Final Fantasy arguably has the edge over Dragon Quest when it comes to global fame, so much so that it's easy to forget that Yuji Horii's series came out before Hironobu Sakaguchi's.
The early rivalry between the two franchises was quite heated in Japan, but, as Horii tells Game Informer, he never saw Final Fantasy as "competition," even if it was on his radar as a designer.
He adds:
"Way back then, when Final Fantasy originally came out, I was definitely paying attention to it because it was something we needed to look out for. But there's one key difference that I really saw back then: the protagonists in the Final Fantasy titles, they speak a lot. Whereas for Dragon Quest, the key objective for [the games], or the experience it offers for the player, is that the player becomes the protagonist themselves.
In Final Fantasy, you kind of observe the protagonist, but you're not necessarily becoming the protagonist in the games. So I thought that was a really interesting and stark difference between Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, but I didn't necessarily see them as a rival back then."
Despite this difference, Horii reveals he's a fan of the series – and even lists his personal favourite in the lineage. "I do like Final Fantasy, though. When I first saw Final Fantasy X, I recall feeling this was the ultimate perfection of Final Fantasy."
Ironically, both franchises are now under the same ownership, thanks to the 2003 merger of Square and Enix.
Dragon Quest's last mainline entry was 2017's Dragon Quest XI, but Dragon Quest XII is currently in development. Square Enix has been revisiting past entries with a series of remakes, the most recent of which is Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake.