Final Fantasy: Every Numbered Game Ranked

Final Fantasy VIII's problem is that it's not Final Fantasy VII. Many initiated into the series by Cloud's strife were obliviously expecting the follow-up to return to the ruins of a post-meteor Midgar, but instead, they got a high-school drama about a moody teenager, with a heavy focus on summoning and dossing about playing cards.

Rian Johnson's Final Fantasy doesn't get a whole lotta love then, and it's massively unjust - especially for a game themed around it. Whilst VII was Square-Enix's exploratory step into 3D, VIII showed them at their most confident, both refining and evolving the formula in equal measure. Characters no longer look like Playmobil, and the dialogue is actually localised rather than directly translated, allowing for a deeply nuanced story whose subtleties only reveal themselves upon reflection. FFVII dipped its toe in the pool of amour with Cloud and Aerith's doomed connection, but it's Mills & Boon next to Squall and Rinoa's slow-burning - and coherent - romance.

The evolution comes in the battle system. Gone are equippable items and learnable spells, and instead customisation is via a dynamic (albeit tricky) 'junctioning' system. This, combined with scalable enemy levels, ensures the game remains a challenge till the end, favouring strategy over brute strength and eradicating the grind.

And then there's Triple Triad: the best card minigame of all time. It's almost worth it for that alone.