Final Fantasy was originally created as a last game for a game company to produce before they went under. Hence the “final” in the title. It is toted on Square Enix’s website as “The best selling RPG series in the world!” http://www.square-enix.com/na/title/finalfantasy/ And there is cause for that. It has spawned 14 numbers in the series, not including spin offs, sequels, and even a couple of movies. It’s a big deal. But oh, have they gone wrong in recent, and in not so recent, years.
The series as a whole has a really interesting premise. Each installment in the series is an entirely new world that is facing a “final” crisis. This is a double edged sword. On the one hand, each installment has the ability to be epic! because you’re not building up from the last epic battle—it's a new world with new problems. You don’t have sequelitis (usually) where uber crazy things have happened to these characters and keeps happening to these characters game after game. Which is a good thing.
On the other hand, this means that in each new number in the series, the creators have to come up with a completely new world, new characters, new story, a new magic system, and a new thing to keep you interested in playing for 70+ hours (most of my games lasted from 90-120 hours total, not counting multiple playthroughs). That takes a lot of work, a lot of ingenuity, as well as a lot of luck in guessing what you think your audience will like, seeing how you can’t bring over a bunch of things from the last game like most series (*cough* God of War *cough*)
