Magitech

[Wolf Kanno]

It would have been nice to see magitech manifest itself in other technologies instead of just the armour but then we'd be moving in on VII territory with mako.

Actually its used in a lot of things in VI. As Sephiroth pointed out, the Magitech Soldiers themselves are genetic engineering, as well as a good chunk of monsters you face in the Magitech Research Lab. Just about every high tech machine the empire uses is Magitech technology as well.

Magitech soldiers are just kind of lame in game. They're a pushover. It would have been good to fight a team of strong MagiKnights, or even battle Kefka in them once. But yeah, I think Magitech armour was definitely undersold.

They are not really that weak, at least when you finally get to face the real ones at Vector. They have a much higher defense than usual and lost their weakness to Poison. Only magic based skills, high damage attacks, or magic can take them out quickly. Hell, you have to rely heavily on the Figaro Bros. until you acquire the Magitech weapons like the Flameberge, Thunderblade, and other elemental swords, to deal with them without much effort.

Of anything, their really no different from the nameless SOLDIERs you fight in VII, who are actually pretty weak when you face them, and are basically just meatier mooks.

Gameplay wise I didn't see anything unique with them. From what I remember it just had the basic black magic elemental attacks except they were called beams instead right?

Except if you use Terra and Celes with them there are some amusing quirks with the armor. Besides Terra getting more abilities, both of them seem to get damage bonuses to the beams associated with their elements, I find that Terra does more damage with Fire Beam than the other characters (it also doesn't help that most creatures in the Magitech Armor sections are also weak to it) and Celes, likewise, does more damage with Ice Beam than other characters. Mage characters do better with the armor as usual but that's not surprising.