FF6 is by far my favorite of the whole series. It inspired me to make the Woolsey Uncensored Edition hack. If you're looking for a vanilla experience with numerous bugs fixed and delivered a cleaned up script with all the classic Woolsey lines.
Hey dude, thanks for stopping by! I've heard good things about the Woolsey Uncensored Edition. Definitely plan to give it a try next time I go through FF6 :)
FF9 is the only one close to it. But I played 6 about a month after it came out. No guide. Just touching and talking to everything, and enjoying the hell out of all of it.
As someone else whose favorite track from FFVI is Searching for Friends, for the longest time, I didn't know its name. I only knew it as the World of Ruin airship theme. When I found out its name was Searching for Friends, i sat back and thought for a solid minute about how much *better* that made the song.
Searching For Friends is amazing. But I quickly get tired of it because I always need to level all my characters to 99 and teach them all spells. Many hours in the dinosaur forest… and listening to that song. Well, my fave is still the end credits song. First the character theme medley, and then the “Balance Restored” theme, which totally blew me away the first time I heard it and saw the ingame cinematic. It’s some 24mins long, and Nobou Uematsu literally composed the shit out of it, and out of the SNES console. The arrangements are masterful, sometimes cranking up the tempo and the mood where you didn’t think it could get any phatter - I thought my heart would explode from the joy. At any rate, no matter what our fave is, music has affected us, and it unites us in our love for this game.
My favorite game of alltime. Im 44 years old and still have to replay this every year or so. Something in me always calls back to it. The characters, story, music. Nothing comes close. A true masterpiece.
I still find myself whistling some of the tunes from this game even today (almost 30 years later!). What a brilliant game. Thanks for your review here - it makes me want to go back and play the game again!
UPDATE: Some of you have expressed concerns about my use of AI generated images in parts of this video. This is valid criticism, and I take this feedback seriously. The impact of generative AI has been constantly on my mind over the past year. This is something that's been bothering me even before I received such comments, and the fact that this has been brought up has made me even more doubtful about using such tools in my future content. -- I have created a monument to my love for Final Fantasy VI! I swear, this is the shortest I could possibly make the video - I cut SO much stuff I wanted to include lol. Dear god, the amount of work I’ve put into this video… I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish. Next in my retrospective series: Chrono Trigger. But first, I have a couple of Xenoblade critiques I want to publish - Torna: the Golden Country and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. What’s YOUR first great JRPG love? Let me know! And as always, thanks for supporting me! 😍
Outstanding video! I didn't think anyone could show me something new about this game. Some games I play again, and I'm like "oh wow, this is worse than I remember." FF6, Tactics, and Chrono Trigger don't suffer from this and hold up so well.
I will always feel FF4 really holds this spot in my heart, and the greatness we see from 6 is built upon what was already being worked toward in 4 or 5. I will never forget how blown my mind was playing 4 back in 1991, there was nothing that ambitious in terms of storytelling and depth. Then especially since I didn't have 5 growing up, it feels wrong to make that cut off point at 6, when 5 did somethings objectively better. All that being said, 6 is a masterpiece and having played them in order when they came out really highlighted how ambitious they took each evolution of the game. I always hope they one day go back to an ensemble style FF game like this again, and see if they could pull it off for an entirely new generation. One can dream!
I played FF4 the first time in 2011 on the psp, played games like ff9,10, 12 already before that . FF4 still blew my mind, thought it was better than all the other FF games i played. A year or so later i found out that i'm super basic when it comes to Final Fantasy since i moved out from home and finally had my own Internet and was allowed to Connect my PSP to it, Downloaded FF7 on it and Completley fell in love with it.
I recall picking this up in 1994 and playing it over an entire weekend, getting less sleep than I should and finishing the game. It has such a fond place in my memories. I was in my late teens and was already an avid RPG fan on the NES and SNES, but this game was the culmination of perfection of that era,
Thank you so much for all your love and care put into this brilliant video. This was incredible. Your narrative and analysis tapped into things i always felt and also put words into the feelings I never knew how to convey about why this game is so important. I cannot thank you enough... Thank you, thank you, thank you.
It was my first special and still biggest relation with a video game, and your tribute to it makes it even more complete and greater, very, very good content there, thanks!
I absolutely loved the "hidden in plain sight" approach to storytelling. Instead of shoving it down your throat, it actively rewarded you for paying attention, which makes for very satisfying moments and gives the "illusion" of a lot more character depth. Heck, I only figured out Shadow's was Relm's father 15 years later and I was blown away! And today I learned that the game was supposed to end at the Floating Continent. Man that would have been such a bummer. The villain winning turned out to be one of FF6's most unique and memorable moment. It would have been a completely different game with a different theme and impact had that not been so. Amazing content!
It's amazing how much more satisfying these subtle plot points are when you get to figure it out on your own. :) Thanks for sharing, and thanks your kind words!
My friend, I can't tell you how amazing this video is. Thank you so much for making it. You put into words so many things I always felt about this game, my favorite game of all time. I will watch this many times in the future just to feel the nostalgia from someone else who I feel knows what I felt when I first played Final Fantasy 6 (3 when I was a kid lol)!
I first played this game on ZSNES back in '99 and I remember being absolutely blown away by it. Over the intervening two decades, my fondness and appreciation for this title and what it did to elevate the artform of video games has only continued to grow. I'm so glad to see this title still getting the love and attention it deserves. This was a phenomenal retrospective! Hopefully you will give a similar treatment to Zelda: LttP and Chrono Trigger! ^_^ Thank you for all your amazing work! You just earned a sub. Shared this video with some friends as well! Wishing you all the best with your channel!
Thank you so much for your kind words! Chrono Trigger is next on my list of retrospectives, and I might cover Link to the Past as well, if I think I can do the game justice.
Best of the best. When it comes to gaming; FFVI belongs to the deepest part of my heart because of it's many aspects. In case you don't know since it wasn't mentioned in video - Whole final battle scene was based off "The Divine Comedy" aka "Dante's Inferno" giving it even more depth. Like the "Dante" character in The Divine Comedy, we must literally climb from Hell, through Purgatory and up to The Paradise in order to reach your ultimate goal, slaying Kefka. This "paradox of choice' pretty much also applies to innovative FFVIII I recently completed few months back. Few segments in game forces player to select a party and couple of cutscenes had surprisingly a lot of variables. This and goofy dialogue were my favorite things of VIII I'd say.
Thanks for sharing! Do you have a source for the link to the Divine Comedy as inspiration for the final battle? I haven't seen that in any of the interviews I found and I'm always interested in learning more about the creation of this game :)
I remember being 14 years old and using money i had saved up to buy this game brand new for almost $100 !!! And to be fair... im 43 years old right now, and i STILL think about and play this game, and STILL find New Things in it. So you can say... Best $100 i have EVER Spent
@@icyboy771z agreed. But this game was EXPENSIVE when it first came out. Totally worth it though, the fact everyone still talks about it To This Day says it all
@@dantediss1woah. I don’t remember it being $100. Was it???? I can’t even remember if I bought it now that I’m thinking of it. I might’ve just borrowed it to finish from my friend.
Excellent video. Really love this long-form JRPG content, makes for excellent listening while I'm grinding in some game. Listened to this one while going through Colosseum fights on my Kingdom Hearts replay. Glad you mentioned Shibuya's contributions to sprite design. Those iconic sprites are responsible for much of the charm of early Final Fantasy games and Shibuya really knocked things out of the park with FFVI. I can't even imagine what these games would be like without her work.
Thank you! Yes, I think Shibuya is very much an unsung hero of FF. I hadn't even heard her name before I started doing these retrospectives, which is kind of sad!
I'm certain I've said this before, but revisiting this video again after countless times - your voice is so soothing! The depth into which you've researched and how much you love the game comes through beautifully. This is one of my biggest comfort videos on RUclips. Whether you make another or not, please know your work is deeply enjoyed and I'll be back to watch your final fantasy essays again. Thank you for this! I hope you're well!
Wow, that's incredibly nice to hear! Thank you so much for saying that. I've been taking a step back to cover the early Dragon Quest games this year, but I definitely plan to continue the Final Fantasy retrospectives in the future. I won't rest until I've covered all of the mainline games :)
@@AltercateTV of course! You deserve to hear it. That's wonderful to know, I can't wait to see what you come out with for them! Whatever you put out, we support you!
This is such an incredible amount of work you must have had to put in here. This is so well done. A pleasure to watch, honestly. Most youtube videos you see on retrospectives, and reviews of old games are just copy/paste videos with stcok images or just some screenshots but you've really put so much effort into making this a real documentary and tribute to the game. The artistic nuances and the overall presentation of the video are just perfect. Thank you! I look forward to more releases from you and I've subscribed..
