She’s one of the most familiar names in games, let alone Resident Evil, and that reputation is well-earned. The star of Resident Evil 3, Jill Valentine ranks alongside recognizable characters like Lara Croft within the greater world of games. Shes one of the strongest female video game characters in history, and she is quite capable of shooting up zombies while remaining a believable personality.
Nobody does horror like Japan, and nobody does horror games like Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. The Evil Within, which is directed by Mikami, is a third-person survival horror game that dishes up enough visual and psychological horrors to jolt you awake for a good few weeks after you stop playing it. Your brain never stops playing, dear one.
Shigeru Miyamoto As a child, he didn’t have many toys, so he made his own and was inspired by a boyhood visit to a local cave. As one of the greatest video game designers of all time, he created both the Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda franchises. He also gets credit for Pikmin, Yoshi, Nintendogs, and others. In this article for “The New Yorker,” he recalls how developing games has been an attempt to recapture the wonderment of his childhood days.
Shinji Mikami Proving that horror wasn’t just for the big screen, he helped design the horror game that had gamers afraid to touch there consoles. Although he started out designing Disney themed games, he later designed one that had players attempting to escape a mansion flooded with zombies. The game would end up being called Resident Evil, and the franchise of games and films it launched is still active today.
Hideo Kojima The video game designer behind Metal Gear inspired many others to create games based on stealth and puzzle solving during game play. Over 20 years after he designed the game, Kojima is still going strong and even advising Final Fantasy creators on future games.
لیست برترین تا بدترین های فاینال فانتزی از نگاه سایت های مختلف!
IGN
Final Fantasy xiii -10
Final Fantasy XIII marked the franchise's much-anticipated PlayStation 3-era debut,but many fans felt it couldn't quite live up to the hype. While it was the most graphically impressive entry in the series to date, XIII was considered by many to be too linear with a convoluted story. Despite that, XIII did go on to spawn two direct sequels and tons of cameo appearances by protagonist Lightning in spin-off titles. And while plenty of fans ultimately considered the game a disappointment, XIII is undeniably gorgeous, and does eventually allow open exploration, even if it takes its sweet time getting there. Love her or hate her, Lightning is among the most iconic Final Fantasy protagonists, and the Paradigm system was a smart new take on classes that allowed for fast-paced changes during battle. While it wasn't perfect, staggering enemies during battle was also a smart new mechanic for Final Fantasy and led to some incredibly tense close calls. Final Fantasy XIII has plenty of flaws, but does mark a notable modern shift in the series for its only main entry of the console generation.
9-Final Fantasy x
Even before Final Fantasy IX was released back in 2000, screenshots of Final Fantasy X began to surface in the media. The photo-realistic picture of a shaggy-haired blitzball player holding an aquatic sword and covered in finely rendered drops of saltwater dropped jaws across the globe. The screenshot was evidence that Final Fantasy X – the first Final Fantasy for the Playstation 2 – was the next level in graphical achievement. The game also broke ground by getting rid of the series' traditional top-down world map and introducing continuous areas that felt real and immersive. In addition, the Sphere Grid allowed players to fully customize characters in contrast to their pre-determined battle roles without having to swap out abilities like in Final Fantasy's traditional Job system. Despite a charming love story and memorable soundtrack, Final Fantasy X's linear path, ease of combat, and questionable voice work left some fans disappointed. Still, there's no doubt its graphical advancements and solid combat mechanics were a milestone for the series. – Meghan Sullivan
8- Final Fantasy iii
For American fans,
Final Fantasy III was long the missing link between the comparatively simple NES original and the subsequently spectacular Super Nintendo games. Released on the Japanese Famicom in 1990, the third Final Fantasy chapter didn’t reach the US until 2006, and it was only then that most Western players discovered the extraordinarily important mechanical evolution it inaugurated. While the turn-based battle system remains in place, it's both streamlined and augmented. Physical attacks against destroyed enemies no longer result in an "ineffective" miss, and new class-based commands expand your arsenal of options in combat. Final Fantasy III also brought the first iconic summons to the series, and most importantly, introduced the Job system, the heavily-customizable party-crafting innovation that would become the backbone of the series’ greatest installments.
7- Final Fantasy i
The US had Pac-Man Fever in the 80s, but Japan had Dragon Quest Mania. When Enix's turn-based RPG caused a national hubbub, Square struck back with Final Fantasy. It cribbed a lot from Dragon Quest, like an overworld map, random battles, and stats (these were new concepts to many players at the time), but Final Fantasy expanded on the newly realized JRPG formula in a big way. It had colorful, detailed depictions of fantasy monsters, a huge world with different ways to get around (canoe!), a soundtrack that has been revisited in nearly every Final Fantasy game to date, and, perhaps most importantly, character creation. You could choose your party classes and name your characters. If you chose lame classes (Thief) the payoff was that they could become amazing (Ninja) at a bizarre mid-game graduation ceremony. Contemporary players might balk at Final Fantasy's lack of Chocobos, Moogles, or Cid, but fear not: you still get an airship
6- Final Fantasy vii
Final Fantasy VII represents one of the most important turning points in video game history.The series' first jump into 3D on the original PlayStation was a groundbreaking moment for RPGs, and the medium as a whole. The massive adventure that begins in Midgar before eventually unfolding into a globe-spanning quest added a sense of scope and scale to the series that we'd never seen before. The roster of characters, like them or not, has become the most iconic in the entire series, with Cloud appearing in well over a dozen other games. And once again, Uematsu knocked it out of the park with his score, and the emotional gravitas of a certain death halfway through the game might be the most talked about video game moment of the entire generation.
