn't hold up and yet CT somehow does.
To be frank, OP, it's a rather good thing FFVI is a very easy game, as is Chrono Trigger. Because man you're kind of bad at JRPGs.
This big chunk here really kind of highlights how you've missed multiple fundamental parts of the game. Going though it all in order.
Relm is healing your other party members with an attack because she has a Healing Rod equipped. It's a trait of the weapon, not the character
The UI has a giant grey arrow over the person who's menu you have open. Not to mention each characters unique command generally means that it would be trivial to figure who you're directly controlling.
You can't have done anything with any character's unique ability. Because to say 80% of the time it misses is absurd, the majority of the characters unique commands aren't exactly esoteric. Edgar's Tools are very simple and powerful, Locke's Steal is self explanatory, etc.
You just seem kind of lazy. It's very easy to remember Sabin's basic commands and what Cyan's moves do.
Again, good thing FFVI is easy. The point of all these other options is experimentation. Yeah, you can beat the game with brute force, but you can do it faster and lower leveled if you bother to figure out the intricacies of the command
The game both A) Explains what each item does, and B) What effect is already absurdly easy to figure out from their names.
Holy crap how do you not know how the Esper System works. It is literally the easiest thing in the world. You Equip an Esper, you gain AP as you fight, get enough AP and you learn the spells the Esper teaches you.
This is your nostalgia talking because Chrono Trigger is by far the weirder and goofier game then FFVI.
This is all fair criticism, I'm admittedly not one to get super into number systems so RPGs aren't usually my thing.
I think most of complaints stem from the fact that I don't really understand how the "active" enemy attack timing works. It seems like you're penalized for thinking through your options, so I haven't gone in depth with testing abilities and analyzing the UI when someone's turn comes up. I'm not sure why they can't just show a bar for the enemy's next attack, like you have for your characters. I played Chrono Trigger on DS, so the UI was much more friendly and the attacks a bit more intuitive, so it didn't bother me as much.
I do know it's Relm's weapon, it's the rush of the timing battle system that makes a command that does one thing for everyone else but the opposite here kind of a hassle. It's not really good UI, my hangups or not.
I know the game marks who's turn it is, but it doesn't do it as intuitively as Chrono Trigger on DS did, which is partly understandable going by screen real estate.
Yeah, those moves you mentioned are pretty simple, I just found things like Sketch or Gau's moves or status effect moves (honestly most weirded out how ineffective they've been) always miss. The game doesn't really do a good job of signposting why, other than it seems like bosses just arbitrarily reflect lots of things.
I don't really think the status effect defense is valid, because while it's explained in-game, mid battle it's completely esoteric and there's quite a few colours to remember. Your status isn't labeled, and you can't see item explanations in the fight.
Espers, yeah, it doesn't seem insanely complicated other than the menus seem to imply alot of depth to it. The blank magic menus annoy me when checking if I can cast a spell with this character yet, so I usually don't bother. My own hangup, but it's still stuff that could easily be improved.
Maybe Chrono has more goofy moments, but it feels like they're just handled in the flow much better. The opera scene in FFVI was just all over the place in such a short window.
It happens, bit of circumstancial evidence but my wife had the same experience a few years ago. Played CT, loved it and FF VI right after did nothing for her.
You're not wrong in the slightest. Chrono Trigger introduced so many cool features -- some already found in Western RPGs from the 80s -- that it's baffling that you don't find those features consistently in every JRPG that came after, not even Squeenix!
Chrono Trigger should have been the next big step for JRPGs, but it feels like developers forgot all but a few new additions.
CT and FF6 are both amazingly fantastic games and games of their generation and both hold up today. This doesn't need to be debated really since what order you put them in or if you like one and not the other just comes down to personal preference.
However OP let me spell out for you why I think you are very wrong about FF6.
It's all about the characters and the development and depth to their characterization.
I'll mark spoilers for World of ruin as I go but lets just begin with Terra.