Thank you so much for saying that. My videos do indeed take a lot of work to create, so it's really nice to get this kind of feedback! PS. Dragon Quest 1 retrospective coming tomorrow. :)
Thank you for making this retrospective/tribute. Final Fantasy VI is my favourite game of all time, and you gave it the look back it deserves. Playing the pixel remaster right now, and I can say that I still love this game as much as I did when I first played it (maybe loving it even more actually).
It’s a love letter to which I can easily add my name. 🙏 FF6 is the game I never get bored playing. I miss my old SNES for that. I am playing the pixel-remastered version for the first time, and I am in heaven (the orchestrated music 🤩). Thanks for your video - it could have been 3 hours and I would have watched it.
@@AltercateTV Above everything that made this game so great, one of my favorite features in FF6 was being able to play the game with my best friend using a second controller. To this day, it's still one of our favorite games that we've played together. FF6 is all about teamwork and friendship, right?! 😊
@@marcbabin True! I thought that was a really cool feature back in the day, even if me and my friends didn't use it much. Secret of Mana blew my mind though, being able to do 3 payer co-op with the multitap!
This is easily is without a doubt the most biggest and most comprehensive review that I’ve ever seen in FF6, and watching this made me appreciate things that I didn’t even consider prior to watching this such as the verity of scenarios, dungeon design and how the characters and relics are similar to the job classes and abilities like in FF5 and I also admired how it tired to dealt with much more adult and complex themes then most video games where at the time of FFVI release. Though the Game isn’t completely perfect such as the stuff mentioned in this review. The Biggest example of this for me at least is how the story is structured in how it deals away with having a main character into having a large ensemble cast of characters and having the world of ruin at the 2nd half of the game as being much more open ended. And on paper it’s a really neat idea having multiple different characters that you can freely switch and giving players a lot of freedom. And I can see why alot of people really like it. But because of that the game doesn't know which character is going to be in your group, and some of the major character development and events are completely miscible, it also causes other characters to feel less developed than others and once you do get to the 2nd half of the game's the story is pretty much over and doesn't really conclude until you face Kafka. Which is why I genuinely much prefer more linear structured stories such that feature a proper main character and a fix party since it allows the story to flow more natural, have natural beginning and end points and it would mean I wouldn’t miss any important developments or major events to the characters which kinda why I liked FF5 a bit more for these reasons. So I wouldn’t say FF6 is my absolute favorite in the FF series or in my top favorite RPGs But I still did enjoy this one as it is easily within my Top 5 Final Fantasy Games and is really good for a game made in 1994. And I’m hoping to see more future Final Fantasy retrospective videos.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Gavin, and thanks for the support! I'm planning on covering every mainline game eventually, but it's going to take a very long time to get there... 😂
Thanks! Yep, the conversation has turned mostly away from FF6 these days, sadly. Btw I was just watching your "anime dubs aren't cringe, anime is" video a while back, good stuff. :)
Not only was this the greatest game ever made, it takes every person who ever played it back to a certain time of their life. I was 12 years old when I first played it and I still get my mind blown when I play it again now at 40 years old :). From the moment I turn this game on, memories flood back in. Good memories. Even the soundtrack to this game goes with the feelings I get when I start to remember where I was and who I was with back then :). final fantasy 3 That’s how I remembered it. now, we all know their is a lot of story that was deleted out of this game. Shadows mysterious past. Gogos identity. What happened to banon in the world of ruin? What happened to Arvis? this game needs to have a proper sequel or better yet Bring back all the stuff they cut out this game. They did it with final fantasy 7. They can do it with this. And I know it’ll be one of the most incredible games ever. The story is too rich with possibilities with all the characters. Please do it!
My wife thinks it's silly that I still mourn (if that is the right word) General Leo. He was the best, and I was all hyped that he would join the party... then Thamasa. Holy crap, I get to control him! It's happening! His Offering made him mighty, Shock was strong and awesome! And then, I cried like I had lost a close friend and mentor. On my first time through, I would periodically visit Thamasa, and look at that sword on top of the mound, and just lament not having Leo in the party.
When you take everything into account for when it was released - 1994 - this game was one of the best games ever made, period. Along with Chrono Trigger just ONE YEAR later, we were truly in a Golden Age of JRPGs and Square in general It hasn't been recreated since. Now we have 4-10 year waits on major titles we love (Skyrim anyone?)
Agreed! When you’ve gotten used to the modern game development cycle, it’s crazy how fast games were made in the past. There was a mainline Final Fantasy title per year in 1999, 2000, and 2001… And I still remember feeling like the wait for each new game was unbearable 😂
To this day the opening of this game and the music cant be best. Here we are almost 30 years later ans it still holds up. Most SNES games do. This is the Final Fantasy to beat and while i enjoy 7 8 and 9 no other FF game has ever been able to top it for me. I love that games like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy are bringing this type of JRPG back and introducing younger generations to it
I agree. FF6 deserves every love letter we can write. It is hard for some people discovering today to appreciate just how massive that game felt playing it as a 10, 11, or 12 year old back in the ‘90’s. It far surpassed everything else that had come before.
This was brilliant. I especially enjoyed you reminding me of how special this was when I was a kid, and how new and innovative so many aspects of the game were when it released. I've watched a lot of FFVI videos, and this is easily my favorite. Thank you. Liked, subscribed, commenting for the algorithm
Yup. It was groundbreaking and I was in awe of its beauty. It SO deserves a 3D makeover. It would be an amazing game made in a realistic looking engine.
This was my favorite back in the day. After borrowing FF8 from a friend, I asked my parents to buy the game. My dad got me the Anthology. At first I was so dissapointed because it was the old pixel games. Until I played this and realised how great is is ! 25 years later I own every FF game ever created on 2 different systems. It was truly great.
I have never played a final fantasy game and enjoy watching/listening to retrospectives of games I missed out on as a kid since I had a rough childhood. I have no real interest in playing these games as an adult, and just enjoy secondhand viewpoints of other people’s experiences. I have watched many retrospectives, at any rate. Your voice is really, really comforting. Effortless subscribe. Thank you.
Whuuff. 2 Hour video, but man it's about my favorite game of all time, so it was well worth the watch. I came here after watching your videos on Dragon Warrior 1 & 2; those two games, along with the original Final Fantasy, were the NES games that defined my childhood. I'm hoping you'll do videos on Dragon Warrior 3, and the excellent Dragon Warrior 4 (my favorite game, except for when my saves erased themselves.) I used to play these older NES games with my father, some of the few good memories I have with him. FF3(6) was the first time I was ready to play through by myself, and it stands as one of my favorite games of all time. You have to look for it, but Uematsu-san did a live performance of (most!) of Dancing Mad at a Distant Worlds concert, and he's repeatedly said "never again!" Thank you. Just, thank you.
Thank you for sharing your memories, and for the kind words! I'm playing through DQ3 right now and I'm planning on covering the entire mainline series eventually. :) And I'll try to find that live performance haha.
You absolutely nailed the themes and moments that make this game a masterpiece! Thanks so much for your hard work here! I found myself yelling "You get it!" at the video out loud more than once. This is the retrospective this game deserves!
I agree that FF6 was absolutely stunning at the time (and it holds up pretty well), but I think FF4 deserves a lot of credit for laying the groundwork. It was FF4 that introduced the idea that you could tell a real story in a JRPG, with character development, conflict, and emotion, instead of just nameless heroes on a generic quest. Sure, it was greatly surpassed by 6 (my favorite in the entire series), but I don't think 6 could exist without 4.
Totally agree with that! If you're interested, I think I give a lot of credit to those aspects of Final Fantasy IV in my retrospective of that game. The reason why I personally single out FFVI as the "first masterpiece" is of course completely subjective, but in my eyes, it's the first game that truly hits every note in the symphony of mastery that would come to define this genre in the long run. That said, none of these games would even exist without the enormous contributions made by previous games in the series (and in the genre as a whole)!
This was a great tribute, the nostalgia hits me really hard. I'm glad I got to experience this game when it was new. Celes is actually the namesake for my avatar's first name, when trying to come up with a name, I for some reason thought to myself what would be the male equivalent of the name Celes, and came up with Cerez.
I’m glad you liked the video! And thanks for sharing your story. Always fun to hear about the many different ways these games have impacted people’s lives :)
Honestly last year I finally finished Final Fantasy 6 and fall in Love with it, well I still like 9 the most but I'm honestly glad I that I was able to finish it and see why it was loved by fans and I can see why the Story and Characters will be forever my favorite in the series next to 9
Not my favorite title in the series, but this video made me appreciate FFVI a lot more by helping me remember many great moments I had with it. It must have taken a lot of time and effort to put such a long video together, so thank you for all the hard work.
I was a teenager in the mid-nineties when I first played this game. Since then I’ve played many games as the decades have passed but nothing has moved me more emotionally than Final Fantasy 3 (6) did. For far too long this beautiful game was sadly overlooked, this game truly special and deserves every single bit of the recognition it’s finally starting to receive!
