Ahead On Our Way - The Top 21 Numbered Final Fantasies Countdown

[Positronic Brain]

START​

 

[Positronic Brain]

Honorary Mention
N/A Final Fantasy Tactics

#21 Final Fantasy III DS (88 points, 4 mentions)
#20 Final Fantasy XI (93 points, 4 mentions)
#19 Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (108 points, 5 mentions)
#18 Final Fantasy XIII-2 (125 points, 6 mentions)
#17 Final Fantasy IV DS (150 points, 6 mentions)
#16 Final Fantasy VII Remake (216 points, 7 mentions)
#15 Final Fantasy XV (236 points, 9 mentions)
#14 Final Fantasy XIV (262 points, 8 mentions)
#13 Final Fantasy III (399 points, 15 mentions)
#12 Final Fantasy X-2 (415points, 15 mentions)
#11 Final Fantasy II (415 points, 16 mentions)
#10 Final Fantasy XIII (438 points, 17 mentions)
#09 Final Fantasy XII (454 points, 16 mentions)
#08 Final Fantasy X (502 points, 17 mentions)
#07 Final Fantasy (503 points, 19 mentions)
#06 Final Fantasy IV (509 points, 17 mentions)
#05 Final Fantasy IX (527 points, 18 mentions)
#04 Final Fantasy VIII (532 points, 18 mentions)
#03 Final Fantasy V (541 points, 18 mentions)
#02 Final Fantasy VII (599 points, 20 mentions)
#01 Final Fantasy VI (600 points, 19 mentions)

 

[Positronic Brain]

So. Sakaguchi. Uematsu. NASIR. Kawazu. Four legends in their field came together and, almost exactly thirty five years ago, released a game that would change the videogame landscape forever. To honor their legacy, I will be posting one entry each day until we find out which one is Talking Time's favorite entry.

But before we being the countdown, we'd like to take a moment to meditate about the legacy of the series. Final Fantasy has become synonym with innovation and experimentation: every entry is wildly different to the last one, for better or worse. If you don't like one entry, you just have to wait for the next one and try again.

But if every entry is different, what makes a Final Fantasy game a, well, a Final Fantasy? With each entry we will highlight something each entry added to the overall Final Fantasy zeitgeist, and somwething that each entry borrows from the games that came before. And since experimentation implies occasional failure, we will also highlight something that was never seen again from each entry. By tracking how each main entry has influenced the series, we hope we will get a clear idea of what's in the heart of Final Fantasy.

Now it's time for "Honorary Entry That Nobody But Positronic Brain Voted For" - but this time there's none! All my entries made into the list, so instead I'm highlighting a game that couldn't qualify anyway because it was excluded by the rules. Yeah, it's my list and I'll include a game if I want to. Because while we narrowed down the pool of possible picks to keep the list brief, spin-offs are important to the series, with over seventy entries. But I think one is more relevant to the series as a whole than any other.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Blame yourself or God

#N/A
Final Fantasy Tactics

a.k.a. The one that everybody quotes

0 points • 0 mentions • Highest rank: #N/A​

Released on June 20, 1997 (Japan)
Producer: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Director: Yasumi Matsuno
Composers: Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata

Tactics is not the first Final Fantasy spin-off (that would be either Mystic Quest or Final Fantasy Legend, depending on what hairs you want to split) but I think it was the most relevant. To this day, if you ask people to rank their Final Fantasies, among all the roman numerals odds are you’ll find a T - Tactics is *the* spinoff, one that many people consider part of the main series.

The seed of Final Fantasy Tactics was Sakaguchi’s interest in tactical games, and he pushed for a tactical spinoff of the series at Square. Under the guidance of Yasunori Matsuno, fresh out from Tactics Ogre, the project took shape in what it’s considered one of the best tactics game in consoles. Pair Matsuno’s loves for multi-tiered gameplay system and experience at game design, tie it with Hitoshi Sakamoto’s great compositions and spice it up with Akihiko Yoshida’s distinctive designs and you get an instant classic.

The story is more political than usual for a FF. You play as Ramza, the youngest son of a noble family, who gets involved in an intricate war of succession. There are plots within political plots, made more complex when Delita, Ramza’s former best friend, gets involved with his own plots. And to top it up, eventually Ancient Dark Forces also get involved. If you managed to make sense of all the plot twists and character motivations through the original release’s infamously bad localization, congratulations is you!

Tactics has gotten a remaster (The Lion War) and several ports. Surprisingly, it only has had two sequels, although its legacy still lives on in Square-Enix in the form of Triangle Strategy and the remaster of Tactics Ogre.

