To me, Final Fantasy VI is typified most completely by a scene in the Jidoor opera house: in the acting out of an opera, tiny, board-looking set backgrounds are put up on a stage for our characters to perform their little play in front of. It's this sort of story-within-a-story that allows a particular realization come to pass—it is in its ability to make the player imagine that FFVI really succeeds.
To sustain hyperbole for a brief moment, consider this: after eight or so years of having not played the original game, my memories of scenes like this are fleshed out, epic—I remember our brothers from Figaro and a pivotal coin-toss, I see them racing down a mineshaft after a weapon of the Empire, I recall Terra screaming toward Zozo in an Esper-induced fit. Replaying these scenes on the Gameboy Advance has reminded me that while still compositionally pretty, in actuality there's little more there than some flat backgrounds and two-dimensional sprites tossing a little coin-shaped circle, some crude mine-cart background scaling, and a garish pink character-swap. It's not as glamorous as it makes you think it is, yet it never takes itself too seriously—it uses the tools it has at its disposal as a cue for you to pretend, to make the scene your own.
But there's a certain level of interaction you've got to be caught up in, too, represented in this instance by that good old RPG staple, the random battle. You fight in FFVI, you fight a lot, and depending on your whole slant towards aging role-playing hallmarks you're either going to like it or lump it in this one. The real draw of the battle system in this game is the implementation of Espers, phantom beasts which grant you their powers by allowing you to associate them with your party members. Attach a particular Esper to a character, and you learn from that Esper's repertoire of spells as you collect magic AP after fights. Shuffle the Espers around to make different characters learn different spells and you really kind of have the best of both worlds: relative customization of the magic capabilities for each character combined with the fixed availability of each party member's inherent technique. These range from Edgar's "Tools" command, which lets you rip into groups of foes with various hand-held machinery, to Relm's esoteric "Sketch" command, which allows you to paint a physical carbon copy of an enemy you're fighting and command it to attack, using that monster's particular array of abilities. Nearly every character's special skill ends up being particularly useful at some point in the game. The fluidity of battles is sometimes impacted when several moving objects are on-screen at a time (see some of Sabin's Blitzes) but it still remains a minor qualm with a system that is overall functional and entertaining.
The Gameboy Advance treatment has helped the game along quite a bit in a number of ways. Small "headshots" based on Yoshitaka Amano's original artwork now accompany speech windows. The old glitches of the original dealing with rendering enemies invisible for an easy-kill using the "X-Zone" spell have been repaired, as have problems with evade percentages not functioning correctly. New Espers and the spells that come with them add an entertaining sheen, as does a new multi-party dungeon. The "battle lag" of the earlier Final Fantasy IV Advance has been eliminated, with menus quick and responsive. Gone are the days of original translator Ted Woolsey's valiant but space-constrained efforts: a bigger, re-written script gives us more detail on Locke's attitudes towards women, Celes' introspect, and Terra's self-actualization—and even drops some hints in the Narshe training room on things like those mysterious "desperation moves" that nobody could ever quite figure out. Item, monster, and spell names have been brought up to the current Final Fantasy series naming standards, with things like "Pearl," "FenixDown," and "Atma Weapon" being left behind for their contemporary equivalents. It is perhaps the strongest redeeming feature of the remake, and wholly representative of the presentation that makes the total package shine.
There's a question that RPGs uniquely have had to struggle with as graphical power has increased: in a realm where story and imagination are supposed to prevail, does a more concrete and ornate display decisively enhance the experience? Such questions are probably best left to messageboards and dorm rooms, but one thing is certain—despite its graphical capabilities, despite the small display of the aging handheld on what's probably its last hurrah—Final Fantasy VI Advance proves that just because a game is old doesn't mean it's not just as good as the "next-gen experience."
To sustain hyperbole for a brief moment, consider this: after eight or so years of having not played the original game, my memories of scenes like this are fleshed out, epic—I remember our brothers from Figaro and a pivotal coin-toss, I see them racing down a mineshaft after a weapon of the Empire, I recall Terra screaming toward Zozo in an Esper-induced fit. Replaying these scenes on the Gameboy Advance has reminded me that while still compositionally pretty, in actuality there's little more there than some flat backgrounds and two-dimensional sprites tossing a little coin-shaped circle, some crude mine-cart background scaling, and a garish pink character-swap. It's not as glamorous as it makes you think it is, yet it never takes itself too seriously—it uses the tools it has at its disposal as a cue for you to pretend, to make the scene your own.
But there's a certain level of interaction you've got to be caught up in, too, represented in this instance by that good old RPG staple, the random battle. You fight in FFVI, you fight a lot, and depending on your whole slant towards aging role-playing hallmarks you're either going to like it or lump it in this one. The real draw of the battle system in this game is the implementation of Espers, phantom beasts which grant you their powers by allowing you to associate them with your party members. Attach a particular Esper to a character, and you learn from that Esper's repertoire of spells as you collect magic AP after fights. Shuffle the Espers around to make different characters learn different spells and you really kind of have the best of both worlds: relative customization of the magic capabilities for each character combined with the fixed availability of each party member's inherent technique. These range from Edgar's "Tools" command, which lets you rip into groups of foes with various hand-held machinery, to Relm's esoteric "Sketch" command, which allows you to paint a physical carbon copy of an enemy you're fighting and command it to attack, using that monster's particular array of abilities. Nearly every character's special skill ends up being particularly useful at some point in the game. The fluidity of battles is sometimes impacted when several moving objects are on-screen at a time (see some of Sabin's Blitzes) but it still remains a minor qualm with a system that is overall functional and entertaining.
The Gameboy Advance treatment has helped the game along quite a bit in a number of ways. Small "headshots" based on Yoshitaka Amano's original artwork now accompany speech windows. The old glitches of the original dealing with rendering enemies invisible for an easy-kill using the "X-Zone" spell have been repaired, as have problems with evade percentages not functioning correctly. New Espers and the spells that come with them add an entertaining sheen, as does a new multi-party dungeon. The "battle lag" of the earlier Final Fantasy IV Advance has been eliminated, with menus quick and responsive. Gone are the days of original translator Ted Woolsey's valiant but space-constrained efforts: a bigger, re-written script gives us more detail on Locke's attitudes towards women, Celes' introspect, and Terra's self-actualization—and even drops some hints in the Narshe training room on things like those mysterious "desperation moves" that nobody could ever quite figure out. Item, monster, and spell names have been brought up to the current Final Fantasy series naming standards, with things like "Pearl," "FenixDown," and "Atma Weapon" being left behind for their contemporary equivalents. It is perhaps the strongest redeeming feature of the remake, and wholly representative of the presentation that makes the total package shine.
There's a question that RPGs uniquely have had to struggle with as graphical power has increased: in a realm where story and imagination are supposed to prevail, does a more concrete and ornate display decisively enhance the experience? Such questions are probably best left to messageboards and dorm rooms, but one thing is certain—despite its graphical capabilities, despite the small display of the aging handheld on what's probably its last hurrah—Final Fantasy VI Advance proves that just because a game is old doesn't mean it's not just as good as the "next-gen experience."