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Final Fantasy VI Advance - Weltall - 26th February 2007
Review: Final Fantasy VI Advance
Platform: Game Boy Advance
Rating: 9.5/10[indent]Final Fantasy VI Advance is the latest in a series of GBA ports based upon the classic series. Fans of the series are usually divided into one of two massive camps. One considers Final Fantasy VI to be the pinnicle of the franchise, and the rest consider Final Fantasy VII worthy of that honor. Those of the former category will be thrilled to see their choice finally get some attention after the much-hyped Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy VI is the tale of a world on the brink of repeating a cataclysmic disaster. Magic is a force that once scoured the world of much life and civilization, after which it nearly vanished. Now, an ambitious emperor seeks to find this power and harness it as a weapon in order to subjugate the world. A large cast of disparate heroes must band together and stand against the emperor before his greed and avarice threaten the very fabric of the world.
Since this is a port, and of a game I have reviewed previously, this review will focus more on the port, than the game from which it was ported.
[/indent]
Graphics: 8.5
[indent]Practically identical. The only changes are in the text appearance and menu fonts, which are all more streamlined. It also helps that the GBA screen is sharper than a television, and that helped the appearance some. Overall, if you liked it before, no reason not to now. The screen resolution is of course decreased but you probably wouldn't pay attention if I didn't tell you that.
[/indent]
Audio: 7.0
[indent]This is where the most complaining comes, from the old-school fans, and it's certainly the only justified complaining. Some of the songs just plain sound funny (Searching for Friends has this weird clicking beat) and some of the sound effects are odd, but not to any real extent. Overall, the quality dropped, though I don't weigh this very heavily because there was no avoiding it, and it could have been handled a lot worse. The music we all knew and loved is still intact.[/indent]
Gameplay: 10.0
[indent]The gameplay has been, more or less, left intact. If you played it thirteen years ago, you'll have no trouble with it now. There are a few, very, very minor slowdown issues, mostly noticed when a large, graphically-complex spell is cast. There is also, allegedly, slowdown when using a chocobo or one of the two airships, but I honestly did not notice it at all. Those sequences seemed just as fluid to me as I remember.
[/indent]Translation: 10.0[indent]Oh boy. If you've ever seen other reviews of this game, you'll have seen no shortage of mincing over the new translation. Well, allow me to editorialize for a moment:
Pity them, laugh at them, but don't take them seriously. Not for one second.
The original Ted Woolsey translation was, to be fair regarding his constraints, unimpressive, and the game screamed for someone to do a decent job. The dialogue now is much, much more coherent and in many cases fleshes the storyline a bit more. Better still, the new translation clarifies several plot points that were confusing and incoherent before. We now, for instance, know that a certain mother was not an idiot who hands over her baby willingly only to regret it five seconds later, but rather the victim of child-snatching, for starters. Can't say too much without ruining things, but you get the idea. In this area, the translation was vital and extremely welcome. The original is a joke in comparison.
Spell names, item names, Monster and Esper names and the like have all been updated either through the original translation or to be more consistent with the ongoing Final Fantasy saga. Some veterans will suffer some momentary confusion, but if you've played the game before, you'll know what the stuff is, and everything has a description to help. Newcomers, of course, won't have any such problems.
Overall, this was the major selling point for me, and I'm incredibly impressed with the results. If one appreciates quality and coherence over silly nostalgia, one too will be impressed.
[/indent]Final Word
[indent]This game has long been one of the games by which an entire franchise, to say nothing of an entire genre, has drawn comparison and with good reason. Anyone who appreciates a good RPG, especially a good RPG made much better, owes it to themselves to hook a copy of this game.[/indent][indent]
[size=6]9.5
[/size][/indent]
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 26th February 2007
You failed to mention the extra dungeons and summons and stuff :D.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and add my two cents.
Graphically, the GBA does have a lower resolution, but it's ALMOST the same as the max resolution the SNES worked with anyway (which the SNES simply upscaled for display on a TV), so it really is the same resolution as what the SNES game had, only not upscaled to fill a higher res display. Upscaling doesn't add quality to an image, it just makes it fit the screen, so that's nothing to miss. Keep in mind it's only ALMOST the same, the game has, like all SNES ports, been trimmed at the top and bottom, and just a tad on the left and right. For the most part, it doesn't really affect anything, and it was either this or showing the full image but distorted and fuzzy, plus it's to be expected. Perfectly acceptable. There are a handful of graphical anomalies, but really unless you've played the original I suppose you won't notice anything. Most of them really only happen in the battles.
As far as sound, that's the big one. Most of it is in the form of sound effects in battle being just completely off. It gets the job done though. So far the most noticable music issue has been the lack of a lot of "fade out" so the music just stops into silence in a lot of places where it originally faded away nice and dramatically. One of the most noticable is fortunately an out of the way cutscene where a bartender laments for the days when he was being oppressed by the Empire and the ol' flapper music starts playing. Aside from this, yes, the music is mostly exactly as I remember.
The game has some slowdown. Walking around, for the most part, it's fine. Sometimes there will be a lot of characters all moving around on screen and some background animation and you'll notice a little slowdown, like when talking to people the text displays slower than normal. There's also the slowdown for really big graphical effects in battle. The game isn't perfect here, but it is fairly close and I'd say FF4 had worse slowdown issues to deal with.
The new translation is great, though a lot of it is nearly identical to the original translation. The extra lines here and there and the clarification do add interesting bits to the story that were orginally not included for either space or censorship reasons. The items monsters and spells are all way better. They did keep a lot of things in there for no reason but nostalgia, which I'm not sure I like. Further, there was censorship at play here. It seems they were really going for that E rating and so Relm's act was cleaned up once again (and she still doesn't refer to herself in the 3rd person). There's also that whole Celes chained to the wall and beaten thing. Translation is still superior to the original though, which had all the same censorship and more.
Really, at this point I'm pretty sure Squeenix is going to go ahead and rerererelease all 6 of these games on the PSP now, and if they do, I think a completely authentic translation would be warrented, right down to Sabin being called "Mash"... okay maybe not that... Yeah like with FF5 I think some name changes are warrented (Butz? BUTZ? Are you kidding me? Still, "Bartz" isn't much better...).
Final Fantasy VI Advance - A Black Falcon - 26th February 2007
Quote:Really, at this point I'm pretty sure Squeenix is going to go ahead and rerererelease all 6 of these games on the PSP now, and if they do, I think a completely authentic translation would be warrented, right down to Sabin being called "Mash"... okay maybe not that... Yeah like with FF5 I think some name changes are warrented (Butz? BUTZ? Are you kidding me? Still, "Bartz" isn't much better...).
Well, they've announced the first two of course... sold separately... with seemingly minimal upgrades other than higher-resolution graphics...
... Square-Enix has 10-12 Final Fantasy projects of various types under development right now...
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 26th February 2007
Are they really selling the 1&2 combo as seperate games? That's crazy... They sold it as a single package in both Origins (one CD) and the GBA game.
As for extras, I guess artwork, those FMVs from the PS1 version, and maybe a few other extras.
Shame they don't just put some extra effort in there and port all 6 in a mega collection. The problem is, the PSP isn't all that popular right now. People aren't going to want to spend that much money on a single game that comes in a collection of two on the cheap on the GBA just because there's some FMVs.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - A Black Falcon - 27th February 2007
It won't cost much and will make money... what more justification could they need?
Yes, it's absurd that they are being sold separately, but... well, Square-Enix just thinks that people will buy them anyway, so why not? It makes twice as much money, and requires no more effort! Double for nothing!
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 27th February 2007
Bad money drives out good...
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 28th February 2007
...Big Red Pyramid Head?
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Weltall - 28th February 2007
That has been my GameFAQs alias for the last four years, yes.
Good eye.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 6th June 2007
I got the game last weekend and I know have portable versions of my favorite Final Fantasy and Zelda games! The game is just as good as I remember and I haven't encountered any issues yet. The one change I really do appreciate is the script. I may not notice all of the changes since it's been a while since I last played the game, but there are places that I've noticed where the script seems a lot funnier or makes a lot more sense.
One thing I don't remember, though, is if your choice at the Terra/Sabin/Locke branching story makes a difference. I just got to that part and I seem to remember there being a difference in Sabin's story if you don't do things in a certain order. Did it have something to do with Shadow?
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 6th June 2007
The order is just like Megaman games, it's just a choice you have. You'll do all the scenarios. As for Shadow, the only thing there is you have the choice of letting him in your party, and whe he is in your party, he has a 1 in 4 or so chance of running away in random encounters (the game designers were smart and disabled this chance when you are in the imperial camp and the phantom train). What you can do is just save after every battle where Shadow stays and load if he runs and then you'll keep him the longest possible time, which is up to the jump into the falls. The order you play the scenarios doesn't affect this.
By the way, I'm STILL finding secret things I missed. Apparently after you beat Vargas, if you run all the way back to South Figaro before going any further, you get a storyline scene where Sabin and Duncan's wife talk about Vargas. If you are picking scenarios, it's too late to see this, even if you stick Sabin in your party and bring him back.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Weltall - 6th June 2007
Actually, whether Shadow leaves is determinate on the amount of Gil you earn while he is with you. If you earn a certain amount, he has 'earned his payment' and will leave. So essentially, the more battles you fight, the sooner he's likely to leave. This only factors for Gil earned from fighting. Treasure and selling items does not count.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 7th June 2007
I hadn't heard about the gil part before. It's certainly something I am willing to try out. After posting this I looked around but couldn't find much about Shadow leaving other than it was "random chance." I had thought that whenever I did one of the scenarios (Locke's I think) before Sabin's Shadow always left before the Phantom Forest.
And I do remember that scene with Sabin and Duncan's wife. I can't remember why I went back to South Figaro during one playthrough but I was happily surprised to get an extra cutscene.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 7th June 2007
Sorry Weltall but upon further research, gil has nothing to do with it. You can actually test this for yourself. Save and just enter a battle and load over and over again. Sometimes he'll leave and sometimes he won't. If it was gil, he'd ALWAYS leave after that one battle, or he ALWAYS wouldn't leave. I got the odds wrong though. It's 1/16. Money has nothing to do with it.
As for evidence, someone took a long time decoding all the in-game algorythms of the game, right down to discovering a way to predicting which Veldt battle you'll encounter next.
http://www.rpglegion.com/ff6/index.htm
Go there and you will find out ridiculously in-depth information on how everything takes place in FF6.
Oh, and here's something interesting. Deathgaze's appearence is not entirely random. They can't do "random encounters" in the normal way when you are flying. Instead, it randomly places an "event" invisibly on the world map. Save, load, whatever, your encounter will now ONLY take place on that ONE square of the map while flying, until you reach it, and then it'll be randomly placed somewhere else. This explains why sometimes you can be flying FOREVER and never encounter it. If you are seeking it out, you can't just fly a cirlce along the same path. If you didn't encounter it on the first run, you never will. You have to explore the ENTIRE map.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 7th June 2007
That Algorithm FAQ is incredible. Someone certainly took a really long time compiling all of that data. And that tidbit about Deathgaze is really interesting. I tried to think of technical reasons why they couldn't just make it random like normal battles but I can't think of why the 3D would have made a difference.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 7th June 2007
It's really not the 3D so much as how things are handled in the air and it wouldn't have been impossible, just hard to implement. Blame either laziness or time constraints.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 8th June 2007
It could have just been random battles based on a timer. Every 10 seconds or so there is a 1/20 chance that you run into Deathgaze. They could modify the time interval or the chance of running into him to make him easier to find or to make it less of an annoyance if he shows up constantly.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 8th June 2007
Yeah but again they'd have to program in random battles for airship flight, which by it's nature doesn't have random encountesr. Again, it could be done, it would just take work.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 12th June 2007
I don't know if I'm playing the game differently this time around, but the game doesn't seem to be as difficult. Some areas where I had to struggle to stay alive such as Mt. Koltz and the fights against Ultros were breezes. I beat Ultros in two turns with what I thought was a weak lineup of characters in Sabin, Locke, and Gau. It might be that my characters are leveled up more since I've been wandering around to force random battles and fill up the bestiary, but I haven't had to do that often enough to account for the difference I'm noticing. Did anyone else feel like the game was a bit easier this time?
