Final Fantasy VI (FFIII US)

The main villain genuinely succeeds midway through the game, destroys the world, and you then explore it in ruins. That single sentence about Final Fantasy VI is enough to explain why so many players consider it the peak of the entire series and one of the finest stories games have ever told. Square cast aside the genre clichés about chosen heroes and built an epic that dared to embrace both darkness and operatic pathos at once.

Unlike most RPGs, Final Fantasy VI has no single lead hero. You are guided by an ensemble of fourteen playable characters, each with their own past, motivation and moment to step into the spotlight — from the mysterious Terra with her magical genes, through the gambling adventurer Locke, to the forsaken knight Cyan. A steampunk world, half industrial and half magical, gives the whole thing a unique atmosphere you simply wouldn't find elsewhere in the genre at the time.

And then there's Kefka. A mad, cackling clown who works his way up from court jester to absolute power and becomes one of the most unforgettable villains in the history of the medium. The fact that the game lets him truly triumph and shatter the world to pieces halfway through the story was a bold narrative move at the time, one that still resonates today. The second half of the game, in which you gather your scattered companions across a devastated world, is among the most powerful things JRPGs have ever offered.

Combat rests on the proven ATB system with charging gauges, and every character brings their own gameplay layer to it — from Sabin's fighting-game-style command inputs to a magic system tied to the Esper beings. The game thus stays mechanically varied from start to finish.

The iconic moment is the opera scene, where your character dons the costume of a stage singer — a passage that showed just how far game storytelling and Nobuo Uematsu's music could reach. Final Fantasy VI originally launched in the West under the confusing title Final Fantasy III and has since seen a number of re-releases and remasters, but its heart remains untouched.

Why play it: For one of the most powerful stories in gaming history, an unforgettable villain, and a steampunk world that lodges itself in your memory.