It’s widely perceived that Final Fantasy III/VI (which I will refer to as “6” from here on out) is the most popular Final Fantasy in the series. In fact, although I can’t find the source off the top of my head, but it was widely shared over the span of last year, that 6 won a fan-vote tournament of which FF was the most popular of the series.
Me, being the contrarian type that typically pushes the brakes and tends to lean away from things that are popular after over-analysis and trite reasoning sometimes, kind of scoffed at the notion. It was kind of a no-brainer, since it really was going to be either 6 or 7, but for what it’s worth, I’m simply glad that 7 didn’t win. Personally, my favorite has always been 4, with my rationale being a level of challenge that seemed to be missing in every FF afterward, and the fact that it really was one the first FF I ever had, when it was released for the SNES as Final Fantasy II.
For whatever reason, I was having an emo-ey morning where I was thinking about how much of a loner I am, and then I began to hear the theme of Shadow from 6 in my head, because he’s also a loner, and well the spaghetti-western style of his theme ruled. From there, I began to think about Shadow’s character, and then the mental snowball began rolling and now I have seven Final Fantasy Wikia tabs open in my browser reminiscing about 6 outright.
But it got me thinking about a lot of little things about the story of 6, and then I began to conclude that the story itself really wasn’t that deep, but when it came to the myriad of individuals available in the game, 6 really had a wealth of quality in character development. Suddenly, I’m prioritizing mentally, if 6 really might be the best Final Fantasy of them all.
Sure, the game is broken as hell which leads to a variety of ways where the player can exploit the game to power level and then breeze through the game, but I’m growing to appreciate just how well developed some of the characters are throughout the game, and some of the plot devices the game uses that, whether or not it was deliberate, does not dumb it down and lets the player think for themselves.
Which brings me back to Shadow, because it’s his role in the game which I really think about when I think about the hefty efforts the developers put into individual character development. Not that anyone reading this really needs to know, but just in case, 6’s game essentially runs in two parts. Shadow is sparsely available in the first half of the game, and based on your decisions at the midway point, you might not even have Shadow available come the second half of the game. Regardless, the depth of this seemingly part-time character is really deep, complex, and has the possibility to tug at the heart-strings of even the most emotionally hardened of individuals.
The thing is, back when I was playing 6 when it originally was just on the SNES, the internet wasn’t around, and there was nobody out there to spoil Shadow for me. At the time, RPGs weren’t cool, and there were very few people I knew that were playing as well. It was even a surprise that the game had a commercial given the general reputation of role-playing games back then. But back to the point, the story of Shadow was an unopened book, free for me and only me to find and reveal, hint, clue and page at a time. The more I think about it, the more I recognize just how brilliant it all was in how it was executed.
At first, it’s little hints, like how Shadow’s companion dog behaves around Relm when they meet. How protective the dog is of Relm aside from Shadow, and in later parts of the game, has the same in-battle behaviors applied for Relm as it would Shadow, regardless of if Shadow is available or not in the second half of the game. Later on a more obvious hint is given, when a particular accessory is acquired and it’s suspiciously only available for Relm or Shadow to wear, with a cryptic description of “Ring blessed by departed mother’s love” along with some decent status immunities.
Upon the start of the second half, if Shadow is still available to the player, more revealing hints are unveiled in straight up memory “dream” sequences that randomly occur when staying at an inn with Shadow in the party. Within these sequences, the player actually gets to see what Shadow looked like before he became Shadow, and hints about his past, and the eventual association between him and Relm.
It doesn’t take a genius to understand the link between Shadow and Relm, but when you’re 11-years old and more concerned about getting to level 99 and perplexed by the Cursed Shield and how to beat the Brachiosaurs, you’re not thinking about the complexities of character development at some times. Even playing through the game while older, I knew about it, but apparently didn’t really come to appreciate it as I do today.
4 will always hold a special place in my gaming heart, because it was pretty much the first RPG that got me into the genre. To this day, it has a level of difficulty that is unmatched by more modern iterations of the series, and its cast and their own characteristics still continues to transcend the tests of time. But I think it’s time that I fess up that 6, in spite of its relatively easy difficulty is still a more complete package overall, with superior beauty, visuals, and outstanding character development and use of plot devices.
Man, writing this entire post just made me realize just how much I’d love it if there were a good ROM emulator for the iPad that existed so I could put classic old games like 6, 4, and both Tactics Advance games on it and remember the good old days.
