Final Fantasy VI Advance

Sorry about the size of these things. It half past twelve so I'll clear things up tomorrow. Enjoy *yawn*.
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Final Fantasy VI Advance
By Chaser
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Quick Info
Platform: Super NES, Playstation, Game Boy Advance
Developer: Square
Publisher: Squaresoft (SNES), Square Electronic Arts (PSX), Square-Enix (GBA)
Players: 1
Genre: RPG
Price: US$29.99 SRP
Release Date: 1995, 1999, 2007 (SNES, PSX & GBA prices respectively)
Media: Proprietary Game Boy Advance Game Pak

Controls
D-Pad: Move the Character in the direction pressed. Not exactly the latest newsflash, pretty obvious people...
A: Select commands from menus.
B: Cancel commands.
L: Um...
R: Pancakes
Start: Pause, Bring up the Character Page.
Select: -_-

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Introduction
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Long time, no write but anyway welcome to my first review under the name Chaser (I'm black now too)! I've chosen to review Final Fantasy VI (will be referred to as FF6 from now on) because it, in plain english, ROCKS and has been re-released for the GBA and quite frankly; It's a much improved flavour. New features, better translation and better visuals are some new juicy goodies to expect . I'm going to spend the next page or so trying to convince you to buy this oh-so-sweet game.

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Story
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FF6’s story is second to none. I don’t know what happened at Square but all of a sudden they stopped milking the crystal story for all it was worth and set on track to write a proper script, complete with humour, romance and drama. The story is brilliant, it tells of an Empire hell-bent on resurrecting a force known as ‘Magic’. What the empire doesn’t know is that things will blow out of proportion and things will stretch past anything they anticipated. It all leads to the eventual destruction of the world, leaving it in a state of ruin. The characters are great; Kefka a nihilistic psycho to Terra, a girl rediscovering her identity, this is a cast you will grow to love. The story has a definite dark tone to it, your characters suffer at the hands of evil and the story is really quite moving and deep. To sum it up this won’t be a story where the B button will be mashed to death, give it a chance and you will fall in love.

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Gameplay
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The gameplay is bittersweet. There are aspects you’ll love but there are some things you will not *glares at random battles*. The battles were pretty revolutionary at the time and are still quite fun if a little repetitive.
They utilise a system developed by Square called ATB (Active Time Battle) which has been used in quite a lot of games since, basically things are turn-based (also taking factors such as speed into consideration) but actions are carried out in real-time. Four characters can be used at a time, each character has its own unique ability, all of which are pretty cool. I’ll briefly run through some of those abilities, Sabin has the ‘Blitz’ ability which allows him to pull off impressive physical moves whilst Edgar has the ‘Tool’ ability giving him access to a wealth of machinery including a chainsaw and crossbow. There are more but I’ll let you discover those for yourself when give the game a shot. Besides the unique abilities there are the standard ‘Fight’, ‘Magic’, ‘Item’, ‘Row’ and ‘Defend’.
What really prevents the game from being fully enjoyable are those bloody random battle encounters which do nothing to help the gameplay, leaves the player in a state of frustration and makes you hate battling all together (when in reality the battle system is decent).
The equipment system is pretty standard but a notable standout is ‘Relics’, which entitles the user to extra powers, two relics can be granted to each character. The magic system is quite cool second only to FF7’s Materia. In this case we use not Materia but ‘Magicite’. In battle a characters gains AP (ability points), which are used in the character’s magic growth. Magicite contains a group of spells which have multipliers that apply to the AP for example learning ‘Fire’ with the Ifrit Magicite will entitle the user to five times as much AP as normal. Weak spells have high multipliers whilst powerful ones do not; it works well and balances things out. In other words - two thumbs up.

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Graphics
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I was pretty impressed with FF6’s visuals on the SNES and on the GBA they look sharper and clearer. The art direction was fantastic, TLC was put into every sprite. The monster design was brilliant, the drawings depicting the craziest most unfathomable creatures too bad they had to re-use some about 10 times with a palette swap. The world map is pretty here too, showcasing some of the SNES’s pretty Mode 7 visuals which work to great effect. The attacks look very impressive they really show what Square is capable of. The buildings are quite detailed, when you take a look inside clocks, beds, shelves, weapons and other bits-and-bobs adorn the place, it really add to the aesthetic side of the game.

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Sound
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The music is Uematsu’s finest, simply brilliant. Words do not do it justice so do yourself a favour and visit vgmusic.com and have a listen. The soundtrack is varied and the music is perfectly matched to every scene and character. For example the opera scene with the brilliant ‘Aria Di Mezzo Carattere’, it fits in perfectly. Or the piece ‘Dancing Mad’ for example a fast paced 17-minute long work that is really the same theme re-worked by Uematsu in brilliant new ways to match Kefka’s insanity. The sound effects deserve a mention, from the screeching wind gush through to Kefka’s humourous laugh the sound is A+ through to the very end.
Never a dull moment in the game to listen to, do yourself a favour and get a set of headphones; you won’t regret it.

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In Conclusion
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This game was Square’s masterpiece and now it has been born again on the GBA. You’ll love every little bit of it from start to finish, there aren’t words awesome enough to describe this game. If you suppose 30+ hours of Gameplay isn’t enough there is so much to fall back on you will never tire of it. The sidequests and the colloseum can keep you coming for more and if that wasn’t enough there is secret magicite fragments, weapons and relics to be found. There’s a lot of game here and it could be your’s for 29 bucks. The GBA version features new espers, a new dungeon (similar to Dawn of Souls) and slight improvements in visuals and translation but it suffers from slow-down. But still, turn away from the computer, rush to the nearest game store, buy this, pop it in to your DS, congratulations you’ve done yourself a bigger favour than spring water ever could.

Pros +: Brilliant Story, ATB, Materia, Kefka
Cons -: Palette Swapping, Occaisional Slowdown, Random Battles, Did I Mention RANDOM BATTLES *weeps uncontrollably*

Overall
9.5
If you don’t buy this you son of a submariner, I’ll eat your pet kittens!