I'm really glad I could brighten your day! I hope you're doing okay now. ❤ Sorry for the late reply, I was in crunch mode to finish my latest video the last couple of weeks, so I wasn't checking comments :)
After playing the first two hours of this game over the years, I finally finished the game with the pixel remaster. Excellent retrospective of the game. Glad I found your channel.
Thatd be great! Only problem is it would be unrealistically big. Like games grow in complexity as time goes on, it takes much longer, much more money and is much more difficult to make a game of FF6 size nowadays. When they originally made it they could add all of these things because it was pixel art and relatively simple compared to modern 3d graphics, it would take an immense amount of time and work to remake this game FF7 style. It would also 100% have to be split into multiple games
Wow I came across this a year after you posted it and I appreciate your video! I love ff6, I played the snes version (FF3) when i was a kid and got stuck right at the final boss never being able to defeat him then I was never able to find it again, until one lone day, 12 years later, I come across the anthology collection at a swap meet. I instantly recognized the game I knew as a kid and didnt care it cost my whole weeks allowance. FF6 is one of the very few games I have played all the way through more than once. I love the story, I love the character, I love the music, and I LOVE Kefka. Thanks for sharing with me your appreciation of this game and putting it into words Ive always had a hard time of describing. I want so many to feel the awe and wonder and turmoil this game inspired in me but ff7 cast such a huge shadow over this game it is incredibly hard for any one to give it the chance to shine.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, and thanks for the kind words! Love your username, by the way. It makes me think of one of my favorite MtG flavor texts: "A rumor passes among the snakes, whispered by the rushes, inspiring the seekers: the goddess Freyalise is alive in Skyshroud."
Hope you enjoy it Will! Thanks for all the support! If you're listening rather than watching, be sure to take a look at the very end of the video later when you have time :)
Oh my, that’s so thoughtful! Thanks so much for the shout out. I’m stanning hard and look forward to all your new material. Let me know if you ever need any help!!!
Best two plus hours ever spent. 👍 I am also of the age where my first time playing the game would've been as FF3 on te SNES, so while I was a little late to the party, that feeling of newness if you will is mutual. To think that my favorite part of the whole game, the World of Ruin, wasn't originally supposed to be there. That part made FF6 my favorite FF game and Kefka my favorite FF villain. Just think, despite all the new features and the greater emphasis on dark and mature themes, as a young man, I still expected FF6 to end in typical fashion of the heroes stopping the villain and save the world in the last minute. But then, even with the best efforts from Shadow, Kefka still won, and watching the world tear itself apart was just mind blowing even now. I agree that it has its weaknesses, but I gotta say, the pros vastly outweigh the cons as it was alot of fun searching for the rest of the cast and grinding out new abilities and spells. I even find certain side stories work out better in the World of Ruin more than the World of Balance, like finding Gau's father. Gau saying he was happy to see him alive despite simultaneously getting insulted and complimented just felt all the more moving when the setting was all broken and gloomy. Anyways, I am happy to have found your love letter to FF6. I only wished I found it sooner.
In a magazine (I forget which one) when talking about the music of FFVI it said "In terms of the technology Nobou Uematsu had to work with, he painted the Sistine Chapel with a box of crayons" I still consider Dancing Mad to be his Magnum Opus, fuck One Winged Angel
Such a masterpiece. I'm playing the pixel remaster rn and they fixed a lot of the issues the game had : They give you hints for the cutscenes you can miss, they fixed the translation errors while keeping the good stuff, you can tweak the grindyness... And the new orchestral music is awesome too.
@@AltercateTV True. That Super Nintendo sound chip never sounded better than in this game. One of my only issue with the new soundtrack is that the bass line should be louder in 'Searching for friends'.
OMG, I can't believe I am posting my Final Fantasy story. A friend rented FF from a video store and we played it at my house. We loved it and barely got to the Marsh Cave before returning it to lose our save point. After thinking about FF for a month, I decided to buy it with my allowance for $40 USD. After playing and loving FF, I played through it multiple times and eventually put it down. The SNES was released. Instead of purchasing the SNES , I opted to play the newer games on my friends' SNESs. Several months after the SNES release I perused the video games at Wal-Mart one evening and saw Final Fantasy II (US) on the shelf. I was surprised and ecstatic. I walked back home, collected all of my lawn-mowing money and returned to purchase FFIV and the SNES console for $135 USD. I loved FFIV and was blown away by the depth of story and beautiful graphics. I played through FFIV several times over the next couple years and enjoyed every minutes. At some time, I learned about the release of Final Fantasy III and learned I could pre-order the game. I had never pre-ordered a game before FFVI and I haven't preordered a game since then, lol. A couple of weeks later, I drove to the Electronics Boutique in a mall where I pre-ordered and closed the purchase of FFVI for $90 USD with some of the money I had reserved for buying a guitar. Of all the hours I spent playing FF and FFIV, I'm sure I played FFVI for more hours than the previous games combined. It was easily my favorite game and remained in my top 2 ever since. Fun fact: Due to my pre-order of Final Fantasy III, I unexpectedly received a VHS cassette in the mail promoting the release of Final Fantasy VII. I never played FFVII or any other FF afterward because I was a broke college student... broke graduate student... eventually, spending all my lawn-mowing and guitar money on kids, cars, and houses. Long story, eh? If you got this far, thanks for reading!
Loved the video. Would be nice to know where you got all the beautiful pieces of character art though :O So many good ones, especially near the end showing off Celes, Edgar, etc. Also, Terra's Theme (the intro march), and Searching for Friends are THE best songs in the game.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked the video! The artwork is AI generated. I made them using Stable Diffusion, a lot of trial and error, and cherrypicking the best results from roughly 1,000+ images... plus touching some of them up in Photoshop afterwards. I know a lot of people are (justifiably) down on AI generated art, but it's remarkable how close I was able to get to the vision of the characters in my head...
I did play FF6 after completing FF7 and looking for more while FF8 came out. Even tho i just played it briefly, for maybe 40-50 hours and not having completed all of it, it was enough to create very fond memories of the Opera House, the story of Celes and finding the Falcon and reuniting the party. Wonderfully put together!
What will become of the legacy of the opera scene when all those of us who were there to witness what a mind blowing revelation it was at the time are gone? Through the eyes of a new, young generation, it must seem so simple and hokey, but if you were there playing the game at, or near release, it was a before and after moment for the industry. I remember being so moved by the scene that upon it's conclusion, I had to put the controller down on the floor and process what I had just experienced, echoes of Uematsu's exquisite score still ringing in my head. Gaming would never be the same. I'm glad I got to witness it first hand, as I believe it could only truly be appreciated as it deserved by those who were familiar with what had come before and carried certain expectations with them into the game. Expectations that were effortlessly obliterated. What a sad tragedy it will be when the memory of its impact fades with each passing generation. May a glimmer of its flame continue to burn for all time.
Sir, this is the most beautiful reflection on this game I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Hats off to you, and to this beautiful masterpiece of a game.
Thank you for making such a beautiful video describing your experience with final fantasy 6 my nephews are coming over for Christmas vacation and I'm going to introduce them to the world of final fantasy and this is the game I chose to do it with again thank you so much you got a new subscriber thumbs up on this video and you got a good comment with great feedback I had to comeback and finish my comments because the final description you made at 2:05 12 seconds the way you described how has the jrpg that introduced him to the genre and the way you describe your experience will hopefully bring more new gamers to take a shot and experienced such a beautiful game almost three decades after it came out and if you keep making these videos like this I'm sure people are going to want to play i know so
The graphics, gameplay, story, characters, the MUSIC? Everything was just so amazing. As a 12 year old when this came out I couldn't imagine gaming getting much better. Good times. The 90s were an incredible era for gaming.
I like Sabin's journey too. It's like "we have a bunch of ideas we don't know where they should go, 2 characters we need to introduce and one guy we don't know what to do with".
I'm glad this is the first FF I played, it took a big gamble of changing the story from it's predecessors in terms of the established 4 Crystals and job system trope
Where did you find those pieces of incredible artwork toward the end of each segment? I've also been marathoning these retrospectives as they are fantastic.
Very nice to hear you're enjoying the videos! The artwork is AI generated. I made them using Stable Diffusion, a lot of trial and error, and cherrypicking the best results from roughly 1,000+ images... plus touching some of them up in Photoshop afterwards.
