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Japanese 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.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera OmniaDissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia launched on the 1st of February 2017, in Japan, assembling heroes and villains from across the Final Fantasy franchise…
  • Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition reached three million downloads within its first month on the market. That number turned a stripped-down mobile spinoff into…
  • Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game)Final Fantasy IV (2007 video game) arrived on the Nintendo DS on the 20th of December 2007 in Japan, timed precisely to the Final Fantasy series' 20th…
  • Final Fantasy XIIIFinal Fantasy XIII opens in a place that should not exist: Cocoon, a massive artificial sphere floating above the surface of Gran Pulse, kept aloft by…
  • Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arrived in 2007 with an unusual burden: explaining one of gaming's most beloved tragedies before it happened.
  • Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III launched on the 27th of April, 1990, and within its first week sold 500,000 copies in Japan. By March 2003, that figure had reached 1.4…
  • Final Fantasy VIIFinal Fantasy VII arrived in Japan on the 31st of January, 1997, and within three days had sold over two million copies. That pace was not an accident.
  • 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 XIII-2Final Fantasy XIII-2 arrived in Japanese stores on the 15th of December 2011, carrying an unusual burden: it was designed from the start as an answer to…
  • 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 III (2006 video game)Final Fantasy III sold 500,000 copies in Japan in its first week on the Nintendo DS, surpassing Square Enix's own prediction of 350,000.
  • 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…
  • Final Fantasy X-2Final Fantasy X-2 arrived in Japan in 2003 as something the series had never attempted: a direct sequel. Every numbered Final Fantasy before it told a…
  • Suikoden (video game)Suikoden, the 1995 role-playing game from Konami, asked players to do something unusual for its time: recruit 108 warriors to overthrow a corrupt empire.
  • Dragon QuestDragon Quest, the Japanese role-playing franchise that first arrived on the Famicom on the 27th of May, 1986, turned into something Japan had never quite…
  • Final Fantasy IIFinal Fantasy II launched on the 17th of December 1988, almost exactly one year after the original game, and Square's small team of around ten people had…
  • Final Fantasy XFinal Fantasy X shipped in Japan in 2001 and sold more than 2.14 million units on its first day alone, including 1.4 to 1.5 million pre-orders.
  • Final Fantasy XIIFinal Fantasy XII arrived in March 2006 carrying five years of development behind it, a record that once earned it a Guinness World Record for longest…
  • Elden RingElden Ring, a 2022 action role-playing game from the Japanese developer FromSoftware, sold 13.4 million copies in its first five weeks alone.
  • Final Fantasy (video game)Final Fantasy arrived in Japan in 1987 as a last-ditch effort by a company that nearly did not survive to publish it. Square was threatened with bankruptcy.
  • Final Fantasy XIVFinal Fantasy XIV had already failed once. In September 2010, Square Enix released an online game that was so broken, so poorly received, that then-President…
  • Final Fantasy XIV (2010 video game)Final Fantasy XIV launched on the 30th of September 2010, and within months Square Enix had suspended subscription fees, postponed its PlayStation 3 version…
  • Final Fantasy VIIIFinal Fantasy VIII sold 2.21 million copies on its first day of release in Japan, grossing the equivalent of $151 million in a single day.
  • Suikoden IISuikoden II arrived on PlayStation shelves in Japan on the 17th of December, 1998, and almost no one noticed. Konami had crafted a role-playing game with…
  • Bravely DefaultBravely Default arrived on the 11th of October 2012, on Nintendo 3DS shelves in Japan and promptly sold 141,529 units in its first week alone, with a…
  • 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…
  • Suikoden IIISuikoden III arrived on the PlayStation 2 in 2002 with an idea that was genuinely strange for its era: what if a war story had no heroes and no villains…
  • BloodborneBloodborne is a 2015 action role-playing game that sent players into a rotting Gothic city where the cure was worse than the disease.