Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launches this week, the latest in a long tradition of Final Fantasy remakes, and once again fans are pondering which game should get get the honour next. Series brand manager Yoshinori Kitase has been asked repeatedly on the pre-launch press tour whether we’ll get remakes of this SNES installment, or that PS1 classic.
Touching up and re-releasing games periodically has been a staple of the industry almost since its inception, and so it seems every few years we get a new Final Fantasy remake or remaster—or six of them, as we saw recently in the excellent (but criminally, almost digital-only) Pixel Remasters. With over 35 years of genre-defining classics under their belt, Square Enix has no shortage of titles to draw from for their next glow-up.
Some games are more deserving or overdue for an update than others, however. Here are the next Final Fantasy remakes or remasters we’re craving after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth—and how we’d like to see them materialize.
The Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy
This can be an unpopular opinion, but Final Fantasy XIII gets too bad of a rap. The first HD and multiplatform installment of the franchise was also the first to truly release in the social media era, and was summarily torn to shreds in many fledgling comment sections and Twitter threads.
Sure, it has its flaws, but it was also a formative step in the series’ transition toward action. Its combat system is the evolutionary step between the era of turn-based systems like Final Fantasy X, and action-RPG systems like Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy XVI, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. It utilized Active Time Battle and introduced the Stagger mechanic, which has become key to many Square Enix games since—including Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Remastering Final Fantasy XIII with the same approach given to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age would offer a chance to fix some of the points of contention, or at least sand down the rougher edges. Throwing in its sequels, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, would be a nice touch as well, despite their even weirder (and in Lightning Returns‘ case, sometimes batshit insane) aspects.
If nothing else, Final Fantasy XIII is the one offline, numbered entry in the series not currently playable on PlayStation 5, and a mid-PS3 era trilogy like this could conceivably be shoved onto a Switch cartridge. Bad reputation or not, this is currently money left on the table, as there’s plenty of fans who would eat up a trilogy re-release.
Final Fantasy XI
It’s amazing that Final Fantasy XI is still alive and well in 2024—22 years after it went online, and so long into the reign of its predecessor, Final Fantasy XIV. At the same time, picking up this old-fashioned MMORPG now feels like an incredibly daunting undertaking. It already had a reputation for being difficult or obstinate even in its heyday, and now there’s so much content to get through. Plus, it still requires a paid sub to play.
What general series fans need is a proper offline remaster of Final Fantasy XI. Such a project was in the works for years until it got canned in 2021. With the sheer number of fans who have played the majority of the rest of the series but never touched the sprawling world of Vana’diel, an offline FFXI “digest” would make an excellent choice for the next Final Fantasy remake.
I know I’m not the only one who’d love to see the house of Final Fantasy remake Dissidia Duodecim.
Granted, the cancelled project was a mobile title, but a proper console release would be a much more worthwhile investment. It need not be a truly breathtaking visual feast like Rebirth, either; if they used the existing assets and added a touch of current-gen effects—sufficient to run on Switch, while holding its own on PS5 and Series X|S—there could be a flood of people eager to check out the story they’ve been missing all these years.
Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy
Though their pedigree is with RPGs, Square Enix also has a history of putting out respectable fighting games (Ehrgeiz, anyone?), so when they announced a crossover game with the heroes and villains of their beloved series duking it out in an RPG-inspired fighting system, I was all-in.
Dissidia Duodecim was actually the second in this fighting game series, but incorporated all of the story content from the first in addition to its own new saga, making it the best bang for a Final Fantasy fan’s buck on the PSP. With a huge roster including at least a hero and villain from each of the main games to-date, plus a smattering of newcomers like Tifa, Lightning, Yuna, and Laguna,
It’s been well over a decade since it launched, but I know I’m not the only one who’d love to see the house of Final Fantasy remake Dissidia Duodecim. Dissidia Since Final Fantasy NT forgot what made the PSP games good and tried to shoehorn a 3-on-3 esport variant on us instead, we could really use a palate cleanser.
To boot, Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Reunion has already shown an ideal path for handling PSP revivals. If Dissidia Duodecim was ported to modern hardware with a comparable facelift, I’d happily rack up another 100-200 hours devouring all it has to offer once again.
Final Fantasy VIII
One of the games Kitase was asked about recently was Final Fantasy VIII, another game he directed. I’m simultaneously eager and wary of this title getting a remake. It’s my personal favourite game of all time and admittedly an acquired taste by modern standards; most people who love it seem to have played it in its own time, before it became hip to dunk on it. On the other hand, the recent remaster only served to scratch my itch and make the game broadly available once more, but came across as a weak effort.
Now that this classic has turned 25, it might very well be deserving of the honour of being the next Final Fantasy remake—but it would require a very discerning hand on the wheel. Chances are, many directors would want to strip away its unique systems, like Junctions and Guardian Forces, and replace it with something more generic. Again, its misguided reputation could betray it here.
Final Fantasy VIII‘s system isn’t unnecessarily convoluted, but it is badly explained in-game. It’s actually one of the most personalized systems in the series, and lends itself well to a plethora of challenge-run scenarios (like trying to obtain Squall’s ultimate weapon as early as possible, aka the “disc one Lionheart” challenge). Like XIII, there’s an opportunity to make a slight course-correction, enough to make it much more palatable to modern audiences while maintaining the original spirit like the Pixel Remasters did.
Legend has it the original code and assets for Final Fantasy VIII weren’t properly preserved, which is why we still have “flat Cid” in the 2019 remaster. Perhaps we wouldn’t get another re-release with a second pass on restoring the graphics, but if the original engine could be recreated and supported with modern graphics, I’d be happier than Zell with a hot dog.
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy Tactics did already see a remaster a decade ago—another PSP killer app, subtitled The War of the Lions—but nonetheless, there’s still a strong cry amongst the community to see a more definitive version released for modern consoles, and it’s earned the spot as my most eagerly desired Final Fantasy remake.
Originally released in 1997, directly in the wake of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics took the series to an even-more tactical application of the beloved Active Time Battle system. It quickly became a cult classic for its pedigree, its dramatic story, and its engaging gameplay, and its setting of Ivalice became a recurring location just before Final Fantasy VII became its own subseries.
Its cult following later warranted that update on PSP. War of the Lions added voice-acted cutscenes, multiplayer, and new cameos, but suffered from slowdown on the handheld platform (and plus, it took out those cool spell incantations!). The result is a divide between fans as to which version is better—but at the end of the day, the only easily-accessible version is the mobile port of War, so does it really matter?
If Tactics was the next Final Fantasy remake to grace our consoles, it would be a potent opportunity to set history right and include the best features of both prior versions, plus any number of other quality-of-life updates that might’ve become standard over the last 17 years.
When Square Enix released Tactics Ogre: Reborn in 2022—a remaster of another game helmed by Yasumi Matsuno—it truly seemed as though they were testing the waters to see how audiences might react to a Final Fantasy Tactics revival. It went well, so maybe they’ll announce the definitive version so many people have waited this long for soon.
