RetroAspect: Final Fantasy 6, the Apex game.

Final Fantasy 6 is the hotly contested "best" entry, in the long running Final Fantasy franchise and for good reason. With a deep plot, layered characters and an engaging world, FF6 by far surpasses it's predecessors in so many ways.
The battle system is the most refined out of the SNES series, utilising the best elements from 4 and 5. Characters each have their own unique skill sets as they did in FF4, but you can also tune and customise characters using Magicite, which borrows slightly from the open ended job system of FF5.
The soundtrack was a treat as well and felt more dynamic and eclectic than what we had previously in the prior games. Each piece captured the mood perfectly and were far more complex arrangements than that if it's peers at the time.

We never had an official release of FF6 in the UK, until the PSX port came out (with some unpleasant hang ups; mainly the load times).
I eventually came to play FF6 on the Gameboy Advance, which by all accounts is the definitive version with many of the bugs and quirks from the original SNES game ironed out. I was ready for this, and I was assured that I would see FF6 through to the end and see for myself what it was so many found great about this game.

My journey through FF6 had some ups and downs, this is a very old game by todays standards and some of the pacing can feel really off. I also found chunks of the game were not at all difficult and I could breeze by, simply spamming the usual over powered attacks over and over.
FF6 does offer many ways to plan out battles but with such a huge party roster you end up with a lot of characters who are substantially less useful than others and you generally end up using the same foursome over and over again, so as not to handicap yourself.
There's no denying FF6 was an ambitious game, it's party roster is huge and unlike previous entries you get to use the whole lot of them by the endgame and it's pretty much essential to have a well balanced full compliment of teammates by the time you get there.

Final Fantasy 6 essentially is a 5 act game. It's incredibly story driven and pushes you to each area through narrative, rather than allowing you to explore at your whim.
Whilst some may find this takes away from the game, making it more linear it certainly does a great job of conveying the story and the urgency of the situation FF6's characters find themselves in.

Act One; starts with the intro and concludes at the point where Terra, Edgar, Sabin, Locke and Banon are split up.
Act Two covers the next several hours of gameplay that ends in Zozo.
Act Three is by far the longest segment and spans right up until the end of the floating continent which leads to Act Four: The World of Ruin and finally comes to end with Act Five, Kefka's tower.

Each act establishes a goal and ends with said goals completion. Each act also effects the flow and pacing of the game.
In Act One the game establishes that Terra has to choose to aid the Returners or risk being captured by the Empire.
In this act we also learn the basics of combat and that each character has a specific skill set. The enemies in act one are pretty simple and don't really take any tactics to beat, but you get to experiment with the party skills without a great risk of failure.

The final boss of this act is Vargas, who is actually the first real formidable enemy you fight in the game and requires you to use what you've learned in a very immediate fashion.
Once this battle ends it's a pretty straight forward path to Terra agreeing to aid the Returners and promptly sets up act two.

In act two the goal is to reunite the Returners and gain the help of the Frozen Esper in Narshe. It's a long segment that spans multiple continents and also introduces us to three (possibly four if you hire Shadow), party members.
Sabin's journey is effectively the core element of this act. It's not only the longest but also contains the most character development. When you meet Cyan there is a lot of character depth explored through the loss of his wife and son.
It's also in the Doma area where we see that Kefka is not just another general in the Empire but an altogether cruel and heartless enemy. It's here we're supposed to hate Kefka and root him in as the main villain.
His clownish appearance and unhinged personality give Kefka inhuman qualities that inform us he is an incredibly dangerous enemy that must not be taken lightly.
It's a well paced scene that sets the stage for later sections.

This act largely becomes gameplay based once the player escapes off the haunted train and there is no plot or character development. Though the game uses this opportunity to introduce us to Gau and teach us how to improve Gau's character skill by allowing us explore the Veldt in order to obtain him.

You may think this act comes to a close when Terra interacts with the Frozen Esper atop the cliffs in Narshe, but I disagree. The goal is to gain the help of the Espers in fighting the Empire and this goal is only achieved when you find Terra in the tower, in the town of Zozo.

Ramuh gives us some exposition and that awards the player with Magicite for the first time.
Magicite can be equipped one at a time to a party member and allows them to learn magic at variable rates.
Gaining access to this key element of party development, changes the tone of fighting for the rest of the game as you become more and more dependant on magic and cannot just spam the usual attacks as before.
Gaining Magicite also makes characters such as Locke and Celes more viable in battle as their character skills alone are so context sensitive, they really pale in comparison to characters like Sabin or Cyan who have powerful attacks right from the off and with no MP cost..

In Act Three we are finally set the goal of stopping the Empire, which is not a straight forward process in terms of narrative or gameplay.
You're first trip to the Magitech Research facility is a wake up call for using magic. Almost all the enemies in there have specific elemental weaknesses and the damage foes can dish out ramps up. Spells such as cure become absolutely essential from here on out and pretty much renders potions redundant in every situation.

We also get a hefty dose of character development for Locke, Celes and Terra. The former two gaining the most attention as the writers setup the love story for them.
It's also the point where we see our character roster begin to bloat with Setzer, Rem and Strago joining the ranks. None of them are particular amazing in terms of battle utility, Strago comes into his own later with amazing Magic stat improvements that combined with powerful endgame spells, make for some serious damage.

In this act Kefka's backstory is explained, being the first magic infused soldier or rather, Magitek Knight (of which Terra and Celes are also), Kefka's sanity was broken in the process and he becomes obsessed with power and obtaining it.
Due to his exploits with the Empire's dictator Emperor Gestahl, Kefka learns of the Warring Triad and in this whole act, we the player are pretty much oblivious to Kefka's goal of obtaining the Warring Triads power.

We also learn the full story of the Espers and how the world was formed in the wake of the Warring Triad, powerful Gods that battled endlessly and almost inadvertently destroyed the world in their ongoing battles.
They eventually agreed to stop and entrusted the Espers with protecting their statue forms from anyone who would upset their balance for power.
It's not explored too well but Kefka performs two of his most shocking deeds in this act with the first being the complete eradication of all Esper, when he converts every single last one of them into Magicite.
And then lastly he comes to destroy the world as we know it in the final location we explore in act 3 and the World of Balance itself.
Kefka's final action occurs on the floating continent, effectively a fail safe if the Espers are to fail protecting the Warring Triad, the Esper homeland is levitated into the air and becomes only accessible to airship.

This location I personally found required me to start grinding for better magic spells and levels up, not so much for stats but for more HP.
The Floating Continent difficulty curve is pretty steep with enemies unleashing all manner of powerful attacks - instant death spells, multiple ailments and lastly the Behemoth that has a nasty trick of raining down a powerful meteor spell on your party when it's beaten. This spell alone can wipe a party, it's a harsh lesson for the player.

We both succeed and fail at the end of act three; the Empire is ultimately destroyed but Kefka achieves his goal of obtaining the power of the Warring Triad and the party end up scattered all over the world in the ensuing calamity.

Act four sees Celes trapped on an island with the former Magitech research scientist Cid, who has fallen ill eating sickly fish.
This beginning section is all about instilling despair into the player. Even when we leave the island we see that the entire world map has been changed to reflect the catastrophic damage Kefka has caused in disturbing the Warring Triad.

This whole act is very open ended, as Celes you're more or less free to explore the world of ruin as you wish. It's alien, after such a structured and linear experience the game takes the leash off and says have at it.
I've found through my discussion with other players that this point of the game was incredibly divisive. Some players loved finally getting the chance to do it how they wished while others didn't enjoy dumping extra hours into just getting their bearings.

The singular goal of this act is to reunite, but much like the free reign exploration, the extent of uniting you do is up to you. You can finish the game with just four characters (madness!) or you can explore every corner of the world and get the whole gang back, even Shadow if you were kind enough to wait for him at the end of the floating continent section.

Once you're done here and you have an airship you're free to initiate act five: ending Kefka.

The tower is plot light, what you need to know occurs in the previous chapter and the degree of involvement you have depends on how much you sympathised with each party member you rediscovered.
What the tower is though, is a true test of your mastery of combat.
I'll be honest, on my first playthrough of Kefka's tower I was decimated over and over again. Getting wiped out was a serious concern, enemies boasted some formidable skills and you're also forced to split everyone you've found in to three groups. Most players will have settled on a standard team of four, but having four OP party members and a load of others very under levelled is a recipe for disaster in the tower.