Terra starts out as a mindless slave to the empire, once shes freed shes lost and confused and doesn't know what to do. She follows Edgar and Locke largely because she has no idea what she should be doing or what living even really means, they find her amazing but shes just doesn't understand what she should be fighting for or if she should be fighting at all. Flash forward to meeting her Father's spirit and learning of her birth and what her parents went through and it triggers something within her, something she finds very foreign but something she is lacking, love. She spends much of the rest of the World of Balance questioning what love is and how to obtain it because its something she hasn't felt before but something she wants because love is what brought her parents together and made them have her, its the single emotion that connects her to her family and something she doesn't understand.
Now in World of Ruin (spoilers depending on how far you are into it)
When you find Terra shes found what shes been looking for. Taking care of a bunch of orphans and becoming their mother. She is finally able to understand love and has found a place to really belong and a place to come home to which she has never had before. It's not so simple though, her desire to protect these kids causes her to doubt herself, her abilities and if she should fight at all. Once Celes and co. meet up with her shes lost her since of battle and when that demon thing attacks she gets her clock cleaned largely due to her not yet realizing what her power is for. When you later return and shes recovered Terra finally understands, she loves all these kids, and the home she has found and she will do EVERYTHING in her power to protect them. Doing so she is able to awaken her true power of her Esper form and you are able to beat the Demon thing with her help. Finally having a purpose she rejoins to give everyone she loves a chance to grow up and live a life, a life she never got to experience.
What ultimately makes her character so special is that unlike so many other characters in both FF games as well as JRPG's in general is that Terra doesn't find love in a man or a relationship with another character she finds it as a surrogate mother to a group of orphans. She ultimately needs them as much as they need her and that is what gives her power. She character arc is all about finding a purpose in life, she doesn't find it as a soldier or getting back at the empire, those are goals that need to be completed to finding out who she really is and why, what she wants is to understand, first her own existence and power and after she finds that out she wants to understand what she should do in her life being what many would call a 'monster' since shes half human and half Esper. Her finding love and acceptance in a bunch of kids is ultimately what she needed more then anything else and upon realizing that and having a great desire to protect it is what makes her decide to fight.
Terra is in every way a hero, her character arc can end long before the game finishes but it doesn't diminish its importance. It speaks to what we all look for in our own lives and how finding our own purpose can be a hard fought battle but before you realize it, its already right in front of you and what do parents want to do more then anything else? Protect their children.
I can go into almost every single character and explain how distinct and unique their character arc is. OP I think one of the biggest problems I think your having with the game is that you seem to be trying to rush through it. You aren't grasping the characters because you are quickly moving on to the next scenario and aren't taking time for the events to really grab you. You mentioned using a guide for the Cid part in world of Ruin but thats the thing. Yeah you CAN save him but you aren't meant to, at least not in your first playthrough because you are meant to fail at this part because it triggers a series of events where...
Celes tries to kill herself by jumping off a cliff.
which is much more impactful then if he lives. It also helps define Celes as a character, she is very much a tragic heroine and the game does a great job of exploring the depths of her character but I'm not going to go on or else I'll spend another 30minutes typing up a long an detailed explanation like I did for Terra.
I guess the main thing is that modern games spell out many of these things for you but older games don't. If you aren't paying attention to the details and letting your mind really think about what happens in the game it can feel like there isn't a lot of character development but thats the point, the game is subtle about how it actually goes about giving many characters development and depth. Look at Shadow, did you ever stay at an Inn with him? If you haven't all of his backstory which is rather surprising will be missed and it helps to connect his life to a few other characters as well. Thats whats special about the game, if you go back to say Figaro Castle with a certain pair of brothers you see character development and its completely optional. Now anything like that is force fed down your throat and if a game doesn't do that (much like FF6) then yeah its easy to miss a lot of the bigger picture. Like do you know why Kefka is insane? Because he didn't just start out that way, but those things are explained in the game if you talk to certain characters and NPC's at different times.
