PixlBit's Final Fantasy Retrospective: The PlayStation Years

PixlBit | Welcome to the third part of our comprehensive look at the history of the Final Fantasy series, celebrating 25 years of role playing goodness. In the last edition, we cast the spotlight on three of the most highly regarded games in the series. This time we break into the third dimension and watch the franchise move into the mainstream. Join us now as we look at the PlayStation Years!

[aDDicteD]

i miss those old school FF's including 10 too. now there's only ff13 and more of it's sequels

[godofboobees]

The PlayStation years were squares finest moments. Never again will they relive all the awesome games they put out during the coarse of the PlayStation 1. From final fantasy to chrono cross to my all time favorite xenogears. R.I.P squaresoft

[Godmars290]

I still say it was the SNES. The PS1 era is a close second with the FFs and Xenogears, but between Chronotrigger, Secret of Mana, Gun Hazard and the Big N's FFs, Square could literally do no wrong.

[godofboobees]

Can't forget bahamut lagoon. Underrated gen

[AlphaNerd1980]

I own Bahamut's Lagoon and always wished it had gotten a proper release in English. I really liked what little I was able to play in Japanese.

[wishingW3L]

if you own the game is legal to have the Rom so just use a patch and that is it. The game's not that good though. I beat it last year and it was underwhelming. Once you level up the Dragons you don't have to do anything because they will beat the game for you and the entire story takes place in just one place, only the battles themselves change scenarios.

If you ask me just play FF tactics which is a much more superior game in every single way. Or Shining Force III too.

[wishingW3L]

this guy really knows his Final Fantasy! Finally I found something worth reading that isn't related to guns or bullets. -__-

[TheLyonKing]

Those were the ones who defined me as an rpg gamers. Everything from each musical piece to the plot line and well developed characters bring a strong sense of nostalgia :)

Everytime I relax I listen to breezy from ff8 everytime I want a true gaming experience I play 7-10. This was the peak of ff's and no wonder new iterations struggle with standards like that.

[izumo_lee]

From 1996 to 2001 those were argubly the greatest years for Square Soft & will probably never be duplicated ever again.

We had legendary to great titles such as:

Final Fantasy 7-10
Tobal 1 & 2
Bushido Blade 1 & 2
Einhander
Final Fantasy Tactics
Saga Frontier 1 & 2
Valkyrie Profile
Xenogears
Parasite Eve 1 & 2
Brave Fencer Musashi
Chocobo Dungeon 1 & 2
Racing Lagoon
Front Mission 3
Threads of Fate
Chrono Cross
Vagrant Story
Legend of Mana

And that's not including those Final Fantasy Collections & Anthologys. JRPG fans were spoiled during these years & many of us took for granted what we had.

[AlphaNerd1980]

I definitely feel that Square Enix has lost their way, and I keep coming back to Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase. Nomura has created such a ubiquitous design style that it's bled into almost every aspect of the Square side of the business, not to mention his silly naming conventions.

And Kitase is clearly tired of making role playing games at this point, going as far to say that he felt that FF XIII has more in common with FPS games than RPGs.

[izumo_lee]

I feels as soon as they lost Sakaguchi the storylines for Final Fantasy games have wavered. Nomura is a good storyteller (co-wrote FF 7) but they are often way to complicated to understand (Kingdom Hearts for example).

Although Sakaguchi is not necessarily the main writer he is the creative mind for many of the older series which is why the stories for them are good.

Personally i think Nomura is under appreciated at Squarenix & it should have been him to lead Final Fantasy series instead of Toriyama who is a terrible writer (he wrote 3rd Birthday...yeah).

It is pretty evident this is the case cause of Final Fantasy vs.13 and the limbo it is in. We got 3 games for Final Fantasy 13 & what a 6min trailer for FFvs.13 in 6 years. Clearly shows what Squarenix thinks of Nomura.

[MindCandy]

Love this piece. Seriously well written and thought out. Great reflections on FF as a whole. His other FF stuff is good too! There's links to the left of the article.