5- Final Fantasy v
Final Fantasy V's story may have involved the investigation of a fallen meteor, but its biggest bang came from the then-freshly revamped Job system. This overhaul tweaked the concept introduced in Final Fantasy III and presented the player with 22 powerful class options. Through careful investment of meteor shards and ability points, you could unlock new ones along with special moves to wreck foes on the battlefield. You could also carry over techniques to other professions and create fun hybrid classes. The resulting deep customization of Final Fantasy V didn't come to the West until years later, but it's had a lasting impact through an annual community event called the Four Job Fiesta.
4- Final Fantasy iv
Final Fantasy IV ushered the series into the 16-bit era with incredible panache. Its ground-breaking combat, deliciously operatic story, epiphanic soundtrack, and (for the time) stunning graphics made it an instant classic. Dark Knight Cecil's road to redemption was the first character-driven narrative in the series, taking players on an emotional adventure full of love, loss, betrayal, and hope. The hero's journey was made all the more epic with Mode 7, a graphics mode on the Super Nintendo System that allowed background layers to be rotated and scaled, giving the world map a fantastic 3D look long before polygons were popular. Final Fantasy IV's true crowning achievement, however, was the Active Time Battle system. This combat mechanic timed enemy and ally turns via a gauge, giving turn-based encounters a nail-biting, real-time dynamic. It was so revolutionary that different variants of the ATB system were used in no less than five subsequent Final Fantasies. With its valiant story and clever machinations, Final Fantasy IV catapulted the series to new heights, and set the standard for RPGs to come.
3- Final Fantasy ix
Final Fantasy IX is a delightful and near-perfect throwback to the franchise’s roots. It brought back the classic crystals, black mages, a high fantasy setting, and plenty more for one last hurrah before Final Fantasy would return to more contemporary settings. The nostalgia is nice, but the true secret to Final Fantasy IX's success is its warmth. Zidane and other members of the bandit theater troupe Tantulus truly feel like close friends by the end of the adventure, and you along with them. It’s rare for a video game to feature non-romantic love and closeness effectively, but it’s almost impossible to not be absorbed by Final Fantasy IX's charming demeanor. The best musical score in Final Fantasy history, a fantastic collection of cities to wander through, and an absolutely perfect ending combine to make Final Fantasy IX an adventure that has only grown in our hearts since its debut in 2000.
2- Final Fantasy xii
Simply put, Final Fantasy XII redefined what it meant to be a Final Fantasy game. After a tumultuous and lengthy development, Final Fantasy XII arrived just in time for the Playstation 2’s swan song and fortunately proved that it was well worth the wait. Set in the world of Ivalice (of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics fame) Final Fantasy XII cast players as Vaan, a streetwise orphan who quickly gets embroiled in a journey that’s rife with political intrigue, danger, and one of the best supporting casts in the series’ history. The License Board offered such deep and varied character customization, that you could mold any of your party members into any hybrid of any class that you could possibly dream up. The battle system, dubbed the Active Dimension Battle, took a note from popular MMOs and did away with random encounters and rewarded players for careful consideration and tactical planning. Combine these attributes with one of the most mature and compelling stories in Final Fantasy history and you can easily see why it’s so high on our list
1- Final Fantasy vi
Not only is Final Fantasy VI our favorite game in the series, but it's also one of our absolute favorite games of all time. The SNES masterpiece has all the tenets of a great RPG. Its massive roster of characters contain some of the most memorable heroes the genre has ever seen. From Terra's enigmatic past to Shadow's rad dog Interceptor, VI does an incredible job of making you actually care about the folks in your party. The combat was fast, tactical, and set a new benchmark for the series' iconic ATB system. Nobuo Uematsu's score made the most of the SNES hardware, especially during the beloved opera scene. And of course, no talk of Final Fantasy VI is complete without mentioning Kefka, one of the best villains in video game history. His evolution from worrisome jester to terrifying God of Magic is punctuated by a handful of the most powerful moments in any RPG. Final Fantasy VI is a masterpiece that has only gotten better with age.
The first entry in the series for PlayStation 2, Final Fantasy 10 left behind many of the standards that appeared throughout the 32-bit chapters. Pre-rendered backgrounds were replaced with real-time visuals. Characters finally spoke voiced dialogue. Solving puzzle dungeons became as important to progression as defeating bosses.
And more radical upheavals came here, too: for the first time since the NES days, the franchise's trademark active-time combat system shed its real-time elements in favor of a strictly turn-based system. As with FF13, the majority of FF10 transpires as a linear journey along a single path to the end ... though in this case, the journey contains enough variety and hidden secrets (including pieces of a cryptographic alphabet that allows you to read texts in other languages on a second playthrough) that it rarely chafes.
FFX feels in many ways like an evolutionary dead end for the series now, with its unique battle system and fixed camera angles in a 3D world. But it brought welcome evolution to the franchise, helping it move beyond the formula Square had adopted for the PlayStation games. While it doesn't rank among the series' absolute best, it's a valuable transitional work.
Another victim of Square Enix's difficult entry into the world of HD visuals, Final Fantasy 15 was first announced as FF13 spinoff "Final Fantasy Versus 13" more than a decade before it eventually shipped. That's never a good sign, but despite everything FF15 had going against it ... the game turned out pretty well. It definitely has its issues, most notably the story not really making any sense unless you watch a lot of supplementary materials, but there's balance against those failings in FF15's curious blend of styles. On one hand, it presents the grandest, most ambitious setting in the franchise's history, a sweeping open-world panorama that players can explore at their leisure. On the other hand, the story revolves around a tightly knit group of friends hoping to set things right for the coterie's leader, the deposed prince of the city-state of Lucis, Noctis.