If I'm misunderstanding you OP and you get all of that then I guess the game just isn't for you but thats why it holds up so well because the game has a rather large cast of main characters and its incredible how nearly all of them have so much depth which even is something today you don't normally see.
On the gameplay front yeah FF6 doesn't do anything super special like CT did but neither does FF4, 5, 7, 8, or 9 but I don't see gameplay complaints about those games. Personally I loved that each character had a unique ability like Terra's morph, Sabin's Blitz attacks, Edgars Tools (Autocrossbow does make the early parts of the game very easy), ect. It helps give each character an identity and I like how everyone can still learn magic unlike many of the other games which relegate it to specific jobs or characters. Heck the Materia system in FF7 and the customization it really gives you is largely based off of the Esper system of 6 just using both magic and commands with it.
FF6 is a masterpiece, it may not be that way for every person but I don't see how anyone really suggests it doesn't hold up and yet CT somehow does.
Great post. VI went above and beyond at plotting out thoughtful, often subtle, but usually very deep and coherent character arcs.
But, fair enough, it doesn't seem like that's what OP is really into. They seem to want a slick, accessible, manageable, relatively frictionless, enjoyable ride, and CT definitely fits that bill better than VI.
I love CT, but it doesn't have half the depth of VI if you really plumb it....
I never understood the hype behind 6. I always found 4 and 5 to be way more enjoyable. Chrono trigger on the other hand is way better than any of the SNES final fantasy games.
I think most of complaints stem from the fact that I don't really understand how the "active" enemy attack timing works. It seems like you're penalized for thinking through your options, so I haven't gone in depth with testing abilities and analyzing the UI when someone's turn comes up. I'm not sure why they can't just show a bar for the enemy's next attack, like you have for your characters.
Yeah, those moves you mentioned are pretty simple, I just found things like Sketch or Gau's moves or status effect moves (honestly most weirded out how ineffective they've been) always miss. The game doesn't really do a good job of signposting why, other than it seems like bosses just arbitrarily reflect lots of things.
You're not wrong in the slightest. Chrono Trigger introduced so many cool features -- some already found in Western RPGs from the 80s -- that it's baffling that you don't find those features consistently in every JRPG that came after, not even Squeenix!
Chrono Trigger should have been the next big step for JRPGs, but it feels like developers forgot all but a few new additions.
CT and FF6 are both amazingly fantastic games and games of their generation and both hold up today. This doesn't need to be debated really since what order you put them in or if you like one and not the other just comes down to personal preference.
However OP let me spell out for you why I think you are very wrong about FF6.
It's all about the characters and the development and depth to their characterization.
I'll mark spoilers for World of ruin as I go but lets just begin with Terra.
Terra starts out as a mindless slave to the empire, once shes freed shes lost and confused and doesn't know what to do. She follows Edgar and Locke largely because she has no idea what she should be doing or what living even really means, they find her amazing but shes just doesn't understand what she should be fighting for or if she should be fighting at all. Flash forward to meeting her Father's spirit and learning of her birth and what her parents went through and it triggers something within her, something she finds very foreign but something she is lacking, love. She spends much of the rest of the World of Balance questioning what love is and how to obtain it because its something she hasn't felt before but something she wants because love is what brought her parents together and made them have her, its the single emotion that connects her to her family and something she doesn't understand.
Now in World of Ruin (spoilers depending on how far you are into it)
When you find Terra shes found what shes been looking for. Taking care of a bunch of orphans and becoming their mother. She is finally able to understand love and has found a place to really belong and a place to come home to which she has never had before. It's not so simple though, her desire to protect these kids causes her to doubt herself, her abilities and if she should fight at all. Once Celes and co. meet up with her shes lost her since of battle and when that demon thing attacks she gets her clock cleaned largely due to her not yet realizing what her power is for. When you later return and shes recovered Terra finally understands, she loves all these kids, and the home she has found and she will do EVERYTHING in her power to protect them. Doing so she is able to awaken her true power of her Esper form and you are able to beat the Demon thing with her help. Finally having a purpose she rejoins to give everyone she loves a chance to grow up and live a life, a life she never got to experience.
