3.
I find as I get closer to the top that these are getting a bit harder to write, largely because a lot of my reasoning comes down to more personal things and I'm a fairly private person which makes writing these pieces a bit uncomfortable for me. So now we've reached my favorite Final Fantasy in the series, and the game that plays a large part of why I'm here and how I got into RPGs to begin with. There is no point in really recapping the story or gameplay because of the nature of our forum and due to this particular entry's reputation among fans. Besides, I have to leave something for the retrospective articles when I get back to them, which may happen once this list is completed.
So this is the first Final Fantasy I ever played, and probably the second RPG I really remember playing. I had one gamer friend growing up through middle school and high school who was a huge fan of RPGs and he wanted me to get into them as well. Unfortunately, growing up in a Tolkien/High Fantasy obsessed house with some overbearing family members, I ignorantly believed that all RPGs were just silly fantasy bulltrout with elves and dwarves and occasionally a dragon or two. Not stuff I particularly disliked, but stuff I had been exposed to all my life and no longer really wowed me like they did when I was six or seven. None of this was helped that the few RPGs I knew of were the D&D RPGs and Dragon Warrior with their typical fantasy trappings on the cover. I loved video games, but I was more interested in the arcade experience of Beat 'em Ups and Fighting games. The idea of a game driven by menus didn't really appeal to me too much either, so for the longest time I resisted his attempts to get me into the genre. While I can never quite remember what started it, I finally relented and let him lend me two games he really thought I would like: Final Fantasy VI and Secret of Mana. SoM was chosen due to it's battle system being closer to what I was into and FFVI was chosen to appeal to my Sci-Fi interest and love of mecha and robots thanks to the Magitek Armors.
I threw in FFVI first, watched the really cool intro and was pretty intrigued by the game's premise and the cool sequence of watching the party walk to Narshe in the Magitek Armors. I liked the idea of a world that no longer knew of magic and it suddenly being revived. It was an interesting premise that hadn't quite been as overused at the time as it is now. So I go into battle and the dudes are on one side taking turns hitting others and the damn asshole never bothered to give me an instruction manual or anything for this thing, so here I am trying to figure out what the buttons do and I probably fumbled for ten minutes inputting a command and then incorrectly canceling it and putting me back to square one. I think I got to the second scripted battle before I grew so frustrated that I called it quits and threw in Secret of Mana instead. So yeah, I started this relationship off kind of hating the game for making me feel stupid. After SoM softened my stance some more and more encouragement from my friend who lent it to me, I eventually decided to go back to the game and my time with SoM better prepared me for the dumbass menu system.
Despite a hiccup here and there usually involving Sabin, I eventually got hooked on the ride. I loved the idea of magic and science being brought together in an unholy union, I liked the way magic was handled and I loved the more interactive and unconventional skill mechanics the party possessed that made them feel so distinct from each other. I became invested in Terra's story of discovery, Locke's tragic past, the Figaro's brother's relationship, Cyan's tragic intro, Celes' betrayal, and the uber awesome Shadow and Interceptor the Wonder Dog. By the time the Opera Scene and Magitek Factory passed by, I was sold on the game. Of course this all ended a bit tragically for me when I accidentally stumbled onto the Sketch Bug and ended up erasing all of the save files on the game, including my friend's brothers save which was the only one he told me not to touch. So I sheepishly gave him the game back without finishing it and apologized for it but he was pretty cool with it since he was aware of the bug himself. Still, I was too embarrassed to ask to borrow it again after killing his files to ever start over and finish it. Instead I plunged into the RPG genre I had been missing out on and went onto FFIV. It was my last year of Middle School I finally found my own copy of the game and I plunged into with enthusiastic zeal. By this time, my friends were obsessing over this other game called Chrono something but I was still trying to finish up a game that had become a bit of a Unicorn/Eleanor for me. Finishing this game was a major accomplishment for me cause it was a title that had kind of got me hooked on the series but I wasn't able to play it to completions for awhile and it drove my OCD crazy.