Amidst a battle between kingdoms for the fate of the world, FF15 shines for its small moments: Friends hanging out at a campground, taking goofy selfies together, bantering in combat and listening to classic Final Fantasy chiptunes as they hit the open road. In other words, there's a humanity in FF15 unique within the the series. For all the game's rough patches and questionably designed sequences (some of which have already been rectified through patches and DLC), it grounds the adventure by placing its focus entirely on Noctis's posse. For a game that began life as a troubled spinoff, FF15 does a remarkable job of pointing the way forward for the franchise.
By far the biggest game in the franchise in terms of its cultural footprint, Final Fantasy 7 exploded the series from cult favorite to global blockbuster. Ironically, the things that made it so popular 20 years ago are the ones that make it feel so profoundly dated today. Its nearly seamless blend of real-time polygons, pre-rendered backgrounds and computer-generated cutscene footage represented a brilliant example of game developers harnessing technology in new ways to blur the line between games and cinema (with far greater elegance and substance than the "Siliwood" movement of the early ’90s). Yet those elements feel clumsy and intrusive now, leaving FF7 with some of the ugliest visuals and shallowest game mechanics in the series' history. The flexible Materia skill system was done better by the games on either side of FF7, and the flashy monster summons fail to dazzle today; they're just drawn-out and dull.
No, what makes FF7 worth revisiting today is its ambitious story and character development. Although its convolutions are poorly served by the localization, FF7 makes some gutsy choices for its memorable cast. Protagonist Cloud Strife demonstrates a whole lot more personality and growth than the series' expanded universe works would have you believe, and the villainous Sephiroth cuts an imposing figure even as the narrative drops hints that he's more a pawn than a mastermind. I'm curious to see how the upcoming episodic remake processes and reinvents this landmark work — in a best-case scenario, it'll revitalize the game's best parts without losing the essence that made the whole thing so beloved in the first place.
Vanilla FF14 may be the worst numbered Final Fantasy, but its reboot — A Realm Reborn — ranks among the best. It's an unprecedented venture: Square Enix removed FF14's leads (long-time company veterans) and handed the reins over to a relative newcomer at the company, Naoki Yoshida, trusting in his deep passion for and understanding of the MMO genre to guide the game's reinvention. The confidence paid off. Yoshida literally nuked the original game, ending FF14 with an apocalyptic event that closed the book on the original world and gave both the land of Eorzea and its fans a fresh start.
A Realm Reborn plays like a love letter to both Final Fantasy and the MMO genre. It's a lean, accessible game that draws on the best of the format while managing not to feel like yet another World of Warcraft clone. The entire world is steeped in Final Fantasy heritage, with frequent events that reference the franchise's best moments (including an expansive tribute to Final Fantasy 12's realm of Ivalice). It manages to be both deeply immersive yet a game even a genre novice can pick up and play without trouble, and it works equally well on PCs and consoles. Although the unavoidable requirements of any MMO — lots of free time and a reliable internet connection — prevent this from being the most universal entry in Final Fantasy's history, it's both a great game and a welcome sign that Square Enix isn't afraid to take drastic measures to right a listing ship.
At once the culmination of Final Fantasy on PlayStation and a joyous celebration of the RPGs of older console generations, FF9 feels at times almost like a "greatest moments" compilation of the series. Perhaps tellingly, it began life as a spinoff game — not unlike FF15, really. But there's so much Final Fantasy essence here that it easily earned its Roman numeral. Turning back the clock on the sci-fi vibe that permeated Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 8, FF9 takes place in a rustic world filled with mages, castles and cobblestone streets. Protagonist Zidane has a roguish, Han Solo-like quality to him, making him something of a small fry and an outsider in a big-picture narrative that involves kingdoms at war, almighty summoned monsters and ancient races ... well, right up until the modern Final Fantasy trappings manifest themselves and reveal Zidane's place in the cosmos while also paying tribute to the original NES Final Fantasy with the return of villain Garland and his Four Fiends.
FF9 feels rather uneven in places, with a narrative tone that veers wildly between comedy and melodrama. Its underlying play mechanics feel a bit stodgy after the excesses of FF8. Its technical ambitions push the PlayStation beyond its limits, resulting in a sometimes slow and irritating play experience as the hardware wheezes to keep up. Still, it would be churlish to talk down FF9 due to these minor deficiencies. It's a good-hearted game brimming with lovable characters like the oafish knight Steiner and the innocent, doomed black mage Vivi, and it stands as a final heartwarming tribute to the vintage Final Fantasy series before FFX pushed it over the edge to modernity.
If FF9 is Final Fantasy at its self-referential best, its predecessor was the series at its most fearless and unfettered. Final Fantasy 8 might well be the most divisive game to wear the name Final Fantasy, which is really saying something, but its controversial nature speaks to what makes it so remarkable. After the staggering success of FF7, the development team could easily have churned out a carbon copy reiteration of that game to satisfy fans clamoring for more. Instead, it defied expectation with an RPG that elaborated on some of FF7's narrative motifs while systematically dismantling nearly every rule and mechanic fans had come to take for granted in a Final Fantasy.
Even elements that do make a return, like the active-time battle system, work in new and unfamiliar ways. Every facet of combat here revolves around summoned beasts: They play a major role in battle, in the story and in determining what skills and powers your party members possess. Meanwhile, the game's magic system does away with the concepts of mana pools or the old-school spell tiers, instead existing as a finite resource whose relationship to the party's combat stats introduces a risk-reward question to every battle: Do you cast magic and risk weakening your team, or tough it out?
