A long time ago, it may have been in 2001, I played the first Final Fantasy game through nearly to the end, except for the end boss fight. End bosses rarely interest me. I took tons of screenshots, but I lost them all later in some hard drive accident. It's a pity. I think I had screenshots of every single monster in the game.

I know I played Final Fantasy VI in the summer of 2001, for on one of the last days of August I put a couple of screenshots online. Later they wandered around a bit, but I've restored them on their original place, so you can admire them, or laugh at them, whatever. I was still rather new to web design then. As for the game, I played it to the end of the World of Balance but never got further. Too many decisions, or something like that.

In the spring or summer of 2003 I played Final Fantasy VII. I took a number of screenshots I haven't put online so far, but so what, I don't really think the world suffers under a lack of Final Fantasy VII screenshots. I played it up to the battle of the Shinra Building, about halfways through the first of three CDs, then I quit. I didn't like a decision I had made, but didn't want to fight the whole battle through again either. I wasn't really fond of the combination of 3D and cartoony characters either.

I played the demo of Final Fantasy VIII once. I was quite impressed. The 3D didn't really look good yet (that happened a couple of years later, around the time of Doom 3, but good enough that I enjoyed watching the cutscenes like a movie. The plot was a bit cheesy though, the characters rather clichéd.

In a way I never got warm with the Final Fantasy games the way I did with Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Earthbound, or Dragon Quest. That's just the way it is.

List of Final Fantasy Games

The list contains only the standard numbered games, not the various spin-offs. It is just intended to give an overview of the series which as of this writing spans nearly a quarter of a century.

The games with odd numbers are called system games, because their emphasis is on character build-up with sometimes rather complicated magic and class changing systems. They have a fixed cast of four or five characters which may not be present at the very beginning of the game, but will assemble pretty fast.

The games with even numbers are called story games. They have a cast of up to twenty characters four of which can be in the party at any given time. This is usually scripted in the first part of the game, while the player gets to choose her party later on.

I am not sure if these distinctions are still maintained as consequently in the Playstation games.

Links

These links have last been checked and updated on 2011-10-16. With the demise of GeoCities, there are less Final Fantasy sites than used to be.

• Yoshitaka Amano: Selected Artwork (not just from Final Fantasy)
• Eyes on Final Fantasy is a huge site about all the Final Fantasy games, including even Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.
• Hardcore Gaming 101
• Final Fantasy History and Timeline by Lisa Shea.
• Final Fantasy Origins is about the first game
• Drond's ROM Hacks