Final Fantasy
“And at this point I’m afraid to ask.”
It’s a question so many of us ask ourselves. Especially when a game series becomes so popular that it starts releasing multiple games every year. So many of us have played at least one of them, whether it was Final Fantasy XV, or XII, or IX (I like IX), but have we played them all? The answer, for me at least, is no. I started with N64 in the mid nineties, had PS and/or Xbox every generation since, and it occurred to me that I’ve never played any Zelda game ever, nor Resident Evil, nor Metal Gear (unless the demo cd that used to come in the PS magazine counts), and I’ve never really got into Final Fantasy.
Ironically, each one is a stand-alone story
There is little to no connection, character or plot wise. The closest I’ve seen do continuity purposes was FFXV. When Cid returns as the cranky old man mechanic.
It’s the changing game mechanics that make it hard to digest, especially when some do it so differently. Shows how much I know! I would have assumed huge interconnected plots, spin offs, prequels, etc.
That’s very fascinating that with stand-alone stories and changing game mechanics they wouldn’t each have unique titles.
Nah, unless there’s a numbered suffix, the stories have nothing in common. 9 is completely separate from 10, but 10-2 is a direct sequel of 10.
XIII, XIII-2, Lightning Returns: XIII.
Yeah. Some are better than others, one spin off was “Final Fantasy: Tactics.” I think it is one of the beloved ones of the series, ironically, completely different gameplay.
Pretty much the best ones were Final Fantasies 6-10, though.
That may be the only one I still remember decently well, pretty sure I’ve played the ones before but 7 was awesome especially for its time, and the story kicked ass
They released the original Final Fantasy as a last ditch effort with a solid story and true final scene. When it was successful they decided to make the 2nd one with a similar idea where the story was tied up but change things up and that’s been their whole thing.
“Sorta” Final Fantasy does have re-occuring worlds that generally do live within the same sorta universe/multiverse and they do sorta build upon themselves.
Actually, more than just thematically similar, the Ivalice settings are LITERALLY the same world, but we’re talking 1000s of years apart, so the stories are still completely unrelated, even if taking in the same world, timeline etc.
To be fair, they’re not connected at all. You don’t need to play any previous titles to understand new ones. It’s basically an anthology series.
They’re worth discovering just for the music alone. So don’t be afraid to dive in. Most of us had a different starting point, so pick what you want.
Six. You want to start with Six.
100% correct. It’s one of my favorite game stories ever.
I’m always so excited to see Kefka get the love and hate he so profoundly deserves. He’s my favorite video game antagonist of all time and it’s not even close.
I played the latest one, honestly it was pretty mid overall.
Yeah the latest final fantasy games don’t deserve to be called final fantasy. They’re essentially button mashers with little to no tactics involved. The turn based, earlier games were better
Each numbered game is stand alone, but a handful of them have direct sequels, most notably X and XIII. I believe IV has a sequel too.
Ok I need a mini documentary about the making of FF and the developers. Because this is wild. I have so many questions. The sequel to 10 is 13?! How would anyone know that?
No the sequel to X is X-2, an all-female RPG with the main (extremely well-designed and tactically engrossing) battle mechanic involving changing your cute costumes to use different class abilities throughout a fight. Which was in no way related to mechanics of the original game.
And then, of course, there’s the Final Fantasy games that never were. The ones that got cancelled and we have to wonder what could have been.
