Final Fantasy 6's Equipment Learning System

You know what might be the most shockingly under-utilized system feature in an RPG that I can think of? The fact that Final Fantasy 6 contains a function that can allow characters to learn spells from an item when it's equipped.

First of all, yeah, that's actually a thing. Probably most of you know that, but I'm willing to bet that there's at least a few readers who might just never have realized that--and probably a couple others who forgot it altogether. And that's totally understandable! It's not really mentioned anywhere, or at least it wasn't in the original SNES release nor in its Playstation 1 rerelease that I can recall. Very few weapons and armors actually utilized the feature, so it couldn't really come up very often to begin with. The primary vehicle for learning magic is presented as the process of equipping Espers, and that's further and frequently highlighted by the fact that it's connected to the core story of Final Fantasy 6. All magic can be learned from Espers (provided you get them all), so there's no catalyst for completionists to look into alternative ways to fill out the spell list. When a character acquires a spell from having held onto a piece of equipment for long enough, there's no indication of where they learned it from, only the message that they have it now.* Gear generally doesn't teach its spells any faster than the equivalent Esper does. And equipment that can teach spells only begins showing up once you've gained access to Espers, so the equipment can all the more easily get lost in the shuffle as the player begins experimenting with the main magic-learning system (not to mention that spell-teaching weapons and armors usually only offer magic that's already available to be learned from an Esper you have at that point, or one that you're going to acquire soon).

Basically, beyond the fact that you can have more than 1 character learning some specific spells at a time, there's no particular advantage or unique utility to learning magic from equipped items in Final Fantasy 6. As a feature, it's essentially a curiosity and little more, if you even really noticed it was there to begin with.

But, like...isn't that kind of crazy?

I mean, the developers programmed an entire system of ability acquisition into the game that they for all functional intents and purposes just didn't use. This isn't just some little, incidental detail that didn't see much play, like fall damage in Final Fantasy Tactics, or 45% of all gameplay features in any number of the bloated Tales of series titles released in the last 15-ish years. Equipment use over a set period of time as a means of learning skills is a system that you could base an entire GAME'S combat progression around! And that's not hyperbole, because Square did just that in Final Fantasy 9! FF6 invented a system that could be the gameplay foundation for a more elegantly complex system, and did nothing with it.

Even wilder is the real possibility that if they'd realized what they had, FF6 could've been a significantly better title from a gameplay perspective. As it is, around the midpoint of the game, individual character abilities start becoming less and less important as the power and utility of attack and healing magic start to noticeably outpace unique skills. When everyone can learn the same spells and those spells quickly surpass almost every non-magic ability in damage output and reliability, then by the later stages of the game, most of the cast just represent different visual flavors to the same spellcasting unit. But in a game where at least some of the powerful spells were restricted to certain weapons and armors, which in turn could each be limited to specific members of the cast, character selection could still have some meaningful influence on combat utility, rather than just a question of which 4 characters out of an entire cast that can use Cure 3, Life 2, Quick, and Meteor or Ultima have the most aesthetic appeal.**

It's just interesting to me to think about, is all. Equipment having the capacity to teach characters spells is something that had to require both a bit of creativity to come up with, and at least a little time and effort to program into effect, so the idea that they essentially just abandoned it, or even that they really never meant for it to be anything more than the inconsequential quirk that it wound up being, seems so peculiar to me. I spoke about how strangely under-utilized another of FF6's innovations was, the separate group control feature, but even that one at least DID get its highlighted moments of genuine use, and it really was only a flashy feature. This learn-from-gear thing is a potential system anchor that Squaresoft slept on the moment they pioneered it, until finally 5 years and 3 titles later they realized just what they had in their hands. Truly peculiar.
















* Granted, it won't take an inquisitive mind very long to connect the dots between Edgar learning Fire 2 and Edgar happening to be the guy holding the Flame Shield, but nonetheless, there's no direct acknowledgement of the cause to this effect.


** Mind you, I'm speaking purely from a gameplay perspective, here. In reality, the flaw of how skewed Final Fantasy 6's combat system is thanks to magic isn't in any way a count against the game, because it doesn't actually lower the experience of playing it, and the measure of an RPG's worth is purely writing-based, anyway. In fact, if anything, this imbalanced setup may very well be a small point in its favor, since it aligns with and shows consistency to a key element of FF6's plot--the fact that magic is extremely overpowered. If any doofus with a few sword techniques were as potent a combatant as the party member who has access to combat magic, then the entire premise of Final Fantasy 6's plot would fall apart. Gameplay balance is fine and good if you can manage it, to be sure, but narrative consistency is far more important.