History EarlyInstallmentWeirdness / FinalFantasy

*** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' introduced MP, but also featured a very primitive version of StatGrinding rather than the CharacterLevel system that most games in the series use. It had yet to be refined; attacking your own party members was the best way to develop.

* When Yugiri was introduced in patch 2.3, she was used as a teaser to the then soon-to-be-playable Au Ra race -- but the model wasn't finished yet, so she actually used a heavily modified Miqo'te model. To cover up the unfinished parts, she wore a veil to hide her face, with the in-universe explanation that the Au Ra are new to Eorzea and she didn't want people freaking out over her appearance. However, this explanation started to look pretty silly when Au Ra became playable, since players could be an Au Ra before meeting her and you could see other Au Ra players running around. Additional races that were added in later expansions would always have their models finished before their teaser characters were introduced, so that the devteam didn't have to bother bother trying to hide their faces or other features and they could just pretend that they always existed everywhere.

* In contrast, Legacy originally didn't have mobs in the overworld at all -- you could go wherever you wanted almost from the very beginning, only locking quests behind level requirements. Irritatingly, the developers overcompensated when adding them in ''ARR'', and several quest objectives will now happily and repeatedly send you into dens filled with ''dozens'' of hostile mobs that you will have to clear out just so they don't interrupt you when you attempt to actually perform the objective[[note]]Fortunately for Rogue/Ninja players, they can use the Hide ability to avoid confronting most, if not all, of these enemies for quests.[[/note]].

* When Yugiri was introduced in patch 2.3, she was used as a teaser to the then soon-to-be-playable Au Ra race. She work a veil to hide her face and it was explained that her kind were still new to Eorzea and she didn't want to cause people to freak out over her appearance. Yugiri's decision to hide her appearance became pretty silly when Au Ra became playable since players could be an Au Ra before meeting her and you could see other Au Ra players running around. Additional races that were added in later expansions didn't bother trying to hide their faces or other features and it was easier to just pretend that they always existed everywhere.

* With the exception of the second tier, the Binding Coil raids have no [[BonusDungeon Savage versions]] -- or maybe it would be more accurate to say they have no [[StoryDifficultySetting normal version]], as when played with the expected gear at time of release, the Binding Coil raids were about as difficult as later Savage raids under the same circumstances. Not coincidentally, the Normal Raid roulette introduced a few expansions later doesn't include the Binding Coils. Furthermore, the final levels of the last coil have voice-acted cutscenes. No other raid series in the game ever saw the return of voice acting outside of BossBanter.

** Characters would [[{{Permadeath}} die for good]] if they weren't revived in three turns. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance'' has a milder version of this where only certain areas can have characters die and only if they are not revived at the end of the battle. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' gets rid of the perma death completely in exchange for losing the judge's protection for the rest of the battle if you broke the law imposed on your clan, causing you to lose the bonus effect bestowed by the judge at the beginning of the battle and making you unable to revive any KOed party members.

* ''Stormblood'' introduced role actions that gave players certain abilities based on their roles and it wasn't fully fleshed out until later expansions. Initially, each role could only use up five skills, which meant that players would have to constantly shuffle skills around until a later patch allowed them to use every skill. Several role actions that were introduced in ''Stormblood'' were removed by ''Shadowbringers'' due to their uses being too niche or redundant compared to similar skills.

* The jobs' related artifact armor was tied to the job quests' completion, but ''A Realm Reborn'' had them spread out a little. You got four out of five of them at level 45, with the final, Body piece given at level 50. ''Heavensward'' and ''Stormblood'' would give you the entire set at their respective level caps, but it would take ''Shadowbringers'' and the phasing out of job quests in favor of Role Quests to be integrated within Main Scenario. In ''Endwalker'', artifact gear is now simply redeemed at a specific vendor in Old Sharlyan once you reach level 89 with that job, likely to make it more useful since you can take it with you in the penultimate dungeon and trial. The level 50 artifact gear sets are also the only sets that can be stored into the Armoire.

