Every mainline Final Fantasy, ranked

Cloud Strife, Sephiroth and the fight against Shinra remain the series' widest cultural footprint — the game that broke JRPGs into the Western mainstream and set the template most later entries are still measured against.

It scored 92 on Metacritic and, decades on, still tops most critic and fan best-of polls; the modern Remake trilogy (Remake 2020, Rebirth 2024) scores even higher, a rare case of a beloved original being matched by its own remake.

Still the answer to 'where do I start with Final Fantasy.'

Fourteen playable characters, a story that literally breaks the world in half partway through (the famous "World of Ruin"), and a villain in Kefka that's still frequently cited as the series' best — Final Fantasy VI tops longtime-fan and retrospective polls more consistently than any other entry.

It predates Metacritic, so there's no launch-era critic score to cite, but the 2022 Pixel Remaster landed in the low-to-mid 80s; its reputation was built and has held through decades of fan and critical retrospectives rather than a single review cycle.

The 16-bit peak the series keeps getting compared back to.

After VII and VIII's sci-fi turn, IX deliberately returned to the series' fantasy roots, and it's often cited as director Hironobu Sakaguchi's personal favorite — the art direction, humor and Kuja as a nuanced villain are still singled out today.

It holds the highest Metacritic score of any mainline entry at 94; a slower opening act is the one recurring soft criticism against an otherwise near-unanimously acclaimed game.

The best-reviewed Final Fantasy the series has ever shipped.

As the first fully-voiced, full-3D mainline entry, X carried real technical risk, and it paid off — the Sphere Grid progression system and Blitzball minigame are still fondly remembered, and the ending is regularly cited among the series' best.

It scored 92 on Metacritic on release; the early voice acting (the famous "laughing scene") became a lasting point of affectionate fan mockery without denting the game's broader critical standing.

The moment Final Fantasy learned to act, laughing scene and all.

Trading turn order for a real-time, AI-programmable "Gambit" system and an Ivalice-set political story was a genuine risk, and The Zodiac Age's job-system rebalance is now frequently cited among the series' best combat systems in retrospect.

It scored 92 on Metacritic on original release; the base game's muted protagonist was a common launch-era criticism that the Zodiac Age's sharper job system helped move past in later reassessments.

The entry that's aged into being one of the best-regarded, not the other way around.

Cecil's redemption arc introduced the Active Time Battle system that shaped how nearly every subsequent mainline entry handles combat pacing — a genuinely foundational design contribution, not just a good story on its own.

The DS 3D remake scored 85 and is well-regarded, though some found its increased difficulty a departure from the SNES original's pacing; the Pixel Remaster offers a closer-to-original alternative.

The template-setter the series has been iterating on for three decades.

Director Hiroshi Takai and producer Naoki Yoshida built a dark, politically-driven fantasy around full real-time action combat (directed by Devil May Cry's Ryota Suzuki) and genuinely spectacular, kaiju-scale Eikon summon battles — a hard structural break from the party-based turn order longtime fans associate with the series.

It scored 87 on Metacritic, among the best-reviewed entries of the last decade; a slower midgame and sparser open areas are the most common specific criticisms, alongside ongoing debate about whether abandoning traditional party mechanics costs it something.

The most spectacular Final Fantasy has looked, and the most it's argued about.

Squall Leonhart's more grounded, character-driven romance plot and the Triple Triad card minigame have a genuinely dedicated fanbase, distinct in tone from the entries around it on this list.

It scored 90 on Metacritic; the Junction system, which ties magic directly to stats, remains the series' most consistently criticized core mechanic for being opaque and easily exploited.

Beloved for its tone, argued about for its systems.

V expanded the Job System introduced in III into its most flexible early form, and systems-focused longtime fans regularly cite it as the best pure job-system entry in the series.

The GBA port scored 83; its story and cast are lighter and less serious than IV or VI, which is exactly why it ranks behind those two despite comparable mechanical acclaim.

The job-system purist's favorite, story be damned.

The original 2010 release is one of gaming's most infamous launch failures; Square Enix's decision to destroy the game world in-story and rebuild it from scratch as A Realm Reborn is still cited as one of the industry's most successful turnarounds.

A Realm Reborn scored 83 at relaunch, and later expansions — particularly Shadowbringers and Endwalker — are frequently ranked among the best story content the genre has produced; it ranks mid-list mainly because many "mainline ranked" conversations exclude MMOs as a different category entirely.

The disaster that became one of the best redemption stories in gaming.

The original established the crystals, the job classes and the turn-based combat structure the entire franchise grew from — genuinely foundational, even if it's the shortest and simplest entry on this list by a wide margin.

The Pixel Remaster scored around 80; by modern standards it's mechanically the thinnest mainline entry, which is exactly why it sits low on a "which is best to actually play" ranking despite its historical importance.

Simple by design, and the reason everything after it exists.

III introduced the Job Change system in its fullest early form, historically important groundwork for V's more refined version — but the execution here is rougher, particularly in the notoriously difficult DS remake's dungeon design.

The Pixel Remaster scored 79; steep difficulty spikes (the infamous Crystal Tower dungeon among them) are the most consistently cited criticism, and it's rarely the version of the Job System fans point to as the series' best.

Important groundwork, rough to actually play through.

XI predated World of Warcraft as a genre-defining console/PC MMO, with strong lore and a famously demanding, group-mandatory endgame that built real community — a pioneering entry that shaped how the series thinks about live content long before XIV.

It scored 85 on release; today it ranks low on a "which should you actually play" list specifically because its punishing difficulty and MMO structure make it inaccessible to new or solo players in a way XIV has since solved.

Historically important, practically a hard sell today.

Noctis and his three companions' Regalia road-trip dynamic is genuinely well-liked — the bromance-driven party writing is a highlight — but the game's decade-long, troubled development (originally announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII) left visible scars.

It scored 81; the back half of the story is widely cited as rushed and incoherent, with major content cut at launch and later sold as DLC or patched in — one of the most commonly cited examples in the series of a game's second half not matching its first.

A great first half in search of the second half it was supposed to have.

II abandoned traditional leveling for a "stat-use" growth system — stats improve through the actions you take rather than experience points — an experiment ambitious enough that the series never repeated it in this exact form.

The Pixel Remaster scored 77, the lowest of any Pixel Remaster release; the growth system is infamous for being exploitable (players attacking their own party to boost HP), and it's widely regarded, including in the series' own retrospectives, as the shakiest core design in the mainline lineup.

The series' boldest experiment, and the one it never tried again.

The Paradigm Shift class-switching battle system is genuinely well-regarded, and XIII was one of the best-looking JRPGs of its console generation — but its extreme linearity, especially in the first fifteen to twenty hours, became the defining conversation around the game.

It scored 82–83 across platforms; a glossary-dependent plot and a near-total absence of towns or NPCs for most of the campaign are the most consistently cited criticisms, and the developers' own choice to open up the sequels (XIII-2, Lightning Returns) is often read as an acknowledgment of the issue.

The mainline entry the series itself seemed to agree needed fixing.