With nearly forty years of incredible stories stretching across sixteen mainline entries and numerous spinoffs, Final Fantasy is a truly singular video game franchise. While they all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and there are some generally accepted as “best” entries, there’s an argument to be made for every one of them. But when it comes to the most complete realization of the franchise’s original idea, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has a surprising choice—none other than the game that started it all, 1987’s Final Fantasy.
This revelation comes from a sweeping interview with Inverse that touches on Sakaguchi’s long career at Square Enix and later his own studio Mistwalker. The original Final Fantasy is the “most complete” entry, in that it “is closest in its final form based on what we set out to achieve,” he says. Famously, the game helped skyrocket the popularity of the then-struggling company Square and spawned a now-iconic series.
Beyond its importance in terms of cementing Square’s legacy, Final Fantasy 1 is essentially the platonic ideal of RPGs. It doesn’t have the complexity either narratively or mechanically that the series would become known for in later entries, but it is a distillation of a delightful fantasy adventure with satisfying turn-based combat and a compelling party system. When you play the first Final Fantasy you can tell that there is no fat, no excess, nor is the game lacking features that would compromise its vision. Even nearly forty years later you can feel the Final Fantasy 1 core within every subsequent game.
As the series grew in popularity and became more ambitious, itsfirst entry has largely fallen by the wayside. It’s often seen as the game that started a series that would very quickly grow into something greater, and many people would say you should ignore it outright. However, as Sakaguchi notes, Final Fantasy feels like the most complete game in the series, the best example of what he and Square were trying to achieve all those years ago. y. And as for a runner-up? Well, Sakaguchi did give a more people pleasing answer, saying Final Fantasy 6 comes close and “stands out” above the rest of the series.
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