So, according to Kamarile, I apparently love the hell out of game mechanics. A typical IM conversation for us today led to the topics of our next two posts -- we discovered that she loves plot and story, and I love cool mechanics and the methods by which you convey yourself from plot point to plot point.
And it's true. You've seen on this very blog an argument about games with great plot and bad gameplay and with superb gameplay but atrocious plot. I still believe, on some level, that great mechanics will forgive really poor plot. I'm not so sure about the other way 'round.
But, back to Final Fantasy 6. The first cool thing about it is the sheer number of characters you have. Look at them! There's fourteen! And, shocker, they're all unique! They're not like, generic mage type person #316, and random chick with giant gozongas #4.
Other games have had a lot of characters, and they've been unique, but here, you've got a chick that can double her magic power, a friendly thief, a samurai that turns time into powerful attacks, a ninja who can throw, a sexbomb who can use machinery, a body builder who uses a street fighter style mechanic to deal damage, a girl who can absorb magic, a blue mage, a kid who can control people, a sexbomb who can use slots, a moogle that can berserk himself and dance, a wind god who can take on the attacks of pretty much any enemy in the game, a character who CAN do anything in the game....
And, um, a sasquatch. Hey, they can't all be winners.
| 
Step one, put a pointer in that box.
Step two, throw a PC in that box.... |
 | Another innovation, and my favorite mechanic by far to be honest, is multi-party dungeons. Check it. There's Gau. But wait! There's Gogo! How can this be? Law clearly dictates that you must wander around the world with no more than 3 of your friends, all compacted into the space of one person.
This is one of those mechanics that is used well, and used at the right times. There are a whole two dungeons in the World of Ruin that use this mechanic -- the final dungeon, and the Phoenix Cave. (The GBA version has a third, bonus dungeon that employs this mechanic.)
This is nice, because it allows you to explore the depth and variety of all the cool characters that you end up collecting, rather than continually using a stock party of three or four characters.
One might argue that you then have to spend three times longer leveling up, but, again, nothing is perfect. |
1 comment:
I knew I shouldn't have skipped this far ahead in the blog -- now I have the dastardly (bwahaha) urge to abandon my party of white mages halfway through Gurgu Volcano and pick up FF6 again. Damn you.
You know, since it's always fun to laugh at my own idiocy, I'd like to mention that I've only NOW realized that one of you is a guy and the other one is a chick. Because, you know, the blue\pink text wasn't quite obvious enough.
I need more friends like you. Wait, I need ANY friends like you. Okay... I just need friends. Most of my co-workers fail to understand the allure of console RPGs produced during the last millenium -- which is a bit sad considering that I work for a company that produces commercial MMORPGs and we're pretty much all huge gaming nerds. It's just that they're into games of the variety that require a quad-core graphics card, and I'd rather spend time on a black mage SCC.
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