With its modern plotlines and steampunk airships, online game franchise Ultimate Fantasy has delighted followers and critics for 35 years.
Forward of the Thursday launch of the newest title, Ultimate Fantasy XVI, listed below are 5 issues to know concerning the massively profitable Japanese sequence:
8-bit magic
Ultimate Fantasy’s wealthy storytelling and colourful characters have made it one of many top-selling sport franchises, with greater than 173 million copies offered worldwide in line with writer Sq. Enix.
Because the influential role-playing sport debuted on Nintendo’s unique console in 1987, its 2D monster battles have developed into real-time fight gameplay.
Fantasy tropes comparable to castles, wizards and magic crystals within the early video games have been later mixed with sci-fi components, from robotic armor to pixelated flying vessels.
Newer titles have picked up the tempo with immersive graphics and hard heroes whereas preserving the expansive in-game worlds popularized by the sequence.
Swap to PlayStation
The primary six Ultimate Fantasy video games have been made for Nintendo consoles, however quantity seven broke that custom in 1997 when builders switched to a brand new rival: Sony’s PlayStation.
It was a wise business transfer, with excessive demand for the unique PlayStation bringing the franchise an enormous new following.
Ultimate Fantasy VII, with its industrial aesthetic and mystical themes, was the primary 3D sport within the sequence and stays its best-selling title by far.
In 2020, Sq. Enix launched the primary installment of a three-part remake of the dystopian epic, which regularly options on lists of one of the best video video games of all time.
Hit music, movie flop
Ultimate Fantasy video games have gained vital acclaim not just for their storylines but in addition their soundtracks, described by British radio station Basic FM as “extremely cinematic”.
However whereas the music is carried out at classical concert events and has even accompanied a bronze-winning Olympic swimming routine, the movie spin-offs have been much less celebrated.
“Ultimate Fantasy: The Spirits Inside”, launched in 2001, was a mega-budget CGI characteristic that bombed on the field workplace and scored simply 44 p.c on evaluation website Rotten Tomatoes.
Different poorly rated Ultimate Fantasy movies adopted—however one better-received adaptation was a conventional kabuki theater model of the tenth sport, carried out in Tokyo this 12 months.
On-line titles
Most Ultimate Fantasy video games are solo adventures, however the franchise has additionally ventured into the profitable world of large-scale multiplayer on-line video games.
Ultimate Fantasy XI, launched in 2002, was its first on-line title, adopted by 2010’s Ultimate Fantasy XIV.
The latter was initially a business failure however was redesigned in 2013 and continues to be going robust, with a cult following who pay a month-to-month charge to play on the high stage.
Though Thursday’s launch shouldn’t be an on-line sport, it was produced by Naoki Yoshida, the mastermind behind the reinvention of quantity 14 that led to its success.
‘Recreation of Thrones’
Even earlier than the discharge, eager followers have been in a position to play a demo of the primary a part of Ultimate Fantasy XVI, which specialist web site Polygon hailed as a “slick, trendy action-adventure”.
The sport, launched on PlayStation 5 on Thursday, is influenced by TV megahit “Recreation of Thrones” and different fantasy classics from the West, producer Yoshida has stated.
He instructed Eurogamer that when the sport was in its infancy, he made the “core group” of builders watch the “Recreation of Thrones” field set, “as a result of we needed this kind of really feel”.
The result’s what has been described as essentially the most grown-up Ultimate Fantasy sport but, that includes intercourse scenes, drug use and graphic violence.
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Recreation changer: Ultimate Fantasy’s many years of reinvention (2023, June 21)
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