Final Fantasy 6 PC Version Might Annoy You

Square Enix confirmed today that Final Fantasy 6 will be coming to the PC as expected. There's a terrible catch, though.

As it turns out, the PC release of Final Fantasy 6 is based on the recent mobile port. This means that it has the retouched graphics that people hate for some reason. Here's a comparison of the old and new visuals:

In my view, the difference is that the environments are more colorful and defined. The characters look hand-painted rather than pixelated. I consider this at least a slight upgrade but some people felt that by implementing this new art style, Square Enix was trampling their childhood with a suit of magitek armor.

The worst thing I could really say about the new visuals is that they don't go far enough. For example, Square Enix added 3D models for key locations on the world map like towns and castles but the rest of the map is still just pixelated. It looks like they plopped the Space Needle in the middle of Stonehenge. It's also jarring that they decided to update the art style for the main characters but not for the actual monsters they're fighting. Still, on balance I think the game looks better thanks to their efforts so I can't really complain.

Regardless of how you feel about the new art, though, the role-playing game you grew up loving is still there underneath it. The lovable characters are intact along with the epic storyline. It's one of only two or three games I've replayed multiple times. The story's just that engaging.

If you've somehow avoided playing FF6 up until now, you should really give the Steam version a shot. Any computer with Windows Vista, two gigs of RAM, and around a gig of hard drive space will be able to run it. You'll be able to download the PC version starting on December 16th.