Final Fantasy VI Kicks Off With Unprecedented Creativity

 It's a small detail, but Final Fantasy VI might be the first in the series in which the first or second monster I fight is not a goblin.

From the beginning, the Final Fantasy games always flirted with some divergences from the medieval fantasy genre. Fantasy, of course, does not need to adhere to the historical limitations on technology (and in fact, there are often some "rules" to medieval fantasy that aren't actually historical, like I think guns pre-dated full plate armor in our reality). We had the sort of technological city in the sky in the first game, and certainly by IV we had what were clearly high-tech elements, such as the futuristic Tower of Babel and Lunar Whale.

But VI feels like the first game that truly sets aside the D&D inspirations of the series and sets out to do its own thing. Yes, there is still a big castle you go to early in the game, but it's actually a big mechanical fortress that can bury itself in the desert.

I haven't gotten my hands on any Magicite yet, so at this stage in the game the characters are limited to what they inherently can do, but what that is is pretty fun. Terra is the only spellcaster at this point, but Edgar has an array of tools that are quite effective in combat (though I'm given to understand he'll need upgrades over time). I think in my previous runs at this game, I didn't appreciate the Noiseblaster and Bio Blaster, defaulting to his Auto-Crossbow, which does the most direct damage. I'm not sure if it's ever ideal to just take the "Attack" action on him - perhaps if he gets a weapon that's better than any of his tools - but I'm fine with that.

My most recent addition to the crew (I'm a little over an hour into the game) is Sabin, Edgar's martial artist brother, and boy has the Pixel Remaster made him easier to play - his unique ability is Blitz, which gives him various attacks that seem inspired by fighting games. Using them requires you to input a specific button combination, and you'd have to memorize them after reading the combinations in the pause menu. Now, in the Pixel Remaster, you select the Blitz you want and then get a prompt in-combat that tells you which buttons to hit, which I am extremely grateful for.

Anyway, I also find it interesting how Kefka is introduced - he's a lieutenant of the evil Emperor Gestahl, and going by the tropes of this sort of game, you'd really expect him to be some tough but ultimately subordinate boss, like the Turks in VII, or I guess the elemental lords in IV.

Another note is how the town of Narshe, which is where the game starts, really feels like it has a more distinct personality than a lot of the towns in previous games - you really get a sense of the extremes of temperature, between the snowy cold outside and the heat of all the steam-powered machinery.

Also, the way the world map works is different - the angle is sort of tilted and the camera is much more zoomed in. This does make it feel a little more like you're exploring a big world, but it will take some getting used to (and especially the change to a "behind the character" rotating camera angle when using a Chocobo, and I assume later the airships, which actually reminds me of Secret of Mana when you get Flammie the Dragon to ride on - a game where I think you only ever see the overworld when flying above it, outside of non-controlled transport like the big cannons).

Environments in this also feel like they're a little more three-dimensional - a departure in the art design that shows an evolution toward the modern 3D environments we're now used to.