Something old

The gameplay system is heavily influenced by Final Fantasy V - you don’t have classes, you have Jobs based on Final Fantasy with skills that you can mix and match to create really versatile characters. Want a chemist that can break shields at a distance? A summoner who can teleport over walls? A dragon dual wielding spears? The battle system also was heavily influenced by ATB, adapting it to the CTB system, and suddenly speed mattered - units with a higher speed would get more turns.

Storywise, Tactics didn’t have much influence from other FFs in its main story, but is full of references to other games in their side-missions. When taking jobs from patrons around town. Your units might journey to the Crystal Tower or find materia lying around.

Something new

Tactic’s main story added several concepts into Final Fantasy’s overall lore (helped in no small part by Matsuno having his shot at directing a main entry of the series later). The world of Ivalice, in particular, and aspects of its lore would appear later in other entries.

Something blew

Of course, being a Matsuno game, there were a dozen systems running at once during a battle, and some of these would never show again in a Final Fantasy. Things like Zodiac Compatibility and the Faith system would stay in this game and would not be revisited.

Something else that would not be revisited - Ramza’s choice of wardrobe. All other male Final Fantasy characters have made sure to keep their buttcheeks covered during battle.

Score

16/16 possible squad members (or 24/24 in the Lion War unit system)

 

[Positronic Brain]

And so their journey began.

The Tyrants felt overwhelmed by the great task destiny had placed upon them.
They did not know the true significance of the LISTs they held in their hands...
The time for their journey had come.
The time to cast off the veil of darkness and bring the world once more into the light...​

 

[Daikaiju]

I attack the darkness!

 

[Kirin]

I wanna cast Magic Missile!

 

[ThornGhost]

Cool! Didn't vote but can't wait to read.

Also if that release date was supposed to be for the PSX version of Tactics, that's pretty far off.

 

[Purple]

So. Sakaguchi. Uematsu. NASIR. Kawazu.

Can we please not do the thing where we pretend women don't work on games?

 

[Issun]

I've always loved that the true villain of FFT is Evil Jesus. Hopefully with the TO remaster we'll soon se one for FFT so it'll finally be on Switch.

 

[JBear]

Can we please not do the thing where we act unnecessarily passive-aggressive and combative? Surely there was a better way to phrase that. Here, like so:

"Don't forget Kazuko Shibuya! Her contributions to the series enduring look cannot be understated!"

Seems a lot more fun to me to celebrate a cool creator than to uncharitably accuse someone of erasing women.

Running these lists is a lot of work, and so far PB is knocking it out of the park, and I just want to state that I at least appreciate the effort and am looking forward to more! (Also, I love the Something old, Something new, Something blew as a way of examining each entry.)

 

[FelixSH]

Yeah, great start. Looking forward to the next entry.

One day, probably when I'm done with revisiting the series, I will make another attempt at beating FFT. I do appreciate a lot about the game, but there are things that keep me away. A shame, I want to know it better. One day.

 

[Peklo]

Just noting that the developer names are Yasumi (not Yasunori) Matsuno and Hitoshi Sakimoto (not Sakamoto).

 

[Positronic Brain]

Cool! Didn't vote but can't wait to read.

Also if that release date was supposed to be for the PSX version of Tactics, that's pretty far off.

Just noting that the developer names are Yasumi (not Yasunori) Matsuno and Hitoshi Sakimoto (not Sakamoto).

Ah. Welcome to the tradition of "Positronic Brain always messes up the first entry". Damn, he's going to be so mad... In any case, the date was wrong because it was part of the template, but I have no idea why I got the names wrong. Anyway, thanks for the spotting, it's been fixed.

Can we please not do the thing where we pretend women don't work on games?

Breaking kayfabe for a moment, I'm not trying to erase Shibuya from history. There are a lot of creators behind FFI - of course those four didn't carry the weight alone. There were lots of talented people working along them and who have had long and fruitful careers (for example, scenario writer Kenji Terada would go on to write the Kimagure Orange Road anime next year, which also has a stable time loop in its ending, and I don't think that's a coincidence!). But I do have to pick a limited set of names for the narrative and the game descriptions or I'll spend my whole day copy/pasting names - and I picked the four most known ones. So my apologies, I didn't intend this to be a slight against anybody else in the creative team, against female developers nor against Ms. Shibuya. And this is why this is in a thread format, so we all can add to the conversation to fill the gaps that I'm inevitably going to have in my written entries.

Back to your regular programming.

