The World of Ruin - the second half of Final Fantasy VI - is very open. After you spend the first game in a relatively linear fashion, getting introduced to the characters and the various points of interest, the World of Ruin, once you meet up with Setzer and complete his backstory dungeon, the first order of business becomes reuniting all of your old playable characters (by the time you find Setzer, you'll have started as Celes and only been able to get the two Figaro brothers back, leaving even central characters like Locke and Terra as technically optional).
While getting Mog as a permanent party member in the World of Balance half is slightly unintuitive and easily missed (you have to go back to Narshe) there are just two characters you can only recruit in the World of Ruin, Umaro the Yeti and Gogo the Mimic, both of whom are pretty light on backstory (Gogo is practically a blank slate, and is found in a very weird dungeon).
Anyway, re-recruiting all of the party members takes up what I think is the bigger chunk of the World of Ruin, but there are a couple other challenges, like climbing the Cultist Tower (a special dungeon in which only spellcasting is allowed - even forbidding Strago's Lores - but which holds a pretty fantastic prize in the form of the Soul of Thamassa, which gives any character who equips it Dualcast for any of their spells, which pair well with the Golden Hairpin, which halves the cost of any spells).
There's also Deathgaze, a moving world boss who will flee from battle and require you to hunt them down repeatedly (luckily they don't recover HP between fights) and who drops the Bahamut Magicite, which teaches Flare, which is ok but perhaps unimpressive compared to Ultima, but also gives a 50% boost to the HP you gain upon leveling up, which is pretty amazing (paired with the Ultima Weapon found in the first half of the game, which gives a larger attack bonus based on your max HP, this becomes very cool).
There are also eight legendary dragons, most of which you'll come across in dungeons when looking for other stuff (I think the first I fought was the Wind Dragon in Mt. Zozo when tracking down Cyan). I have 6/8, and I believe the last two are in the final dungeon.
Some of the endgame activity here is actually just story-related. I found Gau's father (you have to go to the hut with Sabin and Gau both in the party) and there's a somewhat heartbreaking reveal that Gau's crazy father left his "demon child" in the Veldt (I think the implication is probably that Gau's mother died in childbirth, and the father went crazy and blamed him for it), which is particularly jarring as prior to their presentation to the father, the whole party gets together to gussy up Gau with fancy clothes (you get to see him in various outfits as the party argues about fashion).
In this 16-bit era, there are limitations on just how deep the characterization can go. I haven't played the original VII, but I'm given to understand that the Remake trilogy has done a lot to flesh out both the party and the NPCs, and that makes me all the more eager to see VI get a similar treatment.
Once again, VI feels really different than the preceding Final Fantasy games. While I really liked IV and V, VI feels much more original, and more ambitious in its storytelling. Obviously, these games have grown all the more operatic... and lengthy, as time has gone on. While I think I might have one or more things to do (I haven't done much in the arena, and while I think most of the characters who need to learn certain spells have it, I'll never turn down giving everyone things like Curaga, Reraise, and Arise) I think I'm probably ready to head into Kefka's tower and take the mad clown-god down.
I'm at about 40 hours into the game, which feels respectable, especially for a thirty-year-old game.
Still, not only am I getting that "near the end of the story" melancholy for VI itself, this will also mark the finale of my delve into the Pixel Remasters. There's a good chance I'll be playing the port of the original FFVII as well, but it does feel now like a months-long project/experience is winding down.
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