The Best PlayStation Game Every Year 1994 - 2024

Even 25+ years on, many people consider Final Fantasy a PlayStation franchise. Ironically, when it comes to mainline exclusivity, it only lasted for nine years. The reason that this is worth pointing out is to illustrate how big the franchise became off the back of the golden era that began with 1997’s Final Fantasy VII.

Sony and Square’s partnership was monumental for both parties, setting up the studio to create one of the most expensive games to that point. 

As a result, FF7 managed to not just feel huge - spanning across three discs - but also maintained an extremely high bar of quality for the time, as it flawlessly flowed from chibified overworld to high-quality battle models to nearly 45 minutes of full motion video. The game’s use of pre-rendered backgrounds brought to life the incredible art direction and world, allowing players to bathe in an often-imitated never-bettered post-industrial cyberpunk world set to one of Nobuo Umeatsu’s most daring soundtracks.

The game was applauded for its character work and story, which dealt in truly timeless themes like conservationism, death and rebirth, guilt and identity, and purpose. The gameplay was no slouch either, with the ingeniously simple Materia system allowing players full customisation of their party.

Whilst Final Fantasy and RPGs had existed in the West long before, word of mouth made FF7 the entry point for so many and set a standard that Square and the rest of the industry - for better or for worse - is still compared to to this day.