FINAL FANTASY: Characters we wished were part of the main Party.

Welcome to the 2nd video of my series where I  explore the characters that make Final Fantasy, divided in different categories, while the first  one was about the protagonist of the series, as FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth gave us the gift  that was a playable Sephiroth, in this case I’ll be talking about the Guest Playable Characters in  the games, those characters outside of your known main core that you are able to control in very  specific and usually short moments of the game. The party of FINA

L FANTASY II consists MAINLY  of 3 characters, Firion, Maria and Guy, with Leon being the other childhood friend that  gets defeated at the start but disappears later, so many guest characters will  join in his place during the game: Minwu is the first character that will join you  after the first mission, and immediately notice that he is the first white mage of the series,  with a surprising amount of spells at his disposal from the start, which makes him quite impressive  at such early stage

of the game, we get to see classic spells from Cure, to Protect, Blink,  or even offensive ones like Fear or Teleport. But of course, he will leave us not too long  after, and his own fate is not the nicest either. Josef is the first monk of the series, and as such  will have slightly higher skills fighting unarmed, although you can still make him wield another type  of weapon. So while he is still a very specific job class, the gameplay doesn’t really show it  like Minwu. At the end of the snow

cave dungeon, Josef will sacrifice himself for the party to  survive a last trap from the enemy, making him this way, the first FINAL FANTASY party member  ever to die on screen…congratulations I guess! Gordon comes to the party using a spear, with  balanced stats and equal proficiency levels with every weapon, so the player can train  him however they like basically. Nothing of him stands out, just like his character The next is a charming pirate lady, and captain, Leila. She starts as an enem

y  of course, but very quickly as we have the same objective of going against the emperor,  she joins and we have a ship now. Leila has high Agility above anything else, making her a  quick type of thief using daggers for example. When the ship is attacked by a whirlpool  caused by Leviathan, Leila unluckily won’t be with us anymore, but luckily for her she does  survive. And there’s nothing to worry about as we immediately meet Ricard, the last guest party  member and the first DRAGOON of the s

eries, as you would guess with his last name Highwind. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the jump ability, but he comes with a Spear and has good ability  with them, and is relevant plot wise in his relationship with the actual wyverns or dragons of  the game…he also dies, but that’s a small detail. After that, Leon finally rejoins the  team to get the official party together, and that’s how it’s gonna be until the end of the  game fighting the Emperor from Hell at the end. FINAL FANTASY VI is quite

the big cast, there are  potentially 14 playable characters to reach the final boss, including a Yeti and a Moogle. So  it’s quite impressive that there are a couple of guest party members to begin with for a bit. The first one that can be special mention are the iconic Biggs and Wedge, the two soldiers that tag  along Terra at the very iconic start of the game, and gameplay wise they are basically a lesser  version of Terra’s Magitek Armor style, with great abilities such as Fire, Ice  and Thu

nder beams, and a healing one, more than enough to take on the opening boss of  the game, before disappearing until the next game. The one I do count as *the* guest of FINAL  FANTASY VI is “Banon”. leader of the Returners, a secret resistance movement we are part of  almost immediately to fight Kefka and the Emperor. He will be part of the team as we go through  the rapid waters on our way to Narshe, and the main objective here is to protect him, so  we can’t allow him to fall in combat. For tha

t, luckily for us, he will be helpful and not a  drawback, as his main ability is “Pray”, one spell known for White mages, that casts cura to the  whole party without using MP instead. So not bad. We can tell he was a guest as after reaching  Narshe with now almost double the characters than before, the fight against Kefka’s army  will specifically consist of everyone but him. The party in Final Fantasy VII  is this beloved group of people, but one dream a lot of people have since then  was the

ability to control Sephiroth himself, as he was technically a guest member during  the flashback of the Nibelheim Incident. The thing is that in the original  game, you can’t control him, but you can see how powerful he is as  he one shots everyone with his powerful spells, always crits, and takes no damage. But in the latest FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH, this section of the game gave us a  playable Sephiroth after 27 years, and this time we are the ones controlling  him to feel overpower and cool

as heck. Among his abilities we can use the  exact same magic he had in the original, arranged with the same set of materia, and  many different abilities with his Murasame using the Triangle command, or his normal  ATB abilities like his long range “Zanshin”, and his iconic “Hell’s Gate” which he may or  may not use in a cutscene to kill someone later. It may have taken a long time, but we finally got  one of the biggest wishes players had back them. In FINAL FANTASY VIII, while the main party

of  most of the adventure to take on the final dungeon is this cast of 6 characters, you can probably  include the Dream Trio of Laguna and his friends Kiros and Ward, as you occasionally go through  their own adventure in many points of the game. So the ones I considered guests are two: First we  have for little time, Squall’s main rival and your local douche, Seifer. A character who mirrors  Squall battle style with the use of a gunblade, and even timing R1 for a crit, although  based on a cer

