7 Final Fantasy Games That Were TERMINATED In Less Than 12 Months 

To this day I will never understand why The First soldier wasn't a console game. A battle royal is cliche but genuinely makes no sense to restrict it to mobile especially considering how button and command heavy they would be.

I see a theme with this list. >Make new subseries/game based off FF15/old subseries revival >Subseries becomes heavily loved >Make gacha spinoff in same subseries >Make gacha one of the worst P2W experiences known to man >Take gacha and subseries out back when it doesn't meet expectations >Old Yeller them both in a single shotgun blast >Repeat because Squeenix is seemingly incapable of LEARNING FROM MISTAKES DESPITE HAVING MULTIPLE GACHAS RUNNING AND MAKING THEM BILLIONS A YEAR

Squeenix got INCREDIBLY greedy and Chocobo GP suffered greatly because of it. It's a real shame because the game is pretty solid.

The First Soldier was actually a pretty fun and well made BR, it had a surprising amount of focus on melee combat and a clear FF DNA. I reckon if it were released as a console game and polished to a mirror sheen, it would have done really well.

Final Fantasy Record Keeper was seriously one of my favorite games. The fact they dumped the global version soured me so much.

I'm genuinely upset about what happened with Chocobo GP. It could've been a fun Mario Kart alternative, but it just had to be littered with microtransactions. The fact that the Booster Pass was announced for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe around the same time was the final nail in the coffin.

I'm just glad Opera Omnia has lasted so long. I hope it continues to go strong because it's easily my favorite mobile game.

I'm genuinely mad about Record Keeper. I *loved* my little party, led by Celes, because if Final Fantasy has given me anything, it's been some of the most phenomenal power fantasies I've ever had, Record Keeper chief among them

It's remarkable to me just how many failures Square Enix has had, considering that FFRK, probably the simplest mobile game concept they've done, is likely to reach its 10th anniversary in Japan next year, and it lasted 7 years internationally.

Chocobo GP failing hurt so hard because i really wanted it to be a success..

I consider pay-wall and pay-2-win as red flags. I don't care if I spend real-life money on some visuals and cosmetics I like but if money was involved on how the game works it was a different story.

I was very genuinely sad when First Soldier was shut down. I never cared much for battle royale games but I actually got into that one pretty deep. I had almost all the classes leveled pretty high.

These Mobile Games that are presented as Free-to-Play games only to have Micro Transactions based on either Loot-Boxes in the West and Gatcha mechanics in East Asian games. I think that is what turned me off from ever wanting to get a smart phone in the first place, I saw it as far back as 2012 that gaming was going down this dark road and yet I was only a consumer nobody wanted to listen to.

I feel more sorry for the people that played those games & even spent some money on them to now no longer able to play those games. All that money they spent is wasted & the publishers walk away with the people money

I still can't believe anyone would pay for any of these mobile games. Even the 'good' ones are the same they just don't fail right away because they hold back their monetization to hook players in.

Being one who played First Soldier devoutly since beta. I'll say damn, I feel attacked, lol. There's hundreds of stories from the playerbase that fought w/A team on every aspect to keep the game alive. The miscommunication and mismanagement, of the game's support. Even alienated us hardcore loyalists. Console release, fps, class/ weapon scaling, the rate of the gacha system drops, more maps, classes, game types. Yet, we stuck it out. The termination notification came at midnight on last Halloween, and took even the ambassadors back who, had no idea. They even tried to host an official Esports tourny for FS. Ever Crisis, just feels more like a cliff's notes, water down summary of overall ff7 compilation, and more of a cash grab than FS ever was. Many, of us hold out hope of its return. It had a good gun, and melee combat system, impressive cooperation of materia in various styles. Traversal, gameplay, graphics for 60fps... in the end. The loyal soldier community was hurt, and betrayed by what we came to learn was insider stock trading that had overall killed the game, for those who loved it, and found fond memories within.

