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Curated category

Role-playing video games

  • Final Fantasy Legend IIFinal Fantasy Legend II shipped in Japan on the 14th of December 1990, carrying a name that was, in its home country, entirely different: SaGa 2: Hihou…
  • Suikoden TacticsKonami released Suikoden Tactics in Japan and North America during late 2005. The game arrived in Europe and the PAL region shortly after, in early 2006.
  • Final Fantasy XII: Revenant WingsSquare Enix announced Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings in September 2006. This announcement marked the beginning of a new chapter for the franchise.
  • Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred HeroesYoshitaka Murayama directed the original Suikoden games while working at Konami. He left that company in 2002 just before Suikoden III arrived on shelves.
  • Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no TokiPlayers control a party of up to six characters out of 108 possible recruits. These characters come from three distinct time periods within the game world.
  • Suikoden IVSuikoden IV arrives at an unusual place in a beloved series: set roughly 150 years before the events of the original Suikoden, it asks players to forget…
  • Final Fantasy IV: The After YearsFinal Fantasy IV: The After Years asks a question most sequels are afraid to pose: what happens seventeen years later, when the heroes have grown old and…
  • Final Fantasy Mystic QuestFinal Fantasy Mystic Quest arrived in North America in 1992 with a label that few major game publishers would dare to put on a box: it was marketed as a…
  • Final Fantasy Legend IIIFinal Fantasy Legend III arrived in Japanese stores on the 13th of December, 1991, carrying a secret: in Japan it was called SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha, a title…
  • Final Fantasy VFinal Fantasy V launched in Japan in December 1992, and within a single day it sold roughly 900,000 cartridges. That opening figure was about 4.5 times the…
  • Role-playing video gameRole-playing video games place the player inside a world where an ordinary person can become, over time, something extraordinary.
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim shipped seven million units in its first week of release, and within two years had crossed twenty million sold. That was 2011.
  • Final Fantasy IXFinal Fantasy IX arrived on the PlayStation in 2000 carrying a quiet act of rebellion. While its two immediate predecessors had chased a sleeker, more…
  • 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 X/X-2 HD RemasterTidus stands atop a cliff overlooking the city of Zanarkand, watching the sky turn from blue to gray as Sin approaches. The creature known as Sin has been…
  • 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 Tactics AdvanceFinal Fantasy Tactics Advance arrived on the Game Boy Advance in 2003, carrying the weight of a beloved predecessor and the ambitions of a team that had…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • Suikoden VIn the Queendom of Falena, the Feitas River runs dry. Lord Rovere lies dead in the ruins of Lordlake. Queen Arshtat stands over the scorched earth with the…
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2 puts a demon-summoning app in your pocket. Developed and published by Sega, this mobile role-playing game arrived in…
  • Baldur's Gate 3Larian Studios began work on Baldur's Gate 3 in 2017, following a six-year development cycle that stretched until the game's full release in August 2023.
  • Final Fantasy IVFinal Fantasy IV arrived in Japan in 1991, and with it came Cecil Harvey, a dark knight who steers warships through the sky for the Kingdom of Baron.
  • Final Fantasy VIFinal Fantasy VI arrived in Japanese homes on the 2nd of April, 1994, carrying a premise that broke from every rule the series had established.
  • Final Fantasy XIFinal Fantasy XI launched in Japan on the 16th of May 2002, asking players to share a single online world with strangers who spoke different languages and…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • Final Fantasy TacticsFinal Fantasy Tactics arrived in Japan on the 20th of June 1997, bundled with a demo disc for SaGa Frontier, and it told a story most players had never…
  • The Final Fantasy LegendThe Final Fantasy Legend arrived on Game Boy in December 1989, carrying a name it had not been born with. In Japan it launched as Makai Toushi Sa·Ga, the…
  • Suikoden TierkreisSuikoden Tierkreis landed on the Nintendo DS in December 2008 in Japan, arriving as something unusual in a long-running franchise: a game that asked what it…