In many ways, Final Fantasy IX feels like the last traditional Final Fantasy, as much as a series which constantly changes features can have a traditional form. Most grew to know the series with the SNES and PS1 titles, with all six games built around the Active Time Battle system. Though the last entry on the PS1, FF9 felt like a throwback to the SNES titles, focused on a more fantastical world than 7 and 8 while also featuring character designs by Yoshitaka Amano. Even the battle theme features the signature bassline from the earlier games. In many ways, IX is the best of both worlds and feels like a celebration of the whole series up to that point.

There’s a certain charm to Final Fantasy IX that the other games never achieved. Though the plot ends up as dire as any other entry, the game features a consistently lighter atmosphere. Each central character is designed to look nothing like another. The standout here is Vivi Ornitier, a shy boy with a design based upon the original Black Mage. Even the world design feels fresh, mixing together the more medieval styling of the earlier games with ever-present future technology.

Though it might be a minor point, I simply enjoy having more members in the active party. The SNES Final Fantasy games had four or five characters each, yet 7 and 8 reduced this number to three. FF9 brings this back up to four. Meanwhile, the twist on the ability system feels concise yet expansive. Each weapon comes with its own ability, which can be used whenever the item is equipped and becomes permanent after enough use. This gives a greater meaning to both finding and using each weapon.

Nobuo Uematsu is at the top of his game here, the final Final Fantasy to exclusively feature his music. The music is generally more whimsical than the other entries while also featuring some of the most singularly emotional pieces in the series. As mentioned before, the main battle theme builds upon the classic bassline to great effect. Many of the best tracks are limited to single moments. Otherwise minor character General Beatrix is elevated to another level through her wondrous piano theme, “Roses of May.” “The Darkness of Eternity” stands alongside the other classic final battle themes. My personal favorite is “You’re Not Alone,” which plays during a powerful moment where Zidane rejects the assistance of his friends after a devastating revelation. The piece starts as a gentle, melancholic arrangement, slowly building until finally bringing in a guitar and then chanting. It’s an epic theme to a great moment.

While I began by discussing the lighthearted charm, this cutesy aesthetic masks some of the darker themes in the series. The “You’re Not Alone” sequence helps elevate Zidane into a strong protagonist after a rocky introduction – one thing that often gets neglected when discussing the Final Fantasy protagonists is how much they evolve during the course of the story. Zidane and Tidus both get the short end of the stick. Characters like Cecil and Cloud start off cool and then gain more depth, while these later protagonists start as obnoxious teenagers and slowly mature. They may be abrasive, but seeing them grow is ultimately a rewarding experience.

Final Fantasy IX is the series at its most existential, with both Zidane and Vivi getting the brunt of this theme. Vivi is one of the best characters in this series, and this extends far beyond his iconic design. As a character, he is unaware of his origins. An early moment has the group stumble across an assembly line where black mages are being manufactured. What, exactly, is his purpose in existing? The revelations only get worse from there, but like Zidane, he’s not alone. This is a game about characters trying to break free of their intended purpose, whether it involves social roles or being literally manufactured. Kuja makes the perfect foil as the central antagonist. Where the heroes are learning to cope with their destinies, Kuja lashes out.

Final Fantasy IX also takes one of my favorite pages from the SNES era and jumps between characters until they finally come together. The game even includes a dungeon where the player must split the party into two. There’s also a massive world to explore, with plenty of rare collectables to gather. This game offers everything you could want from this series.

Everyone has a different Final Fantasy they call their favorite – the series is just that good. But IX stands as a culmination of all the stray ideas the series had explored during its breakthrough era. The only reason it gets less attention is due to the Wind Waker effect – certain gamers simply refused to try a game with this art style. Which is a shame, as this truly captures the spirit of Final Fantasy on every level.

While IV and V are truly great in their own right, VI is when the Final Fantasy series started churning out downright masterpieces year after year. VI builds upon IV’s narrative foundation (V still stands as a distinct entry), telling the story of a bunch of plucky adventurers as they fight to save their world. Where IV was always centralized around Cecil and most of its revolving cast consisted of temporary characters, VI does away with a protagonist entirely.

Some will argue that Terra or Celes are the ‘true’ main character. This doesn’t really matter. Significant is the fact that this structure allows the game to constantly split the party while never relegating any party member to a minor role. This culminates in a final dungeon where the player must split their 14 party members into three teams of four. Many JRPGs have giant casts, but few utilize them all in such a meaningful way.

