Ranking Every Final Fantasy Spin-Off Game

Final Fantasy began life as a series on Nintendo consoles before Square Enix jumped ship to Sony for Final Fantasy VII and beyond, but the enormous failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within at the box office prompted them to turn back to their old friends for some support in the early 2000s.

With the main series still subject to PlayStation exclusivity, the decision was made to create a new subseries, christened Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, which spanned five games across the GameCube, DS and Wii.

The last of these, The Crystal Bearers, was by far the worst. Released for the Wii in 2009. it was almost unrecognisable from its predecessors as a result of the decision to make it a single player action-adventure game rather than an RPG with multiplayer elements. Whilst it boasted a passable story, gameplay was clunky thanks to the forced use of the Wiimote for almost every action, combat was repetitive and the lack of any sort of map feature was baffling, prompting much aimless wandering in search of the next storyline objective.

Aside from the presence of iconic series creatures such as Moogles and Chocobos, The Crystal Bearers bore little resemblance to anything else in the franchise and could have easily been mistaken for a generic low-budget adventure game given its blandness and lack of sheen. Its mediocrity and low sales figures were ultimately the death knell for Crystal Chronicles, which has now been missing in action for over a decade.