Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series, has finished Final Fantasy XIV, and may even delay retirement to make content.
As previously reported, the 58 year old Sakaguchi began his adventure on September 27th, and has been sharing parts of his playthrough via Twitter. Initially beginning with the free trial, Sakaguchi soon upgraded to the digital collector’s edition; complete with the bonus helmet that resembles that of the Warrior of Light he inspired years ago.
Aided by friends and the developers, Sakaguchi conquered A Realm Reborn (the base game), Heavensward (the first expansion, available in the free trial), Stormblood, and now Shadowbringers. While there are plenty of other sidequests to do, Sakaguchi revealed this on October 31st. This means the main story was completed in just over a month.
Sakaguchi was the director of the first five Final Fantasy games, and seemed touched when coming across moments inspired by classic games [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Sakaguchi even had to come face to face with an all to familiar creation (Editor’s Note: minor spoilers for Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers).
Sakaguchi left Square in 2004 when it merged to create Square Enix, and later founded Mistwalker. They would later produce Fantasian, an RPG using real-life dioramas for levels, and letting players “store” enemies to fight later all at once. Sakaguchi noted that Fantasian may become the last title he makes.
UPDATE: In an interview at Tokyo Game Show 2021 (translation: Siliconera), Sakaguchi praised how Final Fantasy XIV made each player feel like the Warrior of Light; despite being surrounded by other players. He also expressed an interest in writing a scenario for the game, or designing costumes.
Final Fantasy XIV is available for Windows PC, Mac (via the SE Store, and Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and still planned for Xbox One. In case you missed it, you can find our Shadowbringers expansion review here (we can’t recommend it enough!)
The Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker expansion launches November 23rd. In case you missed it, we covered all the changes coming with patch 6.0 when Endwalker launches.
