Final Fantasy III

aka: FF6, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VI Advance, Zui Zhong Huanxiang 6
Moby ID: 5202
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Description official descriptions

A thousand years ago, the War of the Magi occurred. People remember it as one of the most horrible tragedies in history. Since the War of the Magi, magic has been all but forgotten, technology began to grow, and people returned to seemingly normal lives. The only true worry people have is the Empire, whose leaders are looking to revive the great force once known as "magic".

The Empire had heard word of the remains of a mystical being, known as "Esper", being found in the mining town of Narshe. Quickly, three soldiers were dispatched to find this Esper and bring it to the Emperor. One of the soldiers, a young girl, triggers a power in the Esper that initiates a dangerous series of events. The only ones who can help her are a rag-tag band of rebels and heroes, who offer their very hearts and souls to save the world from the mad plans of the Empire.

The sixth entry in the Final Fantasy series was dubbed Final Fantasy III in the West because three out of the five previous installments of the series had not been released there at the time. Similar to its predecessors, this is a role-playing game where the player controls a party of characters, traveling between various locales in the world, fighting randomly appearing regular enemies and bosses, and making the characters stronger by improving their skills and getting better equipment for them. The game maintains the ATB (active time battle) system of the two previous installments in the series, spicing traditional turn-based combat engine with a real-time element.

In battle, every character can fight using weaponry and items, and each has a special combat skill as well. It is also possible for nearly every character to learn magic spells. By finding various Espers and equipping them on characters, the player can improve their parameters in different ways and choose the magic spells the characters should learn.

Unlike most other Japanese RPGs, the game does not have a single main character. Rather, the player-controlled party can be considered the game's collective protagonist. The first part of the game develops linearly, with one of the characters playing a central role; however, during the second part, the player is associated with a different character initially, exploring the game world, recruiting characters, and completing sub-quests in a non-linear fashion.

PlayStation re-release of the game includes new FMV cutscenes, bestiary, and artwork galleries. Game Boy Advance version and later Android, iOS, and PC releases remove FMVs but instead include two new bonus dungeons (the Dragons' Den and the Soul Shrine), new bosses, espers, weapons, and gear, as well as many other minor additions and changes.

Spellings

  • ファイナルファンタジーVI - Japanese spelling
  • 最终幻想6 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (SNES version)

64 People (48 developers, 16 thanks) · View all

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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 70 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 412 ratings with 8 reviews)

Japanese RPG at its very best

The Good
In 1994, Square released the third and the last Final Fantasy game for Super Nintendo. Made during a particularly creative period of video game development, Final Fantasy VI remains until now one of the most revered Japanese RPGs. It was a story-driven game with great emotional intensity; at the same time, it expanded the gameplay almost beyond the boundaries of the genre.

The approach of Final Fantasy VI towards story-telling is unique for several reasons. There are two different "planes" of narrative in the game. While the outer storyline is fairly standard, traditionally epic, serving to tie all the events and the destinies of the heroes together, the inner layer of the story concentrates in turn on each one of the many characters of the game, telling their stories in a very warm and detailed fashion, bringing the player as close to them as it was only possible.

What makes the narrative remarkable is not the course of the events depicted by it, but the small individual "sub-stories" of each one of the game's characters. Every character joins the rebel group for his (or her) personal reasons, and those reasons are explained and shown in detail. The typically epic plot line becomes almost obsolete when the player dives deeper into the intimate worlds of the game's characters, discovering their fears, hopes, joys, and grievances.

Final Fantasy VI introduced mature themes that were unseen in Japanese RPG before: suicide, teenage pregnancy, complicated moral problems, love, etc. It is true that they are treated in a melodramatic way, but that's precisely what makes them so endearing, especially when they are presented against the background of a typical "world-saving" epic. The "opera scene" is, for me, one of the single most touching moments in the history of video games.

A brilliant move Final Fantasy VI did was eliminating the concept of one lead character. It is a unique example of a Japanese RPG in which it is impossible to point out a single protagonist. At least three people can be called "main characters", but it is impossible to say which one of them is more "important". This technique fit the melodramatic tone of the game extremely well, allowing quick shifts of focus that moved the story forward in a graceful, involving way. I can only say it's a real pity that the even more melodramatic sequels didn't use it, preferring to return to the old "lone hero" concept.

