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Ok, I've listed 8 common complaints of FFVI critics from around the world. What do you believe is the biggest problem with FFVI? How could the game be improved?

For me it's the lack of character interaction (especially in the WoR). I think the WoR should have had some missions where you're forced to use characters who haven't interacted with each other much. In these missions they would interact much like the characters in Sabin's scenario. Examples of character groups:

Setzer
Locke
Relm
Sabin

Mog
Gau
Terra
Cyan

Strago
Cyan
Edgar
Mog

Celes
Terra
Relm
Gau or Mog

The second problem with the game in my opinion is the lack of difficulty.

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

Well, as it is not required that you recollect all of your party members before heading to Kefka's tower, I would assume the reason that they have no set groups for necessary character-specific interactions is that there are only a few characters that are necessary to reach the final part of the game (Celes, Edgar, and Setzer I think... If anyone else is absolutely necessary before reaching Kefka's tower, please correct me.)

I personally think that with the optional sidequests in the WoR, character development is quite thorough in its creation of distinct personae.

For me, the only shortcoming / problem in the game was the overabundance of characters. While I did enjoy the story and interaction that each one provided as he/she joined the group, I feel as if by the end there were almost too many side stories involved... While I welcomed such sidequests as Locke's search for the Phoenix Cave, Setzer's (my fav. protagonist) journey into Daryll's Tomb, Celes' lack of purpose / motivation in life after the WoB, and the empire, collapses and she is without her party, specifically Locke, and some others.

I just really didn't care for exploring certain characters though, specifically Strago and Mog (while I must admit that moogles are quite awesome, I really never felt as if Mog fit in with the party.)

Thus, I feel as if the game could have channeled much of its emotion/story more effectively (believe you me, it already does this quite effectively) if the cast were slimmed a tad.

Finally, I hope that no one picks Kefka as one of the game's shortcomings, as he is numero uno in my book. Seriously, though, I never really considered him to be a clown despite the makeup. I always figured he was just a flamboyant, almost narcissistic character similar to french/spanish nobles of the past (who wore makeup and gaudy clothing). *Sigh* this is better left for a different topic, though...

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Je ne t'aime plus,
Mon amour...

Je ne t'aime plus,
Tous les jours...

I don't generally like to do short posts, but Stephen said pretty much everything I could say.

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"My impersonation of an ordinary person was flawless." - Neal

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss

Much as I love FFVI - and oh, I do love it - it's really pretty easy. The first time I played through it (even though I didn't get all the extras, I still hold that I completed most of it) I beat it in under 45 hours. That's not a long time, considering that I spent over 100 on FFX and like 60 something on IV. The others fell somewhere in between. It's a phenomenal game - but if you spend any time leveling up, you can beat any enemy, including the final boss, with little effort.

Quote (Stephen the Third @ 28th January 2004 14:51)

Well, as it is not required that you recollect all of your party members before heading to Kefka's tower, I would assume the reason that they have no set groups for necessary character-specific interactions is that there are only a few characters that are necessary to reach the final part of the game (Celes, Edgar, and Setzer I think... If anyone else is absolutely necessary before reaching Kefka's tower, please correct me.)

You're right, you only need Celes, Edgar and Setzer. However this certainly could have been done differently. While the game offers a lot of freedom in the WoR, I don't think you should be able to beat the game without all the characters. Almost every sidequest in the WoR is dedicated towards finding characters. Perhaps there could have been a 4 scenario thing dedicated to breaking into Kefka's tower. For some reason (see edit below) the 4 teams could be predetermined, which would raise the difficulty and offer a lot of fun character interaction. That would have really brought the WoR to life. Wouldn't this have made the game better?

Edit: Ah, here's an example. Everyone gets randomly thrown off the airship because of an attack from the tower. This comes after a conversation from the characters who were puzzled as to how to enter the tower. So now there are 4 groups of party members who know little about each other. See, there are ways to make things work.