tain knight instead. Other than that he had a unique Limit break for him,  where he mimics the original intro of the game as he throws a fireball before attacking. The other guest is what at least I consider the perfect example of “A Boss when you  fight them vs. A boss when they join your party” of Final Fantasy: Sorcerer Edea. First of all what’s important to know is that Edea has one of the best  presentations ever in the series. Then after being able to fight her a couple  of times in some q

uite intense battles, some finishing not that well for us, she will reveal to  be a person of our past, and eventually join us in some instance to be part of the normal fights. Once we control her though, I don’t think she stands out that much, partially also because  how FINAL FANTASY VIII works in general with the Guardian Forces equipment and such.  But basically she has no equippable weapon, and Her Limit Break is Ice Strike, which  hurls large icicles at one enemy target in a similar fashio

n to that previous scene. The main cast of FINAL FANTASY IX consists of these 8 characters, each with their own defined  Class attached to them once again. At the start of the game you’ll technically have the  chance to use multiple other ones that are mainly part of the Tantalus Theater  group, so they are similar to Zidane. But if you don’t mind me ignoring most of them,  I think this game has one of the coolest (if not THE coolest) playable guest characters of  the series, in the name of Beat

rix. It’s those types of characters that you want to keep  using until the end, and also unlike Edea, a character that beats you up as a boss,  and one that rocks as a playable character. As a party member, she acts as a Paladin, as  she has access to a few White Mage abilities, as well as her own skillset called Seiken,  which will include the ones she uses against us in the boss fights that we can’t win at all,  such as the abilities Shock or Climhazzard. But not only that, she can be pretty 

strong already with the basic attacks, when fighting along Freya against Bandersnatch,  or Steiner later on against Kuja’s mist monsters. In Final Fantasy XII, the main party consists of  these 6 characters, also known as the responsible adults babysitting Vaan and Penelo. And similar  to Final Fantasy 2, we have temporary guest characters that join to be a 4th option in battle. In the original PS2 game, you couldn’t really control them and they will be doing their thing  on their own as a norma

l AI companion which, spoiler alert, will be more common later in the  series, but in the zodiac age version you have more control over them so I think they count. First we have Larsa, the main antagonist Vayne’s little brother, which is why his battle  style is reminiscent of the Judges', especially Gabranth's, wielding a weapon in each hand. Then we have Vossler, brother-in-arms with Basch, and part of the resistance to protect  princess Ashe, who carries a greatsword and doesn’t have the most

peaceful of resolutions. And finally Reddas, a Sky pirate that you meet first at Archadia clashing against Dr. Cid, and  ruler of Balfonheim. Although he didn’t have a happy ending too, as he was the one to sacrifice  himself to destroy the SunCryst near the end. And a special mention could be Vaan’s brother,  as he is the one character you control in the tutorial section of the game. Speaking of special mentions, the following ones will be guest characters  that could totally count as that, bu

t they tend to be AI companions that you don’t  fully control so it feels less impactful: Lightning Returns for example, is a single  character game as you only control her during the fights, but in different sections of the  world, you can use some companions such as the case of Fang herself, a playable character  in the original XIII game, or the Angel of Valhalla, the cutest white chocobo around. In Final Fantasy XV there are more obvious ones. If we count the chocobros as the main crew,  tha

t they can even be playable with the DLCs, we have a couple of additions during either  the main scenario or these mentioned extra episodes that focus on different  characters, such as the case as: Cor Leonis, the Lucian royal guard that  protects the family. Both in the main story and Gladios’ DLC, His gameplay is based  on wielding two katanas in battle, making him something of a Samurai-type of character Iris Amicita, Gladiolus’ younger sister who has the intense and explosive attack of defea

ting  you with a Moogle doll, so that’s pretty fun. but also has a technique called Eclipse,  which can kill imperial enemies outright. Aranea Highwind, the original Dragoon knight of  the empire as you could tell with that last name, so you could expect that it’s always fun to  have her around jumping and whatnot. She can also appear randomly in the game so that’s nice. And Ravus, Lunafreya’s Brother, former prince of Tenebrae and high commander of the Imperial  Army of Niflheim will join force

s with Ignis during the Leviathan trial at Altissia, using  his special attack with his artificial arm, empowering it with electricity and  performing Thunder-elemental attack. And of course the case of Final Fantasy  XVI, which similar to Lightning Returns, is a single character game, so your  friends, such are the cases of mostly Cid, Jill and Joshua, will help you on the  side without being able to control them. But again, as the latest game of the series  shows us, it’s always exciting when

an unexpected character that wasn’t supposed  to be part of the main team is playable, and most of the time is for some fun memories.  Maybe we can see Beatrix return soon enough. Thank you very much for watching, enjoy some  FInal Fantasy and I’ll see you later, love you