What ultimately makes her character so special is that unlike so many other characters in both FF games as well as JRPG's in general is that Terra doesn't find love in a man or a relationship with another character she finds it as a surrogate mother to a group of orphans. She ultimately needs them as much as they need her and that is what gives her power. She character arc is all about finding a purpose in life, she doesn't find it as a soldier or getting back at the empire, those are goals that need to be completed to finding out who she really is and why, what she wants is to understand, first her own existence and power and after she finds that out she wants to understand what she should do in her life being what many would call a 'monster' since shes half human and half Esper. Her finding love and acceptance in a bunch of kids is ultimately what she needed more then anything else and upon realizing that and having a great desire to protect it is what makes her decide to fight.
Terra is in every way a hero, her character arc can end long before the game finishes but it doesn't diminish its importance. It speaks to what we all look for in our own lives and how finding our own purpose can be a hard fought battle but before you realize it, its already right in front of you and what do parents want to do more then anything else? Protect their children.
I can go into almost every single character and explain how distinct and unique their character arc is. OP I think one of the biggest problems I think your having with the game is that you seem to be trying to rush through it. You aren't grasping the characters because you are quickly moving on to the next scenario and aren't taking time for the events to really grab you. You mentioned using a guide for the Cid part in world of Ruin but thats the thing. Yeah you CAN save him but you aren't meant to, at least not in your first playthrough because you are meant to fail at this part because it triggers a series of events where...
Celes tries to kill herself by jumping off a cliff.
which is much more impactful then if he lives. It also helps define Celes as a character, she is very much a tragic heroine and the game does a great job of exploring the depths of her character but I'm not going to go on or else I'll spend another 30minutes typing up a long an detailed explanation like I did for Terra.
I guess the main thing is that modern games spell out many of these things for you but older games don't. If you aren't paying attention to the details and letting your mind really think about what happens in the game it can feel like there isn't a lot of character development but thats the point, the game is subtle about how it actually goes about giving many characters development and depth. Look at Shadow, did you ever stay at an Inn with him? If you haven't all of his backstory which is rather surprising will be missed and it helps to connect his life to a few other characters as well. Thats whats special about the game, if you go back to say Figaro Castle with a certain pair of brothers you see character development and its completely optional. Now anything like that is force fed down your throat and if a game doesn't do that (much like FF6) then yeah its easy to miss a lot of the bigger picture. Like do you know why Kefka is insane? Because he didn't just start out that way, but those things are explained in the game if you talk to certain characters and NPC's at different times.
If I'm misunderstanding you OP and you get all of that then I guess the game just isn't for you but thats why it holds up so well because the game has a rather large cast of main characters and its incredible how nearly all of them have so much depth which even is something today you don't normally see.
On the gameplay front yeah FF6 doesn't do anything super special like CT did but neither does FF4, 5, 7, 8, or 9 but I don't see gameplay complaints about those games. Personally I loved that each character had a unique ability like Terra's morph, Sabin's Blitz attacks, Edgars Tools (Autocrossbow does make the early parts of the game very easy), ect. It helps give each character an identity and I like how everyone can still learn magic unlike many of the other games which relegate it to specific jobs or characters. Heck the Materia system in FF7 and the customization it really gives you is largely based off of the Esper system of 6 just using both magic and commands with it.
FF6 is a masterpiece, it may not be that way for every person but I don't see how anyone really suggests it doesn't hold up and yet CT somehow does.
I'll have to come back to that spoiler section, yeah.
