Job system is gone but there are still accessories to customise with.
Another thing is that new spells don’t appear as you level up. Instead, you have to equip your characters with a stone known as “Magicites” to earn “Magic Points”. Working in a similar way to experience points, you gain new spells depending on what kind of Magicite you have equipped. These can also be used to summon Espers, giant magical creatures to unleash area attacks or effect spells and in this FFVI Advance version, Leviathan, Sabotender, Gilgamesh and Diabolos have been added.


One of the new summons, Leviathan.
Graphics are very much the same as FFV Advance and the original FFVI, with environments and characters looking as vibrant as you can get on the GBA. Water is well animated and every object is rendered with detail down to the very pixel. Characters again have plenty of impressive expressions just like FFV considering what the artists had to work with at the time. You’ll notice the characters like to blink their eyes a lot!


Dinner with the ghosts on a haunted luxurious looking train.
Music is once again covered by Square-Enix’s game musician Uematsu Nobuo and as with all FF games, you’ll find a lot of remixes of past tunes such as the victory, battle and chocobo themes. But then there’s the famous “Aria di Mezzo Carattere” opera scene sung by Celes. While it’s still not sung with a full vocal voice, it’s still an entertaining part of the game in the way it’s presented.


Celes singing opera for the first time.
Dont get the lyrics wrong now!
Directed by Yoshinori Kitase (FFVII) and Hiroyuki Itou instead of the original series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, you’ll find that a lot more events have been put into the game whether it’s in or outside of battles. It keeps the story very interesting with some hilarious and dramatic moments. Another thing that’s changed is that once the main party splits up in a certain part of the game, you can choose which part of the story you want to pursue. It’s not a multi-branching story but this gives you a bit of choice about what you want to know first.


Plenty of entertaining events like this one in FFVI.
Final Fantasy VI Advance may not offer as much as previous re-releases of FF titles in terms of extras but, it’s still a classic to play through. Final Fantasy fans that missed the game the first time round when it was released on the SNES now have a chance to get their hands on FFVI once again.


The game remains a classic to play.

Most of the time you can get by with exploring but there’s just one of two places where you have to carry out a few tasks for the game to progress. There’s again, the option of Kana or Kanji but while the main story makes use of Kanji, item names and town names still mostly stick to Kana so a bit of basic Japanese reading skills may help. Don’t forget the English version of this game comes out in a few months, though!

• Can whiz through random battles just like FFV.
  
• Lots of interesting events.
  
• Customisable abilities.
  
• Classic RPG to play through.

• The extras arent that great compared to other releases.
  
• NPCs can end up blocking paths sometimes.