Ranking Every Final Fantasy Spin-Off Game

Seventeen years is a hell of a long time to wait before deciding to make a sequel to a game (the way things are going that’ll be the wait between XV and XVI but that’s neither here nor there…), but in 2008 Square Enix saw fit to develop a sequel to 1991’s Final Fantasy IV in line with the release of a new remake of the game on the Nintendo DS. The result was The After Years, an episodic title that originally released as yet another Japan-only mobile game before its creators saw sense and released it on the Wii, PC and PSP.

Catching up with the cast of IV, who starred in one of the series’ best stories, in ‘real-time’ given that they had each aged seventeen years, The After Years was largely superfluous from a story standpoint given that IV had a clear conclusion and was clearly never designed with a sequel in mind. It was immersive and enjoyable however, offering a number of solid challenges once its siloed narratives were brought together in the final episode.

The PSP release added a third game in the form of Interlude, which bridged the gap between the two games and was so short that it cannot possibly be given an entry in its own right. Given that they’re included in what is the definitive release of IV, both are definitely worth exploring to get full closure on Kain’s redemption in particular.