I've always loved that the true villain of FFT is Evil Jesus.

Evil Jesus does look hot in that battle swimsuit.

 

[Octopus Prime]

the Church of Ajora is the only church that puts out pinup calendars of its holy saints

 

[Purple]

Breaking kayfabe for a moment, I'm not trying to erase Shibuya from history. There are a lot of creators behind FFI - of course those four didn't carry the weight alone.

I do get where you're going with the four warriors of light deal, and I'm planning to gush about art when FF1 comes up on the list, but like, now that we know this one person did all this super memorable art and basically went uncredited for three and a half decades, I think it's worth revising history to rank her over at least, say, the programmer of a notoriously buggy game, or the guy who didn't really do much of anything until the second game, you know?

 

[Positronic Brain]

Eh, we're not ranking anybody over anybody here, but those descriptions do make a disservice to the creative team. Kawazu was the battle planner - the spell charges, the elemental resistances and the status weaknesses were all his ideas, and other games picked them up (or not) from there. And while the game *is* buggy, NASIR did all the coding himself, which is a hell of a feat (and most likely why the game is buggy).

I am honestly not putting down Shibuya's contribution (she designed Black Mage! That's freakin' huge!) but I don't think putting down the rest of the team helps either.

 

[estragon]

And while the game *is* buggy, NASIR did all the coding himself, which is a hell of a feat (and most likely why the game is buggy).

Yeah, by all accounts Nasir Gebelli is (or at least was) borderline supernaturally gifted. It's extremely silly to be taking cheap shots about the bugs in FF1. They asked him to work magic, and he did, over and over.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Time for our first entry!

Mortality is the greatest gift of all

#21
Final Fantasy III DS

a.k.a. The one that got remade first

88 points • 4 mentions • Highest rank: #11 (Alex)​

Released on August 24th, 2006 (Japan)
Producer: Tomoya Asano
Director: Hiromichi Tanaka
Composer: Nobuo Uematsu (arranged by Tsuyoshi Sekito and Keiji Kawamori)


DId you know Final Fantasy III is really popular in Japan? FInal Fantasy III is really popular in Japan. Of course us westerners didn’t know because the original III wasn’t released outside Japan, but that explains why, after the Square-Enix merger, the first Final Fantasy game to ever be completely remade from scratch was Final Fantasy III.

The game itself follows the story of the NES version, but some changes were made - the four Warriors of Light had names and personalities now, and they were given a storyline (and a redesign by Tactics' designer, harbinger of leather pants, Akikiho Yoshida). But the main story (four young kids discovering the Crystal and the joys of job juggling, and then them taking on the might of Sorcerer Xande and the Cloud of Darkness) remained mostly unchanged.

Everything else was updated, though. The job system was reworked, and jobs rebalanced with the Freelancer job being now the default. The old system of using points to change jobs was kicked out, with the characters being debuffed for a number of battles after a job change. The game was remade using a polygonal engine - and notably that caused the game balance to be reworked, since the engine couldn’t display as many enemies as the original NES version, so encounters had less enemies with more HP, which made battles feel longer and more sluggish.

This was also part of why the game was so criticized when it was released. While the game was remade, it still was mostly faithful to the NES release when it came down to its battle systems and difficulty, and that didn’t go that well with modern reviewers. Paired with the damage sponge that were most enemies, made the game feel slow. In the years since the original, the main games in the series had made lots of advances in both their gameplay systems and the way they respected the player’s time. So when playing IIIDS, keep in mind you’re playing with the equivalent of a Jurassic Park dinosaur - it is a new incarnation of an old fossil, and it still has plenty of teeth.

Something Old

This is a remake of III, so, yeah, plenty of references to *that*. But you can see the influence of games after III - particularly V, with a more generous penalty for job switching (not that you can do a lot with that) and the Freelancer job being the new default.

Something New

IIIDS’s influence would be mostly felt in the DS space. Its graphical style and its design philosophy would affect the next remake, IVDS, and all the original games for the DS family, starting with Four Heroes of Light. Even now you can feel its DNA in Bravely Default II. And some of its job rebalancing mechanics (including ditching points for job switching) made its way back into III with the Pixel Remaster.

Something Blew

I like to think there’s a reason why this is the last Final Fantasy end dungeon with no save point in the main series.

Rating:

3/7 possible polygonal models in screen

 

[Daikaiju]

FF 3 also introduced the Onion Knight. I don't think it's ever held the same prominence since, but it almost always pops up in some form or another.

 

[Positronic Brain]

FF 3 also introduced the Onion Knight. I don't think it's ever held the same prominence since, but it almost always pops up in some form or another.

