I consider Final Fantasy III (which I'll refer to as Final Fantasy VI for the remainder of this review) the single greatest game of all time. Pardon me if that statement sounds fanboyish, and I apologize if that is the case, but I feel that there is simply no way for me to review this game without the outcome being completely and utterly one-sided. Even if I can't convince you to see this title in the same light as I do, allow me to at least explain why I feel the way I do. For its day, Final Fantasy VI had, and still has, one of the best plotlines of any RPG. The way that the game is structured presents almost every playable character (fourteen in all) with fantastic development. Although the game's primary focus is on Terra at the very beginning, the storyline grows to encompass and focus on characters in such a way that by the middle of the game, Terra is but one member of a very memorable, colorful and enjoyable cast. Relationships develop at a very natural pace; there's romantic love lost and won, murder and betrayal, familial ties reforged, and the list goes on. In the end, all of these plot threads become just as important as the central conflict, and when the final boss battle arrives and it's time to save the world, it feels as though that there's actually a world worth saving. Musically, Final Fantasy VI is Nobuo Uematsu at his very best. Final Fantasy VI includes some of the most memorable music in the entire series, including themes representing individual characters and the bonds that exist between them. Quite possibly the game's masterpiece of orchestration comes from the Opera House sequence; the sequence which has come to define the game's masterful storytelling. Without the music, this scene wouldn't have had nearly the impact that it made, and it demonstrates how truly wonderful Uematsu's musical talents are. The graphics, although 2D and from the 16-bit era, are wonderful, and the characters are all large enough that their expressiveness comes through perfectly. For its era, Final Fantasy VI's technical achievements jumped well beyond its contemporaries, and as the last pure 2D game in the series, it's a powerful send off for the style. While Final Fantasy VII may have represented a new era in terms of 3D graphics, Final Fantasy VI maximized the 2D capabilities of the SNES to present the story that the staff at Square desired to tell. The FFVI battle system is the old-school Final Fantasy battle system at its very zenith. With fourteen playable characters, each with very unique abilities, players could customize their parties with a wide variety of skill sets. Even more freeform is the game's magicite system, which allows players to teach any spell to any character. Which each game in the series has provided its own tweaks and overhauls to the battle formula, Final Fantasy VI's system still holds up as one of the best. If you never had the chance to play Final Fantasy III on the SNES, you missed out on one of the best RPGs of the era. However, Square did release the game on the Sony Playstation as Final Fantasy VI in the Final Fantasy Anthology compilation. The Anthology version includes some nice CG cut-scenes, although it does come at the price of loading times. Still, in my opinion, it's more than worth it to experience what I consider to be the single greatest game ever made.
The Final Fantasy series is one of the longest-running and most famous series in the videogame industry. It started out with Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a last-ditch effort by Squaresoft (now S... Read Full Review
Final Fantasy VI is the reason in which I like the Rpg series. My favorite part of the game is that there is no such thing as a main character in this game. Because of FFVII this game isn’t as noticeable to most gamers ... Read Full Review