@@AltercateTV I've recently found your channel and I really like your videos so far, but that really rubs me the wrong way. If you're making videos analyzing and singing the praise of pieces of art, you probably shouldn't be putting AI generated images in them... It's just not a good look at all, and pretty disrespectful IMO. Not to mention, it's completely unecessary. Like, when you're talking about Square being influenced by Miyazaki's airships, why not just show the airships from those movies instead? Makes a lot more sense, and we get to see what ACTUALLY inspired them. Really awkward hearing you talk about a legend like Miyazaki while showing AI images lol
Final Fantasy 6 encapsulates my mid-teenaged years, a brief period where I had true freedom. It was released two weeks before I turned 16, and I had my own money for the first time in my life, thanks to my first job at (where else?) McDonalds. That $4.25/hr. went a lot further back then, and I was easily able to buy the new game before locking myself in my room when I wasn't at school or work and spending hours grinding my way through it. I bought a couple of strategy guides to help make sure I didn't miss anything, though in my panic during the countdown, I left Shadow behind on my original playthrough, and I eventually maxed out 3/4 of the characters, with every character getting above Level 70, and all spells learned. Not too terribly long after, life caught up to me. FFVII was decent, but by then I was pursuing other interests. A little over a year after its release, I became a father, and by the time FFVIII released, I no longer had the time to spend playing games for hours while exploring every nook and cranny. While I enjoyed other games like Chrono Trigger and most of the other SNES JRPGs, my personal memories are mostly of FFIV and FFVI.
Great look at my absolute favorite game of all time. I started getting big into RPGs with Final Fantasy Legend (rather SaGa I suppose) when it came out as my older cousin gave it to me as he wasn't a fan of non-action titles and I fell in love immediately. I can still recall in vivid detail my first time playing most of the mainline series but nothing compared to FF VI, how it blew me away with that opening sequence. I was strangely hesitant when reading previews, doubting that I would become as endured to the cast as I was with those in FF IV, but was very quickly proven wrong. To this day the opera is perhaps one my favorite moments in any form of media.
One of the moments in FFVI that is underrated and overlooked is the mid-game plot twist where Kefka literally destroys the world. When I first played it back when I was 14, I thought I was about to fight the final boss on the floating continent, needless to say I was in for a shock. As a plot twist it hasn't aged that well; that is to say it has lost most of it's shock value due to it going on to become somewhat of a RPG trope, but in 1994 most games barely had dialogue nevermind a deep plot.
Yep, it's crazy how above and beyond this story was for 1994. Moments like the opera house, the story of Maduin and Madonna, and Cid's death (I wasn't very good at catching fish as a kid I guess lol) really hit me hard as a kid.
It wasn’t the first masterpiece jrpg at all. DQ5 is also a JRPG masterpiece with an amazing narrative, that came out years earlier, same with Shin Megan tensei. Anyways FF6 did definitely set a new benchmark for Jrpgs (and games in general), and was a masterpiece but just not the first. Anyways great video! Only replying to the title here haha :)
Yes, it's a total masterpiece. I remember the characters having their own personalities, particularly when Edgar meets Terra the way he flirts with her was funny yet in a unique way sincere. I remember Locke lamenting the loss of Rachel, along with Setzer being sort of devil may care character with a heart of gold. Even Gogo, though brief, introduces himself in a quirky and straightforward manner. Kefka? A mad man who becomes an apathetic god still bound by his cynical sense of humor. I could go on and on, but this game blew my mind and captured my heart like no other game has ever been able to.
Here's how well the dungeon segments flow into the narrative - it had never occurred to me before that the Floating Continent could be classified as a "dungeon," because it didn't feel like one. There was urgency, and energy, and desperation, and worry. But it absolutely is one. 29 years later, the game is still blowing my mind in new ways that are just as impactful as when I was 9.
I am from Germany, so I had a PAL-version of the Super Nintendo on which american games could not run. Company politics at that time also tried to regulate the market making it difficult and quite expensive to lay hands on imported games. Clunky technical bypass solutions were needed to work around the intended hardware restrictions. In the nineties there were slightly shady stores in bigger german cities who sold these devices and imported games. I bought FF IV there and was really amazed, what storytelling could achieve, the graphics did not convince me really,but the music did. So I was totally hyped, when in Print magazines FFVI was announced. Whe I finally played it, I was totally blown away by it. Your Loveletter describes perfectly my first playthrough in an era long before the internet, where I had to discover everything the game offered by myself. Up to this day the Soundtrack is still running regularly at my place. Even my children hum the tunes without ever having played FFVI (they played Chrono Trigger eventually). Thank you very much for letting me relive my awe and wonder playing it the first time with your brilliant video.
I played it for the first time 2 years ago and it held up great, for some reason it’s really easy to imagine the pixelated scenes as full movie scenes in my mind
Wonderful job. Your content is amazing. Thank you for this love letter retrospective to, what is also MY favorite JRPG of all time. A watershed moment for gaming that once again reaffirms the Japanese as the true master artisans of game design.
Great video and good memories. I was maybe a bit too young when I played FF6, and also not a native English speaker, so I may have missed some of the finer details. This makes me want to play it again, after 30 years!
I remember growing up in the 2000s when everyone was always talking about FF7 and 10, but a lot of the older games were often left out of the conversation so watching this series has been fascinating! Before this I didn’t know anything about these games.
One of not only my favorite Final Fantasies, but also one of my favorite games. I've beaten it so many times I can't remember. I beat the end skipping the others with only Celes, Setzer, and Edgar, a few scenes are pretty different, and low level challenge. Which was insane, some enemies you had to be sneaky to kill, like phoenix down on the train.
Thanks for sharing! I did the Celes/Setzer/Edgar challenge for this video to see the different scenes, although I was like level 70 so it mitigates a lot of the challenge 😂 Something I really wanna try next time I play is the no espers challenge, where you just use whatever the characters get naturally. Seems really fun!
FF6 is by far my favorite of the whole series. It inspired me to make the Woolsey Uncensored Edition hack. If you're looking for a vanilla experience with numerous bugs fixed and delivered a cleaned up script with all the classic Woolsey lines.
Hey dude, thanks for stopping by! I've heard good things about the Woolsey Uncensored Edition. Definitely plan to give it a try next time I go through FF6 :)
FF9 is the only one close to it. But I played 6 about a month after it came out. No guide. Just touching and talking to everything, and enjoying the hell out of all of it.
Thanks, I have downloaded the patch in the past but haven't applied it, I will play this version one day.
Almost 30 years later, this is still my favorite video game of all time. Thanks for putting together such a great video.
Thank you! :)
As someone else whose favorite track from FFVI is Searching for Friends, for the longest time, I didn't know its name. I only knew it as the World of Ruin airship theme. When I found out its name was Searching for Friends, i sat back and thought for a solid minute about how much *better* that made the song.
Totally agreed! The naming of things can have a lot of power. Just knowing the title of the track opens up a world of emotion!
Searching For Friends is amazing. But I quickly get tired of it because I always need to level all my characters to 99 and teach them all spells. Many hours in the dinosaur forest… and listening to that song.
Well, my fave is still the end credits song. First the character theme medley, and then the “Balance Restored” theme, which totally blew me away the first time I heard it and saw the ingame cinematic. It’s some 24mins long, and Nobou Uematsu literally composed the shit out of it, and out of the SNES console. The arrangements are masterful, sometimes cranking up the tempo and the mood where you didn’t think it could get any phatter - I thought my heart would explode from the joy.
At any rate, no matter what our fave is, music has affected us, and it unites us in our love for this game.
Yes what a perfect track revealed at the perfect time in the game. Song of hope
My favorite game of alltime. Im 44 years old and still have to replay this every year or so. Something in me always calls back to it. The characters, story, music. Nothing comes close. A true masterpiece.
I still find myself whistling some of the tunes from this game even today (almost 30 years later!). What a brilliant game. Thanks for your review here - it makes me want to go back and play the game again!
Thanks! Glad you liked it! :)
The chorus for “Searching for friends” is my favorite casual whistling tune.
Sent chills down my spine when I first heard it in game.
UPDATE: Some of you have expressed concerns about my use of AI generated images in parts of this video. This is valid criticism, and I take this feedback seriously. The impact of generative AI has been constantly on my mind over the past year. This is something that's been bothering me even before I received such comments, and the fact that this has been brought up has made me even more doubtful about using such tools in my future content.
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I have created a monument to my love for Final Fantasy VI! I swear, this is the shortest I could possibly make the video - I cut SO much stuff I wanted to include lol. Dear god, the amount of work I’ve put into this video… I wasn’t sure I’d ever finish.
Next in my retrospective series: Chrono Trigger. But first, I have a couple of Xenoblade critiques I want to publish - Torna: the Golden Country and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
What’s YOUR first great JRPG love? Let me know! And as always, thanks for supporting me! 😍
My first great JRPG love? The one and same: FF6.
Outstanding video! I didn't think anyone could show me something new about this game. Some games I play again, and I'm like "oh wow, this is worse than I remember." FF6, Tactics, and Chrono Trigger don't suffer from this and hold up so well.
@@hawkbirdtree3660 Thank you so much! Yes, it's a rare few games that hold up this well even after almost 30 years :)
This one is my favorite
Why does it show ff3 in 3:15
I will always feel FF4 really holds this spot in my heart, and the greatness we see from 6 is built upon what was already being worked toward in 4 or 5. I will never forget how blown my mind was playing 4 back in 1991, there was nothing that ambitious in terms of storytelling and depth. Then especially since I didn't have 5 growing up, it feels wrong to make that cut off point at 6, when 5 did somethings objectively better. All that being said, 6 is a masterpiece and having played them in order when they came out really highlighted how ambitious they took each evolution of the game. I always hope they one day go back to an ensemble style FF game like this again, and see if they could pull it off for an entirely new generation. One can dream!
