I eagerly picked this up upon release for my SNES. I had drooled over it for months in advance... years if you count the time I waited for FFV, which never game. I is a beautiful title. Interesting story, solid gameplay, cool world fantastic graphics for the time and an epic soundtrack. It made several advances to the series over the previous title.
It did, however, have a few shortcomings. 1, the story - it's less refined than FFIV. It's good, but IV had a clear, classic narrative. FFVI is a bit disjointed and slightly less epic. 2. The characters. Again, they're good, but their story roles are a little less defined than some other titles and their character less fleshed out. 3. Character classes. Equipping the espers can eventually make any character a super character. I'm not a fan of this. I prefer each character to have a defined class as we saw in IV and other titles. Customization is good, but having a Theif or Engineer get all this magic power breaks the fourth wall for me. I prefer the characters to have limits within their game world.
I would put the game a little behind IV in overall execution, though it is superior in many aspects. I rank it 3rd among FF's after IV and X. It's among the greatest rpg's and games of all time.