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 12th June 2007
Nope. In fact all the stats for all the enemies are the same. The only real difference is evade handles evading physical attacks instead of magic evade, as it was meant to be. However, that's not really going to have that much of an effect. The reality is, this is actually a very easy game, on par with FF7 in terms of difficulty. Your suspisions are correct. The reality is your running around to encounter all the enemies (which I made a habbit of on many repeat playthroughs of the game just to get all of Gau's rages the older versions allowed one to get) IS in fact making you strong enough to easily beat pretty much whatever is around the corner.
This is contrasted with FF1's various remakes over the years, which have done very notable things to make the game progressively easier. The Wonderswan and PS1 versions weren't so bad in this regard. They changed up the way enemies handled attacks (no longer a direct line up of move lists where you would always predict exactly what move was next based on the previous moves, but rather a simple RPG AI script for each enemy), and they also changed up how items were handled (instead of limiting equipment so you could only carry 4 weapons and 4 armor pieces per character, they did the standard "infinite item pool" method). Further, they fixed a LOT of glitches and adjusted some damage formulas, making some spells, for the first time, actually do things (making them worth buying). However, to balance this, they increased stats here and there, the most extreme of which is doubling the HP of all bosses in the game. It balanced out to pretty much the same experience. "Easy Mode" on the other hand did exactly that, make enemies easier to kill and increase the level cap to 99 (from 50). The GBA version did a lot more than that though. Almost everything was totally overhauled in that version (graphics and sound were nearly identical though). Not only did they make things cheaper all around, items shops had a lot of things added to them, namely stuff that never even existed in the original game. This includes restorative items and equipment. For that matter, the entire magic system was overhauled. Instead of having individual spell "levels" which each had their own MP pool (max of 9 in each and a spell in any level couldn't use up points of any other level, but on the plus side every spell cost exactly 1 point), they gave everyone their own universal MP pool and all spells got an MP cost to reflect what they would cost in other games. This MP pool quickly added up to giving you WAY more castings than the old pool ever would, and that alone made it much easier. Further, enemy stats were all based on the Easy Mode, as well as the max level cap being 99 just like in easy mode. Further, the instant death attacks (death, stone, and so on) had so many ways to nullify them, and had their chance of hit reduced to such a point, that enemies that you used to pretty much have to run from unless you had certain items that gave immunity now were handled pretty much the same as anything else with little for you to fear. Indeed, one of the big changes was phoenix down alone. There were many other little things like letting you cast life inside battle or use softs in places you otherwise couldn't (oh right, golden needles, whatever). In the PS1 version these other little changes could be adjusted in a special menu but that menu is nonexistant in the GBA version. However, all that said, they did stick in the 4 dungeons that pretty much required all those adjustments to survive them and beat their super bosses (basically a smattering of bosses from various later FF games, from 2-6).
In the end with FF1 they pretty much overhauled the game to the point where only the setting remained unaltered, and the gameplay was another beast altogether, a much easier beast. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind a "total overhaul" remake, but when they do that I would at least like a "classic" gameplay mode to be included so that I can experence the unaltered original as well as the remake on the go as well. Metroid Zero Mission did it right, by including the original NES game right in there (though actually I think they should have included the Famicom version what with it's 3 save files instead of just one password slot and a save state remembering that password). Also, XBox Live Arcade remakes all tend to include the original version (and my only complaint there is sometimes they put this updated menu that blocks the main screen, the worst offender being the Ninja Turtles Arcade Game, where the menu blocks the entire opening animation). It's not like space is a big concern these days. Those old games take up less than 1/1000th of the space available on today's cartridges, they aren't exactly pressed for space as much as they used to be. There are texture files that take up more space than many old NES games, for example. With the rererererelease of FF1 and FF2 (can't speak to the gameplay differences in the second one, that one having never been released stateside until the PS1 remake) on the PSP, and the over 1 gig of space available on those disks, not including FF1 is pretty much not excusable. It's not like they don't have a million and one open source NES and Famicom emulators out there, and it's not like big companies haven't already made their own internal ones many times before. They could easily stick both the english and japanese versions in there and not even crack a meg. As it stands, I do love these remakes when they are done well, but if they are going to make substantial gameplay changes, I like having the original game there.