But I get your point, the characters in FFVI definitely have more depth than Chrono Trigger. I just think the game does a disservice to that depth through its """amateur""" cutscenes and spritework. Like, I could easily see how a remake without limits could be so compelling. It's the execution that gets me, the goofy cartoony sprite movements mixed in weirdly with the melodrama. A lot of that depth, like about Terra's quest for love, seems to be extrapolated from a few scenes that are otherwise kind of pushed to the side most of the time.
It's kind of annoying how maybe I've missed side parts that flesh out the characters, but I'm not sure how I'd find those without a guide. I've seen some of the ones you mentioned, but probably not ones like Shadow's back story (and from what I've read he's apparently gone forever now...). I wouldn't be looking up a walkthrough for the part with Cid if it would actually let me progress, I don't care about saving him but either way I've brought him fish literally 20 times and nothing is happening - that's a pretty objective break of the game flow, really. Just kind of shoddy for a game so well-regarded for its plot, to follow up a climax with this unintuitive chore? Comes back to my "amateur" execution complaints.
Not sure why the game can't just explain what the deal is with the active battle system, or why it needs it at all. I think I even have "wait" turned on but it still follows a kind of pseudo active system? I'm checking it now, and it says time pauses when selecting items/spells - that's uh, good to know, I guess. When I started the game the options didn't really make as much sense as they do now. I dunno, tips to enjoy it better is why I made the thread.
Why using the term "amateur" ? You mean like "indie" dev ?
I don't know, it was just... More creative ? FFVI isn't really a systemic game so they can ask very strange things to the player. Indeed, after the fish didn't do any effect, i started to feel hopeless too, i didn't had a faq so i just stopped and... He died.
Actually it's very similar to taking care of old person that may never be the same again. It's an hopeless task and you may drop it at a moment... And when Celes
killed herself
just after that, i actually teared up... Which happens, like, very very rarely.
The game isn't perfect, waiting for Shadow at the last second before World of Ruins is really something annoying... But you know the first time i just lost him and that's all. It's only way latter than people told me that i had to wait and when i played the game 10 years after, i had some new stuff to see.
I think that's the way the game was intended to be played.
Also, the spritework is really great and one of my favorite from the era, i think you just don't like "SD" too much but that doesn't mean it's amateurish.
Why using the term "amateur" ? You mean like "indie" dev ?
I don't know, it was just... More creative ? FFVI isn't really a systemic game so they can ask very strange things to the player. Indeed, after the fish didn't do any effect, i started to feel hopeless too, i didn't had a faq so i just stopped and... He died.
Actually it's very similar to taking care of old person that may never be the same again. It's an hopeless task and you may drop it at a moment... And when Celes
killed herself
just after that, i actually teared up... Which happens, like, very very rarely.
The game isn't perfect, waiting for Shadow at the last second before World of Ruins is really something annoying... But you know the first time i just lost him and that's all. It's only way latter than people told me that i had to wait and when i played the game 10 years after, i had some new stuff to see.
I think that's the way the game was intended to be played.
Also, the spritework is really great and one of my favorite from the era, i think you just don't like "SD" too much but that doesn't mean it's amateurish.
The spritework itself is fine really, it's more the goofy animations used, the way they're animated in cutscenes, the mis-match of battle sprites vs. those overworld sprites. It's that mismatched design choice and the weirdness of the cutscenes that I'm kind of calling "shoddy". Again, """shoddy""", like I'm not that into trashing devs, it's in contrast to Chrono Trigger which doesn't seem to have these problems as heavily.
The spritework itself is fine really, it's more the goofy animations used, the way they're animated in cutscenes, the mis-match of battle sprites vs. those overworld sprites. It's that mismatched design choice and the weirdness of the cutscenes that I'm kind of calling "shoddy". Again, """shoddy""", like I'm not that into trashing devs, it's in contrast to Chrono Trigger which doesn't seem to have these problems as heavily.
Detailed battle sprites become weird when you have Sabin vs. his rival, or Kefka becomes this overly detailed sprite entirely randomly. Like it might work if the player characters had equivalently detailed sprites in-battle?
