Summary
There have been plenty ofFinal Fantasycollaborations over the years, from Dragon Quest and Monster Hunter, to Puma and Audi. It’s a pretty big franchise after all. However, when it comes to games, Final Fantasy has one particualr type of game it loves to collaborate with the most - fighting games.
While the list isn’t massive, there is a fascinating number of fighting games in which Final Fantasy characters have found themselves. The semi-realtime ATB system lends well to putting a character directly into a fully realtime fighting game, it seems. So let’s check out every appearance there is.
6Ehrgeiz
The Cast Of Final Fantasy 7
Ehrgeiz, rather than pulling from the likes of Street Fighter or Tekken which were popular at the time, insteadtakes inspiration from wrestlingto present a more free-form 3D arena for you to perform your actions in. And even though the original arcade version wasn’t published nor developed by Square Enix, it had a hearty helping of Final Fantasy 7 characters.
Tifa, already being a martial artist, makes perfect sense. Seeing Cloud punch people is just silly, but in a good way. A port to the PlayStation was later published by Square Enix internationally which added Sephiroth, Yuffie, Vincent and Zack. Almost half the cast was just Final Fantasy 7 at this point. You have not lived until you have seen Sephiroth perform a suplex.
5Tobal 2
Just A Cheeky Chocobo
The original Tobal was Square Enix’s first foray into the fighting game genre, and recruited the assistance of Akira Toriyama to design the characters. This was followed up just a year later with Tobal 2, a game that holds the rather obscene record of largest fighting game roster, with a total of around 200 playable characters.
These are all pre-made characters too, even if some of them are just texture swaps and stat changes. The game also has a unique mode in which you can recruit monsters, turning them into playable characters. And of course, the most unique of those is the beloved mascot of Final Fantasy, the Chocobo.Too bad this one never launched internationally.
Super Smash Bros. has always been heralded as the height to aspire for in terms of series collaboration. This became especially true with Smash Brawl when a plethora of non-Nintendo characters started to make their appearance. It wasn’t until Super SMash Bros. 4 that Final Fantasy, and indeed Square Enix as a whole, would gain a representative in the series.
This, of course, came with Final Fantasy 7’s Cloud Strife, asFF7 is seemingly eternal. In an odd choice, Cloud only came with his Japanese voice actor, though at least the interactivity of the Midgar stage made up for some of the other odd exclusions on Square Enix’s part. If only his greatest rival were here to join him.
The influence of Final Fantasy 7 is incredibly difficult to escape, like a black hole that absorbs all the attention around the series as a whole. Thankfully, Final Fantasy 15 managed to wrangle free of its gravity, and was very detatched from much of the associations of the rest of the series. It also came with some of the most bizarre and intensive marketing a single game has ever seen.
When it comes to the pantheon of beloved fighting games, Tekken ranks pretty highly, especially on the more competitive end of things. Tekken 7 specifically already had a rather…eccentric collection of guest characters, so how odd would a Final Fantasy one be? Enter Noctis Lucis Caelum, marking Square Enix’s Final Fantasy debut in a dedicated, competitive fighting game. Smash is a party game, after all.
With Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo gave itself a rather daunting challenge - for every single character to return, no matter how small their appearance may have been. And what a roaring success that was, with every known character reappearing to form one ofthe largest rosters in a fighting game. This even included Cloud, still with just his Japanese voice actor.
Square Enix had a great run with Smash Ultimate, too. Cloud returned, the Hero from Dragon Quest got his first appearance, and the long-requested Sora finally entered the arena. For Sephiroth though, the red carpet was rolled out. A minigame was added to give you early access to the character, and you could even fight him in his shirtless form, if that’s your thing.
Tekken already added one Final Fantasy character, so why not another? Tekken 8 has had a much simpler release schedule of characters so far, relying mostly on new or returning characters to the series. This marks Clive Rosfield as the first collaboration character for the game, and the second Final Fantasy character in the series.
Or three, if you count Torgal.
Coming directly from a much more character-action oriented game than Noctis did, Clive’s moveset is a much more natural fit for the game. His wide sword swings, fantastical Dominant abilities, and trusty wolf companion for grapples. And a whole host of customisation options, in case you also wanted to see Clive shirtless. Common trope for Final Fantasy characters in fighting games, it seems.
