In terms of story, what do you believe can be improved?
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Honestly my least favorite part of FFVI is how the story gets fragmented during the World of Ruin. After you pick up Setzer and the second airship everything before tackling Kefka's Tower is made optional, which is cool in some ways, but makes the story itself not flow very well and story beats have less impact than the ones in the first half. Alongside an overall lack of guidance in what to do (which again some people like the freedom of WoR) made the final half of the story not nearly as engaging for me as the beginning was. There are ways to do open world and freedom in a game without butchering the story in the process. Iirc because of characters being optional SE didn't bother to add in lines for characters you find after you get the airship, something that Octopath Traveller does and is why I didn't get that game.
Overall I think VI is a great game...for its first half and then it falls apart, but that's just me. I still like it more than VII.
Overall I think VI is a great game...for its first half and then it falls apart, but that's just me. I still like it more than VII.
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I think the fact that it becomes a lot easier to miss content in the World of Ruin could be a flaw. Having said that, I personally love how scattered everyone is and how the player can resolve personal story arcs for each character. It suits the post-apocalyptic feel that they were going for and I guess real life in situations like this aren't easy.
Some of my favourite parts of the game are from the World of Ruin, but if I hadn't loosely followed a walkthrough then I am not 100% certain I would have known where to go in order to discover them. I think they should have kept the story more or less the same, but perhaps the plot could have driven the player into each scenario (which would need some expansion). That said, with doing that then the freedom and choice aspects are undermined. It could be a tricky balance to get right.
Another thing could be to integrate Umaro and Gogo into the story more. These characters appear to be slotted in at the last moment are hardly explored at all. Which is fine in itself since the cast is huge anyway. I still love these characters, but I would love to know more about them.
Personally the plot itself is very strong in this game and I can't think of much to improve it.
Some of my favourite parts of the game are from the World of Ruin, but if I hadn't loosely followed a walkthrough then I am not 100% certain I would have known where to go in order to discover them. I think they should have kept the story more or less the same, but perhaps the plot could have driven the player into each scenario (which would need some expansion). That said, with doing that then the freedom and choice aspects are undermined. It could be a tricky balance to get right.
Another thing could be to integrate Umaro and Gogo into the story more. These characters appear to be slotted in at the last moment are hardly explored at all. Which is fine in itself since the cast is huge anyway. I still love these characters, but I would love to know more about them.
Personally the plot itself is very strong in this game and I can't think of much to improve it.
I think the biggest thing that holds this game back from being good is the fact that there are just too many characters. And another pet peeve I have is gaining characters so deep into the game. I mean, there are 4 characters you get when you're better than half way through the game. Of all the characters, most of them are useless in battle. You only need Edgar, Sabin, Cyan and Celes for battle.
As far as story goes, they all play some role, I suppose. I think it just gets convoluted with the 1100 characters in the story. I agree with ribbit and that you could essentially finish the game with just Celes and Setzer (and maybe even without him too). For all of the hub-bub about Terra being the lead character or Locke, you can finish the story without them, which almost renders them entirely useless. Imagine playing FFVII and never helping out Cloud with his amnesia thing and just taking out Sephiroth without him, doesn't that seem odd? Same concept here. If I recall, getting Locke was very annoying, and being he's subpar in battle, why bother?
I've always felt this game just tried way too hard to be epic (soundtrack too). The overglorifying of the opera scene, a killer clown and the oh so climactic "the bad guy won and destroyed the world" thing. I think from a 30,000 foot perspective, it really isn't any more epic than say either of it's 2 predecessors of the same generation. But for some reason, people really gush about this game.
As far as story goes, they all play some role, I suppose. I think it just gets convoluted with the 1100 characters in the story. I agree with ribbit and that you could essentially finish the game with just Celes and Setzer (and maybe even without him too). For all of the hub-bub about Terra being the lead character or Locke, you can finish the story without them, which almost renders them entirely useless. Imagine playing FFVII and never helping out Cloud with his amnesia thing and just taking out Sephiroth without him, doesn't that seem odd? Same concept here. If I recall, getting Locke was very annoying, and being he's subpar in battle, why bother?
I've always felt this game just tried way too hard to be epic (soundtrack too). The overglorifying of the opera scene, a killer clown and the oh so climactic "the bad guy won and destroyed the world" thing. I think from a 30,000 foot perspective, it really isn't any more epic than say either of it's 2 predecessors of the same generation. But for some reason, people really gush about this game.
I was discussing with a friend earlier how I felt like the game suffers from having too many protagonists and how a lot of the characters feel kind of under-developed as a result. But they--who have put far more time into the game than I ever could--showed me a lengthy list of things that I missed, which is particularly frustrating when I was actually looking for them. So I don't think the criticism that most of the characters are kind of under-developed really holds up. But it's going to leave that impression on the first playthrough unless you're looking at a guide to see absolutely everything and to see all the ultra-specific circumstances that have to happen in order to trigger key character moments.
It's actually not necessarily a bad thing that these moments can be skipped if you're a skilled enough player. The above post describes a hypothetical FFVII where you could just skip Cloud entirely and defeat Sephiroth without him, and honestly, I think that kind of sequence breaking is fine. The problem is that even if you're looking for this content, it's easy to miss because the triggers are too specific. It's less akin to if you skip helping Cloud with his amnesia and moreso if Cloud's amnesia never triggered in the first place unless you had specific party members and had completed other quests beforehand.
Contrast with something like Chrono Trigger, where you can engage Lavos at pretty much any point. It's your funeral, but you can. Still, for the sake of the story and because it will give you the skills and weapons you need along the way, the side quests are pretty easy to stumble into without having to wander around too much, and NPC's will give you some decent guidance as to where to go.
I still love FFVI and even more so now that I've seen some of the content that I missed out on. But I do think it could have done a better job with how it chose to do that.
It's actually not necessarily a bad thing that these moments can be skipped if you're a skilled enough player. The above post describes a hypothetical FFVII where you could just skip Cloud entirely and defeat Sephiroth without him, and honestly, I think that kind of sequence breaking is fine. The problem is that even if you're looking for this content, it's easy to miss because the triggers are too specific. It's less akin to if you skip helping Cloud with his amnesia and moreso if Cloud's amnesia never triggered in the first place unless you had specific party members and had completed other quests beforehand.
Contrast with something like Chrono Trigger, where you can engage Lavos at pretty much any point. It's your funeral, but you can. Still, for the sake of the story and because it will give you the skills and weapons you need along the way, the side quests are pretty easy to stumble into without having to wander around too much, and NPC's will give you some decent guidance as to where to go.
I still love FFVI and even more so now that I've seen some of the content that I missed out on. But I do think it could have done a better job with how it chose to do that.