This split structure also helps highlight each member of this colorful cast. While the quality isn’t exactly consistent, characters like the Figaro brothers, Terra, Celes, Shadow, and Locke all rank among the best in the series. Then there is the first unforgettable villain in the series, dancing mad court mage Kefka Palazzo. His colorful outfit hides a ruthless sadist who only wants to see the world destroyed. The game doesn’t even treat him as a serious threat initially. His cackling soundbite is spine-tingling, and he’s one of the few convincing displays of destructive nihilism. There’s no cheap stab at creating sympathy – Kefka is a living embodiment of evil, plain and simple. The heroes absolutely have to stop him.

And what makes Final Fantasy VI so effective is that they don’t. Not initially. The game is divided into two distinct halves. The opening is rather straightforward beyond its branching paths, but the second half turns closer to an open world experience as Celes finds herself in a shattered world. All of the heroes have been split up, and the team must reunite to have a chance at getting their revenge on Kefka. This atmospheric shift was key in establishing FF6 as having one of the first truly great video game narratives, and it also gave the player a chance to have their own sense of control as they sought out the remaining heroes.

With its fourteen party members, FF6 stands out by giving each of them a clearly defined function through a special command. Sabin pulls off awesome physical feats which must be input like a traditional fighting game. Gau imitates enemies through his rage ability. Edgar utilizes special tools with a variety of effects. Each and every character fills a niche. Meanwhile, the esper system gives the player a bit of control over how the characters level and gain magic.

Most modern JRPGs have Final Fantasy IV to thank for establishing solid narratives in traditional video games. Final Fantasy VI refined these elements. From a strong cast to a surprisingly dark narrative to a large world to a phenomenal soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, this is everything you could ever want from a Final Fantasy experience, years before VII finally set the world on fire.

As someone who largely experienced 90s video games as a teenager in the mid-2000s, the overwhelming popularity of Final Fantasy VII has always been a bit jarring. The reasons for its commercial success are largely nonsensical now; this was seen as an example of cutting edge technology? But what gets people to pick something up in the first place can differ from what sticks with them. Square sold this game based on cutscenes which looked much better than the standard gameplay, but people who bought in were rewarded with the latest iteration of a solid franchise that had been largely overlooked during the previous generation.

Square simply does memorable characters better than most companies. While plenty of games feature deeper protagonists with stronger characterization, that quality rarely extends to the supporting cast. With Tetsuya Nomura’s distinctive designs, each individual party member has become a video game icon. One of Final Fantasy’s greatest strengths is its Seven Samurai-styled collection of disparate heroes coming together for a shared cause, and VII is absolutely the most consistent cast in the series. Even relatively minor characters like Zack Fair and Rufus Shinra have captured the imagination.

Final Fantasy VII truly outshines its legacy. Cloud Strife is absolutely deserving of his place as one of the definitive video game protagonists. Square themselves seems to have lost track of what made him special, framing him as the quiet brooding type in later appearances like Kingdom Hearts. The whole point of his actual character arc is that Cloud is deeply disturbed and has been clinging onto a personality which is not his own. One of the game’s defining moments has Cloud break out of this shell and become his true, more joyous self.

What makes this change special is how it affects our understanding of the cast itself. Cloud is caught inside gaming’s most famous love triangle, which is already complicated by one of the participants being the victim of gaming’s most well-known spoiler. But with this twist comes the realization that Aerith is drawn to the performance while Tifa has been longing for the real Cloud.

The surprise of FF7 is how it wades through some complex territory. Ecoterrorism, corporations killing the planet, identity, betrayal, death – this features some heavy stuff compared to most mainstream hits, and it seems that later entries were wary of tackling anything too controversial once 7 shot the series into the spotlight.

So many of these moments are magical. Stepping onto the world map for the first time, Sephiroth standing amidst the flames, that famous twist at the end of disc one – Square knew how to direct our attention. The standard presentation would have never been enough for this ambitious story, so the cutscenes really do assist in generating emotional resonance.

But the highlight of the presentation has always been the score. Nobuo Uematsu is the biggest name in video game music for a reason, and everything about Final Fantasy VII’s soundtrack is phenomenal. Beyond the simple beauty of the music, Uematsu expertly links many of these songs together through distinct motifs. Even as the party strays far from where they began, these motifs are a constant reminder of everything being connected.

