Music: Omen, movement 3The music in Final Fantasy 6 on the Super Nintendo was heavily orchestrated and amazingly well-done. Series composer Nobuo Uematsu was so satisfied with his work on FF6 that he's been quoted as saying that he could retire happy after completing it. The tinny sound chip on the Game Boy Advance? Doesn't even come close to doing it justice.
Most of the music links I'm putting up will be from the SNES version.
The opening credits roll as the three soldiers walk their powered armor through the snowfields.
On the SNES version, the music runs out when the credits do. But because the credits are longer, or the animation is slower, or for
whatever reason, the music ends long before the robots are finished marching. The music cuts right as the credits for the "sound programmer" appear, too, for maximum irony.
The town they're marching toward appears fully in the SNES version, shown here. In the GBA version, the smaller screen means they didn't bother even trying to get the town onscreen. So the music cuts out early, and the background scrolling happens late. Did anyone even try to playtest this sequence? I mean, you can't miss it, it's
the very first thing that happens in the game.
One more gripe to get out of the way: the game is dark. Like, not just thematically -- the palettes used tend to be shades rather than tones or tints. Compare:
Squeenix brightened the colors to make them easier to see on the GBA's not-backlit "made of reflectonium, the most reflective material known to man" screen, but they just... don't look as good.
Okay. Back to the opening narrative. There's no music in this section, just whistling gusts of wind.
That's right! Nobody's safe from us!
The
video intro for the Playstation release shows the Narshe guards using rifles against the Magitek armor our heroes ride in, but those look more like axes or warhammers to me.
The characters don't even have a "hit enemies with equipped weapon" Fight command yet. The only options are Magitek (to use the weaponry installed in the walking mech) or Item (to drink a potion).
The beams are so effective against infantry that it only takes one shot to down... well, pretty much any resistance I meet during this entire sequence. The as-yet-unnamed girl has a better-equipped mech than the other two, adding some sort of biological poison gas, concussive missiles, and a dimension-shredding teleport device along with the elemental beams and self-repair systems.
She also has more traditional Final Fantasy series spells in Cure and Fire.