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Curated category

Turn-based 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…
  • 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…
  • 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 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…
  • 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…
  • 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 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 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 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.
  • Suikoden (video game)Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo spent roughly two years crafting the first Suikoden game. Scenario writer Yoshitaka Murayama drew inspiration from…
  • 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.
  • 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 (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 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 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…
  • 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 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…