Why Final Fantasy 4 and 6 Are So Often Confused

Final Fantasy, as a series, is nearly 40 years old, and while the numbered games have only reached 16 in that time, there are plenty of spin-offs to explore alongside the massive world of Final Fantasy 14, which is filled with hundreds or thousands of hours of content. While the regions are now on the same page regarding which entry each game is released as, that wasn’t always the case. As a result, the confusion between Final Fantasy 4 and Final Fantasy 6 isn’t just because their roman numerals are so similar, and they aren’t the only entries that make the order feel uncertain.

By the time Final Fantasy 7 was first released, the Japanese and North American regions started receiving the games on a closer timeline compared to the previous entries, which often made it to North American players years after their release. Even the first Final Fantasy wasn’t released in North America until 1990, three years after its initial release in Japan in 1987. From there, the releases in North America were quite different from the Japanese releases, up until Final Fantasy 7.

Final Fantasy Wasn’t Released in Order in North America

When you have a series that has numbered entries, you would expect that the games for that series would be released in that numbered order. For Final Fantasy in North America, that wasn’t entirely the case. Even though the games would be given the next number according to their release order in North America, these entries wouldn’t match the same order in which they were created in Japan. As you might expect, this led to a confusing situation that leaves North American players today still uncertain at times about which Final Fantasy game is which, especially if they played the games in the 1990s as they came out.

After the first Final Fantasy was brought to North America, the next game released in the region would actually be Final Fantasy 4 in 1991. Of course, it would be titled Final Fantasy 2 at the time of its initial release, which would be the start of the early-series confusion for North Americans. Next, Final Fantasy 6 arrived in 1994 with the title Final Fantasy 3. After that, Final Fantasy 5 was released in 1999 as Final Fantasy 4. Finally, the games that were released as Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy 3 in Japan would arrive in 2003 and 2006, respectively, at which point the North American audience was fairly aware of the release order differences.

While the games now have the correct numbers attached to them, it’s easy to see how players might still have some confusion about which game is which. Honestly, the best way to clear up the lingering confusion would probably be remaking the first six games with the love that the FF7 remake is getting, but that would be a massive undertaking for Square Enix, as nice as it would be for the players.