This post has been edited by i90east on 28th January 2004 22:13

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

I actually agree with you about the structure of the WoR, i90east. Although I feel as if the freedom / lack of direct objectives in the WoR really adds to the feelings of despair and hopelessness, I think that for the sake of some of the characters it would have been better with a more structured second half of the game.

However, I do feel that there should have been at least a couple of scenarios that reenforced bonds between main characters (the ending really did this well.... but, I find myself wishing that this same level of story telling could have been more prevalent earlier in the WoR.)

I really wish that the Celes/Locke relationship were developed a bit better (other than Celes' longing for Locke on the deserted island, the post-phoenix segment, and the ending I feel as if it that part of the story sort of fell to the back burner until the final sequence.) as well as Setzer's past (just one segment about his past / relationship with Daryll? Come on!). Edgar and Sabin don't really develop in the WoR outside of their brotherly relationship.

Cyan, Locke, Shadow, and Terra, I felt, were those that showed clear, heartfelt development in their post-WoB characters. I only wish that some of the other characters received that same treatment.

Still, though, I see this as a problem with the sheer number of characters. It would be hard to give each character equal development throughout the whole game, so I think this is more a side-effect of the game's overly large cast.... so my vote is still the same.

This post has been edited by Stephen the Third on 28th January 2004 22:27

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Je ne t'aime plus,
Mon amour...

Je ne t'aime plus,
Tous les jours...

I say it's because the game was too easy. Very, very, VERY fun. but I realize it was too easy, even for me It could stand to be a little harder, and that's why, the next time I play it, I'm gonna use i90's Expert Version.

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Wow. 1,000 posts.

I miss you all now that I'm in boarding school! ;_;

graphics is the issue with ff6
Final Fantasy 6 is a great game, but many people judge games by its graphics and basically think '2D is an old graphic...old graphic means old school games...old school game sucks'... Honestly, if it had good graphics, Most people will consider (or way more) ff6 as the best final fantasy game.

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I will be there...

Well i believe the game was quite difficult despite that. In order to really beat kefkas tower i sorta felt like i needed to Level up atleast 12 characters.
the characters were deffinately a plus, but the WOR sort of lacked organization. My favorite party was always Locke,Mog,Shadow,andTerra, and i found it damn hard to complete some of the harder quests. A problem i did have was the shortness of the game.It took me about 200 hours to level up everyone to my specs and to 100% the Game(dragon Forest), but the story line was short. And responding to the coment of io_rage FFIV took me 30 hours to beat 100% meteo all sumons ect, cmon.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 1st March 2005 02:29

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

My only problem with the game is that it was too short and too easy. It would've been nice if the side quests were tougher. Part of this problem is the limitations on the battle engine, but also the availability of certain "cheesy" relics makes it rather easy at times.

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Food is like magic in my ears. - Djibriel
Ogopogo lives.

No offense to you i90, but...
"Characters learn every type of magic spell, making them indifferent"
I think this is an absurd complaint. If anything this complaint should be directed towards FF7, not FF6. In FF7 there are only 4 things which differentiate characters: character sprites, dialogue (few as it were), Weapon/Armor selections, and the only real differentiator, Limit Breaks (Who wouldn't want to have Aeris in the last 10% of the game? hmm?). Don't get me wrong, I love FF7, but if the above complaint were heard in any forum, it should be in an FF7 forum, not here.

FF6 on the other hand has 5 things which differentiate characters: character sprites, dialogue, Weapon/Armor selection (which has much more effect on the game, considering that in FF7 ANY weapon can cause any effect/status for any character), Desperation Attacks (comparable but not the same as Limit Breaks) and Skills. Other than Gogo, Skills completely and thoroughly differentiate the characters. Character selection for sidequests and especially during multi-party areas are completely based on Skills.

io_rage:
I think you have a good underlying point. At least I hope I am following your reasoning here. There should have been more "required" quests in WOR. That way one would be forced to gather more characters, experience more parts of the game and develop the character of the characters more fully.

I think it is unfair however, to compare the gameplay time of FF6 to FFX. FFX utilized DVD disk technology, ~8 GB of data on that one disk, compared to FF6 which utilitized 1 SNES cartridge, ~3 MB of data. The fact that they crammed so much play time into so little code, is a praise to the FF6 designers.