The spritework itself is fine really, it's more the goofy animations used, the way they're animated in cutscenes, the mis-match of battle sprites vs. those overworld sprites. It's that mismatched design choice and the weirdness of the cutscenes that I'm kind of calling "shoddy". Again, """shoddy""", like I'm not that into trashing devs, it's in contrast to Chrono Trigger which doesn't seem to have these problems as heavily.
Well, if you consider that to be "problem", for me the characters you have in sprite is only a representation of what happen in the game. I had to use more of my imagination and the "battle sprites" actually is more detailed and give a better idea of what the characters really look like.
I don't really think it's a "problem";.... I can go as far as saying that it's a RPG convention that may be a little overblown in FFVI but i wouldn't have thought of calling it a "problem".
Let's conveniently forget that the world falls apart literally in Chrono Trigger too. In fact, in Chrono Trigger it falls apart three times throughout history, unlike in FFVI.
Agree to disagree I suppose. The post below summarizes how dark the themes are in FF6, particularly as you tackle the side quests in the World of Ruin. The character arc of Terra and Celes is magnificent, given the horrifying pasts they both endured. As is Kefka's , they never let up, even after his crimes seen in the first five hours. Nobody that evil even came close in CT.
CT and FF6 are both amazingly fantastic games and games of their generation and both hold up today. This doesn't need to be debated really since what order you put them in or if you like one and not the other just comes down to personal preference.
However OP let me spell out for you why I think you are very wrong about FF6.
It's all about the characters and the development and depth to their characterization.
I'll mark spoilers for World of ruin as I go but lets just begin with Terra.
Terra starts out as a mindless slave to the empire, once shes freed shes lost and confused and doesn't know what to do. She follows Edgar and Locke largely because she has no idea what she should be doing or what living even really means, they find her amazing but shes just doesn't understand what she should be fighting for or if she should be fighting at all. Flash forward to meeting her Father's spirit and learning of her birth and what her parents went through and it triggers something within her, something she finds very foreign but something she is lacking, love. She spends much of the rest of the World of Balance questioning what love is and how to obtain it because its something she hasn't felt before but something she wants because love is what brought her parents together and made them have her, its the single emotion that connects her to her family and something she doesn't understand.
Now in World of Ruin (spoilers depending on how far you are into it)
When you find Terra shes found what shes been looking for. Taking care of a bunch of orphans and becoming their mother. She is finally able to understand love and has found a place to really belong and a place to come home to which she has never had before. It's not so simple though, her desire to protect these kids causes her to doubt herself, her abilities and if she should fight at all. Once Celes and co. meet up with her shes lost her since of battle and when that demon thing attacks she gets her clock cleaned largely due to her not yet realizing what her power is for. When you later return and shes recovered Terra finally understands, she loves all these kids, and the home she has found and she will do EVERYTHING in her power to protect them. Doing so she is able to awaken her true power of her Esper form and you are able to beat the Demon thing with her help. Finally having a purpose she rejoins to give everyone she loves a chance to grow up and live a life, a life she never got to experience.
What ultimately makes her character so special is that unlike so many other characters in both FF games as well as JRPG's in general is that Terra doesn't find love in a man or a relationship with another character she finds it as a surrogate mother to a group of orphans. She ultimately needs them as much as they need her and that is what gives her power. She character arc is all about finding a purpose in life, she doesn't find it as a soldier or getting back at the empire, those are goals that need to be completed to finding out who she really is and why, what she wants is to understand, first her own existence and power and after she finds that out she wants to understand what she should do in her life being what many would call a 'monster' since shes half human and half Esper. Her finding love and acceptance in a bunch of kids is ultimately what she needed more then anything else and upon realizing that and having a great desire to protect it is what makes her decide to fight.
Terra is in every way a hero, her character arc can end long before the game finishes but it doesn't diminish its importance. It speaks to what we all look for in our own lives and how finding our own purpose can be a hard fought battle but before you realize it, its already right in front of you and what do parents want to do more then anything else? Protect their children.