What made Final Fantasy such a definitive JRPG experience between the SNES and PS2 eras was the way each game offered its own unique spin on a sturdy foundation. While VII stands as the most popular, they are each of a distinct quality where any individual entry would be a reasonable favorite (except perhaps VIII). The Materia system does a fantastic job of giving the player control over what their characters can do. The fact there are many powerful Materia throughout the world also makes it essential not just to level but to hunt these items down – any JRPG that gives a meaningful way to power up outside of shopping and grinding has a distinct advantage.

The hunt for these Materia also highlights the size of this world. There are so many sidequests and secret bosses. Yet even while restrained to Midgar, this world feels huge. There’s always some new corner to explore, and the game offers some serious rewards, including two full-fledged party members.

I’ll never quite have the nostalgic association with FF7 like those who got to experience it upon release. Even then, the core experience stands strong – turn-based gameplay never really ages and the narrative concepts have remained unique. There’s a reason everyone had been clamoring for a remake – the graphics have always been the sole barrier for new players from an otherwise flawless game. But with Square deciding to experiment with the remake, the original remains a distinct and definitive experience.

It feels like every Final Fantasy since VII has split the fanbase. The polar opposite of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy has always tried to redefine itself. Those between IV and IX were slight variations, focusing more on different ways to build your characters while featuring the same combat system. X overhauled that central system but still felt like a Final Fantasy. XII goes so hard in the other direction that, if not for its title and a few familiar creatures, one could have easily assumed it was a new series entirely.

I’m not going to pretend Final Fantasy XII is flawless. Previous Final Fantasy games have some of the most beloved casts in gaming – the only great character from XII is Balthier. For whatever reason, XII went with a more subdued and realistic art style, leaving most of the cast looking mundane. A messy production left non-entity Vaan as the protagonist, and the narrative is almost impossible to follow. Those drawn to the series for its stories had every reason in the world to be disappointed – it took until the 2017 rerelease for it to really click with me.

But once it clicked, it hit hard. XII is sometimes derided as a single player MMORPG. For me, it lands in the perfect place between the two genres. This is about as big as JRPGs come, yet it never gets as overwhelming and demanding as a full MMO. There’s so much to explore, but it never leaves you waiting or needing to endlessly grind.

A common complaint from its release now seems rather precious. Instead of controlling every individual action for each character, the game has something it calls a gambit system. You are given up to 12 lines of “if x, then y” statements for each character. The earlier lines take precedence, so you can set up your healer to raise the unconscious first, heal if no one is knocked out, and then attack if no one needs healing. It’s an ingenious system which allows fluid combat, which is key since this game avoids random encounters by having enemies integrated into the locations. With more RPGs moving toward action combat where the AI controls everyone but the main character, it’s shocking more games haven’t expanded on this feature to give the player precise control over their teammates. The only other game I know which uses a similar system is Dragon Age. While this can cause a lot of battles to essentially play themselves, I find this intricate programming preferable to mashing the attack button against random mobs. The player can always give commands when necessary, and there are plenty of hard encounters which will require restricting the programming. Combat in XII feels a lot more tactical than its predecessors, even when much of it is hands-free.

I’ve always been a fan of how Final Fantasy manages to reinvent leveling, and the license board started off as an intriguing concept which was fully brought to life in the rerelease. The original version gave everyone the same board, giving the player control over what path to send their characters down. The Zodiac Age mixes this with the underutilized job system and dual-classing, limiting the characters but guiding them down distinct paths. Deciding which ability to go after next is always a tough decision. Every RPG should aspire to make levelling this fun.

While I mentioned that the art style does little favor for the characters, the world itself is breathtaking. Few cities in gaming feel as alive as Rabanastre. Having enemies scattered across the land leaves every location bustling with life. Later locations are colossal, and the pure variety makes it feel like you are truly trekking across every inch of this world. There are dozens of side quests, and I wanted to do all of them just to visit every corner. In fact, I believe this is the only game where I bothered to get the Platinum trophy, simply because I was having so much fun seeing all this game had to offer.

Beyond simple scope, the world has a mesmerizing layout. Nearly every location has some passage sitting just out of reach. Many late game quests involve revisiting these areas and finally seeing what lies beyond those gates. Final Fantasy XII is constantly building a sense of intrigue.

14 years later, Final Fantasy XII still sits in a perfect niche. The only game I know which captures that not-MMO style is Xenoblade Chronicles. How more games haven’t followed in their footsteps is baffling, though it takes a lot of effort to make a world this awe-inspiring. While never capturing the typical Final Fantasy charm, XII managed to excel with its own distinct magnificence.