FF8 demands you relearn how Final Fantasy works. You earn cash as part of a regular stipend and rarely use it in the world. Grinding for experience makes enemies stronger, too, resulting in a more difficult game. Magic is precious and essential. Your team operates from a military academy. You don't buy weapons; you reforge them. And sometimes, you play as a weird guy with long hair and a machine gun instead of as protagonist Squall. Many people find FF8 impossibly opaque, or crushingly tedious, as they find the easiest way to play is to evoke lengthy monster-summoning animations over and over again. The thing is, though, FF8 offers no end of unconventional systems and workarounds to what seem to be required tactics, allowing you an enormous degree of options to affect how the game plays both in and out of battle. Indeed, if you take the time to learn its workings, FF8 turns out to be the easiest and most exploitable game in the series. It's a fascinating subversion of the series, almost postmodern in its design, and there's simply no other game like it in the world.
4: Final Fantasy 4
No game in the series has done quite so much to define the what it means to be Final Fantasy like Final Fantasy 4 (released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy 2). From the introduction of the dynamic active-time battle system to a narrative application of FF3's Job classes to its cast of distinct and clearly defined characters, FF4 marks the point at which the franchise transcended its early days of well-intended chaos in search of a personality to set it apart from Dragon Quest. All the silliness and melodrama that have come to define Final Fantasy found its primal form here, too: As protagonist Cecil embarks on a sulky quest to discover his true self, his allies drop into and out of his party, often leaving the story by way of a noble self-sacrifice. FF4 is hokey in the way of classical Greek theatre, with Nobuo Uematsu's groundbreaking musical score playing the role of the Chorus, and in its way the game did as much to lay down the rules of the console RPG as the Dragon Quest had.
If FF4 has a flaw, it's that this pillar of a genre feels entirely too brief and linear; you'll find yourself face to face with final boss Zeromus just as things really start to fall into place. But no matter how desperate you may be for another FF4 fix, please don't play its spinoff sequel. Trust me on this one.
3: Final Fantasy 5
In FF4, the series' creators took the Job system of the previous game and used it as raw materials from which to build a story-driven quest. Final Fantasy 5 pushed the needle back all the way back from narrative — its story may well be the slightest in the entire series — and into the far end of the "systems" side of the meter. In doing so, its dev team put together the single most replayable entry in the entire franchise — a fact attested to by the fact that thousands of people revisit it every summer in a collective charity run.
FF5 expands on the Job system, offering more classes to choose from while allowing players to mix and match the skills that belong to each Job. The resulting setup doesn't technically give you an infinite number of ways to play the game, but it sure seems like it. Despite this immense flexibility, the game's difficulty level feels exquisitely balanced from start to finish; enemies pose a challenge throughout the quest, yet there's no scenario that can't be overcome by the proper party setup. While you probably won't remember much about FF5's characters or plot once the credits roll, the flexibility inherent in the game's systems give it a real "one more time" appeal. What if I played it with this class setup? What if I tried using that skill on the superbosses? The nuts-and-bolts approach to Final Fantasy design would reach its true apex with spinoff Final Fantasy Tactics, but within the series proper, this is as nutty and bolty as it gets.
2: Final Fantasy 12
Time has been kind to the divisive 12th chapter of Final Fantasy. This past summer's long-awaited HD remake (The Zodiac Age) helped cement the fact that FF12 was, indeed, a work far ahead of its time — one that has become only more relevant and engrossing through the years. A decade ago, FF12's determination to blur the line between single-player and massively multiplayer RPGs made it quite controversial. Its elaborate Gambit system (which allowed players to effectively program the behavior of their party members) struck many as a game design crutch that surrendered the actual process of play to artificial intelligence. Now, however, the prospect of AI-controlled party members in an open-world real-time RPG has become commonplace. Yet nothing that's come after FF12 has matched the flexibility and precision offered by its Gambits.
Open-world RPGs continue to struggle to live up to all the things FF12 did right. Even simple little details, like differentiating between passive and aggro monsters on sight by the color of their health icons, don't always make their way into games (including the very recent Xenoblade Chronicles 2). Few open world adventures manage to balance free-form questing with a structured narrative as well as FF12, either; the game allows you to wander wherever you like, even if you end up way out of your depth. But if you know what you're doing, it often simply lets you go about your way, making possible some interesting breaks from the "proper" order of events.
FF12 is a game that trusts and respects the player in a way you rarely see, especially in a story driven JRPG. While it may not have the greatest story in the series — much of the main cast exists at the periphery of much larger events — the vast world and durable game design more than makes up for its shortcomings.
1: Final Fantasy 6
Ultimately, only one game perfectly embodies everything great about the Final Fantasy series, and that’s 1994's Final Fantasy 6 (which initially appeared in the U.S. under the name Final Fantasy 3). Sitting at the divide between the vintage games (with their elemental crystals and tiny sprite graphics) and the modern take on the series (full of sci-fi futurism and narrative-driven structures), FF6 truly feels like the best of both worlds. Its steampunk-inflected world may be drawn with old-school bitmap graphics, but those 16-bit visuals depict a setting every bit as gritty and modernized as FF7's. The story feels as enormous as you'd find in any of the games to follow on PlayStation, seeming more modest in scale only as a side effect of the tech limits of the hardware. FF6 may in fact be the only game where the villain not only pulls off his mad scheme to end the world, but in which the apocalypse simply kicks off the second half of the adventure.
That's not all that makes FF6 unique. The game somehow manages to juggle a party that potentially consists of more than a dozen characters while making most of them interesting, distinct and sympathetic. It then deftly combines the two fundamental structural approaches that have defined progression within Final Fantasy through the years: a highly linear, story-driven first half gives way to a wide-open second half that players can tackle in any sequence they prefer.