Same. IV had a story that most video game players never experienced before. While VI is an absolute classic, IV will always be my favorite.
I played FF4 the first time in 2011 on the psp, played games like ff9,10, 12 already before that . FF4 still blew my mind, thought it was better than all the other FF games i played. A year or so later i found out that i'm super basic when it comes to Final Fantasy since i moved out from home and finally had my own Internet and was allowed to Connect my PSP to it, Downloaded FF7 on it and Completley fell in love with it.
I can't believe how criminally under subscribed your channel is for the quality, keep it up!
Thank you so much! That really means a lot to me :D
Agreed, love this channel!
I absolutely agree. Great videos!
come on, the Atma Weapon music and intro? that shit blew my 11 year old mind!
2 hours? 2023? FF6? Holy ... It must be your THRE LOVE.
Eh, it's an alright game ;)
I recall picking this up in 1994 and playing it over an entire weekend, getting less sleep than I should and finishing the game. It has such a fond place in my memories. I was in my late teens and was already an avid RPG fan on the NES and SNES, but this game was the culmination of perfection of that era,
Yeah, it really felt like the start of the golden age for me...
Thank you so much for all your love and care put into this brilliant video. This was incredible. Your narrative and analysis tapped into things i always felt and also put words into the feelings I never knew how to convey about why this game is so important.
I cannot thank you enough... Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Wow, that makes me super happy to hear! I’m so glad I was able to convey what I wanted to convey with the video :)
It was my first special and still biggest relation with a video game, and your tribute to it makes it even more complete and greater, very, very good content there, thanks!
Thank you so much! :)
I absolutely loved the "hidden in plain sight" approach to storytelling. Instead of shoving it down your throat, it actively rewarded you for paying attention, which makes for very satisfying moments and gives the "illusion" of a lot more character depth. Heck, I only figured out Shadow's was Relm's father 15 years later and I was blown away!
And today I learned that the game was supposed to end at the Floating Continent. Man that would have been such a bummer. The villain winning turned out to be one of FF6's most unique and memorable moment. It would have been a completely different game with a different theme and impact had that not been so.
Amazing content!
It's amazing how much more satisfying these subtle plot points are when you get to figure it out on your own. :)
Thanks for sharing, and thanks your kind words!
My friend, I can't tell you how amazing this video is. Thank you so much for making it. You put into words so many things I always felt about this game, my favorite game of all time. I will watch this many times in the future just to feel the nostalgia from someone else who I feel knows what I felt when I first played Final Fantasy 6 (3 when I was a kid lol)!
Wow, that’s such a nice thing to hear! I’m glad you like the video, and thanks for taking the time to tell me :)
I first played this game on ZSNES back in '99 and I remember being absolutely blown away by it. Over the intervening two decades, my fondness and appreciation for this title and what it did to elevate the artform of video games has only continued to grow. I'm so glad to see this title still getting the love and attention it deserves. This was a phenomenal retrospective! Hopefully you will give a similar treatment to Zelda: LttP and Chrono Trigger! ^_^
Thank you for all your amazing work! You just earned a sub. Shared this video with some friends as well! Wishing you all the best with your channel!
Thank you so much for your kind words! Chrono Trigger is next on my list of retrospectives, and I might cover Link to the Past as well, if I think I can do the game justice.
Best of the best. When it comes to gaming; FFVI belongs to the deepest part of my heart because of it's many aspects.
In case you don't know since it wasn't mentioned in video - Whole final battle scene was based off "The Divine Comedy" aka "Dante's Inferno" giving it even more depth. Like the "Dante" character in The Divine Comedy, we must literally climb from Hell, through Purgatory and up to The Paradise in order to reach your ultimate goal, slaying Kefka.
This "paradox of choice' pretty much also applies to innovative FFVIII I recently completed few months back. Few segments in game forces player to select a party and couple of cutscenes had surprisingly a lot of variables. This and goofy dialogue were my favorite things of VIII I'd say.
Thanks for sharing! Do you have a source for the link to the Divine Comedy as inspiration for the final battle? I haven't seen that in any of the interviews I found and I'm always interested in learning more about the creation of this game :)
I remember being 14 years old and using money i had saved up to buy this game brand new for almost $100 !!! And to be fair... im 43 years old right now, and i STILL think about and play this game, and STILL find New Things in it. So you can say...
Best $100 i have EVER Spent
Game prices were kind of insane in the 90s 😂
Wtf. Even $100 for a new game in 2023 is way too expensive.
@@icyboy771z agreed. But this game was EXPENSIVE when it first came out. Totally worth it though, the fact everyone still talks about it To This Day says it all
@@dantediss1woah. I don’t remember it being $100. Was it???? I can’t even remember if I bought it now that I’m thinking of it. I might’ve just borrowed it to finish from my friend.
Excellent video. Really love this long-form JRPG content, makes for excellent listening while I'm grinding in some game. Listened to this one while going through Colosseum fights on my Kingdom Hearts replay.
Glad you mentioned Shibuya's contributions to sprite design. Those iconic sprites are responsible for much of the charm of early Final Fantasy games and Shibuya really knocked things out of the park with FFVI. I can't even imagine what these games would be like without her work.
Thank you! Yes, I think Shibuya is very much an unsung hero of FF. I hadn't even heard her name before I started doing these retrospectives, which is kind of sad!
criminally underwatched channel. Kepp grinding, you'll make it some day.
That's very kind of you to say :)
Deserve million views minimum. Great content, man.
I'm certain I've said this before, but revisiting this video again after countless times - your voice is so soothing! The depth into which you've researched and how much you love the game comes through beautifully. This is one of my biggest comfort videos on RUclips. Whether you make another or not, please know your work is deeply enjoyed and I'll be back to watch your final fantasy essays again. Thank you for this! I hope you're well!
Wow, that's incredibly nice to hear! Thank you so much for saying that.
I've been taking a step back to cover the early Dragon Quest games this year, but I definitely plan to continue the Final Fantasy retrospectives in the future. I won't rest until I've covered all of the mainline games :)
@@AltercateTV of course! You deserve to hear it. That's wonderful to know, I can't wait to see what you come out with for them! Whatever you put out, we support you!
😍
This is such an incredible amount of work you must have had to put in here. This is so well done. A pleasure to watch, honestly. Most youtube videos you see on retrospectives, and reviews of old games are just copy/paste videos with stcok images or just some screenshots but you've really put so much effort into making this a real documentary and tribute to the game. The artistic nuances and the overall presentation of the video are just perfect. Thank you! I look forward to more releases from you and I've subscribed..
Thank you so much for saying that. My videos do indeed take a lot of work to create, so it's really nice to get this kind of feedback!
PS. Dragon Quest 1 retrospective coming tomorrow. :)
Thank you for making this retrospective/tribute. Final Fantasy VI is my favourite game of all time, and you gave it the look back it deserves. Playing the pixel remaster right now, and I can say that I still love this game as much as I did when I first played it (maybe loving it even more actually).
Glad you liked it! Yep, the game still holds up. :)
16:05 hey get that thing outta here, what do you think this is? The sun palace from 2300 AD?
"...it all sounded exactly like this in my head back in 1994." Exactly. Transcendent.
It’s a love letter to which I can easily add my name. 🙏 FF6 is the game I never get bored playing. I miss my old SNES for that. I am playing the pixel-remastered version for the first time, and I am in heaven (the orchestrated music 🤩). Thanks for your video - it could have been 3 hours and I would have watched it.
Thanks for saying that! :)
@@AltercateTV Above everything that made this game so great, one of my favorite features in FF6 was being able to play the game with my best friend using a second controller. To this day, it's still one of our favorite games that we've played together. FF6 is all about teamwork and friendship, right?! 😊
@@marcbabin True! I thought that was a really cool feature back in the day, even if me and my friends didn't use it much. Secret of Mana blew my mind though, being able to do 3 payer co-op with the multitap!
Snes best console of time
This is easily is without a doubt the most biggest and most comprehensive review that I’ve ever seen in FF6, and watching this made me appreciate things that I didn’t even consider prior to watching this such as the verity of scenarios, dungeon design and how the characters and relics are similar to the job classes and abilities like in FF5 and I also admired how it tired to dealt with much more adult and complex themes then most video games where at the time of FFVI release. Though the Game isn’t completely perfect such as the stuff mentioned in this review.
The Biggest example of this for me at least is how the story is structured in how it deals away with having a main character into having a large ensemble cast of characters and having the world of ruin at the 2nd half of the game as being much more open ended. And on paper it’s a really neat idea having multiple different characters that you can freely switch and giving players a lot of freedom. And I can see why alot of people really like it. But because of that the game doesn't know which character is going to be in your group, and some of the major character development and events are completely miscible, it also causes other characters to feel less developed than others and once you do get to the 2nd half of the game's the story is pretty much over and doesn't really conclude until you face Kafka.
