8 Worst Spin-Offs From HUGE Video Game Franchises
The worst gaming spin-offs that should've never been made.
When any video game franchise gets sufficiently huge, of course the possibility of spin-offs rears its head, as publishers plot to exploit their most lucrative IP for every possible drop.
And while there are countless spin-offs which have proven phenomenally successful in their own right - say, Mario Kart, Persona, Fallout: New Vegas, and Gwent, to name just a few - there are far more that end up falling flat.
After all, selling players on an extension of the core IP isn't easy if it's lacking some of the mainline series' key traits, but every so often, there's a gaming spin-off so thoroughly, hilariously miscalculated that it genuinely leaves fans reconsidering how much they love the franchise as a whole.
And that's certainly the case with these spin-offs, which while entries into some of the biggest video game series of all time, lacked the polish, finesse, creativity, production value and sheer reason to exist that their predecessors did.
Whether they were purely cynical cash-ins or simply poorly constructed attempts to widen the series' appeal, these spin-offs were all pure duds that largely fell upon deaf ears at launch...
8. Final Fantasy All the Bravest
You'll struggle to find a single living soul who will stick their neck out for Final Fantasy All the Bravest - a 2D mobile game sold on the promise of teaming up characters from many different Final Fantasy eras in a massive party of up to 40 heroes.
As cool as that sounds, All the Bravest is, for want of a better word, wack.
There's no story, the combat comes down to just basic tapping, and the aggressive microtransaction implementation was widely criticised when it launched in 2013.
It felt like a genuine embarrassment to see such a spectacular IP abused in such a crass way, all with Square Enix's obvious sign-off no less.
Though All the Bravest swiftly faded into obscurity, it was only finally removed from all digital storefronts in 2023, effectively nuking it from existence. And nothing of value was lost.
No matter the many oddball, only dubiously worthwhile spin-offs Final Fantasy has had over the decades - looking at you, Dirge of Cerberus - it's weirdly comforting to know that things will surely never get this dire again.