I'm currently re-playing FFVI on the GBA. With this playthrough, I've realized that VI is, by far, my favorite FF game and this has inspired me to collect my thoughts about the FF games I've played and the reasons I've not played any main series FF games after VII. If you've not played VI, stop reading and buy it. Come back after you've finished it.

I've played all of the Final Fantasy games from I through VII. I is a truly great game that is very true to the RPG genre. Characters have very little personality other than what the player projects onto them. II was a pretty good game; the main problem is the experimental leveling system. III is also pretty good but can be rather slow moving at times. IV is a brilliant game. V has great characters and the job system is insanely cool. VI had a unique world, a large cast of distinct characters and a beautiful score. VII is a game that I have a love hate relationship with. I loved a lot about it but some things, like the over-the-top spell effects hampered the game for me. Did I really need to see Sephiroth's meteor spell destroy all of the planets in the universe five times? Probably not. VII clearly marked a turning point to a more cinematic experience, which I find to be less enthralling.



My brain defines most experiences as moments. When I see a great film, I generally remember the key emotional points of the story and that's how the film is defined in my brain. I clearly remember the exchange between Edward Scissorhands and Kim in which she asks him to hold her and he replies that he can't and runs away into the darkness. In Hal Hartley's Trust, the moment is when Maria tells Matthew Slaughter that she's had the abortion; Matthew's drive has been pulled out from under him and his life has fallen apart.

FFVII, in my brain, is defined as a single moment: Aerith's death. The scene of her praying and then her eyes going wide and the camera panning back to see Sephiroth's blade through her chest. That's the whole game for me. One single moment. FFVI, in contrast, is a series of amazing moments. Locke vowing to protect Celes because she reminds him of someone the empire took from him; Cyan bidding farewell to his family as they depart on the Phantom Train; Terra freaking out over transforming into an esper; the opera scene; the world being destroyed. These are a few of the moments that define FFVI for me. Part of this is that the game splits the cast for several scenarios, allowing the player to really get to know each character as an individual.

FFVI is a more gameplay-centric game. When Locke, Terra, Sabin and Edgar flee the empire on a raft, there is no cut scene; the player chooses the path that the raft follows and battles enemies throughout the chase. When Sabin and Cyan jump over the cliff near Doma to reach the Veldt, the player controls the battle that happens on the way down. As I played these scenarios, I realized that such events would be cut scenes in later FF games, whcih sort of detaches the player from the action and eliminates the use of the player's imagination. All FF games after FFVII have a much more cinematic approach. While this lends itself well to storytelling, it does a disservice to the gameplay. In almost every important instance in the story, the player is passively watching.

As far as gameplay itself, both VI and VII mix things up pretty well. I love the RTS and opera scenarios in VI and adore the motorcycle chase in VII. Where VI really surpasses VII is the spell effects and battles. Battles in VI moved along faster than those in VII, largely due to the spell animations. I find the esper system in VI to be far superior to the materia system in VII. I love that characters in VI retain spells even after the esper has been removed; the customization possibilities are staggering. The materia system in VII was good, just not as good as the esper system in VI.

It's somewhat hard to compare the soundtracks since VII had the far superior CD technology compared to the midi of VI. Hell, VI was one SNES cart whereas VII was 2 PlayStation CDs. Still, both soundtracks are brilliant in their own right. On the subject of technology, I actually prefer the graphics of VI. I prefer nice 2D to clunky 3D any day and the fact that FFVI made me care about the characters as much as I did is a testament to the writing. The characters were an extension of the player, but also unique people. It's a hard balance to strike but it was successful.

In the end, this has forced me to contemplate the impact of the removal of limitations on gaming as a media. Currently, developers have gigabytes of space to work with rather than megabytes. There is almost no limit to what can be done by game creators. RPGs have moved to a very rhythmic approach - cut scene, exploration, boss battle, cut scene. During the 16-bit era, developers were forced to be creative to engage players, despite space limitations and relatively weak processors. I think this creativity is beneficial to the industry and is slowly being lost.