final fantasy VI play-through thread, kupo!

SNES had a great sleigh bell sample.

Kind of amazing NOA let the scene stay in of Cyan finding his murdered family, that was horrifying!

xxxpost It's a nice way of making sure you don't, later on, just lean on only a few characters you've really maxed out...you're sort of forced to spend time with all of them and their stories, and that in turn makes you build up a kind of affection for them. Or even kind of fill in some blanks imagining their relationships - X and Y both went through the big mountain adventure together, back at the beginning of the game! Makes it feel more like LOTR or name your other source material - the "party" is always getting reshuffled and scattered, not everybody was there for everything. At some point I think there are too many characters and it kind of breaks this - FF7 went back to a much smaller cast, for better or worse.

(also thinking of this: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2006/07/i-was-a-goblin-but-i-wasnt-a-hobbit/ )

it's very well done how many of the character relationships are sketched out in this game; there's a lot purposely left out and implied

VII continued this tradition somewhat - at least, it started that way, but then it kinda gave way to crazy over-exposition fast. but VI did a more impressive job drawing the wide epic cast, IMO, especially in the before/after world divide

replayed this just a year or two ago and it held up better than any non-chrono trigger jrpg i can think of. probably the best game ending ever

the mode 7 march to narsh over the opening credits is still square's best 'cinematic' moment imo

the world of ruin felt revelatory to me as a kid

otm

These NPCs are pretty wonderful. I imagine most of them have one line (well, maybe 2, after the world switches over) but rather than some procedurally-generated dialog (filled with weird made-up words that do nothing but make you feel like you are in a role playing game) they tell a story. It is probably a simple folk tale or old fable shared long ago by East and West. Or maybe an everyday drama like someone mad about a broken clock. Or maybe a joke that has no purpose to the plot or open world, but adds to the overall aesthetic. 16-bit Cyber-Steampunk retro-futurism.

Replaying it, with the original chiptune and pixelart masterful 16-bit presentation, is a wonderful trip into nostalgia. Totally awesome! Living On The Edge! These games have some revolutionary ideas - zen/animist/cultist/wicca/capitapocalyptic/Marxist global digital revolution. Storytelling has taken a HUGE step back from these earlier, sketched-out, pixellated masterpieces from the Golden Saucer Age.

Mode 7!!

man i loved this game so much. just reading the wiki on it; i have no recollection of umaro at all

pretty sure i had a savegame where i got every character up to lvl99

Umaro was pretty easy to miss and for me a waste of time but still so sweet that they included stuff like that for you to find (or not).

one thing that's nice about playing this on an emulator is that grinding is waaaaay easier. i can set SNES 9X to 15x speed, tap left and right on the world map, and hold down the attack button and get through a random encounter every 5 seconds or so. last night i logged about 2 hours of grinding time in about 7-8 minutes.

it's kind of a dangerous feature, actually, because now i'll be superleveled for the next section and it won't be challenging.

in recollection i think the opera sequence is one of the best bits of any video game i've ever played

xp tbf it's probably one of the least challenging FF games as it is, and they intentionally give you plenty of room to grind

i dipped back into this again, just navigated the lethe river and am at the crossroads. i remember being really excited by this part, the idea that i could play the game in different orders. i wish they did more with this because iirc there really isn't anything interesting that comes out of doing the storylines in any specific order except the fact that you can deequip yr party at crucial moments to get access to certain new items or w/e.

again iirc if you do the wor characters out of the order they sort of nudge you into you can trigger certain cutscenes that you won't get otherwise. i remember purposefully skipping sabin in one of my playthroughs as a kid because i liked the idea of playing the game on my own terms, i would do the same with the palaces in link to the past, although doing those in non-suggested order is actually p helpful.

