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Top 10 Best Final Fantasy Games

There are ton of Final Fantasy games, but which one is the absolute best? Is it Final Fantasy Tactics? Final Fantasy 7? … Final Fantasy 15? There are… so many, so let’s take a look at the top 10 best in the series.

10. Final Fantasy Dimensions

Coming in at the bottom of the list is the episodic mobile game Final Fantasy Dimensions. This game is basically a 3rd installment in the SNES Final Fantasy tradition that includes FF3 and FF5 that has gameplay focused on exploding crystals that provide options for your character to change into different classes.

Final Fantasy Dimensions, when played all together as a singular game, is roughly on par with either FF3 or FF5 in terms of scale, and is probably better overall than FF3. The class changing dynamic is always a welcome component of Final Fantasy games and in Final Fantasy Dimensions it’s presented in one of its more polished incarnations.

9. Final Fantasy 4

This is one of the earliest story focused Final Fantasies and its execution was very strong for the time. It takes time to introduce and flesh out its characters, so you come to care about the Dark Knight Cecil, the Dragoon Kain, the old sage Tessah, etc. Characters come and go from your party based on the story, which was sort of a novel concept at the time. It’d been done before in FF2, but FF2 is largely ignored in terms of Final Fantasy games because it’s… an unfun, unmemorable slog.

Because FF4 did so well developing its characters, it sort of set the tone for the rest of the series to become more focused, and its characters are recognizable in several of the ensemble properties like Dissidia.

8. Final Fantasy 9

Square-Enix’s attempt at a return to form after the Final Fantasy series started taking a cyberpunk techno-fantasy turn with FF7. With FF9 they returned to medieval castles, knights and elemental crystals that make the world function. Overall it’s a decent Final Fantasy, if not somewhat forgettable. There’s nothing overtly wrong with the game, it just doesn’t stand out from the pack very much.

The cast is decent. The story is decent, if a little bland. The combat, including the trance system, is decent. Learning techniques from weapons was a little bit of a chore. Overall, it’s decent. Putting it at number 8 on this list is certainly not a dig. Keep in mind there are 15 mainline Final Fantasy games and at least an equal number of spinoffs.

7. Final Fantasy 5

The second class-based game on this list, FF5 is the one that follows Bartz, Faris, Lenna and Galuf in their sort of paint-by-numbers Final Fantasy adventure to save the crystals and then… go to space? And then back to Earth, or whatever they call it in this one.

This one’s pretty good, and one of the most interesting things about it is they sort of embedded a second challenge playthrough in the game, because you can technically beat this game without ever gaining a level. Bosses don’t give XP and each one has a gimmicky trick that can be used to defeat them, so you can have a second super-difficulty playthrough where you run from every fight and try to beat the game at level 5.

6. Final Fantasy 8

People love to hate on this game, but it’s pretty good. Triple Triad is an excellent minigame, probably the most engaging minigame in the whole series. The cast, overall, is pretty good when you don’t think of them as FF7-lite. The only thing about this game that really doesn’t work is that the Disc 2 orphanage plot-twist is mindbogglingly stupid and the story after that is totally incomprehensible. If they’re sort of done away with that, or at least foreshadowed it to some degree, and incorporated the fun fan theory that Ultimecia is Rinoa, they would have had a great plot.

The draw system is somewhat tedious, but I found junctioning to be pretty satisfying, because it’s fun to find all the ways in which you can break the game. If you’re clever and use guides for the magic draw locations, you can game the system and get all your characters endgame stats and weapons by the end of disc 1. I typically think it’s cool when jRPGs have that extra layer of being able to break the system.

5. Final Fantasy 12 – The Zodiac Age

FF12 is a game of extreme highs and lows. Some of its characters, like Basch and Balthier, are among the best in the series. Some of its other characters — basically the rest of the cast — are completely formulaic archetypes. Its battle system is divisive; there are some things to like about it, but overall programming your characters’ AI and then being almost completely hands-off in battle is a bizarre concept that remains bizarre no matter how well it’s executed.

