Not so Final: Ranking the 10 best Final Fantasy spin-offs
In honor of Final Fantasy XVI, we've ranked all the best Final Fantasy games that didn't get a fancy Roman numeral in their names
Games Features Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy XVI arrives in stores this week, bearing a title that might lead you to conclude “Damn, that’s a lot of Final Fantasys.” But you don’t know the half of it, swear-prone reader—and we mean that literally. After all, the main-line numbered entries in Square-Enix’s long-running role-playing game franchise account for less than half of the games to bear the Final Fantasy name, which, as one of the planet’s most prolific gaming series, has lent its wildly inaccurate moniker to action games, card games, rhythm games, racing games, and more.
But while only 16 of those games have had the honor of calling themselves “main” Final Fantasys, that’s no reason to leave those other weirdos huddled and numberless out in the cold. And so we’ve deigned to toss them some numbers ourselves, in the form of ranking the 10 best non-numbered games in the Final Fantasy series.
For the purposes of consolidation, we’ve made a couple of necessary cuts here—most notably, by eliminating any game that bear a direct, sequel-style relationship to one of those aforementioned number-games. (Which means we have to bid adieu to fascinating oddball Lightning Returns, all of the various Final Fantasy VII spin-offs, and, most tragically, the Final Fantasy XV VR fishing game.) We’ve also skipped out on any of the games that had their origins on smartphones, including FF: Record Breaker and free-to-play hit Mobius Final Fantasy. That still leaves us with a hefty catalogue of side-path games to rank and explore, though, each one making the series’ title a little more unbelievable than the last. And so, without further ado: Let’s get to applying a little numerical rigor to these numberless orphans.
11 Comments
id switch ffta with fft and also throw an itadaki street in the top 5 (even though i havent played any of the ff ones)
id switch ffta with fftYou monster.I remember liking the DS one, but thought the GBA game was pretty meh.
I think it might matter which one you played and got into first.
I was really excited for Tactics Advance, and then found myself asking what a “Stave” was.
It’s a decent game, but it had a much different tone.
FYI: 1997 was 26 years ago, not 16.
I need to beat Final Fantasy Tactics. I’ve gotten so far, so many times and things just happen(once my brother erased my save file, another time, it straight up bugged out on me, a third time, the PSP broke)
> Not just the best un-numbered Final Fantasy, but possibly still just the best Final Fantasy game, periodHappy and surprised y’all got this one right! Brava!
As usual World of Final Fantasy has been snubbed! People didn’t give it a chance because of the chibi art style but it’s a solid title.
I would argue Legends 3 is the best of the legends games. It was the only one that felt remotely like a final fantasy game in combat, and the story was a fun futuristic adventure where you get your own spaceship.
The Final Fantasy Legends I-III were epic on the original GameBoy. When you get to the screen to choose characters and see that “robot” is an option, you just get hooked. I don’t want to spoil any other details about it, but it’s worth picking up on the Switch.
I think it was Final Fantasy Legend 1 that I played so much that I started using the teams that the instruction manual specifically suggested that I don’t use.
Final Fantasy Tactics release 26 years ago, not 16.