Final Fantasy VI (PC) Review

As usual, this is a great game. It boasts a terrific roster of fourteen characters, some of whom are tremendously fascinating and some of whom have no personality, and the plot revolves around Kefka, the legendary antagonist. With so many characters, themes are the main focus of the game: adjustment, growth, and hope in the face of a straw-nihilistic god, and excellent music further ties the package together. As with Final Fantasy V on PC, this is a great game, but also a terrible version of it.

One of the more curious aspects of Final Fantasy VI on PC is that it has eluded much of the community that this is a port of the mobile version, and that the issues being criticised are not unique to the PC. Ridiculous sprites, ugly black bars, and static PNGs for enemies were all present in the mobile version, much as was the case for Final Fantasy V.

It's true that more effort was put into this than was put into its immediate predecessor, but that doesn't say very much. Among the optimisations is that the control is fluid and concise; one of the biggest problems with the mobile version is that the controls were never smooth or graceful. With FFV on PC, the sense of navigating touchscreen controls with a cursor was omnipresent. FFVI doesn't have these problems, and that's refreshing, but this isn't to say the PC version is flawless.

Never mind that offline mode was unavailable upon launch (almost certainly because of obtrusive DRM), and never mind the severe lag that many laptop players experienced. Sometimes character sprites inexplicably disappear, followed by crashing and a Quicksave that becomes useless. Hours of progress can be lost this way, and even regular saves are not immune to this bizarre bug. Often, relaunching the game fixes this, but not always.

It's still the same game it's always been, more or less, and it's still good. It's not the perfect thing it used to be, and in this form it's only slightly better than good. Screen tearing is obnoxious and something that players are expected to fix; the recommendation is to activate anti-aliasing with third-party software, presumably because Square Enix couldn't be bothered to add it itself. That is the running theme for the recent Final Fantasy cash-ins: Square Enix couldn't be bothered.

Among the more interesting failures is that the title appears to close by forcing itself to crash. Neither is the mouse cursor hidden upon launch, although there is no support for mouse input. It could be worse, of course: it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the game attempted to hide the mouse cursor by uninstalling and deleting the mouse drivers. The whole affair of Final Fantasy rereleases has gotten to a point where tears or laughter are warranted, and which is justified depends on an individual's tolerance for shameless silliness.

It's perfectly okay when Goat Simulator stops working inexplicably and crashes as a method of closing the game. It's less acceptable when Final Fantasy VI does it, partially because the latter is more expensive and partially because it's not a joke product - or is it?