Which is why I genuinely much prefer more linear structured stories such that feature a proper main character and a fix party since it allows the story to flow more natural, have natural beginning and end points and it would mean I wouldn’t miss any important developments or major events to the characters which kinda why I liked FF5 a bit more for these reasons. So I wouldn’t say FF6 is my absolute favorite in the FF series or in my top favorite RPGs But I still did enjoy this one as it is easily within my Top 5 Final Fantasy Games and is really good for a game made in 1994.
And I’m hoping to see more future Final Fantasy retrospective videos.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Gavin, and thanks for the support!
I'm planning on covering every mainline game eventually, but it's going to take a very long time to get there... 😂
@@AltercateTV No worries I'm just glad I'm there to support you. Your doing great!
Great video. Finished playing the pixel remaster not long ago and can’t stop thinking about it. Shame that 6 isn’t talked about nearly as much as 7
Thanks! Yep, the conversation has turned mostly away from FF6 these days, sadly. Btw I was just watching your "anime dubs aren't cringe, anime is" video a while back, good stuff. :)
Been waiting for this. Thanks for putting in all the time and effort to create it!
Thank you for saying that! :)
Not only was this the greatest game ever made, it takes every person who ever played it back to a certain time of their life. I was 12 years old when I first played it and I still get my mind blown when I play it again now at 40 years old :). From the moment I turn this game on, memories flood back in. Good memories. Even the soundtrack to this game goes with the feelings I get when I start to remember where I was and who I was with back then :). final fantasy 3 That’s how I remembered it. now, we all know their is a lot of story that was deleted out of this game. Shadows mysterious past. Gogos identity. What happened to banon in the world of ruin? What happened to Arvis? this game needs to have a proper sequel or better yet Bring back all the stuff they cut out this game. They did it with final fantasy 7. They can do it with this. And I know it’ll be one of the most incredible games ever. The story is too rich with possibilities with all the characters. Please do it!
I’d be up for that for sure :)
My wife thinks it's silly that I still mourn (if that is the right word) General Leo. He was the best, and I was all hyped that he would join the party... then Thamasa. Holy crap, I get to control him! It's happening! His Offering made him mighty, Shock was strong and awesome!
And then, I cried like I had lost a close friend and mentor. On my first time through, I would periodically visit Thamasa, and look at that sword on top of the mound, and just lament not having Leo in the party.
I feel the same way about ffx but I gotta give this one a go seeing how much everybody loves this one.
When you take everything into account for when it was released - 1994 - this game was one of the best games ever made, period.
Along with Chrono Trigger just ONE YEAR later, we were truly in a Golden Age of JRPGs and Square in general
It hasn't been recreated since.
Now we have 4-10 year waits on major titles we love (Skyrim anyone?)
Agreed!
When you’ve gotten used to the modern game development cycle, it’s crazy how fast games were made in the past. There was a mainline Final Fantasy title per year in 1999, 2000, and 2001… And I still remember feeling like the wait for each new game was unbearable 😂
To this day the opening of this game and the music cant be best. Here we are almost 30 years later ans it still holds up. Most SNES games do. This is the Final Fantasy to beat and while i enjoy 7 8 and 9 no other FF game has ever been able to top it for me. I love that games like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy are bringing this type of JRPG back and introducing younger generations to it
Best Final Fantasy of my generation (yes even better than 7). Sephiroth’s brooding pretentiousness has nothing on Kefka’s DK Joker Agent of Chaos!
Have you considered doing a retrospective on the rest of this series? I'm curious about your thoughts on something like Final Fantasy Tactics!
I’m planning on covering all of the mainline entries in the series, as well as some of the spinoffs. Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely on that list!
I agree. FF6 deserves every love letter we can write. It is hard for some people discovering today to appreciate just how massive that game felt playing it as a 10, 11, or 12 year old back in the ‘90’s. It far surpassed everything else that had come before.
This was brilliant. I especially enjoyed you reminding me of how special this was when I was a kid, and how new and innovative so many aspects of the game were when it released.
I've watched a lot of FFVI videos, and this is easily my favorite.
Thank you.
Liked, subscribed, commenting for the algorithm
Wow, thank you so much for the kind words! Glad you liked the video :)
Yup. It was groundbreaking and I was in awe of its beauty. It SO deserves a 3D makeover. It would be an amazing game made in a realistic looking engine.
This was my favorite back in the day. After borrowing FF8 from a friend, I asked my parents to buy the game. My dad got me the Anthology. At first I was so dissapointed because it was the old pixel games. Until I played this and realised how great is is ! 25 years later I own every FF game ever created on 2 different systems. It was truly great.
I have never played a final fantasy game and enjoy watching/listening to retrospectives of games I missed out on as a kid since I had a rough childhood. I have no real interest in playing these games as an adult, and just enjoy secondhand viewpoints of other people’s experiences. I have watched many retrospectives, at any rate. Your voice is really, really comforting. Effortless subscribe. Thank you.
That makes me very happy to hear! ❤️
30 years later ppl still making new videos about this game. That tells you all you need to know
Whuuff. 2 Hour video, but man it's about my favorite game of all time, so it was well worth the watch. I came here after watching your videos on Dragon Warrior 1 & 2; those two games, along with the original Final Fantasy, were the NES games that defined my childhood. I'm hoping you'll do videos on Dragon Warrior 3, and the excellent Dragon Warrior 4 (my favorite game, except for when my saves erased themselves.)
I used to play these older NES games with my father, some of the few good memories I have with him. FF3(6) was the first time I was ready to play through by myself, and it stands as one of my favorite games of all time. You have to look for it, but Uematsu-san did a live performance of (most!) of Dancing Mad at a Distant Worlds concert, and he's repeatedly said "never again!"
Thank you. Just, thank you.
Thank you for sharing your memories, and for the kind words! I'm playing through DQ3 right now and I'm planning on covering the entire mainline series eventually. :) And I'll try to find that live performance haha.
Hey! I was missing you 😂. Great video btw.
Thank you so much! :D
You absolutely nailed the themes and moments that make this game a masterpiece! Thanks so much for your hard work here! I found myself yelling "You get it!" at the video out loud more than once. This is the retrospective this game deserves!
Thank you so much! That's really cool to hear :)
I agree that FF6 was absolutely stunning at the time (and it holds up pretty well), but I think FF4 deserves a lot of credit for laying the groundwork. It was FF4 that introduced the idea that you could tell a real story in a JRPG, with character development, conflict, and emotion, instead of just nameless heroes on a generic quest. Sure, it was greatly surpassed by 6 (my favorite in the entire series), but I don't think 6 could exist without 4.
Totally agree with that! If you're interested, I think I give a lot of credit to those aspects of Final Fantasy IV in my retrospective of that game. The reason why I personally single out FFVI as the "first masterpiece" is of course completely subjective, but in my eyes, it's the first game that truly hits every note in the symphony of mastery that would come to define this genre in the long run. That said, none of these games would even exist without the enormous contributions made by previous games in the series (and in the genre as a whole)!
This was a great tribute, the nostalgia hits me really hard. I'm glad I got to experience this game when it was new. Celes is actually the namesake for my avatar's first name, when trying to come up with a name, I for some reason thought to myself what would be the male equivalent of the name Celes, and came up with Cerez.
I’m glad you liked the video! And thanks for sharing your story. Always fun to hear about the many different ways these games have impacted people’s lives :)
This is a fantastic video and I really appreciate all the time you spent putting it together!
Thank you for saying that! That means a lot to me :)
This was an amazing look back at one of, if not my favorite JRPG's of all time. Keep up the good work man!
Thank you! 😀
Honestly last year I finally finished Final Fantasy 6 and fall in Love with it, well I still like 9 the most but I'm honestly glad I that I was able to finish it and see why it was loved by fans and I can see why the Story and Characters will be forever my favorite in the series next to 9
Thanks for sharing your experiences! Glad you liked the game :)
Not my favorite title in the series, but this video made me appreciate FFVI a lot more by helping me remember many great moments I had with it. It must have taken a lot of time and effort to put such a long video together, so thank you for all the hard work.
Thank you, that's really nice of you to say! :)
I was a teenager in the mid-nineties when I first played this game. Since then I’ve played many games as the decades have passed but nothing has moved me more emotionally than Final Fantasy 3 (6) did. For far too long this beautiful game was sadly overlooked, this game truly special and deserves every single bit of the recognition it’s finally starting to receive!
Thanks for sharing! This game is definitely one of a kind.
Just wanted to say watching this got me thru the end of a very hard day. So thank you for making this content. Very calming but still engaging.
I'm really glad I could brighten your day! I hope you're doing okay now. ❤ Sorry for the late reply, I was in crunch mode to finish my latest video the last couple of weeks, so I wasn't checking comments :)
Why FFVI is goated? Sabin suplexed a fucking train.