I had to grind in a desert against sandworms for a very long time before my teams had enough HP to survive and enough variety of high level magic to swiftly deal with the enemies in the tower.
Now, FF6 is the second to last FF game I have finished (the latest being FF15!) so I've been incredibly spoiled. No endgame dungeon in a JRPG has given me as much trouble as Kefka's tower. It was a real hurdle to overcome, but once I got to the Warring Triad bosses I had pretty much conquered the dungeon.

Now to say that the final boss of FF6 is something to behold is selling it light. I can only imagine how excited and pumped those who first played FF6 were, when the orchestral music begins to boom and the harrowing choir shriek as Kefka descends from the heavens in his ultimate form.

He questions life, existence and the purpose if it all. Kefka is alone with his perceptions of the world. His ascension to godhood has fully dissipated any sense of sanity he had.

It's an interesting but brief interaction you have with Kefka prior to the fight. Kefka spent much of the game's plot, cruelly carrying out Emperor Gestahls orders.
We never really get to see things from Kefka's perspective or even get a hint of what he knows and is planning.
Throughout the entirety of the World of Ruin we don't hear a peep outta Kefka. Only stories of his cruelty and the effect he has had on the world.
In this final moment, before we set about to destroy him Kefka chooses to reflect on the essence of existence.
It's the hint of a more complex character, and I so wished he got more development in the World of Ruin but perhaps it's a good thing. It gives some levitation to the moment, Kefka's final words...

As a final boss he is quite straight forward, primarily just dealing out huge sums of damage for you to heal through. By the time I came face to face with Kefka I was spamming auto-life and dealing out huge DPS, to say I was overpowered might have been an understatement...
Regardless, Kefka is an enjoyable thematic fight and defeating him does grant a sense of victory and closure.

The final act draws to a close as our heroes flee Kefka's crumbling tower, there is a nice bit of character bonding here and independent stories are wrapped up nicely.

Final Fantasy 6 is a swan song for the SNES and serves as a fine example of classic JRPG. Even with the limitations of the SNES system they oozed every last drop of tech to get out the best game they could.
The battle system is pretty dated and it lacks the balance of later games, but you cannot deny the eclectic cast and narrative really make this journey something special.
You feel the desperation and sorrow of these little pixel people and get truly immerse into their little oblivious world, teetering on the edge of destruction.

For me FF6 deserves it's spot in gaming history as a true classic.

Digital Devil Saga; In the shadows of others. But a marvel all it's own

Shin Megami Tensei is a series of games that have rapidly increased in popularity since the release of the Persona titles on the PS2. That sub-series is still very popular and to date is the last Shin Megami game to be released, and the only one to receive a release on the current gen main consoles. (There are still many games on the 3DS)

It's a shame because I fell in love with the series after playing Nocturne (SMT 3) on the PS2 many years ago. At the time it felt like a Pokémon game for adults: catch Demon, raise Demon, fuse Demon. Gotta summon them all.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Shin Megami games is that the difficulty is rather steep. But this is something of a fallacy, SMT games reward tactics and planning and having the right resistances and skills is the make or break of any battle.
Granted there is the occasional cheap one hit KO scenarios from instant death attacks but most of the time the game gives the player enough time to protect themselves from those attacks before they become far too frequent but the occasional cheap game over is a bit of a mainstay of the series.

Eventually the SMT team decided to make a more accessible game, one with a shallow learning curve and with a greater emphasis on narrative and characters.
The game they made was Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner (that's a mouthful.) It utilised Nocturne's press turn icon battle system which I personally find to be one of the most intuitive battle systems known to JRPG.

But before I run off on a tangent about battle systems lets mention one great thing about DDS and that's the focus on a character driven narrative.
We're all familiar with Final Fantasy's cinematic take on JRPGs and their memorable and most of the time lovable characters, but in the SMT games we're often introduced to a silent protagonist that is effectively us, the player.
And thus the story tends to be about personal discovery and is more interested in challenging your thoughts and perception on religion, philosophy and existence. Interesting and deep stuff but it's A) not for everyone and B) lacks variety for want of a better word.