Sadly, I'm pretty sure at least with FFIV on the DS, they won't be sticking the original SNES game in there (or the GBA partial remake, despite them not even needing to emulate that one) simply because they can still make money selling the GBA game and the DS game at the same time.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 12th June 2007
Yeah, I guess the game was challenging before because I never really felt the need to level-up my characters. Until the latter parts of the game when I was trying to learn some advanced spells, uncurse the cursed shield, or level-up for the runthrough of Kefka's tower I didn't feel a need to level-up my characters much. It's good that they fixed the evade bug, but one I noticed they didn't fix is the fact that Dark has no effect. Obviously it is suppose to make it harder to land physical attacks but it doesn't do anything. I'm surprised they fixed the evade bug and didn't do anything about the dark bug. I guess the evade bug was easier to fix, but I don't know why the dark bug was allowed through in the first place.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 12th June 2007
The dark bug was a symptom of the evade bug actually. Dark basically just lowered the evasion stat. Since evasion didn't do anything in the original, that meant darkness wouldn't do anything either.
It actually IS fixed in this one though, because the evade stat is fixed that one got automatically fixed by association. I've tested it rather thouroughly myself, and with darkness I miss more often than without. I will say this though. It didn't have quite the strong effect that I thought it might, and as it had in later games like FF8 (where you almost always missed when you were blinded). The thing they didn't fix so far was limit breaks. Maybe they don't consider that "broken" but it is still way too easy to go through an entire game and never once see one. If you'll check that algorythm FAQ up there you'll see how convoluted the formula is for determining if a limit break is used. The biggest flaw as far as I'm concerned is the fact that it's impossible to even see one for roughly the first 90 seconds of combat. If they had disabled that odd check, I'm sure they would appear much more often but still rarely enough that one couldn't abuse them. Fortunatly FF8, which uses a similar "low on HP means chance of one appearing" method fixed that, though there was a seperate abuse based on how the limit break was determined, which I made use of quite often actually (repeatedly switching characters in THAT game would do the trick if certain conditions were met beforehand).
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 12th June 2007
I tested the dark bug too and I got a hit every time. I guess I didn't use a big enough statistical sample in my experiment. It makes sense that the dark bug had to do with the evade bug. Anyway, I don't know if this is a glitch in much of the rest of the game, but in the first 3D sequence with the airship on the way to Vector the spotlights over the imperial capital kept blinking in and out. I haven't seen many other glitches in the game, but that was the first thing that stood out because I don't remember it in the original.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 12th June 2007
It was flickering, but the flicker rate was not really as noticable. The fact is, there's slowdown in the conversion to GBA.
Thinking on it further, when did you test the dark bug? If you had on a lot of equipment that boosted your evasion stat, it wouldn't have mattered. I myself noticed that late game I could "wear sunglasses" without much of a problem at all compaired to near the start. I actually tested it myself using the Lete River near the start of the game.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - DMiller - 13th June 2007
I tested it on the Lete River as well, but it wasn't really too thorough. Terra was blinded in the second battle on the river and I kept attacking with her. I don't think she missed once, but it must have just been random chance. It was just for however many battles it took before I reached Ultros because I cast Fire with Terra once I reached him.
Final Fantasy VI Advance - Dark Jaguar - 13th June 2007
That'd probably be like 5 battles. I decided to do repeated loops at that one part that gets you to level 99 if you have autofire back in the olden days.