also i want to, again, admire just how much stuff there is in this game, how many random chests and items and cutscenes the hid throughout the game

i liked that part a lot too, really gives you that lotr ensemble vibe

yeah it's a great concept but tbh i find it annoying because i only have one pair of sprint shoes

someone said something like this upthread or in one of the other threads or in a dream but i like that as the game progresses certain characters develop shared histories that the other characters don't have. wish they were referenced from time to time tho: how awesome would it be if you did this procedurally, so that if you had sabin in your party when you infiltrated the magitek factory or whatever he reminisced about it later with someone else who was there. (for all i know they do this; i'm flying aimlessly around the world avoiding the floating island because i'm terrified that if i go there i won't be able to come back and I MUST HAVE SECRETS)

dayo otfm tho

i didn't grow up playing either this or LTTP so it's just now dawning on me that ocarina of time was not exactly novel in this regard

that rugpull was the height of game-story greatness to me as a kid (deus ex aside) but nevertheless i always suspected and now ff6 has confirmed that it was executed way, way too cravenly early

in lttp, i mean, but in oot too, because they are identical, because they are zelda games after 1988

like that as the game progresses certain characters develop shared histories that the other characters don't have. wish they were referenced from time to time tho

they sort of do, or do so obliquely. some of the dialogue btw locke and celes references their shared escape from south figaro, or btw shadow and realm. i think you can trigger certain cutscenes that reference gaul and cyan's relationship as well. there's not a tonne you can do as a player to influence these but party member selection can influence things a little - like if you bring both of the brothers to duncan's house in the wor or w/e. the relationships btw characters in this are really fairly dense and interesting i think.

i'm flying aimlessly around the world avoiding the floating island because i'm terrified that if i go there i won't be able to come back and I MUST HAVE SECRETS

haha this was really annoying to me - there are a bunch of things you can only do in the wob

party member selection can influence things a little - like if you bring both of the brothers to duncan's house in the wor or w/e.

i did see something like this -- walked into figaro castle at one point and somebody said "i wish sabin were here!" so i came back with sabin and there was a scene. can't now remember if it was an easter egg or if it was how to advance the plot but i was grateful for the nudge.

wait he says! do i look like a waiter?!

the only part 1 secret that you couldn't get back to was losing Shadow permanently, i thought?

I'd dabbled before but this is really the one that led to me spending a 1/4 of my life grinding away at jrpgs <3 >_<

So apparently you can do sabin's blitzes without the in-between arrows, i.e. ↓↓← instead of ↓↙←

What the fuck

lol i remember only getting good at the ↓↙← move via this game; was always hopeless at street fighter

Yeah you can totally do that stuff. Playing on emulator w analog joystick makes these easier to do but still kind of absurd how often they miss anyways.

especially once you get to the crazy 10-steppers

uh so is there a good snes mac emulator that can do button combos as a macro?

The only good one seems to be snes9x.

Dunno about macros though, maybe on a gamepad?

Keyboard config seems not configable

anyone have a good recommendation for a gamepad (under $40 if possible)? i don't mind playing FFVI using the keyboard, but i recently purchased Rogue Legacy for mac (it is soooooooooooooo good) and it would be a much better experience with a gamepad, kupo

i should probably take that question to a more appropriate thread, sorry kupo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1FlbfPu_TA

I love Zozo

Lmao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4QOzi7_FUE

I'm in Zozo too. I actually made it through, climbed those buildings, got the Espers, went and got about halfway through the Opera thing. Got tired and shut off the game and forgot to save!!! So now I have to go through Zozo again. Blitzing Slam Dancers.

the music in zozo is my favorite so far i think, except maybe for the beginning of the floating continent theme where it pretends it's gonna be maddening looped fairy fountain twinkle for a few seconds before getting real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbdAJBXbyKc

industrial percussion magitek facility theme also did not drive me crazy at all

all the music in this game is so classic

the zoso theme is so good. also the crazy chromatic melody in the battle vs Atma Weapon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwSfUqnDvA

This is going to sound really corny but I really love Setzer's line

'My life is a chip in your pile. Ante up!'

PRobably should have used it in my high school yearbook or something

I like all the old fan pages that come up when you start googling

http://www.icybrian.com/

i remember icybrian

Yeah, I think I saved right after I got that airship, so right after "Ante up!"

The opera scene was pretty rad. I really liked that sample they use for the voices, and the words on screen and notes not matching exactly works because it's opera so some syllabus are gonna be spanning multiple notes and whatnot. Also LOL at "You are speaking with octopus royalty!"

The female characters in this don't really get much to do story-wise. Celes is used as bait by multiple people at once and Terra is pretty much incapacitated (now she's an MIA Esper). Say what you will about Tifa but the one time she was captured she freed herself and then took command of an airship.