After playing the first two hours of this game over the years, I finally finished the game with the pixel remaster. Excellent retrospective of the game. Glad I found your channel.
Thank you! :)
Great job with this video. I enjoyed every moment with it.
Thanks, that’s very nice to hear! :)
Am I the only one who wish for a Remake of FFVI for people who played it back and for new people to see how the game is amazing ?
I'd want to see it, for sure :)
Thatd be great! Only problem is it would be unrealistically big. Like games grow in complexity as time goes on, it takes much longer, much more money and is much more difficult to make a game of FF6 size nowadays. When they originally made it they could add all of these things because it was pixel art and relatively simple compared to modern 3d graphics, it would take an immense amount of time and work to remake this game FF7 style. It would also 100% have to be split into multiple games
This was such an amazing video. I applaud your thoughtful analysis of this beautiful work of art
Thank you so much! That's very kind of you to say :)
Wow I came across this a year after you posted it and I appreciate your video! I love ff6, I played the snes version (FF3) when i was a kid and got stuck right at the final boss never being able to defeat him then I was never able to find it again, until one lone day, 12 years later, I come across the anthology collection at a swap meet. I instantly recognized the game I knew as a kid and didnt care it cost my whole weeks allowance. FF6 is one of the very few games I have played all the way through more than once. I love the story, I love the character, I love the music, and I LOVE Kefka. Thanks for sharing with me your appreciation of this game and putting it into words Ive always had a hard time of describing. I want so many to feel the awe and wonder and turmoil this game inspired in me but ff7 cast such a huge shadow over this game it is incredibly hard for any one to give it the chance to shine.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, and thanks for the kind words! Love your username, by the way. It makes me think of one of my favorite MtG flavor texts: "A rumor passes among the snakes, whispered by the rushes, inspiring the seekers: the goddess Freyalise is alive in Skyshroud."
You've brought me back many years to find buried treasure. Wonderful retrospective into what made this shared experience so meaningful.
Thank you! Glad you liked it :)
Great work man, loved the video. You just gained a subscriber :)
Thanks so much for saying that! :)
Ahhh so excited for the next video! Haven’t listened yet, but will on a long work drive I have so. Thanks so much for the final fantasy content!
Hope you enjoy it Will! Thanks for all the support! If you're listening rather than watching, be sure to take a look at the very end of the video later when you have time :)
@@AltercateTV oh, well with a hint like that, you KNOW I will!!! Thanks for being such a talented, passionate, and interactive creator!
Oh my, that’s so thoughtful! Thanks so much for the shout out. I’m stanning hard and look forward to all your new material. Let me know if you ever need any help!!!
@@williamishee9533 Thanks William! I appreciate it as you can tell :)
Best two plus hours ever spent. 👍
I am also of the age where my first time playing the game would've been as FF3 on te SNES, so while I was a little late to the party, that feeling of newness if you will is mutual.
To think that my favorite part of the whole game, the World of Ruin, wasn't originally supposed to be there. That part made FF6 my favorite FF game and Kefka my favorite FF villain. Just think, despite all the new features and the greater emphasis on dark and mature themes, as a young man, I still expected FF6 to end in typical fashion of the heroes stopping the villain and save the world in the last minute. But then, even with the best efforts from Shadow, Kefka still won, and watching the world tear itself apart was just mind blowing even now.
I agree that it has its weaknesses, but I gotta say, the pros vastly outweigh the cons as it was alot of fun searching for the rest of the cast and grinding out new abilities and spells. I even find certain side stories work out better in the World of Ruin more than the World of Balance, like finding Gau's father. Gau saying he was happy to see him alive despite simultaneously getting insulted and complimented just felt all the more moving when the setting was all broken and gloomy.
Anyways, I am happy to have found your love letter to FF6. I only wished I found it sooner.
Thanks for sharing, and thank you so much for your kind words! It means a lot to me to know that there are people out there enjoying my videos!
1:07 Is the most honest and professional opening that I think I've ever seen for a retrospective.
Thank you :)
In a magazine (I forget which one) when talking about the music of FFVI it said "In terms of the technology Nobou Uematsu had to work with, he painted the Sistine Chapel with a box of crayons"
I still consider Dancing Mad to be his Magnum Opus, fuck One Winged Angel
Such a masterpiece. I'm playing the pixel remaster rn and they fixed a lot of the issues the game had : They give you hints for the cutscenes you can miss, they fixed the translation errors while keeping the good stuff, you can tweak the grindyness... And the new orchestral music is awesome too.
I really liked the Pixel Remaster’s rearranged soundtrack, even if it’s not always an upgrade! The original compositions hold up crazy well.
@@AltercateTV True. That Super Nintendo sound chip never sounded better than in this game. One of my only issue with the new soundtrack is that the bass line should be louder in 'Searching for friends'.
Glad I love this game enough to RUclips search “final fantasy vi” retrospective every few years to find this one. Onto to your FFIV retrospective!
Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Subscribed!! Ff6 is my #1 fave of all time,i still have my first copy i got on release date! Awsome video!
Thank you so much! :)
OMG, I can't believe I am posting my Final Fantasy story. A friend rented FF from a video store and we played it at my house. We loved it and barely got to the Marsh Cave before returning it to lose our save point. After thinking about FF for a month, I decided to buy it with my allowance for $40 USD. After playing and loving FF, I played through it multiple times and eventually put it down. The SNES was released. Instead of purchasing the SNES , I opted to play the newer games on my friends' SNESs. Several months after the SNES release I perused the video games at Wal-Mart one evening and saw Final Fantasy II (US) on the shelf. I was surprised and ecstatic. I walked back home, collected all of my lawn-mowing money and returned to purchase FFIV and the SNES console for $135 USD. I loved FFIV and was blown away by the depth of story and beautiful graphics. I played through FFIV several times over the next couple years and enjoyed every minutes. At some time, I learned about the release of Final Fantasy III and learned I could pre-order the game. I had never pre-ordered a game before FFVI and I haven't preordered a game since then, lol. A couple of weeks later, I drove to the Electronics Boutique in a mall where I pre-ordered and closed the purchase of FFVI for $90 USD with some of the money I had reserved for buying a guitar. Of all the hours I spent playing FF and FFIV, I'm sure I played FFVI for more hours than the previous games combined. It was easily my favorite game and remained in my top 2 ever since. Fun fact: Due to my pre-order of Final Fantasy III, I unexpectedly received a VHS cassette in the mail promoting the release of Final Fantasy VII. I never played FFVII or any other FF afterward because I was a broke college student... broke graduate student... eventually, spending all my lawn-mowing and guitar money on kids, cars, and houses. Long story, eh? If you got this far, thanks for reading!
Beautiful story! Thanks for sharing :)
Loved the video. Would be nice to know where you got all the beautiful pieces of character art though :O So many good ones, especially near the end showing off Celes, Edgar, etc. Also, Terra's Theme (the intro march), and Searching for Friends are THE best songs in the game.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked the video! The artwork is AI generated. I made them using Stable Diffusion, a lot of trial and error, and cherrypicking the best results from roughly 1,000+ images... plus touching some of them up in Photoshop afterwards. I know a lot of people are (justifiably) down on AI generated art, but it's remarkable how close I was able to get to the vision of the characters in my head...
this is a really well put-together video man! makes me wanna go back and finally finish FF6, so perhaps I shall make a start on that right now...
Thanks, that’s really nice of you to say! Have fun with the game 😀
I did play FF6 after completing FF7 and looking for more while FF8 came out. Even tho i just played it briefly, for maybe 40-50 hours and not having completed all of it, it was enough to create very fond memories of the Opera House, the story of Celes and finding the Falcon and reuniting the party. Wonderfully put together!
Thank you! And thanks for sharing your experience with the game :)
A wonderful retrospective for one of my favorite games of all time. Thank you for this
Glad you liked it! :)
It's like you took the words right out of my head. Saving this video for anytime anybody asks me why I love this game so much.
That's very nice to hear. Thank you for saying that :)
I can't put into words how great this video is, I enjoyed every 130 mins of it.
Wow, thank you! That’s very encouraging to hear 😀
This was a wonderful journey. Thank you so much!
Thank you! That's really nice to hear :)
Nice work, lad! Enjoyed it.
Thanks! Glad you liked it :)
What will become of the legacy of the opera scene when all those of us who were there to witness what a mind blowing revelation it was at the time are gone? Through the eyes of a new, young generation, it must seem so simple and hokey, but if you were there playing the game at, or near release, it was a before and after moment for the industry. I remember being so moved by the scene that upon it's conclusion, I had to put the controller down on the floor and process what I had just experienced, echoes of Uematsu's exquisite score still ringing in my head. Gaming would never be the same. I'm glad I got to witness it first hand, as I believe it could only truly be appreciated as it deserved by those who were familiar with what had come before and carried certain expectations with them into the game. Expectations that were effortlessly obliterated. What a sad tragedy it will be when the memory of its impact fades with each passing generation. May a glimmer of its flame continue to burn for all time.
