The NES may have been true Final Fantasy made its first debut, but it wasn’t until the SNES days that the series really took off. However, many fans would argue that the series only exploded on the PS1 thanks to Final Fantasy VII. Including that game, there were twelve core titles and spin-offs released for the console, although there are two other games worth mentioning before we move on.
Ehrgeiz: God bless the ring and wanderer story are technically related to the Final Fantasy franchisee. Ehrgeiz is a wrestling game that had Final Fantasy VII characters like Cloud and Sephiroth in cameo roles. wanderer story was not launched as part of the Ivalice series, but was later re-instated. Those examples can make things sound confusing, but the rest of the PS1 Final Fantasy games are much simpler.
Updated September 9, 2022, by Tom Bowen: Many would argue that the golden age of RPGs began in the early 1990s, with the SNES hosting some of the very best games in the genre. While this may be true to some extent, it wasn’t until the PS1 era and the release of Final Fantasy VII that role-playing games really started to find mainstream success in the west. After the success of Final Fantasy VII, Sony’s little gray box would play host to plenty of other great JRPGs, as well as receive ports from most previous Final Fantasy games. In fact, western audiences could end up playing everything except the third installment of the series on the PS1, which is somewhat ironic given that Final Fantasy VI was originally sold as Final Fantasy III when it first came to the west. There were also plenty of great Final Fantasy spin-offs available on the console, making the list of Final Fantasy games on the PS1 quite long.
12 Chocobo Stallion
Chocobo Stallion was released in 1999, but only in Japan. It was a simulation game themed around raising and racing Chocobo, with a strong focus on the former. It sold quite well, but unfortunately not well enough to warrant a North American or PAL release.
unlike Final Fantasy VII, from which it seems this game took a lot of inspiration, players took a careless approach to the racing segments. That’s okay, because raising Chocobo has its own benefits that can be very relaxing in certain situations.
11 Dice The Chocobo
Dice the Chocobo was also released in 1999 as a Japan exclusive. It did get a GBA port in 2002, but this was also a Japanese exclusivity, which made it very difficult for western players to get their hands on a physical copy of the game.
For those wondering, the game looks a lot like an RPG version of monopoly. There’s a whole series like this one called in Japan Itadaki Streetwho, like Dice the Chocobonever really got a chance in the west apart from Fortune Street for the Wii.
10 Chocobo No Fushigi Na Dungeon
Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon was released in 1996 and is yet another chocobo themed Japanese adventure. However, it has a special place in history because it is the first? Final Fantasy spin-off to the Mysterious Dungeon series of dungeon crawler roguelikes.
It’s a little harder than the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, but it’s not a million miles away in terms of usability. This is a good roguelike for beginners who want to show their love for . want to expand Final Fantasy and an interesting bit of video game history in its own right.
9 Final Fantasy Chronicles
Final Fantasy Chronicles was released in 2001 in North America. It was a combo pack with ROM ports from Chrono trigger and Final Fantasy IV. For some reason, the compilation was never released in PAL regions, although Europeans ended up getting a port of Final Fantasy IV as part of Final Fantasy Anthology pack the following year.
Burning these ports to discs wasn’t great though as the loading times were notoriously bad, which understandably might be incredibly frustrating for players. The added cutscenes were a nice touch, but this is arguably the worst way to play both games.
8 Final Fantasy Anthology
Final Fantasy Anthology was a similar combo pack as Final Fantasy Chronicles and was released for the North American market a few years earlier in 1999. It included ports of Final Fantasy VI and, for the first time outside Japan, Final Fantasy V.
The latter was originally an SNES game that was only released in Japan in 1992, meaning it took almost eight years to get to the west. Interestingly, PAL regions were treated to a standalone release of Final Fantasy VIwith their version of Final Fantasy Anthology instead with the series’ fourth and fifth episodes.
7 Chocobos Dungeon 2
Chocobos Dungeon 2 is the first game that North America has received from the long-running Chocobo’s dungeon spin-off franchise. It’s very similar in gameplay to the first title, and it doesn’t seem like much has been added to differentiate the two games.
On the plus side, fans of the Final Fantasy series were still happy to see the game making its way west. It was around this time that the series really started to gain popularity outside of Japan, making the decision to localize the game for a Western audience kind of a no-brainer.
6 Chocobo Racing
Chocobo Racingunlike Chocobo Stallion, did allow players to manually race their feathered friends. It’s still a very different experience from the one in Final Fantasy VII though, with the game serving as Squaresoft’s attempt at a Mario Kart clone.
In addition to the titular Chocobo and others Final Fantasybased monsters and classes, the game also features some secret characters from the series, such as Cloud. It’s not nearly as good as some of the other great kart racing games available on the PS1, but can still be fun in small quantities.
5 Final Fantasy Origins
Final Fantasy Origins was one of the last games released for the original PlayStation, arriving in North America in early 2003. For those wondering, this was already three years into the PS2’s life cycle. However, the pack launched at the price of $20, which was a very nice incentive for potential buyers.
The compilation pack collected the first two games in the series, meaning it marked the debut of Final Fantasy II in the West. For whatever reason, both games were actually based on the 2000 WonderSwan Color remakes rather than the original NES versions, although the differences were pretty minimal.
4 Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII had some pretty big shoes to fill after the resounding success of Final Fantasy VII. These high expectations may be why reaction to the game was so divided when it launched, as some just didn’t feel like it advanced the series as much as it should.
It is now seen as one of the many black sheep of the family and is very different from all the other entries. That said, it’s still a great RPG that pushed the PS1 to its limits just as much as its predecessor, and is worth checking out for those who haven’t yet.
3 Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy IX was a sender of the classic Final Fantasy medieval settings that had interrupted so many of the series’ earlier installments. In many ways, though, it’s exactly what the series and the PS1 needed at the time.
Perhaps one day the right games will return to this more fantastic setting and move away from the more futuristic motifs and ideas found in most of the more recent mainline games. Final Fantasy XVI looks like it could get really close but time will tell.
2 Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics was the first entry in this tactical RPG spin-off and one of the very best. It was a successful idea that Square Enix decided to use it for its world, Ivalice, to create a vast universe connecting both spin-offs and feature articles.
At the time of writing, there are only six games in the Ivalice subseries so far, but that number is likely to grow in the future. Even if it isn’t, Final Fantasy Tactics remains one of the best tactical RPGs ever made and is a must for fans of this fantastic sub-genre.
1 Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII was the first 3D mainline Final Fantasy game ever made and the pinnacle of the series up to that point. It really raised the bar in visuals, storytelling and gameplay compared to its NES and SNES predecessors and helped the franchise really take off in the west.
The PS1 had some hits before, but this is one of the games that made the system so popular. That was the hype, even non-RPG fans jumped on the Final Fantasy bandwagon with millions of copies of the game being sold. The game was so popular that it spawned its own subseries, which includes multiple spin-off games and a full-length anime movie.
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