So one of the things DDS does as soon as you hit new game is introduce us to core cast:

The intro also introduces us the Junk Yard; the world the characters of DDS inhabit. It's a barren wasteland that rains constantly. There is no vegetation or any other signs of life other than the warring Tribes.
In the intro we learn that our main character Serph, is the leader of the Embryon and they're currently skirmishing against a neighboring tribe; the Vanguards. During a skirmish the two tribes come across an Egg shaped object on the battlefield. Perceiving this as some sort of new weapon the two clash attempting to capture it, but are caught in it's sudden detonation where it the Demon Virus that transforms the soldiers including Serph into insatiable demons that devour each other in a blood bath.

With their blood lust sated, Serph and his comrades discover a girl called Sera resting in the spot where the Egg had been, they take her back to their base where she continues to sleep while they ponder who she is and why she appeared.
It's learned when Sera awakes that she can calm Demons from their insatiable bloodlust and refers to herself as a Cyber Shaman.
Serph decides to talk with the Vanguards' leader Harley and travels there with Heat and Argilla (two soldiers from his inner circle).
Unfortunately Harley is in no mood to chat and flees, sending his soldiers to fend you off. Serph and Heat accept that it's devour or be devoured and so embellish their new forms while Argilla refuses to eat the defeated enemy demons.
Upon finally confronting Harley, after laying waste to his base, he finally succumbs to the Bloodlust and goes berserk, transforming into his Demon form and is subsequently Devoured by the Embryon soldiers upon his defeat.

The following day all the surviving tribe leaders are called to the Karma Temple: a colossal tower that somewhat governs the Junk Yard and will grant the victorious tribe access to Nirvana.
At the temple the leaders are spoken to by a voice that refers to itself as Angel. It restates that the purpose of the tribes is to fight until only one is left and that the introduction of the Demon Virus was to end the stalemate that had occurred.

Now as these revelations are made, the characters of the Junk Yard's eyes flash and their grey iris' become coloured. Along with this slight physical change the person's complete personality changes and they become more human.
For instance; Heat becomes passionate and reckless. Argilla becomes empathetic with a strong morality.
There are also two other primary characters introduced in the beginning that join Serph proper after the Karma temple and they are Gale and Cielo.
Gale is an intelligent and calm taciturn and Cielo is well, always cheering everyone up and not taking things too seriously.

Serph's team also affect the gameplay; each one of the team has elemental strengths and weaknesses that play into the press turn system. Each party member gets one turn, if they hit an enemy with a weakness or a critical attack they gain half a turn. The maximum amount of turns the entire party can have is six as you only allowed a maximum of three party members.
Conversely your enemies can also take advantage of the press turn system by exploiting your party's weaknesses, the enemy can also double their own turns and there in and of itself is the basis of all encounters. Knowing weaknesses and resistances.

Mastering the press turn system is key to survival in DDS, you are always forced to have Serph in your party and so will always have him weak to fire attacks but very early on you can learn skills and one of those allows you to void an elemental attack for all party members once per turn.
So as well as gaining bonus turns by exploiting weaknesses, in the press turn system you can also block attacks and prematurely end an enemies turn. A missed or voided attack loses the enemy two turns, but you can also repel and absorb attacks and they incur further turn penalties. These penalties also apply to your own party. It's great to see a JRPG enforce the same rules on the enemies as there are on the player.

So as you can see there is a lot to consider in each battle but unlike Nocturne, DDS eases you into this gameplay. Elements are introduced gradually with more complex enemy party groups only really appearing late in the game and instead of obtaining and fusing Demons, you always know your party's elemental attributes. Unlike in Nocturne where without pre-warning, it's very difficult to discern enemy weaknesses and resistances by the area you're in or by the enemy's appearance.
Coupled with the fact you may have fused or caught demons that are not suitable to the next area you're in this can all add up to be a bit of a nightmare and frustrating.

