FF6 essentially rearranges the components of FF5’s job system and splits it up between character choice and relics, and tying it partly to character choice means that the system is more baked into the narrative compared to 5, where you got dumps of jobs at regular intervals
I think if the devs had more time, they would have caught and taken out the mechanical weirdness like the vanish/x-zone thing, darkness not having any actual effect on accuracy, magic evade superceding physical evade – these really were just bugs
I only ever played the PSX port of FFVI, and having the game stream from whatever dying PSX I had at the time only made the game feel more held together by straw!
I still like the game fine because I like the characters still find the narrative structure effective enough, but I wonder how much goodwill was earned by everyone seeing the opening Magitek/mech setpiece in the mid 90’s that gets immediately exchanged for a much safer “early 90’s JRPG with steampunk lite” vibe. Probably still way more cohesive than the presentation of VII, at any rate.
the unevenness of the ensemble is one of the best things about it for sure, and it’s the primary reason I love speculating about a FFVII-budgeted remake (which won’t happen), because I think an overful party of those lunatics, especially if they could find a way to let you use like seven or eight of them at once, would be a scream,
but it also contributes to the combat feeling like slop where every so often you’re like “OK, right, I need to get one good move and cure 2 on this character I’m forced to use”
I love FF8 but it’s a real shame that the staff was so set on turning all of the traditional FF mechanics on their head and fixing what was broken but working well enough that we didn’t get to see that design philosophy taken to its natural conclusion, considering the promise they showed with 6 and 7
A theoretical FF9 in that vein could have been the greatest thing ever, compared to how reigned in the actual FF9 was
And FF10 is nice enough, everything has its place there, but how interesting is it to revisit?
another reason I’m unusually fond of the GBA release is that it adds more late game challenges and FFVI is the only game in the series that’s arguably otherwise totally bereft of them, despite having all these edge case mechanical advantages you can seek out but don’t need (like the sword you can get instead of the ragnarok esper, that you can trade for an even better sword at the automated battle arena if you want to do that, despite every character in the game who can actually use swords generally having better combat options than their main weapon).
gau is one of the things i’m extremely frustrated with. he relies both on knowledge the game doesn’t give you access to without testing in battle (based on randomness since you don’t control his moves) and also gains these skills through random encounters even if you know what to look for. the pool of enemies in the veldt is so huge that meeting the specific enemies you want or need feels very unlikely and i hate doing that.
otherwise there’s a ton of small annoying things that makes managing the party unnecessarily grating. the amount of steps necessary to change members is annoying, and then you only heal the characters with you when going to an inn.
it’s still pretty good, i’m just really annoyed by this. i’m at the point where i’m gonna storm kefkas tower and i’m gonna kick that clown off it
theres a whole fifty post discussion about it above us, but if a game plays in a way that you hate you cant complete its goals. that’s a pretty direct affect
I don’t play a lot of rpgs but I enjoy them mostly for what they could end up being, it’s probably why I barely replay them. It becomes something I want to share and continue enjoying vicariously
I’d say the gameplay in the dragon quest ds ports have good gameplay because I had a lot of fun twirling the camera in 5
