I do apologize for resurrecting a topic this way, but I just want something to do while I’m doing something else that’s quite tedious.
FF6 has all the scope, sweep, and epicness of the later entries, but with none of the bloat and excessiveness (both hardware/software-related and plot-related) which the series has seemed unwilling to retreat from, especially after FF8 came out.
I find it intriguing that I continue to hear/read things like “favorite FF”, “Greatest FF mainline series entry”, “Best game of all time” about 6, nearly 30 years after its rather modest initial sales run (it was no Street Fighter…wasn’t even as good a seller as FF5, iirc). That kind of speaks to how exactly it manages to hit that “sweet spot” of just being a really good goshdang JRPG, without being “too big for its britches,” as it were.
Consider; it has an intro that only lasts maybe 2 and 1/2 mins (1 1/2 if you skip the credits sequence). After that, you’re in control of the game, you’re playing. It also doesn’t force long, drawn-out tutorials down your gullet; it presumes that you’ve played a FF game before, or at least a Zelda game.
It also then goes on to keep that pacing going all the way from Narshe until Zozo; when it finally does force you to stop for an exposition break, it *feels* like a break, rather than feeling like a chore (I’m looking at you, Kalm Flashback).
It then rewards that break, with a lovely and technically novel (for 1994) sequence that I suppose we’ve all come to know about (being that the Dream Oath Opera is the one thing that’s said about FF6 in just about every retrospective vid on YouTube).
From there, it puts you into a traditional “visit new towns, collect info, storm the dungeon” gameplay loop that JRPGs are known for, which avoids feeling perfunctory sheerly on the strength of its aesthetic presentation, and the story buildup that came before it (The Empire). It then rewards that, by allowing you to fly the Airship and freely select your party (masterfullly requiring you to learn that you can do so, in order to continue, that is, Terra must be in the party).
It’s such a well crafted game. You almost can’t *not* love it.