I can go into almost every single character and explain how distinct and unique their character arc is. OP I think one of the biggest problems I think your having with the game is that you seem to be trying to rush through it. You aren't grasping the characters because you are quickly moving on to the next scenario and aren't taking time for the events to really grab you. You mentioned using a guide for the Cid part in world of Ruin but thats the thing. Yeah you CAN save him but you aren't meant to, at least not in your first playthrough because you are meant to fail at this part because it triggers a series of events where...
Celes tries to kill herself by jumping off a cliff.
which is much more impactful then if he lives. It also helps define Celes as a character, she is very much a tragic heroine and the game does a great job of exploring the depths of her character but I'm not going to go on or else I'll spend another 30minutes typing up a long an detailed explanation like I did for Terra.
I guess the main thing is that modern games spell out many of these things for you but older games don't. If you aren't paying attention to the details and letting your mind really think about what happens in the game it can feel like there isn't a lot of character development but thats the point, the game is subtle about how it actually goes about giving many characters development and depth. Look at Shadow, did you ever stay at an Inn with him? If you haven't all of his backstory which is rather surprising will be missed and it helps to connect his life to a few other characters as well. Thats whats special about the game, if you go back to say Figaro Castle with a certain pair of brothers you see character development and its completely optional. Now anything like that is force fed down your throat and if a game doesn't do that (much like FF6) then yeah its easy to miss a lot of the bigger picture. Like do you know why Kefka is insane? Because he didn't just start out that way, but those things are explained in the game if you talk to certain characters and NPC's at different times.
If I'm misunderstanding you OP and you get all of that then I guess the game just isn't for you but thats why it holds up so well because the game has a rather large cast of main characters and its incredible how nearly all of them have so much depth which even is something today you don't normally see.
On the gameplay front yeah FF6 doesn't do anything super special like CT did but neither does FF4, 5, 7, 8, or 9 but I don't see gameplay complaints about those games. Personally I loved that each character had a unique ability like Terra's morph, Sabin's Blitz attacks, Edgars Tools (Autocrossbow does make the early parts of the game very easy), ect. It helps give each character an identity and I like how everyone can still learn magic unlike many of the other games which relegate it to specific jobs or characters. Heck the Materia system in FF7 and the customization it really gives you is largely based off of the Esper system of 6 just using both magic and commands with it.
FF6 is a masterpiece, it may not be that way for every person but I don't see how anyone really suggests it doesn't hold up and yet CT somehow does.
I hear ya, OP. Final Fantasy VI used to be one of my favorite Final Fantasy games, but last time I replayed it went down a few notches in my book. I just can't find myself connecting with many of the characters. There are a lot, but sadly only a few I care about. Kefka wasn't as great as I remembered either. He was kind of...samey. I got bored of him after a while. However, it is still a good game. And I think you're nuts for thinking anything but amazing things about the music. FFVI has some of the best music in any Final Fantasy.
For me, and this is kind of petty I suppose, FFVI's character sprites just suck. I hate looking at them, especially next to the monsters. But even those don't have the movement etc that they do in Chrono Trigger. , from the monsters to the bosses to the fist pumps and "dancing" all look great in CT.
I hear ya, OP. Final Fantasy VI used to be one of my favorite Final Fantasy games, but last time I replayed it went down a few notches in my book. I just can't find myself connecting with many of the characters. There are a lot, but sadly only a few I care about. Kefka wasn't as great as I remembered either. He was kind of...samey. I got bored of him after a while. However, it is still a good game. And I think you're nuts for thinking anything but amazing things about the music. FFVI has some of the best music in any Final Fantasy.
The music is killer for sure, I just think it's sometimes used in a weird way tonally? It's more about the presentation. The transition to peppy battles from the overworld, goofy fanfare during dramatic moments, etc.