* The jobs' related artifact armor was tied to the job quests' completion, but ''A Realm Reborn'' had them spread out a little. You got four out of five of them at level 45, with the final, Body piece given at level 50. ''Heavensward'' and ''Stormblood'' would give you the entire set at their respective level caps, but it would take ''Shadowbringers'' and the phasing out of job quests in favor of Role Quests to be integrated within Main Scenario. The level 50 artifact gear sets are also the only sets that can be stored into the Armoire.

* Early dungeons don't have proper music, just a short tune that plays at the start and then the battle music kicks in for the rest of the dungeon, starting from Pharos Sirius in 2.1, dungeons started having proper music that played for the whole dungeon excluding boss fights.

* A lot of trial bosses had the ability to [[RingOut knock players off the area]] and permanently took them out of the battle. This could cause DisasterDominoes for uncoordinated or unlucky parties if too many players fell off, especially if they were a healer or a tank. Starting with the trial against Sophia, players who fell off the platform would reappear so that the healers can revive them. Later patches would make this a standard feature for the earlier trials.

* Job skills were obtained by completing your job quests, a method that was used in ''A Realm Reborn'' and ''Heavensward''. Due to how easy it was for players to level up without doing their job quests, job skills acquisitions were changed to being obtained upon leveling up instead, with the exception of the player's level 70 skill being acquired at their level 70 job quest in ''Stormblood.'' ''Shadowbringers'' would abolish job quests entirely and would use role quests instead in order to give a more cohesive story that would fit each role and would also work alongside the main story.

* The game's free trial used to be much more limited. Initially it was your standard [[ThirtyDayFreeTrial time-limited trial]], letting you play for 14 days and capping you at level 35. Sometime after patch 3.5 the time limit was removed. Then, sometime after 5.3, the cap was boosted up to level 60, including making all the content of ''Heavensward'' free to play.

* Early dungeons don't have proper music, just a short tune that plays at the start and then the battle music kicks in for the rest of the dungeon, starting from the pharos sirius dungeon in 2.1 dungeons started having propermusic that played for the whole dungeon excluding boss fights.

* Early dungeons didn't have proper BGMs, just a short tune that plays at the start and then the battle music kicks in for the rest of the dungeon, starting from the pharos sirius dungeon in 2.1 dungeons started having propermusic that played for the whole dungeon excluding boss fights.

* Up until the introduction of the Glamour Dresser, Glamours were very different in mechanics. Players were allowed to buy a basic Glamour Prism, but they had to be used to ''craft'' specific Prisms for each article of clothing, thus players were toting around five different types of Glamour Prisms

Being one of the biggest and [[LongRunners longest]] video game franchises in the world, ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' has changed a lot since 1987:

* Related to this, in ''ARR'', Trials against Primals (and the Ultima Weapon) were the only ones which had an Extreme version. Fights like The Steps of Faith, Cape Westwind, and The Chrysalis never got one. From ''Heavensward'' onwards, ''all'' Trial fights would get an Extreme version, the sole exception being the Kugane Ohashi Trial due to it using a BonusBoss.

* Artifact armor in ''A Realm Reborn'' involved going on a quest that took you all over Eorzea to find the pieces of said armor while also learning about the lore behind them. First you would find all the pieces except for the chest piece at the level 45 quest while said chest piece is given to you at the end of the level 50 job quest. An upgraded version of the artifact armor also exists, which were obtained through a different method. Due to the changes made to ''A Realm Reborn'', the upgraded version of the artifact armor is given to you at the end of the level 50 job quest, which makes your newly acquired gear from before already obsolete unless you go through the effort of augmenting the initial set. From ''Heavensward'' on, artifact armor acquisition got streamlined where the player can obtain them very easily through one method while the upgraded versions had their own methods depending on the expansion being played.