RPG designers have been always struggling to create a perfect balance between a focused narrative and exploration. Final Fantasy VI solves this problem in a simple and elegant way. Its first part is linear and intensely story-driven, like most Japanese RPGs. However, the second part (World of Ruin) throws the player into an absolutely open-ended environment, with only one main quest: defeat Kefka. The player is free to explore this world, travel to any location, and recruit any party members he/she sees fit. But the story doesn't simply disappear; the characters offer plenty of interesting side-quest, and gradually gathering them together for a fight against the ultimate evil is an unforgettable experience. World of Ruin is a phenomenon; I don't think there is any other Japanese RPG world that can compete with it.

Final Fantasy VI also manages to solve another common Japanese RPG dilemma. Should characters belong to a particular class, or should they develop freely and be able to learn any abilities? The fourth game chose the first path; the fifth the second. The sixth once again finds the golden mean. The characters do have clearly assigned classes: you can easily recognize the typical Final Fantasy classes of monk, thief, ninja, samurai, etc. However, later in the game the characters can learn any spells on top of their old, "pre-defined" techniques, essentially allowing completely free customization.

The series has always been famous for its exceptional music. But I think many fans will agree that the main theme of Final Fantasy VI is the single most memorable musical piece of the entire series. Like many outstanding compositions, it conveys strong emotions while being very simple.

The Bad
Final Fantasy VI suffers from occasional bad translation, though perhaps the original writing wasn't exactly stellar to begin with. Writing has been the Achilles' heal of the series during its entire existence. It is, however, possible that much of the writing was intentionally goofy. Personally, I find the awkward dialogues endearing, but I can see how they could detract from the serious themes of the game.

Same can be applied to "cutesy" elements such as recruiting a moogle into your party and teaching him "dance" abilities, etc. The main villain is also decidedly "cartoony", having no other motives for his deeds other than simply being evil.

The graphics of the game are considered by some the best example of 16-bit art. However, those graphics also showed the limits of the Super Nintendo console in the age of full-screen animations and CD. They were barely enough to express all the rich ideas and emotions of the game. Maybe it sounds odd, but sometimes I wish Final Fantasy VI were made for a console with superior storage capacity, like TurboGrafx or Sega CD.

The Bottom Line
Some people would perhaps name the next installment as the highest achievement of the series; and while it is correct when applied to ambition, presentation, and influence, from the point of view of soul (and perhaps gameplay perfection as well) Final Fantasy VI takes the crown. It contains everything there is to love in the series and in Japanese RPGs in general, and remains a timeless classic that is admired by loyal fans and newcomers alike.

SNES · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2017

Personally my favourite RPG of all time

The Good
- excellent soundtrack by the one and only Nobuo Uematsu. The music adds plenty of atmosphere and emotion to the game. Terra's theme is truly inspirational (heard in the intro and on the world map of the world of balance and some other places throughout the game). - brilliant plot with many twist (one brilliant twist in particular, but can't give spoilers so you will just have to find out for yourself). - characters all have unique abilities. All of them have personality helping the player to become more engaged into the story. There are characters you can care for like Terra and characters you hate such as the epic villain, Kefka. - Many, many side-quests to uncover character backgrounds and extra items, etc to go with the 20 - 70 hours of fun you can get playing through the game depending on the amount of secrets, level building, etc you can be bothered with - a generally all round classic RPG with great story, great characters, great music, and has to go down as one of the best games of all time.

The Bad
However the game isn't faultless: - too many random encounters - the story pretty much fades away after the world of balance (near the end of the game anyway though, which is pretty much all side-quests, so not that bad) - leveling up system automatically levels up characters not in your party, and your characters gain more attributes when they have espers equipped making those levels gained without espers equipped semi-useless. - maybe too many characters (i think about 14 or so including secret characters). Some of the characters you get too late on and don't develop much, e.g mog.

The Bottom Line
Snes version is better that playstation. The playstation one has extras such as fmv's but there are annoying loading times. A MUST play for all Japanese RPG and final fantasy fans. However some people find it hard to play 2-d RPGs in this day and age of 3-d brilliant graphics but they will only miss out on one of the best games in existence, some people even believe that all the newer final fantasy's have threw away all the good plots in exchange for graphics (except maybe FF7, of course). If you are like that then you should try Final Fantasy 7 - also a classic for playstation.