FF6 rewards players who take the time to explore its world with hidden skills, special weapons, challenging bonus battles and even extra characters. It also rewards players who take the time to understand its mechanics by granting them the keys to completely break the entire battle system wide open and customize their party members top to bottom.
FF6 remains incredibly playable (and replayable) nearly 25 years after its debut. It’s a climax to the series' early days that simultaneously embraces the changes yet to come. Its music, graphics and presentation push the Super NES hardware to its limits without ever feeling like they are making it strain too hard. The witty script manages to evoke humor, pathos and drama, yet it never feels confused or inconsistent. The game really is a landmark achievement, and while many of its sequels have surpassed it in one area or another, no other Final Fantasy has done everything as expertly as FF6 did
Final Fantasy XIII marked the franchise's much-anticipated PlayStation 3-era debut,but many fans felt it couldn't quite live up to the hype. While it was the most graphically impressive entry in the series to date, XIII was considered by many to be too linear with a convoluted story. Despite that, XIII did go on to spawn two direct sequels and tons of cameo appearances by protagonist Lightning in spin-off titles. And while plenty of fans ultimately considered the game a disappointment, XIII is undeniably gorgeous, and does eventually allow open exploration, even if it takes its sweet time getting there. Love her or hate her, Lightning is among the most iconic Final Fantasy protagonists, and the Paradigm system was a smart new take on classes that allowed for fast-paced changes during battle. While it wasn't perfect, staggering enemies during battle was also a smart new mechanic for Final Fantasy and led to some incredibly tense close calls. Final Fantasy XIII has plenty of flaws, but does mark a notable modern shift in the series for its only main entry of the console generation.
Even before Final Fantasy IX was released back in 2000, screenshots of Final Fantasy X began to surface in the media. The photo-realistic picture of a shaggy-haired blitzball player holding an aquatic sword and covered in finely rendered drops of saltwater dropped jaws across the globe. The screenshot was evidence that Final Fantasy X – the first Final Fantasy for the Playstation 2 – was the next level in graphical achievement. The game also broke ground by getting rid of the series' traditional top-down world map and introducing continuous areas that felt real and immersive. In addition, the Sphere Grid allowed players to fully customize characters in contrast to their pre-determined battle roles without having to swap out abilities like in Final Fantasy's traditional Job system. Despite a charming love story and memorable soundtrack, Final Fantasy X's linear path, ease of combat, and questionable voice work left some fans disappointed. Still, there's no doubt its graphical advancements and solid combat mechanics were a milestone for the series. – Meghan Sullivan
Final Fantasy III was long the missing link between the comparatively simple NES original and the subsequently spectacular Super Nintendo games. Released on the Japanese Famicom in 1990, the third Final Fantasy chapter didn’t reach the US until 2006, and it was only then that most Western players discovered the extraordinarily important mechanical evolution it inaugurated. While the turn-based battle system remains in place, it's both streamlined and augmented. Physical attacks against destroyed enemies no longer result in an "ineffective" miss, and new class-based commands expand your arsenal of options in combat. Final Fantasy III also brought the first iconic summons to the series, and most importantly, introduced the Job system, the heavily-customizable party-crafting innovation that would become the backbone of the series’ greatest installments.
The US had Pac-Man Fever in the 80s, but Japan had Dragon Quest Mania. When Enix's turn-based RPG caused a national hubbub, Square struck back with Final Fantasy. It cribbed a lot from Dragon Quest, like an overworld map, random battles, and stats (these were new concepts to many players at the time), but Final Fantasy expanded on the newly realized JRPG formula in a big way. It had colorful, detailed depictions of fantasy monsters, a huge world with different ways to get around (canoe!), a soundtrack that has been revisited in nearly every Final Fantasy game to date, and, perhaps most importantly, character creation. You could choose your party classes and name your characters. If you chose lame classes (Thief) the payoff was that they could become amazing (Ninja) at a bizarre mid-game graduation ceremony. Contemporary players might balk at Final Fantasy's lack of Chocobos, Moogles, or Cid, but fear not: you still get an airship
Final Fantasy VII represents one of the most important turning points in video game history.The series' first jump into 3D on the original PlayStation was a groundbreaking moment for RPGs, and the medium as a whole. The massive adventure that begins in Midgar before eventually unfolding into a globe-spanning quest added a sense of scope and scale to the series that we'd never seen before. The roster of characters, like them or not, has become the most iconic in the entire series, with Cloud appearing in well over a dozen other games. And once again, Uematsu knocked it out of the park with his score, and the emotional gravitas of a certain death halfway through the game might be the most talked about video game moment of the entire generation.
Final Fantasy V's story may have involved the investigation of a fallen meteor, but its biggest bang came from the then-freshly revamped Job system. This overhaul tweaked the concept introduced in Final Fantasy III and presented the player with 22 powerful class options. Through careful investment of meteor shards and ability points, you could unlock new ones along with special moves to wreck foes on the battlefield. You could also carry over techniques to other professions and create fun hybrid classes. The resulting deep customization of Final Fantasy V didn't come to the West until years later, but it's had a lasting impact through an annual community event called the Four Job Fiesta.
Final Fantasy IV ushered the series into the 16-bit era with incredible panache. Its ground-breaking combat, deliciously operatic story, epiphanic soundtrack, and (for the time) stunning graphics made it an instant classic. Dark Knight Cecil's road to redemption was the first character-driven narrative in the series, taking players on an emotional adventure full of love, loss, betrayal, and hope. The hero's journey was made all the more epic with Mode 7, a graphics mode on the Super Nintendo System that allowed background layers to be rotated and scaled, giving the world map a fantastic 3D look long before polygons were popular. Final Fantasy IV's true crowning achievement, however, was the Active Time Battle system. This combat mechanic timed enemy and ally turns via a gauge, giving turn-based encounters a nail-biting, real-time dynamic. It was so revolutionary that different variants of the ATB system were used in no less than five subsequent Final Fantasies. With its valiant story and clever machinations, Final Fantasy IV catapulted the series to new heights, and set the standard for RPGs to come.