VI has forever remained a magical game for me. Objectively, I can tear this game apart with an non-intuitive customization system that is largely obsolete due to your level being the only really important stat. Magic is overpowered, summons are underwhelming and several party skills and weapon/relic combos break this game with little effort. The plot is good for it's time but video game writing came a long way only a few years after this game released, and the second half of the game suffers from the writing coming off more stilted due to the open world nature of itself. The music, well who am I kidding, this game is Nobuo Uematsu's Magnum Opus and I can't really think of a better OST he worked on though a few do come close. Despite the flaws the game carries with itself, I can't help but love it though cause it was a game that actually made me care and feel for the cast. While VI has an interesting premise to it's world and setting, the game isn't so much plot focus as it is character focus, and I still feel VI has one of the best casts in the franchise. I salute them for giving me so many great characters and spending time with all but three of them to get you to actually give a damn about them which was pretty impressive cause even nowadays it's not uncommon to play games with three times the playtime and a quarter of the cast VI had and still feel like the writers dropped the ball on some of the characters. I mean I love FFTactics but if I was to discuss which specific characters I liked versus the ones I didn't care for or felt underutilized, I would become painfully aware that I only really loved a handful of them among a massive cast. VI's ensemble approach to the characters was a smart move and SE's attempts to have lightning strike twice just never materialized for them in my opinion.
There are many other reasons why I love this game of course, I still feel VI kind of clinched the most interesting dungeon design in the series with great puzzles and unique scenarios to play through. Yet I feel it was how the game integrated gameplay and storytelling that really resonated with me.I love the Opera scene, it's a funny and ridiculous scenario but the music is great and that initial moment of panic when you realize you have to memorize a script to get through it was actually a mind blowing experience for my adolescent mind. Before that moment, games were just about overcoming obstacles and working towards a goal, and while this is not any different in theory, it caught me off guard to have the usual static story sections where I would patiently sit there and read text suddenly ask me to interact and play a part of it was kind of a watershed moment for me and irreversibly changed my mind about the medium. It might seem a bit silly now to think that something so simple and silly could have such a profound effect but in addition to having a pretty receptive mind due to my age, I simply never really experienced something like that before. I've dealt with an occasional dialogue tree but this was something different. I can't change the answers, I have to help Celes now play the part of Maria and it was a profound bonding moment for me. Celes is not even my favorite character in the game but that Opera scene has always made me feel a connection with her I simply don't have with too many characters and this to me is magical and the true potential of the medium, something I feel my next two entries embody on a greater level but for me this start down the road of video games as an art form began with VI.
For me, VI is just filled with too many moments that stand out for me. Even though a game like Xenogears has better writing and deeper meaning to it's storytelling, it can't quite eclipse the feeling you get when you watch Edgar and Sabin decide the fate of Figaro to a coin toss, watching Setzer recount his lost love Daryl as you descend the stairs to her tomb, Cyan's memories of his family in the nightmare world, and Terra storming the gates of Narshe in Magitek Armor. VI is simply a magical game to me and I love all of it, even the stuff people often criticize the game for, I can forgive it because VI was probably my first "proper" RPG and it's what I cut my teeth on it, and I honestly can't think of a better game to be a real "first" for turn based RPGs. So many of it's elements went of the franchise, Limit Breaks, interactive gameplay sequence, special input devices for attacks, more open ended final acts, better blending of magic and science elements, and better dungeon design. Secret of Mana may have been the start of what I feel is Square's most successful and experimental period of the company's history, but I feel VI embodied this era better than any other entry with possibly VII being the only exception. Overall, VI is a bit like my last entry, a flawed but masterfully done game that pushed the genre and the series forward in some exciting ways. For it's few issues, the game has more good to outweigh the bad for me and whenever I truly begin to doubt my feelings for the series, I just need to pop this gem back in and play a few hours to remind myself why I've stayed so dedicated to the series in the first place. It's another stellar title from Square's Golden Age and a highlight of a time frame where I felt the developer was at it's creative peak, a sentiment many of the actual designers themselves believe in if interviews are to be believed. It was a great time to be alive, and it was a great time to be a gamer. No era since has really made me feel excited about the future of gaming like that time period, and no game better embodied that feeling to me than VI.

Coming Up Next: "As long as we have 'loyalty till the end' there's no point in believing in anything, even in those we love. The only thing we can believe in, with absolute certainty is the mission, Jack."