IMO, Final Fantasy has always been some kind of science fantasy, and tends to owe a lot to the fiction of Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, C. J. Cherryh, and C. L. Moore.
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Ooh nice post, or am I just saying that I’m much more interested in FF than in most things people blog about 
And yet another example of why black and white thinking is bad because exactly, all FF games have some elements of fantasy and some of science and they just blend these in different ways (personally I am relieved that the “going into space” trend seemed to stop after FF9 though).
I liked this part –
There’s no solid definition at this point of what a “Final Fantasy” game even is,
– but mostly because gamer bros have been saying the latest entry in the franchise “isn’t a Final Fantasy game” since 2009 or whatever, and sorry lads but Square Enix gets to decide what a Final Fantasy game is. If FF17 is a reskin of Candy Crush we’ve all got to suck it up I’m afraid.
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I think there’s at least a few gamer bros who would prefer a FF-skinned Candy Crush over FFX-2. Not I, though, but I think Paine was best girl in that one.
Good taste!! If I’d played FF games as a child I would absolutely have based my whole personality on Paine haha.
I have a total outsider’s perspective on this, as for the longest time the only FF thing I knew was the Advent Children movie (I watched it religiously on DVD as a kid and was just in awe of the style and visuals while understanding nothing about the story lol), but to me FF is one of the best representations of science-fantasy out there. Correct me if that isnt the right genre but thats what it feels like to me and its my fave genre, its so so underrated. To me its never been knights with jetpacks and stuff like that, but more like fantasy tropes bleeding into soft sci fi settings: magic, councils, prophecies, divine beings etc. It does feel like a totally different thing from scifi OR fantasy, be it leaning more towards one than the other.
I’m not going to correct you when I’ve called the franchise science fantasy myself.
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