I have no idea how much or little of FF6 sidequests you completed. But I assure you that if you completed all the sidequests, attempted to max out just 4 characters and find just 80% of the total items in the game, then you would have easily broken the 100 hr mark for FF6.

I am currently playing a low level game and I just hit 100 hours and I am not to the Floating Continent yet. Admittedly, the majority of this time I have spent on the Veldt maxing out Gau's Rages, but still it goes to show that to max-out FF6, it easily compares in gameplay time to a beast like FFX, which had much more space to work with.

FF7 aside:
I think the magic-learning system in FF6 is the best of all the FFs. I hated the idea in FF7 that I could learn Esuna (max out the Heal Materia) in a particular combat, then unequip it and have nothing to show for it. Why not make 1 such Contain materia. Let people equip it in armor/weapons as usual, once they learn the spells in it, those spells become a permanent part of their spell repertoir. Then another character can equip it and learn it, just like the Espers. Sure, they wanted to 'do something different', but I think it is better to do something old which works, than to 'do something different', which is inferior.

I voted Other in this category, for the following reasons.
* I think many of the bosses are too easy for a normal playthrough. This could have been easily fixed.
* I would have liked to see more Easter Egg monsters like Emerald Weapon and Ruby Weapon in FF6 though. Brachosaurs and TRexs are tough, but nowhere near Ruby Weapon toughness.
* More weapon selections per character. Space concerns? Then let more characters use weapon X. This problem could have been dealt with in several ways. 1 Water-elemental weapon in the game? Usable by 2 people?! The number of elemental attacks available to each character were not rounded out well.

I don't think FF6 is perfect. There is room for improvement. But it is darn close. It is one of my 3 favorite games, games which I never get tired of replaying.

This post has been edited by Detah on 29th January 2004 15:49

Quote (Detah)

No offense to you i90, but...

Keep in mind that these arn't my complaints. These are the complaints of people who like other FF games better, especially FF7-FFX. So no I didn't call Kefka a clown or claim that the characters are indifferent. Feel free to take aim at the list of complaints and fire away.

Quote (MogMaster)

My favorite party was always Locke,Mog,Shadow,andTerra, and i found it damn hard to complete some of the harder quests.

None of those characters have very effective special commands which might be why you're having such a hard time. Some of the better specials are Blitz, Rage, Swdtech and Tools. These clean up the bad guys quick.

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

my biggest complaint about the game? it ended...

no seriosuly, he worst part about the game is the difficulty. only a couple battle where at all challenging (and the combination of vanish and x-zone/doom pretty much obliterated everything). if any one aggrees with me, definetly try out i90's expert version, its currently kicking my but

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<Nealio> Seymour sounds like evil Winnie the Pooh

My biggest complaint wasn't on the list. It's the lack of good dialouges in FFVI. Perhaps you all start screaming now, but look: I really dislike the way the characters interact and speak with eachother through the game. A major example is when Edgar meets his long lost brother, Sabin. What happens? Well...

(These lines are not 100% correct, but you get the point)

Edgar: "Sabin! Is that really you?"

Sabin: "Yes."

Locke: "The brothers are reunited!"

And so they move on. Is that really the way you act in that situation? Pschaw!

Other things that was a little bad with FFVI was the easiness. We should get harder bosses and more difficult puzzles. Also, some characters were less worth than others. But no way like some people claim it to be (I'm not talking about you here at CoN, I'm talking about persons I've met in real life). I've honestly met people who claim that "The only good characters are Edgar, Sabin and Cyan, coz they have powerful attacks as standard commands." While it's true that they might be slightly better than some other characters, most characters in FFVI can be used in a great way if you know how to do. But still, Square didn't manage to fix it for all characters.

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People say I'm a slow learner, but I type fast!