SNES · by Alan Yeung (3) · 2004

A surprisingly good blend of story and open world

The Good
Final Fantasy VI is structured into two chapters which work very differently: The first is very linear and tells the story of the main characters. This is very well executed, even if the writing (or the translation) is a bit uneven, mostly because of the sprites which manage to transport emotions without words and the wonderful music - yes, it is so good even a tone-deaf oaf like me can recognize it. Like many Japanese games, FFVI mixes up serious topics with goofy moments which works exceptionally well for my taste. Like usually in this series so far, the villain does not have a personality except evil, but his actions make me hate him enough that it doesn't matter.

Without spoiling too much, the second part puts the player into a known world which is drastically changed. Final Fantasy V pulled a similar trick, but it didn't succeed because too much stayed the same. Here on the other hand, everything (except a few minor NPCs dialogue) has changed and it is worth re-exploring every town and every cave. In fact, here the game drops all story and becomes a real open-world adventure. Now the player can freely visit every location and only has one goal: to meet old friends, become stronger and eventually take on the final dungeon. The revolutionary part for the series is that many of the side-quests have a narrative and even result in real character development while others have interesting secrets to find. I'm not an open world person and usually I prefer a bit more linearity, but this game pulls it off almost perfectly - even modern (as of 2021) open world games could learn a few things from FFVI.

The Windows version (which is a port of the mobile version) adds many UI improvements (just make sure to change the combat screen to "Tab" in the options) and portraits which, in contrast to FFV, match the in-game sprites and look reasonably well.

The Bad
The biggest weakness of FFVI are its number of party members. There are overall 14 and this naturally means not everyone gets the the same attention, both from the writers (only a few have actual character development, the rest are just along for the ride) and the player (an active party consists of four). This wouldn't be that bad, but for the final dungeon the player needs to create three teams (i.e. 12 members) which results in the need to grind up every NPC which wasn't used much. I did it once during my first playthrough back in the day of early SNES emulation, never again.

There is also another end-game dungeon with a gimmick: only magic allowed. Against enemies which all have reflect active, i.e. almost all magic bounces off. Oh, and there are no save points, you can't run away from random encounters, the boss dies with a spell which instantly kills the party unless he knows what is coming and afterwards the player has to walk all the way down again. This is about as fun as it sounds. There is an obvious way to beat the odds, but it results in a boring slog in which the enemies slowly kill themselves while there isn't any danger of actually dying. Unfortunately the reward is so good and useful that it can't be reasonably skipped.

The Bottom Line
You probably noticed the negative section is mostly filled with complaints over two specific dungeons and the interpretation is obvious: this is a very enjoyable and competently designed game. It was the first Final Fantasy which impressed me and it remains my favorite up to this day, even if I can't be bothered to actually finish it anymore.

Final Fantasy VI shows how to do a good blend between story and open world, even if the two sections are strictly separated. Of course it would have been better to have both at the same time, but I think it would be unfair to hold it against this game - this feat wasn't actually achieved until 2015 after all. I fully recommend FFVI to everyone with an interest in JRPGs who isn't put off by SNES graphics and a high frequency of random encounters.

Windows · by Patrick Bregger (298879) · 2021

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Named wrong? te_lanus (523) Oct 7, 2018
M A G I C Simoneer (29) Oct 1, 2010
Holy crap. (another game music post) J. P. Gray (115) Jun 22, 2008

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Final Fantasy VI appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Characters

The names of some of the player-controlled characters were changed from their original Japanese counterparts: * Tina (ティナ) Branford became Terra Mash (マッシュ) Rene Figaro became Sabin Cayenne (カイエン) Garamonde became Cyan**

Development

Development of the game was rushed and several superbosses are included in the game's code but were not actually used. There are also several glitches in the game, possibly a result of the rushed development.

Extras

The European PlayStation release also contains the Final Fantasy X demo disc.

Manual

The game manual in the PlayStation version contains a major spoiler, by casually mentioning a major plot twist while listing the bonus content available after completion of the game.

Multiplayer

In the configuration menu of the original SNES release, characters can be set to either Controller 1 or Controller 2, making this in effect a two-player game. However, this control to the second player only works in battle and not on the overhead view maps or levels.