Final Fantasy IX is a delightful and near-perfect throwback to the franchise’s roots. It brought back the classic crystals, black mages, a high fantasy setting, and plenty more for one last hurrah before Final Fantasy would return to more contemporary settings. The nostalgia is nice, but the true secret to Final Fantasy IX's success is its warmth. Zidane and other members of the bandit theater troupe Tantulus truly feel like close friends by the end of the adventure, and you along with them. It’s rare for a video game to feature non-romantic love and closeness effectively, but it’s almost impossible to not be absorbed by Final Fantasy IX's charming demeanor. The best musical score in Final Fantasy history, a fantastic collection of cities to wander through, and an absolutely perfect ending combine to make Final Fantasy IX an adventure that has only grown in our hearts since its debut in 2000.
Simply put, Final Fantasy XII redefined what it meant to be a Final Fantasy game. After a tumultuous and lengthy development, Final Fantasy XII arrived just in time for the Playstation 2’s swan song and fortunately proved that it was well worth the wait. Set in the world of Ivalice (of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics fame) Final Fantasy XII cast players as Vaan, a streetwise orphan who quickly gets embroiled in a journey that’s rife with political intrigue, danger, and one of the best supporting casts in the series’ history. The License Board offered such deep and varied character customization, that you could mold any of your party members into any hybrid of any class that you could possibly dream up. The battle system, dubbed the Active Dimension Battle, took a note from popular MMOs and did away with random encounters and rewarded players for careful consideration and tactical planning. Combine these attributes with one of the most mature and compelling stories in Final Fantasy history and you can easily see why it’s so high on our list
Not only is Final Fantasy VI our favorite game in the series, but it's also one of our absolute favorite games of all time. The SNES masterpiece has all the tenets of a great RPG. Its massive roster of characters contain some of the most memorable heroes the genre has ever seen. From Terra's enigmatic past to Shadow's rad dog Interceptor, VI does an incredible job of making you actually care about the folks in your party. The combat was fast, tactical, and set a new benchmark for the series' iconic ATB system. Nobuo Uematsu's score made the most of the SNES hardware, especially during the beloved opera scene. And of course, no talk of Final Fantasy VI is complete without mentioning Kefka, one of the best villains in video game history. His evolution from worrisome jester to terrifying God of Magic is punctuated by a handful of the most powerful moments in any RPG. Final Fantasy VI is a masterpiece that has only gotten better with age.
The first entry in the series for PlayStation 2, Final Fantasy 10 left behind many of the standards that appeared throughout the 32-bit chapters. Pre-rendered backgrounds were replaced with real-time visuals. Characters finally spoke voiced dialogue. Solving puzzle dungeons became as important to progression as defeating bosses.
And more radical upheavals came here, too: for the first time since the NES days, the franchise's trademark active-time combat system shed its real-time elements in favor of a strictly turn-based system. As with FF13, the majority of FF10 transpires as a linear journey along a single path to the end ... though in this case, the journey contains enough variety and hidden secrets (including pieces of a cryptographic alphabet that allows you to read texts in other languages on a second playthrough) that it rarely chafes.
FFX feels in many ways like an evolutionary dead end for the series now, with its unique battle system and fixed camera angles in a 3D world. But it brought welcome evolution to the franchise, helping it move beyond the formula Square had adopted for the PlayStation games. While it doesn't rank among the series' absolute best, it's a valuable transitional work.
Another victim of Square Enix's difficult entry into the world of HD visuals, Final Fantasy 15 was first announced as FF13 spinoff "Final Fantasy Versus 13" more than a decade before it eventually shipped. That's never a good sign, but despite everything FF15 had going against it ... the game turned out pretty well. It definitely has its issues, most notably the story not really making any sense unless you watch a lot of supplementary materials, but there's balance against those failings in FF15's curious blend of styles. On one hand, it presents the grandest, most ambitious setting in the franchise's history, a sweeping open-world panorama that players can explore at their leisure. On the other hand, the story revolves around a tightly knit group of friends hoping to set things right for the coterie's leader, the deposed prince of the city-state of Lucis, Noctis.
Amidst a battle between kingdoms for the fate of the world, FF15 shines for its small moments: Friends hanging out at a campground, taking goofy selfies together, bantering in combat and listening to classic Final Fantasy chiptunes as they hit the open road. In other words, there's a humanity in FF15 unique within the the series. For all the game's rough patches and questionably designed sequences (some of which have already been rectified through patches and DLC), it grounds the adventure by placing its focus entirely on Noctis's posse. For a game that began life as a troubled spinoff, FF15 does a remarkable job of pointing the way forward for the franchise.
By far the biggest game in the franchise in terms of its cultural footprint, Final Fantasy 7 exploded the series from cult favorite to global blockbuster. Ironically, the things that made it so popular 20 years ago are the ones that make it feel so profoundly dated today. Its nearly seamless blend of real-time polygons, pre-rendered backgrounds and computer-generated cutscene footage represented a brilliant example of game developers harnessing technology in new ways to blur the line between games and cinema (with far greater elegance and substance than the "Siliwood" movement of the early ’90s). Yet those elements feel clumsy and intrusive now, leaving FF7 with some of the ugliest visuals and shallowest game mechanics in the series' history. The flexible Materia skill system was done better by the games on either side of FF7, and the flashy monster summons fail to dazzle today; they're just drawn-out and dull.