Well, the original did. The Onion Knight class was pretty set in the FF lorespace by the time IIIDS came out (although few games, if any, used it).

 

[Daikaiju]

Ah my bad, I thought some of your discussion was about FF3 in general.

 

[Alex]

FF3 DS had one of my more detested mechanics of that system, gating content behind the online portion of the game. I don't even think I had access to wifi when it first came out!

 

[Peklo]

I believe another kind of facilitating factor for III being remade was also that Hiromichi Tanaka happened to be available to take charge of the project, having been the original's lead designer; the same pattern would repeat with IV's remake and Takashi Tokita. Square Enix has demonstrated this kind of internal culture where remakes and revisions to past works of note may not ever, or at least are likelier to happen if someone for whom it could be considered "theirs" is present to oversee and contribute to the comeback. SaGa remains more vibrant than possibly ever because Kawazu is still there collaborating with a new generation of enthusiastic developers to maintain it, while the ongoing VII Remake series is difficult to conceptualize happening to the scale that it has if as many of the key figures from the past weren't roped into the production as have been--the Nojimas, Toriyamas, Nomuras and Kitases.

 

[Kirin]

Despite owning a DS and being a big FF fanboy, I never picked up the DS remakes. I think I just have a hard time making space for big handheld RPGs; the only one I remember completing in the past couple decades is Bravely Default. Also the reputation Pos mentioned of the battles being a bit of a slog certainly didn't help any. I do have a bit of other history with III, but I guess the original may show up separately.

 

[estragon]

Well, the original did. The Onion Knight class was pretty set in the FF lorespace by the time IIIDS came out (although few games, if any, used it).

I was curious about this so I tried to look into it, and I think that at the time of publication FF3DS was the only game to use Onion Knight as a class other than FF3. Then, the following year, FFT: The War of the Lions came out and became the first non-FF3 game to use it as anything other than reference/easter egg (like Lulu's Onion Knight doll weapon, etc.). The other instances of it being playable (Dissidia, a bunch of mobile games) all come after its appearance as a secret, unlockable class here.

In my opinion, the class has only ever been any fun in Dissidia, because in the non-action based entries it's positioned a class dedicated to rewarding grinding, which is something I don't do.

 

[FelixSH]

I bought the FF III DS remake when it came out, being hungry for a JRPG. Didn't really work out, back then. It felt too old-school for me, at the time, and I never liked 3D graphics on the DS. Considering these lists are more of a celebration, I'll leave it at that, and appreciate that it brought FF III (a game that, in it's original form, I adore) for the first time outside of Japan. And I appreciate that they tried some new stuff.

 

[Lokii]

START​

This thread is great! Can't wait to defeat Lich and light up my LIST.


Glad to see FFT getting special recognition. It def felt like the one that was most hurt by the mainline-only rule. It's weird because it doesn't feel like a mainline game but at the same time... it does? Crazy to think it came out just a few months after VII (and then SaGa Frontier just a bit after that). Heady days.


III DS is a strange one for sure. It's got its moments but it def feels p creaky and the product of a lot of compromises. Still, it's the first entry of a sort of sub-series that leads through IV DS, 4HoL, and into the BD games. There's an aesthetic trend that you can trace back here that emerged from the translation of Famicom sprites into DS lowpoly models and that's pretty cool. My favorite part of the remake is how all the characters have little individual costuming details that follow them through their job changes like Luneth's turtleneck or Arc's ascot. Plus, I love the game's interpretation of the Dragoon with the blue and gold color scheme and wing-a-ling motif. Pixel Remaster decided to go with a blue/black design to bring the job back in line with the rest of the series and something essential was lost.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I played III DS when it came out and had an interesting experience with it. I put a ton of hours into it, and I got very near the end. And then one thing happened: I got the black belt class. I was excited about finally upgrading my character who'd been a monk nearly the entire game, but was hit with the realization that despite his being a level 80 monk, that had no bearing on a different job, even one so closely related, and I'd basically have to re-grind him up from scratch.

I don't know why this was such a strike at the time, but I put down the game right then, and learned an important lesson: I don't have to finish a game to have enjoyed the time I spent with it. I still have a soft spot for III DS, though I doubt I'll ever revisit it. I also like that it was essentially the great-grandfather of Bravely Default, which was great, so that alone earns it a mention.

 

[Patrick]

I was a fan of FFIII DS on Vita. The fast forward feature helped a lot. Looking forward to finally playing the pixel remaster version on Switch soon.