Since the top two are clear, let me write about them both before posting the final rankings.
Final Fantasy VI features the largest and most eclectic playable cast I’ve ever seen in an RPG. With characters that range from comical to tragic, young to old, and human to Moogle, it has something for everyone. It’s no wonder that many fans cite the supporting cast as their favorites, but for me, it was the two female leads that carried this game and stole the show. I’m a big fan of both for reasons both similar and different.
Terra carries the main plot. She’s the focus of both the game’s intro and ending, and it is the mystery surrounding her which progresses the game’s story. Conversely, Celes carries the party. She builds the game’s closest interpersonal relationship with Locke, and as the first playable character in the World of Ruin, she leads the charge in finding and recruiting everyone else.
They both face challenges and shoulder immense responsibilities. During the World of Balance, Celes struggles with the realization that her newfound friends still distrust her due to her old allegiance with the Empire (Terra, who was literally a mind-controlled slave with no memory, does not face this hardship). Crushed, she risks her own wellbeing to help them escape from a bind, and only slowly opens up and forgives them later on. Of course, there is also the famous opera scene, where the hardened general steps out of her comfort zone and sings her heart out to progress the party’s plans. It’s the scene where I was one over as a fan.
However, most probably consider the attempted suicide as her most powerful moment. Waking bewildered and alone in a destroyed world, and then losing her only caretaker to sickness, Celes loses her will to live. In casting herself off that cliff face, she staked a place for herself in the hearts of gamers the world over. By surviving, gaining renewed confidence and zeal for life, and leading the search for her old friends, her status only grew.
Celes’s heroism is well documented, but I’ve come to think that Terra’s is too often (unfairly) unrewarded. While Celes defected from the Empire, Terra spent her entire life as an unwilling, unknowing prisoner. With her mind ensnared, she spent the purest years of a person’s life unable to feel or love. After being freed at the beginning of the game, she takes up the fight against those who so cruelly wronged her in the hopes that they are never able to harm another person again. Despite being little more than a machine her whole life with no concept of good or evil, the liberated Terra wields her sword for good.
In the World of Ruin, her heart feels its first pangs of love – the love of children who see her as a mother. She is overcome with this rush of new feelings, and as such, no longer wishes to fight, opting to spend the rest of her days caring for her newfound family. Despite her diminished powers and unwillingness to fight, she still challenges the powerful Phunbaba (lol) twice, willing to sacrifice herself for the children without thought. I thought this was incredibly admirable and one (or two) of Terra’s greatest moments.
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