The Bold and the Braveus: A Look Back at Final Fantasy’s Teenage Years
The famous franchise had its share of growing pains
We used to be the parents. We were their guardian angels, the commander of our own private army of ensemble characters with wild hair and crazy costumes who burped giant boxes of text from their mouths as they talked about giant monsters and time-travelling wizards.
That was until Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIII, games that marked the dawn of the series’ nose-pierced, finger-painted adolescence. Those crazy costumes and wild hairstyles still spoke of monsters and time travel — sans giant floating text boxes — but they weren’t quite under our command anymore. Like a proper teenager, they well and truly developed a will of their own.
That will characterised Final Fantasy: The Teenage Years — a pimply, slightly awkward TV show full of ups and downs and twists and turns. Every release was a new wardrobe, every new box on the shelf was another attempt to find the series’ identity in a post-PSOne world. In this era, the series transitioned from the player-driven, menu-based active-time battle of Final Fantasy VII and X…