No, what makes FF7 worth revisiting today is its ambitious story and character development. Although its convolutions are poorly served by the localization, FF7 makes some gutsy choices for its memorable cast. Protagonist Cloud Strife demonstrates a whole lot more personality and growth than the series' expanded universe works would have you believe, and the villainous Sephiroth cuts an imposing figure even as the narrative drops hints that he's more a pawn than a mastermind. I'm curious to see how the upcoming episodic remake processes and reinvents this landmark work — in a best-case scenario, it'll revitalize the game's best parts without losing the essence that made the whole thing so beloved in the first place.
Vanilla FF14 may be the worst numbered Final Fantasy, but its reboot — A Realm Reborn — ranks among the best. It's an unprecedented venture: Square Enix removed FF14's leads (long-time company veterans) and handed the reins over to a relative newcomer at the company, Naoki Yoshida, trusting in his deep passion for and understanding of the MMO genre to guide the game's reinvention. The confidence paid off. Yoshida literally nuked the original game, ending FF14 with an apocalyptic event that closed the book on the original world and gave both the land of Eorzea and its fans a fresh start.
A Realm Reborn plays like a love letter to both Final Fantasy and the MMO genre. It's a lean, accessible game that draws on the best of the format while managing not to feel like yet another World of Warcraft clone. The entire world is steeped in Final Fantasy heritage, with frequent events that reference the franchise's best moments (including an expansive tribute to Final Fantasy 12's realm of Ivalice). It manages to be both deeply immersive yet a game even a genre novice can pick up and play without trouble, and it works equally well on PCs and consoles. Although the unavoidable requirements of any MMO — lots of free time and a reliable internet connection — prevent this from being the most universal entry in Final Fantasy's history, it's both a great game and a welcome sign that Square Enix isn't afraid to take drastic measures to right a listing ship.
At once the culmination of Final Fantasy on PlayStation and a joyous celebration of the RPGs of older console generations, FF9 feels at times almost like a "greatest moments" compilation of the series. Perhaps tellingly, it began life as a spinoff game — not unlike FF15, really. But there's so much Final Fantasy essence here that it easily earned its Roman numeral. Turning back the clock on the sci-fi vibe that permeated Final Fantasy 6, 7 and 8, FF9 takes place in a rustic world filled with mages, castles and cobblestone streets. Protagonist Zidane has a roguish, Han Solo-like quality to him, making him something of a small fry and an outsider in a big-picture narrative that involves kingdoms at war, almighty summoned monsters and ancient races ... well, right up until the modern Final Fantasy trappings manifest themselves and reveal Zidane's place in the cosmos while also paying tribute to the original NES Final Fantasy with the return of villain Garland and his Four Fiends.
FF9 feels rather uneven in places, with a narrative tone that veers wildly between comedy and melodrama. Its underlying play mechanics feel a bit stodgy after the excesses of FF8. Its technical ambitions push the PlayStation beyond its limits, resulting in a sometimes slow and irritating play experience as the hardware wheezes to keep up. Still, it would be churlish to talk down FF9 due to these minor deficiencies. It's a good-hearted game brimming with lovable characters like the oafish knight Steiner and the innocent, doomed black mage Vivi, and it stands as a final heartwarming tribute to the vintage Final Fantasy series before FFX pushed it over the edge to modernity.
If FF9 is Final Fantasy at its self-referential best, its predecessor was the series at its most fearless and unfettered. Final Fantasy 8 might well be the most divisive game to wear the name Final Fantasy, which is really saying something, but its controversial nature speaks to what makes it so remarkable. After the staggering success of FF7, the development team could easily have churned out a carbon copy reiteration of that game to satisfy fans clamoring for more. Instead, it defied expectation with an RPG that elaborated on some of FF7's narrative motifs while systematically dismantling nearly every rule and mechanic fans had come to take for granted in a Final Fantasy.
Even elements that do make a return, like the active-time battle system, work in new and unfamiliar ways. Every facet of combat here revolves around summoned beasts: They play a major role in battle, in the story and in determining what skills and powers your party members possess. Meanwhile, the game's magic system does away with the concepts of mana pools or the old-school spell tiers, instead existing as a finite resource whose relationship to the party's combat stats introduces a risk-reward question to every battle: Do you cast magic and risk weakening your team, or tough it out?
FF8 demands you relearn how Final Fantasy works. You earn cash as part of a regular stipend and rarely use it in the world. Grinding for experience makes enemies stronger, too, resulting in a more difficult game. Magic is precious and essential. Your team operates from a military academy. You don't buy weapons; you reforge them. And sometimes, you play as a weird guy with long hair and a machine gun instead of as protagonist Squall. Many people find FF8 impossibly opaque, or crushingly tedious, as they find the easiest way to play is to evoke lengthy monster-summoning animations over and over again. The thing is, though, FF8 offers no end of unconventional systems and workarounds to what seem to be required tactics, allowing you an enormous degree of options to affect how the game plays both in and out of battle. Indeed, if you take the time to learn its workings, FF8 turns out to be the easiest and most exploitable game in the series. It's a fascinating subversion of the series, almost postmodern in its design, and there's simply no other game like it in the world.
4: Final Fantasy 4
No game in the series has done quite so much to define the what it means to be Final Fantasy like Final Fantasy 4 (released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy 2). From the introduction of the dynamic active-time battle system to a narrative application of FF3's Job classes to its cast of distinct and clearly defined characters, FF4 marks the point at which the franchise transcended its early days of well-intended chaos in search of a personality to set it apart from Dragon Quest. All the silliness and melodrama that have come to define Final Fantasy found its primal form here, too: As protagonist Cecil embarks on a sulky quest to discover his true self, his allies drop into and out of his party, often leaving the story by way of a noble self-sacrifice. FF4 is hokey in the way of classical Greek theatre, with Nobuo Uematsu's groundbreaking musical score playing the role of the Chorus, and in its way the game did as much to lay down the rules of the console RPG as the Dragon Quest had.
