Navigation on a town's field map.

Like previous Final Fantasy installments, Final Fantasy VI consists of four basic modes of gameplay: an overworld map, town and dungeon field maps, a battle screen, and a menu screen. The overworld map is a scaled down version of the game's fictional world, which the player uses to direct characters to various locations. As with most games in the series, the three primary means of travel across the overworld are by foot, chocobo, and airship. With a few plot-driven exceptions, enemies are randomly encountered on field maps and on the overworld when traveling by foot.

The game's plot develops as the player progresses through towns and dungeons. Town citizens will offer helpful information and some residents own item or equipment shops. Later in the game, visiting certain towns will activate side-quests. Dungeons appear as a variety of areas, including caves, sewers, forests, and buildings. These dungeons often have treasure chests containing rare items that are not available in most stores. Some dungeons feature puzzles and mazes, which require the player to divide the characters into multiple parties.^[13]

The menu screen is where the player makes such decisions as which characters will be in the travelling party, which equipment they wield, the magic they learn, and the configuration of the gameplay. It is also used to track experience points and levels.

Combat

A battle in Final Fantasy VI.

Combat in Final Fantasy VI is menu-based, in which the player selects an action from a list of such options as Fight, Magic, and Item. A maximum of four characters may be used in battles, which uses the series' traditional Active Time Battle system, or ATB, which was designed by Hiroyuki Itō and first featured in Final Fantasy IV. Under this system, each character has an action bar that replenishes itself at a rate dependent on their speed statistic. When a character's action bar is filled, the player may assign an action. In addition to standard battle techniques, each character possesses a unique special ability. For example, Locke possesses the ability to steal items from enemies, while Celes' Runic ability allows her to absorb most magical attacks cast until her next turn. Characters are rewarded for victorious battles with experience points and money, called gil (GP in the original North American localization). When characters attain a certain amount of experience points, they gain a level, which increases their statistics. An additional player may play during battle scenarios, with control of individual characters assigned from the configuration menu.^[14]

In contrast to previous versions of the Active Time Battle system, the player is able to pick from any character that has a filled action bar and has not yet received any commands, rather than being forced to issue commands to whichever character had his or her action bar filled first. Another new element is a powerful attack substitution that occasionally appears when the character's health is low. Similar features appear in later Final Fantasy titles under a variety of different names, including Limit Breaks, Trances, and Overdrives.

Customization

Characters in Final Fantasy VI can be equipped with a wide variety of weapons, armor and accessories (known as "Relics") to increase their statistics and obtain special abilities. Most of this equipment can be used by several different characters, and each character may equip up to two Relics. Relics have a variety of uses and effects, some of which alter basic battle commands, allow characters to use multiple weapons, provide permanent status changes during battle or use protective magical spells in response to being near death.^[15]

Although only two characters start the game with the ability to use magic, almost every character can learn to do so. Characters may equip magicite, which enables the summoning of espers, this game's incarnation of summoned monsters (including several recurring summons such as Ifrit, Shiva, Bahamut and Odin, along with many new summons exclusive to Final Fantasy VI), as well as that of specific magic spells. If a character has a piece of magicite equipped, he or she will gain "Magic Acquisition Points" after most battles. As a character gains magic AP, he or she gradually learns spells from the magicite equipped and will gain additional statistic bonuses when leveling up, depending on the magicite.^[16]