Ranking Every Final Fantasy Spin-Off Game

Independent game development has flourished in recent years, as digital distribution has allowed smaller companies to showcase their creations to a wide audience without the need for costly and risky physical production and marketing. When Nintendo launched WiiWare, a developmental platform targeted at such companies, Square Enix decided to release a number of the games on the service to raise its profile, including two separate Crystal Chronicles spin-offs that share a world and are usually always mentioned together, hence their shared ranking here.

My Life As A King was a city building game, drawing from Animal Crossing for inspiration. It enabled players to build their own Final Fantasy towns, full of shops and other buildings. Brilliant in theory, it was let down slightly by a slow pace and a reliance on expensive DLC in order to get the full experience.

My Life As A Darklord was a tower defence game. Far more innovative than Crystal Defenders, it offered a broad range of units and traps to play with but lacked much in the way of depth and also relied too extensively on DLC.

The Wii Shop is no longer accessible and both games have never been released anywhere else, making them incredibly rare and impossible to play unless bought during the lifespan of the Wii. Their unique core mechanics were hugely enjoyable in short doses, so this is nothing short of a crime. Here’s hoping they see the light of day elsewhere at some point in the future.