If FF4 has a flaw, it's that this pillar of a genre feels entirely too brief and linear; you'll find yourself face to face with final boss Zeromus just as things really start to fall into place. But no matter how desperate you may be for another FF4 fix, please don't play its spinoff sequel. Trust me on this one.
3: Final Fantasy 5
In FF4, the series' creators took the Job system of the previous game and used it as raw materials from which to build a story-driven quest. Final Fantasy 5 pushed the needle back all the way back from narrative — its story may well be the slightest in the entire series — and into the far end of the "systems" side of the meter. In doing so, its dev team put together the single most replayable entry in the entire franchise — a fact attested to by the fact that thousands of people revisit it every summer in a collective charity run.
FF5 expands on the Job system, offering more classes to choose from while allowing players to mix and match the skills that belong to each Job. The resulting setup doesn't technically give you an infinite number of ways to play the game, but it sure seems like it. Despite this immense flexibility, the game's difficulty level feels exquisitely balanced from start to finish; enemies pose a challenge throughout the quest, yet there's no scenario that can't be overcome by the proper party setup. While you probably won't remember much about FF5's characters or plot once the credits roll, the flexibility inherent in the game's systems give it a real "one more time" appeal. What if I played it with this class setup? What if I tried using that skill on the superbosses? The nuts-and-bolts approach to Final Fantasy design would reach its true apex with spinoff Final Fantasy Tactics, but within the series proper, this is as nutty and bolty as it gets.
Time has been kind to the divisive 12th chapter of Final Fantasy. This past summer's long-awaited HD remake (The Zodiac Age) helped cement the fact that FF12 was, indeed, a work far ahead of its time — one that has become only more relevant and engrossing through the years. A decade ago, FF12's determination to blur the line between single-player and massively multiplayer RPGs made it quite controversial. Its elaborate Gambit system (which allowed players to effectively program the behavior of their party members) struck many as a game design crutch that surrendered the actual process of play to artificial intelligence. Now, however, the prospect of AI-controlled party members in an open-world real-time RPG has become commonplace. Yet nothing that's come after FF12 has matched the flexibility and precision offered by its Gambits.
Open-world RPGs continue to struggle to live up to all the things FF12 did right. Even simple little details, like differentiating between passive and aggro monsters on sight by the color of their health icons, don't always make their way into games (including the very recent Xenoblade Chronicles 2). Few open world adventures manage to balance free-form questing with a structured narrative as well as FF12, either; the game allows you to wander wherever you like, even if you end up way out of your depth. But if you know what you're doing, it often simply lets you go about your way, making possible some interesting breaks from the "proper" order of events.
FF12 is a game that trusts and respects the player in a way you rarely see, especially in a story driven JRPG. While it may not have the greatest story in the series — much of the main cast exists at the periphery of much larger events — the vast world and durable game design more than makes up for its shortcomings.
Ultimately, only one game perfectly embodies everything great about the Final Fantasy series, and that’s 1994's Final Fantasy 6 (which initially appeared in the U.S. under the name Final Fantasy 3). Sitting at the divide between the vintage games (with their elemental crystals and tiny sprite graphics) and the modern take on the series (full of sci-fi futurism and narrative-driven structures), FF6 truly feels like the best of both worlds. Its steampunk-inflected world may be drawn with old-school bitmap graphics, but those 16-bit visuals depict a setting every bit as gritty and modernized as FF7's. The story feels as enormous as you'd find in any of the games to follow on PlayStation, seeming more modest in scale only as a side effect of the tech limits of the hardware. FF6 may in fact be the only game where the villain not only pulls off his mad scheme to end the world, but in which the apocalypse simply kicks off the second half of the adventure.
That's not all that makes FF6 unique. The game somehow manages to juggle a party that potentially consists of more than a dozen characters while making most of them interesting, distinct and sympathetic. It then deftly combines the two fundamental structural approaches that have defined progression within Final Fantasy through the years: a highly linear, story-driven first half gives way to a wide-open second half that players can tackle in any sequence they prefer.
FF6 rewards players who take the time to explore its world with hidden skills, special weapons, challenging bonus battles and even extra characters. It also rewards players who take the time to understand its mechanics by granting them the keys to completely break the entire battle system wide open and customize their party members top to bottom.
FF6 remains incredibly playable (and replayable) nearly 25 years after its debut. It’s a climax to the series' early days that simultaneously embraces the changes yet to come. Its music, graphics and presentation push the Super NES hardware to its limits without ever feeling like they are making it strain too hard. The witty script manages to evoke humor, pathos and drama, yet it never feels confused or inconsistent. The game really is a landmark achievement, and while many of its sequels have surpassed it in one area or another, no other Final Fantasy has done everything as expertly as FF6 did
What is the quintessential video game horror series? Resident Evil, right? There are tons of titles one can play in this series to get into the spooky mood as well as a lot of copycats. Sometimes these closes have even surpassed Resident Evil.
1 DEAD SPACE
BioShock is a hoot to play, but it isn’t as horrifying as our number one pick: Dead Space. This game has it all. Creatures that rival the iconic power of Resident Evil’s zombies. It has a unique setting in space making it feel like the best Alien game ever made without bearing its name. The Evil Within is definitely a more obvious spiritual successor, but a lot of Dead Space’s DNA can also be linked to Resident Evil 4. It is a game that, like that classic title, we love playing every few years around this time.
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