Final Fantasy is one of the most enduring franchises in the video game industry, but it’s also seen its fair share of struggles over the years. In the early 2010s, the franchise had a hard time defining its contemporary identity after helping to define the medium in the two decades prior. The story and extreme linearity of Final Fantasy XIII turned a lot of fans off in 2010, and that very same year, Square Enix released a cataclysmic failure in the form of the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. The next few years wouldn’t fare much better as the series saw two middling sequels to XIII and lackluster, even predatory, mobile games like All the Bravest. Final Fantasy desperately needed a win, and luckily it was about to arrive in the form of a quite literally reborn FFXIV.