The story is bad. It just doesn’t grab me. It tries to have this political Game of Thrones type of story, but it just doesn’t work. On the other hand, moment to moment scenes are well-acted by the characters and the voice acting is probably the best the series has ever delivered. The license board, especially in the Zodiac Age, which has to be considered the definitive version of this game, is a pretty good concept that acts somewhat as a side-grade to FF10’s sphere grid.

4. Final Fantasy 6

This one’s tough, because I know a lot of people would put this game at number 1. It has an excellent story. Probably the best story that could be delivered with SNES pixel characters. It’s got a great soundtrack. The cast is amazing and full of memorable characters, each of whom get their moments to shine. The structure of the game is great, and all of the sidequests and equipment combinations add to the scavenger hunt elements that are core to the jRPG experience. In short, it’s basically a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, it’s just not as good as the other games above it on this list which, admittedly, are in some cases not as perfectly executed as FF6. Unfair as that may be, the technical limitations of its time hold it back. I’m curious how a modern remake of FF6 would rank; I suspect it would be at least two spots higher on this list, and it would come down to personal preference between FF6 and FF7 and their very different worlds, characters, and story.

3. Final Fantasy 10

This feels a little bad, because if Final Fantasy 6 had FF10’s graphics, level up system and gameplay, it would handily defeat it. The story of FF10 is not that good. Tidus has really weird shorts that are long fishnets on one side and really high cutoffs on the other. Seymour is not a very good villain. Kimahri is a totally useless, vestigial cast member.

However, the story is decent enough, the FF10 take on Final Fantasy turn-based combat is probably the cleanest, most fun, most polished version of this type of combat that we’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, and the sphere grid is a pretty fun character customization/upgrade system.

The game provides a lot of content to sink your teeth into before the final battle, all expanding the exploration aspect of the game: building the best possible blitzball team (which lots of people hated, but I liked), finding everyone’s ultimate weapons, the hidden summons, the monster arena, building ultimate armors. The cast, also, while not being the best, is certainly not the worst.

2. Final Fantasy Tactics

While not a mainline Final Fantasy game, FFT is almost certainly the second best Final Fantasy game. Its only real competition is the theoretical FF6 remake. The story of FFT is the Game of Thrones political fantasy FF12 wishes it was. The class system, an incredibly engaging system, is at the pinnacle of its execution here, easily beating any of the variations present in previous class-based FF games like 3, 5, Dimensions and to a lesser extent FF12 Zodiac Age.

Even the cast of characters — Ramza, Agrias, Delita, Orlandeau, etc., is among the most memorable of all the Final Fantasy casts. It’s very easy to dump 100s of hours into this game and not feel the least bit bad about it. Even the moment to moment combat, which in most strategy/tactics game like this typically feels unacceptably slow, actually feels fast and polished here. FFT is definitely a classic, although unlike FF6 I can’t imagine how it could benefit from being remade.

1. Final Fantasy 7

Coming as a surprise to no one, the most famous Final Fantasy, 7, caps off the list. Where to even begin with this game? The story is legendary. It’s original, it’s meaningful, it delivers strong characters, it’s really fucking weird, but in a way that overall makes sense. After Final Fantasy 7, most Final Fantasy games basically just exist to try to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was Final Fantasy 7.

It does a fantastic job of being serious and melodrama while still have the right balance of humor and silliness. It brings up a host of interesting themes, such as corporatism, global warming, imperialism, mental health, etc., while tying them to interesting allegorical fantasy elements. It delivers some of the most compelling scenes in any Final Fantasy games — not just the famous Aeris death scene, but, for example, the introduction of the Weapons, Sephiroth burning down Niflheim, the Wutai sequence, etc.

This game has a ton of personality and style. It’s a classic.

That does it for the best Final Fantasies. Be sure to check out the games section for more content like this.

Author

  • Ryan Night

    Ryan Night is an ex-game industry producer with over a decade of experience writing guides for RPGs. Previously an early contributor at gamefaqs.com, Ryan has been serving the RPG community with video game guides since 2001. As the owner of Bright Rock Media, Ryan has written over 600 guides for RPGs of all kinds, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Tales of Arise.

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