The king of RPGs, Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy anthology began in 1987, when the first title in the series was released on the NES and Famicom. Directly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the game featured an innovative yet classic system. It became a new classic, an essential reference in the world of video games, and gave rise to a myriad of variations and adaptations that are still very much alive today.

The class system

The first Final Fantasy was released in December 1987. It was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi for publisher Square. It offered players the chance to immerse themselves in a fantasy world, populated by dragons and magicians, and lead a team of four heroes in a battle against the darkness.

The main attraction of the title was the possibility of combining heroes. Although each character had no story or personality, players could give them the qualities they wanted. So, at the start of the game, players could create a team with each member belonging to one of six basic classes:

Each character can then evolve to a more powerful form: paladin, ninja, master, white sage, black sage and red sage, respectively.

While this list may seem to suggest that the monk and the black mage are inferior, in reality each has an important evolutionary advantage. The master can inflict more damage than the warrior, while the black sage has Flare, the most powerful spell against the final boss.

It's a real game of strategy, with 54 possible combinations for the team of heroes. With the right combinations, players can adapt the team to their style of play and discover the ideal complement to explore the world, fight against the various creatures (Bahamut, Bikke, Garland, Kraken or Tiamat the wind demon), and then against the final boss, named Chaos, and suspected to be the final form of the warrior Garland.

A never-ending series

Final Fantasy is an anthology, which means that each opus has a story independent of its predecessors. Of course, each game has much in common with the others, but each story can be tackled without any prior knowledge.

Final Fantasy VII marked a major turning point in the series in 1997, with the switch to 3D on the PlayStation platform. It also marked the victory of Sony's console for this type of game, as CD technology made it possible to integrate cinematic scenes, something impossible on the Nintendo 64 and its cartridges. Despite the technical qualities of the latter (no loading times, real 3D depth on the Z axis, precise position calculations), the publisher preferred the visual rendering of the PS.

For the European public, this is also a revolution, as Final Fantasy VII is the first of the core series to be made available on the old continent. Until now, gamers have had to make do with a spin-off, Mystic Quest Legend.

However, the European public discovered a very different version of the basic games. Final Fantasy VII took place in a more science-fiction-style universe: the group of heroes was made up of environmental activists who had to thwart the plans of Shinra, a powerful corporation that was depleting the planet's vital energy.

We had to wait until Final Fantasy IX to rediscover the Heoric Fantasy universe of the early days.

One game, one soundtrack

While the stories of the various games are very diverse, one recurring element stands out. This is the music by composer Nobuo Uematsu. He had to compose an extremely simplistic melody for the NES, particularly for the title screen. He composed a series of adagios (rising and falling notes with a certain harmony).

Incredibly simplistic, this music had the effect of provoking a dreamlike feeling in players, helping them to immerse themselves in a fantasy world. The music is a true stroke of genius, composed in just 30 minutes, but used again and again in a multitude of variations (opera, symphony, pop, electronic, etc.).

Mixed success in the cinema

A few films were made based on Final Fantasy. The first real cinema film, "Final Fantasy: Creatures of the Mind", was released in 2001, with CGI actors. It was expensive and didn't go down well with audiences, prompting publisher Square to merge with rival Enix to save itself financially.

The more popular Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, directed by Tetsuya Nomura, was released in 2005 and 2006. It follows on from the events of the famous 1997 video game.

Find your favourite characters like Cloud Strife, Yuna, or even the great villains like Sephiroth in our Final Fantasy franchise geek shop.