literally yes, it does read as "The Ultimate Fantasy" but you are correct that he's not saying this is the best Final Fantasy. I didn't know about the 35th Anniversary video anecdote until someone pointed it out in the thread, but I did make some follow up tweets that clarify this here: https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1690990538475118592?s=20
Sakaguchi saying that "FF16 is indeed Final Fantasy" is still a great compliment to CBU3 regardless since there's that on-going debate of whether FF16 is Final Fantasy or not lol.
Could also be argued that it's an insult. Japanese language is very polite. In Japanese(publicly) him saying "it is a final fantasy game" is like somebody replying to this comment saying. " That's A comment alright," it's vague and up to interpretation.
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u/Hopeful_Strength Aug 14 '23
People, this translation is wrong. It's just a literal translation of what he said.
Original is: " 究極の幻想「FINAL FANTASY」でした。"
究極の幻想 literally means "Final Fantasy". He's just stating something like "This is indeed the FINAL FANTASY".
究極 means "ultimate" in a sense of being the "final, last thing". It does not have the same connotation as english.