The difficulty. I personally like a challenging game, or at the very least, a game with optional bosses to keep me training. FF4 had tough bosses near the end of the game that must be defeated to earn an ultimate weapon. FF5 did even better with Shinryuu and Omega. These guys meant business. FF7-10 all had optional challenges, from Weapons upon more Weapons, to Ozma, to arena monsters like Nemesis. These games kept me training and training. FF6 didn't have any big bosses, and so after I was done collecting all the characters and doing the sidequests, I was finished. An extra-hard enemy with a nice prize would have definitely spruced things up.

I liked the idea of 14 characters. I could pick the characters I liked depending on the strategy I was going to use. In a way, though, it became tedious to train everybody. Completionists probably despise having to train characters they didn't like to lv. 99. Also, it became much harder to give these characters a role in the story. Many were almost invisible after joining the party.

This post has been edited by Jlombardi13 on 29th January 2004 21:33

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Lou: There's a couple of guys fighting down at the aquarium, Chief.
Wiggum: Do they still sell those frozen bananas?
Lou: I think so.
Wiggum: Let's roll.

I wish we had a polling system where you could choose more than one option.
I would choose:

There are too many characters - makes it look more like a strategy game than an RPG.
The characters aren't developed enough - that's a sacrifice that comes with having many characters.
FFVI is just too easy - the series has had declining difficulty.
Some characters have annoying personalities - what's annoying is that they are more or less constant. Goes with #2
Characters learn every type of magic spell, making them indifferent - Lack of individuality in battle keeps battles from being as interesting as they shoud be.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

Probably the lack of difficulty is it's ONLY shortfall, IMO. 6 is probably the best Final Fantasy game, ever, although it isn't my favorite (...if that makes sense...)

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SPEKKIO: "GRRR...That was most embarrassing!"

I can't find anything wrong with it. I compare it to other Final Fantasies in my head, but i cant remember another final fantasy with a set skill for all characters. I also cant remember another ff that has auto run on 2 chars. no other ff(except ff tactics)has a jump command in which you.....well....actually stay up there for a while like a dragoon. closest is cid on ff7. The characters arent developed as some others, but thats not a major problem to me.

Feel free to put bullet holes in my post

Doesn't Freya do the Jump command on FF9?

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"Luck is my middle name. Mind you, my first name is Bad." - Rincewind

You can be as self-assertive as you like, just so long as you do what you’re told.” - Granny Weatherwax

"When Mr. Safety Catch Is Not On, Mister Crossbow Is Not Your Friend" - Sam Vimes to Detritus

I'm not at a all a completionist so the lack of uber-hard baddies for me to train up to take out doesn't strike me as a bad thing...I always ignore that stuff.

I found the challenge to be about right, from what I can re-call long long ago. I never actually beat the game without cheating to lvl 99 untill recently...got as far as kefka's tower, but that place had me so scared that I didn't think I could do it without cheats.

Since then I have gotten better and found the challenge to be easy...but that tends to happen after playing through any game around 7 times.

I have played FF 4-7 + tactics and they all took aproximatly the same time for me to complete...meaning kill the end boss, lvling as little as a possibly can, so about 20-30 hours. I ussualy do all the FF 3/6 side quests in that estimate.

and I love Kefka..he is my fav boss...EVER.

The one thing I didn't like was the large number of chars, many of which didn't have enouph development.

Gogo was cool as a mystery and a secret character..no need to change him/her/it
Gau..I didn't like gau, and he was hardly developed
Umaro was not introduced untill VERY late game, no development at all, but he is powerful and unique, a good secret char.
I felt that Strago and Relm were introduced too late in the game for them to gain any real measure of power by the time you go after Kefka, Strago may have been better off as an NPC, but Realm is just too cool


anyway..I'd want to thin out the char selection a bit, perhaps make Kefkas tower only a 2 party dungeon and get rid of 2-3 of the chars..use the time to better develop the rest...also make the pheonix cave different...perhaps one party that gets split in two.

That way you can get Locke bakc in your party..he's such a major char in the 1st half you really should get him sooner in the 2nd half.

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"I will be the last, and you will go first!" -Saravok

"Silence Dog. You serve no purpose but to die by my hand." - Jon Irenicus

"Doom awaits thee!" -Mellisan

"Eh-Yo, It's me, Imoen"

I almost voted that it is perfect but the one thing that does get me is that everyone can learn every spell. I love the games that have a certified black mage and white mage. I kinda wish that FF6 would have kept to that or at least make Terra, Celes, Relm, and Strago the only magic casters in the group. Of course every FF game has their own shortcomings but FF6 is still my favorite hands down.

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War is for the participants a test of character; it makes bad men worse and good men better. - Joshua Chamberlain

U sir R a n00b >:-( - Cactuar

I really like FFVI, and I think it's the second best RPG ever made, following closely behind Chrono Trigger. Everything is top-caliber, although not necessarily perfect (which is why I voted other): The music is excellent, the graphics are (although not lifelike) quite enjoyable, the character development is fantastic, and the plot is extraordinary. I personally like the esper system in that every character can use magic (although every one being able to use the exact same spells is a little "un-unique-izing", which is one reason I like Strago and Gau), although some characters have weak magic power and others are real tough mages. I would give the game a score of about 96/100, which is very high on my scale. (In comparison, CT gets about 98/100 and FFIV gets about 87/100.)

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

There are a couple of shortfalls and they are: Not very many sidequests in the WoR, Not very many optional bosses, and it was a tad bit short even thought I have spent 30 hours on the game.

My only beef was the weakness of certain characters in battle. It's the only practical downfall I can think of for the game, other than that I can't see any problems.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Quote

You're right, you only need Celes, Edgar and Setzer.

Actually, whether you like it or not, Terra shows up at the end if you haven't gotten her in the WoR. remember, she has to lead the airship out. she'll join you right before the final fight. I didn't know this piece of info myself until a couple days ago, though.

I think they could have standed to cut a few people out, but I don't know who, because I like them all. so, I voted for perfection. if it's not perfection then it's the closest thing to it, and I doubt they're gonna get that close again

Quote (GamblingCat @ 17th February 2004 15:49)

There are a couple of shortfalls and they are: Not very many sidequests in the WoR, Not very many optional bosses

Almost the entire WoR is a sidequest.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

The difficulty.

Also I made the mistake of leveling up my characters with Espers (Bahamut,
Crusader, Bismark, Odin, Starlet, and Tritoch) until their HP and MP maxed out
to 9999 and 999, and now I kill everything in one hit and enemies can't kill me.

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I want this world to change for good. I want to see Final Fantasy, the world of swords and magic.

Quote (Detah @ 29th January 2004 09:47)

I have no idea how much or little of FF6 sidequests you completed. But I assure you that if you completed all the sidequests, attempted to max out just 4 characters and find just 80% of the total items in the game, then you would have easily broken the 100 hr mark for FF6.

I didn't want to say anything until I went back and did it for sure, but you are wrong. I just finished the game with all characters maxed out at level 99 and having every spell in under 40 hours this time. With the exception of getting Gau every single rage (which to me seems to be a bit excessive and unneccesary), I don't see how it's physically possible to spend 100 hours on the game. I don't know if there's some crazy 60 hour sidequest that I don't know about, but barring that, my original complaint stands.

Not to be snooty, but I think our definitions of maxing a character are quite different. Maxing means everything. Side quests, Spells, Specials (Lore, Rages, Blizes, Tools, SwordTechs), and stats. So lets ignore Rages for the moment, which I think are important, but you are right, maxing them can be extremely tedious for very little payoff.

Lores
Lores alone should take a few hours. If you are venturing into Kefka's Tower for Dark Force right after you enter WOR, then you are most likely not maxing out stats first. Truly maxing out all characters almost certainly requires that you play a perfect low level game for all of the WOB and a tiny bit of WOR. It would be extremely time-consuming (and lucky I might add) to enter Kefkas Tower and get to the Dark Force area with just 3-6 L6-8 chars, not to mention the 3 party splitting. One would need at least 3 buff chars (at least 1 for each party) to stand a chance in those battles. But I digress.