Now a static party does help simplify this system but it's not the only way the SMT team made DDS more accessible. Skills are no longer inherited or learned automatically through levelling, each party member has access to an expansive shared skill tree that requires AP to master. Each skill node has one or more skills and/or abilities within it that you can view before purchase.
The game puts you directly in the frame of what skills you wish each party member to learn and to top it off you can equip these abilities as you see fit with the only restriction being that AP can only be spent at save points.

So if you enter an area that's full of fire skill using enemies who are also weak to Ice, you could have Heat (who is resistant to fire), learn some Ice skills to counter these foes.
It's a really helpful feature that removes the punishing element from Nocturne when you don't have the correct abilities for the situation you're in.

Also as mentioned, skill nodes require AP which is obtained by defeating demons. However you can gain amazing boosts to AP by defeating enemies with "Devouring Skills". These skills are context sensitive and require the player to exploit enemy weaknesses to have them enter "fear" states that then grant Devouring Skills damage modifiers so they can deal killing blows.
It's a great addition that rewards tactical play with a genuine benefit and helps player progression in a big way. In fact the quickest way to learn late game skills, is to Devour demons with stronger Devour skills that further increase AP gains.

One gameplay element that is still very SMT but has been streamlined is dungeon environments. Most SMT games rely on labyrinthine style of level design with lots of branching paths that lead to dead ends and traps.
Their dungeons also tend to contain puzzle elements that the player must overcome in order to complete them. For instance in Nocturne the player finds themselves in a construction yard that has been taken under control by troublesome fairy demons. The demons patrol catwalks above the pathways and if you take the wrong path you get teleported back to the entrance of the area. And only by luck or by process of elimination can you discern which catwalks are safe to walk under. It can be an irritating process at times and most of Nocturnes puzzle dungeons work in this way, sending the player back to the beginning or in loop. It's time consuming and frustrating when it goes wrong and Nocturne begins to rely on this gimmick a lot in the later dungeons.

Both games contain well designed mapping tools that aid the player's navigation, which is pretty essential as the dungeons in either game are quite expansive. Fortunately DDS's dungeons are more simplified with less branching routes and rewarding players for going off the beaten track with useful items or unlockable shortcuts for save points.
There are no horrible looping or progress resetting traps until the final dungeon and even then they're not spammed as much as they are in Nocturne.
Most dungeons in DDS centre around one theme, barring the first dungeon that is extremely straight forward and works more or less as a tutorial. Players will find themselves in a creepy castle that contains light puzzles where the player has to line up rays of light to progress. A derelict ship that's a straight forward gauntlet and a complex sewer system with one way pathways that force the player to consult their map and consider their routes.

Save points are also more commonplace in DDS and allow the player to fully heal themselves for some ingame currency and spend accumulated AP in the skill tree menu.
In Nocturne save rooms are separate from healing rooms and fusion rooms and in dungeons you only encounter save rooms and so you must be fully prepared to tackle the whole dungeon or be forced to retreat to a hub area to fuse more powerful demons or heal up.
Shops are detached from the save points and require the player to return to the Embryon base to purchase items and equipment.

It's been a long time since I heard anyone talk about a Shin Megami Tensei game that wasn't one of the Persona games. Indeed those titles have taken the series into the forefront of popular JRPGs but SMT has an expansive back catalogue of amazing games and I personally find their PS2 selection to be the undisputed finest works the company has released.

Having recently played Persona 5 I was glad to see that Atlus wanted to make Persona more accessible and while that game has a pretty big hurdle for players to overcome (90+ hours to finish means you need some endurance). It does a lot to encourage new players dive in and have a go with it's gentle learning curve and relaxed attitude to dungeon completion.

If you have a PS2 and some free time and have never tried Digital Devil Saga I wholeheartedly urge you to do so, it's a fabulous piece of gaming. Or if you've been too afraid to delve in to a Shin Megami Tensei game because you've heard they're "hardcore" or "too hard". Give DDS a try. You'll be surprised at how welcoming this game is and how easy it is to master the mechanics of the press turn icon system.

For me Digital Devil Saga is a beautifully crafted game that I always come back to every so many years. Far more often that I return to Nocturne or other SMT titles.