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Action role-playing video games

  • Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy OriginStranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin opens not with a hero, but with a man named Jack who wants only one thing: to destroy Chaos.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionSquare Enix rebuilt Final Fantasy XV using the Unity engine to fit mobile devices. The original game relied on the in-house Luminous Engine for its complex…
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIISeven years before the events of 1997, a young man named Zack Fair stood in the ruins of Wutai. He wore the blue uniform of SOLDIER and carried a heavy…
  • Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a conversation between two Square employees sharing an elevator. Shinji Hashimoto and Tetsuya Nomura found themselves talking about…
  • Action role-playing gameAction role-playing game, commonly shortened to ARPG, sits at the crossroads of two very different gaming traditions. On one side stands the role-playing…
  • Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VIIDirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2006 as something nobody expected from Square Enix: a third-person shooter set inside one of gaming's most…
  • The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimBethesda Game Studios began work on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in 2006 after finishing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Full development started following…
  • Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins begins on the eve of the fifth Blight, a moment when the monstrous Darkspawn threaten to swarm the surface world for only the fifth time…
  • Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake arrived on the 10th of April 2020, nearly a quarter century after the game it set out to reimagine.
  • Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth landed on the PlayStation 5 on the 29th of February 2024 - one of the first major video game releases to arrive on Leap Day.
  • Final Fantasy XVIFinal Fantasy XVI arrived on the 22nd of June 2023, carrying the weight of a franchise that had defined Japanese role-playing games for nearly four decades.
  • The Last StoryThe Last Story arrived on the Nintendo Wii in January 2011, carrying the weight of a question its creator had spent years trying to answer: what was he doing…
  • Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in its first twenty-four hours, a figure Square Enix said allowed the game to break even on development costs…
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIILightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII opens on a brutal countdown: thirteen days until the world ends, and only one person to save every soul in it.
  • Mass EffectMass Effect began not with a game but with a pitch. In 2003, BioWare project director Casey Hudson presented an idea codenamed SFX to company co-founders Ray…
  • Mana (series)In 1987, Square sent a letter to customers who had placed pre-orders for an ambitious Famicom Disk System project titled The Emergence of Excalibur.
  • Namco × CapcomIn January 2005, a press release announced Namco × Capcom to the public. The game was already 70% complete at that moment.
  • The Elder ScrollsThe year 1994 marked the arrival of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, a title that would eventually spawn one of gaming's most enduring franchises.
  • Vagrant StoryVagrant Story arrived on the PlayStation on the 10th of February 2000 in Japan, and it came with a peculiar design decision: no shops.
  • Final FantasyFinal Fantasy was Hironobu Sakaguchi’s personal last-ditch effort. In 1987, Square’s designer chose to make one more role-playing game for the…
  • Granblue FantasyGranblue Fantasy launched in Japan in March 2014 on Android, iOS, and web browsers, built by a studio called Cygames. What made it remarkable from the start…
  • Assassin's Creed ValhallaIn 873 AD, political pressures in Norway prompt Eivor Varinsdottir and her adoptive older brother Sigurd Styrbjornsson to lead their clan of Vikings to…