References

  • In the SNES version (it is unknown if this applies to the PSX remake), the two soldiers that escort Terra at the beginning of the game are named Vicks and Wedge. This is a mistranslation, and a reference to Star Wars, where there are two pilots named Biggs and Wedge.
  • Larry, Curly, and Moe are named after the slapstick comedy threesome The Three Stooges.

Sequel

Sometime in the mid-1990s, Square released several models showing off their new 3-D system. Much of what they used were characters and images from Final Fantasy VI, modeled into new 3-D. For this reason many people were expecting a sequel using these same characters or some kind of spin-off game. Much speculation was around Project Reality (the Nintendo 64) which promised to be a console system built around rendering 3-D graphics. In the end, nothing developed from these rumors about Final Fantasy VI and Square's following game in the series, Final Fantasy VII became the first to use 3-D modeling techniques.

Setzer

One of the main characters in this game is an avid gambler named "Setzer" (he even has a casino build on his airship). Supposedly, this was meant to be the German equivalent of "one who places a bet" or "placer". While it technically means this in German, it is never used that way; "Setzer" is rather used for "typesetter" (well, not that typesetters are common nowadays anyway). Yet another example of Japanese usage of German "names".

Soundtrack

The entire 25-minute opera sequence is available on CD as played by a full orchestra with singers. It's on the album Orchestral Game Concert #4, (translated, CD is Japanese) which is, itself, hard to find.

There have been multiple albums released with the game's soundtrack, all of them in 1994: a three-CD set with the original music, two CDs with orchestral and piano arrangements of certain tracks, and a CD with unused or remixed tracks. More details are to be found at Wikipedia.

Translation

It is a popular rumor that the lead translator for the English version, Ted Woolsey, apparently lacked professional translating experience. The discrepancies in translations have been attributed to this fact for several years. As with many translations, name changes and dialogue 'corrections' are left entirely up to the staff, but there are many who believe that these erroneous changes are due entirely to the fact that Ted did not have the knowledge to translate the text fully.

Version differences

There were two SNES releases of Final Fantasy III, the later release contains minor hardware revisions, as well as tweaks to the game itself such as the disappearance and renaming of certain items (Hero Ring, etc).

In the original SNES release of the game, Relm's "Sketch" ability is very buggy. Using it consistently against certain enemies can cause all sorts of interesting problems such as graphical distortions, random status effects and/or inability to use party members, a hacked inventory full of items/spells that are not even possible to get, large amounts of various items/spells and sometimes even a wipe of all the game's saved battery data.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • October 1994 (Issue 63) - Game of the Month
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Best RPG
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Best Music (Cartridge Format)
    • 1995 Buyer's Guide - Best RPG (Japanese)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #7 (Readers' Top 10 Games of All Time)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #9 (Best 100 Games of All Time)
  • FLUX
    • Issue #4 - #28 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
  • GameFan
    • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Overall RPG Game of the Year
    • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Best SNES RPG Game of the Year
    • 1994 (Vol.3, Iss.1) - Best SNES Music
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #7 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • Game Players
    • January 1995 - Best SNES RPG Game in 1994
  • GameSpy
    • 2007 – #4 Handheld Game of the Year
    • 2007 – GBA Game of the Year
    • 2007 – GBA RPG of the Year
  • VideoGames
    • March 1995 - Best Role-Playing Game of the Year

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Related Sites +

  • FF-Fan
    A fansite that offers all kinds of information on the entire Final Fantasy franchise, including walkthroughs, game media, discussion boards and fan art.
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  • Final Fantasy Online Strategy Guides
    Tips, tricks, walkthroughs, and just really useful information for Final Fantasy VI.
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  • Wikipedia: Final Fantasy VI
    Information about Final Fantasy VI at Wikipedia

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  • MobyGames ID: 5202
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Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Satoshi Kunsai.

Android added by Fred VT. Windows, PS Vita added by GTramp. Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. iPad, iPhone added by firefang9212. Fire OS added by Sciere. Wii added by Joshua J. Slone. Game Boy Advance added by Unicorn Lynx. PSP, PlayStation 3 added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Roedie, Unicorn Lynx, SAGA_, Alaka, Mobygamesisreanimated, Bregalad, Havoc Crow, DarkDante, Big John WV, DreinIX, —-, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, 64er.

Game added October 22, 2001. Last modified March 4, 2024.