It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over five years since I helped PixlBit ring in Final Fantasy’s 25th anniversary with an exhaustive retrospective series, but here we are. Even though I missed the actual 30th anniversary of my favorite game franchise, I couldn’t let that milestone pass without doing something to show my love for this epic saga. To that end, I submit to you, our dear readers, my ordered ranking of the fifteen main games in the series. Naturally, this excludes spinoffs like Final Fantasy Tactics and direct sequels like Lightning Returns, and this is very much my list and in no way is PixlBit’s definitive order. But hey, everyone loves a good list, right? Each game features a quick paragraph reprising some of the information from the FF Retrospective, and a more personal take on each entry. I hope you enjoy!
My favorite FF games are FF6, FF4, and FF9.
FF6 is on my list of my top five favorite games of all time.
Even though I had played FF1 and Dragon Warrior on the NES, FF4 is the game that got me into RPGs.
FF9 is what FF7 and 8 should've been.
FF IV was technically my first RPG too. I played just a teensy bit of FF I at a friend's house, and when I saw the SNES game for rent I convinced my cousin to take a chance on it. We instantly fell in love.
I played some of the first FF and forget what I thought of it. Then I played FF IV and loved that, although, I didn't beat it, yet. I've always meant to get more into FF even when I bought FFXII and didn't get more than a few hours into it, being baffled by the battle system. I think I might try and get into some of these later this year when I revisit '87-91. That would be FFI-IV. I'll take your advice and try and get that GBA version of FFI, but maybe it's downloadable on PS4? I know it was a in PSOne Classics on PS3 a while back. Oh wait. . . I just realized I still have the NES cart. Phew. That one's taken care of.
I grew up with FF II and III (IV and VI). I have tons of nostalgia for those games, especially VI. I've beaten FF III, VI, and IX. FFVI is my favorite RPG, the story, characters, and music are all incredible. I've gotten very close to beating FFI and IV, but they get quite brutal at the end!
It's ironic that some gamers thought FFIX wasn't "a true Final Fantasy game" when in reality, FFVII and VIII were far removed from what a FF game was. Love the series on a whole!
I didn't know FFV was held in such high esteem, since I never hear about it.
FF V is the "intellectual" best game in the series, the one that fans of will use to thumb their nose at people like me who don't care for it as much.
retronauts did a neat episode about FF V. Their 'expert' guest wrote a book on FF V from Boss Fight Books. It sounds fantastic form a mechanics standpoint, but only okay on the story side.
I just bought that book recently and am lookung forward to reading it!
I have the book as well. Can't wait to read it