Stats
Leveling up to L99 as soon as you can is not considered to be maxing out the character, except maybe to the novice RPGer. I would much prefer to get ALL 92 +2 stat bonuses from an Esper (after acquiring all 14 chars in WOR) than to have a couple L99s at the beginning of WOR and just a handful of stat bonuses. As you can see, maxing out just 4 characters is a very big deal and requires spending tons of time in WOB...just so you dont die. Between the 2 events the Escape from Vector and the intro to Floating Continent I have been wasting away whole weekends. Optimizing where to place stats on which chars is also time consuming. since there are only 2 +2 MP Espers etc. One can easily run into the rival problem and need to remove one char while another levels.

Spells
Acquiring all the Spells on every character is also quite tedious. There are at least 2 spells which are only x1 (Quick and Ultima) and Quick can only be gotten late into the game. There are places where one can earn 10 AP per battle, and it should be easy since this must all take place after you have stat maxed and leveled up.

Levels
I hear so often about people rushing into WOR DinoForest to max out their level. But I never hear anything about maxing # of +2 stat bonuses or maxing out a particular stat. L99 is NOTHING if you dont have the stats to back it up. Im 99% sure that the single round damage max of 79,992 is only possible with well boosted Vigor. Perhaps not maxed, but well-boosted to be sure. You are not going to acquire that if you enter WOR with any L30+ chars. HyperWrist and Behemoth Suits can only do so much alone. L99 is great and high HP is the best defense in the world, but it doesnt come close to maxed stats. *maybe PSX's character log agrees with you and says a char is maxed, but it doesn't mean that it really is maxed.*

Weapons/Armors/Items
To acquire 3 items in the game you need to fight in the Colossem. To earn the item for those trades you need to do side quests. Other unique items are rewards for quests, like the Offering. This requires the Cyan's Dream quest. I thought this was a rather long quest by itself. Did you spend any time leveling up with Odin? Did you acquire Raiden? Do all of your characters have their original Speed stat? Do you own the Marvel Shoes, a Rename Card, collect a full set of Imp eq? Did you get an Illumina AND a Cursed Ring? That would seriously impress me, btw.

If you have gotten all 92-94 +2 stat bonuses on every character (all 12), all spells, all specials (except Rages), done all side quests and acquired all unique or non-infinite weapons/armors/items in under 40 hours, then I bow to you. If you have done that, then you are truely The Master of FF6.

Dont get mad at me io_rage. I think you are a very experienced player who has found probably every goodie in FF6 at one time or another, but I doubt you have played a perfect maxed game. And if you did, I cannot fathom doing it in under 40 hours. I suspect you satisfied all the maxing requirements except stats and items. And that is great. But it is not truely a maxed game or 1 character.

Perhaps if I used an emulator and savestate I could improve my time considerably, but even then I think 40 hours is just impossible.

I wouldn't get mad at someone for defending his stance. Don't worry about it.

But yeah, our definitions of maxed clearly are different. I'll go point by point, to match yours.

Lores - I got all of these. This is critical to Strago, who is my 2nd favorite character.

Stats - This is where our main difference in views lies. I don't think every character needs to be maxed out to every possible extent. I can kill ANYONE in two rounds without getting hurt at all, so what's the point beyond that? Why would I want to do more than 9999 damage when that's the most that will actually be taken off?

Spells - Every character has every spell.

Levels - Every character is on 99. The rest of your point relates back to stats.

Weapons/Armors/Items - I have marvel shoes (which I used a rename card to get), the Offering, the Gem Box, and Raiden. I didn't get Illumina - I opted to make Ragnarok an esper - and I never bothered trying for a full set of imp equipment.

Basically, I don't see the point in leveling up stats that don't end up doing anything. For example, I do 9999 with Ultima without leveling up my Magic Power very much, so why would I want it much higher? With economizers (of which I have 8) I can cast Ultima every turn and have even the most powerfull villains dead within two rounds. Anything beyond that just seems superfluous to me.

I concede, however, that I did not *max out* by any means by your definition. I don't think that has anything to do with the completion time of a game or it's difficulty, though, which was my original complaint.