The father of the Final Fantasy series has high praise for Final Fantasy 16.
If you didn't already know, Hironobu Sakaguchi is often viewed as the "founding father" of the Final Fantasy series. In the years since he stopped working on the series, Sakaguchi has still remained a huge fan of Final Fantasy's modern games, and now he's got high words of praise for Final Fantasy 16, hailing it as the "ultimate fantasy" in the tweet below.
FF16 最後まで。究極の幻想「FINAL FANTASY」でした。#FF16 pic.twitter.com/rSLabmIO0tAugust 14, 2023
That's got to be music to the ears of developers at Square Enix who've worked on Final Fantasy 16 over the past six years. In the follow-up tweet below, Sakaguchi summarised his thoughts on the Final Fantasy series in general, mentioning "adventurousness, courage, and determination" are all key qualities of the historic RPG series.
- The Final Fantasy 7 remake series is "perhaps one of the best interpretations" of an RPG remake, but Hironobu Sakaguchi wants to "continue giving birth to something new"
- After 3 years of playing Final Fantasy 14 "almost every single day," series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi reckons the MMO "might be the game that I've played the most in my life"
I think...FINAL FANTASY is something that continues to evolve. It is never completed. Adventurousness, Courage, and Determination are the key words.#FF16 pic.twitter.com/tgr3i4Gk37August 14, 2023
It seems like Sakaguchi is saying Final Fantasy 16 embodies all of these core tenets. When the founding father of a series asserts his opinion of the series at large, it's hard to really argue against him. Sakaguchi might be gone from Square Enix, but that doesn't mean he's done with Final Fantasy completely.
This sort of praise from Sakaguchi isn't really unexpected if you're familiar with him. He's been one of the loudest supporters of Final Fantasy 14, and its director, Naoki Yoshida, over the past three years or so, while also pestering Yoshida for any news about Final Fantasy 16 at literally any opportunity. It's sort of surprising Square Enix didn't give Sakaguchi a copy of the game as a gift, to be honest.
Speaking of Final Fantasy 14, we've no doubt Sakaguchi will be excited for Final Fantast 14: Dawntrail, the next major expansion for the MMO coming next year in summer 2024. That expansion will be preceded by Final Fantasy 14's patch 6.5, which is coming later this year in October, followed by a second part early next year in January 2024.
Fantasian might finally be getting a PC release, meaning there's a chance we could actually purchase the latest RPG made by Sakaguchi and company at Mistwalker.
