A brilliant game programmed poorly, Final Fantasy VI for Android is a tough call. It's expensive at $15.99, a huge download, and a major processor and battery hog. But if you want a giant, traditional single-player RPG on your Android phone, it makes for at least 40 hours of passionate play.

Final Fantasy VI is widely considered to be one of the best in the long, complicated series. A big part of that is because of its huge array of characters: Fourteen playable characters come and go from your party during a long, twisted saga of struggle by the rebel Returners against the Gestahlian Empire and the psychopathic clown-general Kefka. It's a huge jump in terms of plot, sophistication, and fluidity from Final Fantasy III, that's for sure.

Navigation is easy enough, with a virtual eight-way control pad that can appear anywhere on the screen, and a series of nested modal menus. Your characters can wield dozens of items, and every character has its own special abilities. Battle is either real-time or turn-based, your choice; characters' action bars slowly rise from the bottom of the screen based on their speed of action, a neat touch. Significant level-grinding may be needed before many of the boss battles, which tend to jump up dramatically in difficulty. Of course, since this is a game from 1994, there are a ton of online guides to help you through the difficult parts.

Like other Final Fantasy Android adaptations, FF6 looks lazily programmed. At 443MB, it's five to ten times the size of a Kemco RPG like Symphony of Eternity, and the graphics aren't that much better. Every time you load it, it checks in with its server. If you try to run it without an Internet connection, it will just quit. If you leave it running in the background, it will consume battery at a noticeable rate until you kill it from the multitasking panel. And while the ability to quicksave-and-quit anywhere is a help on mobile platforms, the odd lack of real save points before boss fights led to me having to restore too far ahead of deadly battles.

FF6 also suffers from a lack of explanation of game mechanics. Because it's a classic game, it assumes you know what the special attacks and powers do. The tutorials are uneven: While it tells you what Gau's Rage power does, for instance, it leaves you completely in the dark about Celes' Runic ability. If you didn't know about the trick with Phoenix Down and undead, well, you're out of luck. And I just don't get some of the game-balance issues involving characters' special attacks which consume no energy and are designed to be used all the time.

Otherwise, well, it's all down to how much you adore FF6. And there's a lot to adore here if you like big, tough games that privilege storyline, exhaustive exploration, and battle strategy over reflexes and quick thinking.

I'm not giving FF6 Editors' Choice, though. Why the heck not, you ask? This is a classic. And you're right: This is a classic. But I'm going to be a little weird and say that a 40-hour, 443MB game may not be the most appropriate experience for a limited-storage platform where you're likely to play for 20 minutes at a time. I originally appreciated this sort of game as a month of two-hour blocks.

The much smaller, lighter, and less expensive Unlucky Hero (which owes a ridiculous amount to the Final Fantasy series) still feels like a better fit for small screens and storage-limited devices, while providing a lot of similar plot pleasures.