Thank you for the wonderful vids and all your hard work.
Thanks for saying that! :)
Sir, this is the most beautiful reflection on this game I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Hats off to you, and to this beautiful masterpiece of a game.
Wow, thank you! That means a lot to me :)
@@AltercateTV Absolutely!
Thank you for making such a beautiful video describing your experience with final fantasy 6 my nephews are coming over for Christmas vacation and I'm going to introduce them to the world of final fantasy and this is the game I chose to do it with again thank you so much you got a new subscriber thumbs up on this video and you got a good comment with great feedback
I had to comeback and finish my comments because the final description you made at 2:05 12 seconds the way you described how has the jrpg that introduced him to the genre and the way you describe your experience will hopefully bring more new gamers to take a shot and experienced such a beautiful game almost three decades after it came out and if you keep making these videos like this I'm sure people are going to want to play i know so
Thank you so much for your kind words! :)
The graphics, gameplay, story, characters, the MUSIC? Everything was just so amazing. As a 12 year old when this came out I couldn't imagine gaming getting much better. Good times. The 90s were an incredible era for gaming.
I like Sabin's journey too. It's like "we have a bunch of ideas we don't know where they should go, 2 characters we need to introduce and one guy we don't know what to do with".
Haha yeah, there's definitely a strong brainstorming energy to FF6's story 😂
I'm glad this is the first FF I played, it took a big gamble of changing the story from it's predecessors in terms of the established 4 Crystals and job system trope
It's great to see the essence of Final Fantasy VI in many indie RPGs I've played
It’s a game that’s inspired countless people for sure!
love your channel bro keep it up your videos are always a joy to watch and thanks for the StarCraft guides as well
Thanks bro! I appreciate you saying that :)
Where did you find those pieces of incredible artwork toward the end of each segment? I've also been marathoning these retrospectives as they are fantastic.
Very nice to hear you're enjoying the videos! The artwork is AI generated. I made them using Stable Diffusion, a lot of trial and error, and cherrypicking the best results from roughly 1,000+ images... plus touching some of them up in Photoshop afterwards.
@@AltercateTV
I've recently found your channel and I really like your videos so far, but that really rubs me the wrong way. If you're making videos analyzing and singing the praise of pieces of art, you probably shouldn't be putting AI generated images in them... It's just not a good look at all, and pretty disrespectful IMO.
Not to mention, it's completely unecessary. Like, when you're talking about Square being influenced by Miyazaki's airships, why not just show the airships from those movies instead? Makes a lot more sense, and we get to see what ACTUALLY inspired them. Really awkward hearing you talk about a legend like Miyazaki while showing AI images lol
Final Fantasy 6 encapsulates my mid-teenaged years, a brief period where I had true freedom. It was released two weeks before I turned 16, and I had my own money for the first time in my life, thanks to my first job at (where else?) McDonalds. That $4.25/hr. went a lot further back then, and I was easily able to buy the new game before locking myself in my room when I wasn't at school or work and spending hours grinding my way through it. I bought a couple of strategy guides to help make sure I didn't miss anything, though in my panic during the countdown, I left Shadow behind on my original playthrough, and I eventually maxed out 3/4 of the characters, with every character getting above Level 70, and all spells learned.
Not too terribly long after, life caught up to me. FFVII was decent, but by then I was pursuing other interests. A little over a year after its release, I became a father, and by the time FFVIII released, I no longer had the time to spend playing games for hours while exploring every nook and cranny. While I enjoyed other games like Chrono Trigger and most of the other SNES JRPGs, my personal memories are mostly of FFIV and FFVI.
Thanks for sharing! Always cool to hear different people's stories with this game :)
Great look at my absolute favorite game of all time. I started getting big into RPGs with Final Fantasy Legend (rather SaGa I suppose) when it came out as my older cousin gave it to me as he wasn't a fan of non-action titles and I fell in love immediately. I can still recall in vivid detail my first time playing most of the mainline series but nothing compared to FF VI, how it blew me away with that opening sequence. I was strangely hesitant when reading previews, doubting that I would become as endured to the cast as I was with those in FF IV, but was very quickly proven wrong. To this day the opera is perhaps one my favorite moments in any form of media.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
So excited to see this dropped! Can't wait to watch it!
Hope you enjoy it! :)
One of the moments in FFVI that is underrated and overlooked is the mid-game plot twist where Kefka literally destroys the world.
When I first played it back when I was 14, I thought I was about to fight the final boss on the floating continent, needless to say I was in for a shock. As a plot twist it hasn't aged that well; that is to say it has lost most of it's shock value due to it going on to become somewhat of a RPG trope, but in 1994 most games barely had dialogue nevermind a deep plot.
Yep, it's crazy how above and beyond this story was for 1994. Moments like the opera house, the story of Maduin and Madonna, and Cid's death (I wasn't very good at catching fish as a kid I guess lol) really hit me hard as a kid.
It wasn’t the first masterpiece jrpg at all.
DQ5 is also a JRPG masterpiece with an amazing narrative, that came out years earlier, same with Shin Megan tensei.
Anyways FF6 did definitely set a new benchmark for Jrpgs (and games in general), and was a masterpiece but just not the first.
Anyways great video! Only replying to the title here haha :)
Thank you! Yeah, this is just my personal opinion. You could easily make a case for a number of earlier titles being masterpieces 😀
Yes, it's a total masterpiece. I remember the characters having their own personalities, particularly when Edgar meets Terra the way he flirts with her was funny yet in a unique way sincere. I remember Locke lamenting the loss of Rachel, along with Setzer being sort of devil may care character with a heart of gold. Even Gogo, though brief, introduces himself in a quirky and straightforward manner. Kefka? A mad man who becomes an apathetic god still bound by his cynical sense of humor. I could go on and on, but this game blew my mind and captured my heart like no other game has ever been able to.
Here's how well the dungeon segments flow into the narrative - it had never occurred to me before that the Floating Continent could be classified as a "dungeon," because it didn't feel like one. There was urgency, and energy, and desperation, and worry. But it absolutely is one. 29 years later, the game is still blowing my mind in new ways that are just as impactful as when I was 9.
Well said! And thanks for sharing your experience :)
I am from Germany, so I had a PAL-version of the Super Nintendo on which american games could not run. Company politics at that time also tried to regulate the market making it difficult and quite expensive to lay hands on imported games. Clunky technical bypass solutions were needed to work around the intended hardware restrictions. In the nineties there were slightly shady stores in bigger german cities who sold these devices and imported games. I bought FF IV there and was really amazed, what storytelling could achieve, the graphics did not convince me really,but the music did. So I was totally hyped, when in Print magazines FFVI was announced. Whe I finally played it, I was totally blown away by it. Your Loveletter describes perfectly my first playthrough in an era long before the internet, where I had to discover everything the game offered by myself. Up to this day the Soundtrack is still running regularly at my place. Even my children hum the tunes without ever having played FFVI (they played Chrono Trigger eventually). Thank you very much for letting me relive my awe and wonder playing it the first time with your brilliant video.
Thank you for sharing your experience with the game! I'm very happy that my video was able to recapture some of that magic. :)
I played it for the first time 2 years ago and it held up great, for some reason it’s really easy to imagine the pixelated scenes as full movie scenes in my mind
Thanks for sharing! Yeah, your imagination really comes into its own with this game. Beautiful pixel graphics that leave a lot to the imagination :)
Wonderful job. Your content is amazing. Thank you for this love letter retrospective to, what is also MY favorite JRPG of all time. A watershed moment for gaming that once again reaffirms the Japanese as the true master artisans of game design.
Thank you so much! :)
Great video and good memories. I was maybe a bit too young when I played FF6, and also not a native English speaker, so I may have missed some of the finer details. This makes me want to play it again, after 30 years!
Thanks for sharing, and definitely give the game another shot! :)
Thanks for the long-form content. It gives me more stuff to listen to while working. 😁
Hey, any time ;)
Who did the Terra artwork at 1:29? That’s some of the best ff6 art I’ve ever seen
It's AI generated. I made it using Stable Diffusion and some Photoshop touchups.
I remember growing up in the 2000s when everyone was always talking about FF7 and 10, but a lot of the older games were often left out of the conversation so watching this series has been fascinating! Before this I didn’t know anything about these games.
That’s really cool! Glad to hear you enjoyed the videos 😀
One of not only my favorite Final Fantasies, but also one of my favorite games. I've beaten it so many times I can't remember. I beat the end skipping the others with only Celes, Setzer, and Edgar, a few scenes are pretty different, and low level challenge. Which was insane, some enemies you had to be sneaky to kill, like phoenix down on the train.
Thanks for sharing! I did the Celes/Setzer/Edgar challenge for this video to see the different scenes, although I was like level 70 so it mitigates a lot of the challenge 😂
Something I really wanna try next time I play is the no espers challenge, where you just use whatever the characters get naturally. Seems really fun!