The First Soldier was actually genuinely fun to play. I loathe battle royales for the most part and while the mobile controls weren't the greatest, with enough practice shit was very, very enjoyable. The issue was is that they started to release "raid bosses" which required team work in a game where team work is the antithesis to success. On top of that the "gacha" aspects of it where it was just cosmetics wasn't BAD however the fact remained I feel people would have been more than willing to pay 15 bucks for a skin instead of paying 120 bucks to gamble on a skin.

First Soldier also ruined the FFVII naming pattern. It could be forgiven if it were a success or loved, but it feels like such a waste to break the tradition and not stick around

This video shows a trend I don't understand how publishers miss. Microtransactions and live service turn gamers away. It's crazy they still try to shove those kinds of games at us. WB games even said they want to exclusively use that model from now on.

FF Record Keeper, Brave Exvius, and Mobius were all fun. Mobius actually had an interesting story it was just a complete slog of fights to get small pieces at a time. The neat thing about that one, is some of the ideas seemed to end up in Stranger of Paradise. Exvius has a very good story, though ive fallen off the game a bit. Record Keeper was just nostalgia fun. I know its not an FF game but unfortunately Echoes of Mana was shut down after one year, but the announcement came before the year mark.

I loved First Soldier. I miss it dearly. It had so much potential.

I still say they need to make a stand-alone game of Blitzball. ❤

How the fuck does nomura convince people to hire him

One would think that after so many failed attempts to impose microtransactions on players one would conclude that it's not something that will make the game "stick"... But I guess the possibility of hitting jackpot is enough of a reason to mess up so many promising games.

I am so sad that i never knew FF Explores got a sequel. I have missed the heck outa that game and even done deep what ifs on how a remake/remaster could work for it.

I just had an idea for a Final Fantasy game which uses the Fire Emblem Echos and how the hock is you can use the spirits of previous heroes only your party can learn skills and spells from them in addition to summoning in combat to lay into your enemies

Chocobo GP deserved the "nitro fueled" treatment, as in, an actual remake of the ps1 game that i played for hours and hours when i was a kid

This is a normal fact of Game Industry since the 1970s. Vaporware happens when games originally start development yet they are changed drastically or even canceled despite their promising origins. Final Fantasy 64 being one of the best examples of this, Donkey Kong Racing for GameCube being obvious reasons.

4 years later and I’m still frustrated that DQ Walk is Japan exclusive. Why must we be excluded from the DQ franchise to such a heavy degree???

It's seems Square Enix doesn't get the message, we don't like mobile games especially with micro transactions and gotcha mechanics. I'm worry about Ever Crisis 😢

who would have guessed Greed would be a problem for the long life of any game.

This is wild. Imagine multiple people, at multiple levels in the company approve making a game and title it "first soldier" - something that fans would expect to have a vast story for continuity to one of the most iconic games - just to make it a storyless battle royale on mobile.. it's crazy

The common theme here has been my biggest gripe with ever crisis. The banners are every week and meant to chew up your money fast af

FF Explorers was a lot of fun so it's unfortunate the follow up was a mess, same with World of FF :(

It was such a bummer to see 1st Solider go under. Their active ambassadors in Season 2 and 3 were actual community players who were active in twitch streams and discord. They were really encouraging and played with anyone. And even outside of that, the development team was so transparent and their community managers were actively involved on discord and engaging people. The development team came up with new jobs, original limit time events and game modes. The game was really good and kept improving. I played it daily and loved it, and I personally hate BRs, but loved what 1st Solider brought to the table. I really hope they're able to try this again and just start on console/pc right away so that its more appealing to people.

My biggest gripe with First Soldier was the fact that it was basically unplayable without a controller and I didn't want to dish out money for a controller mount for my DS4 for just one game.

Final Fantasy First Soldier was actually pretty enjoyable once you got used to the controls. I hate battle royale games and agree it should’ve been on console, but damn that was actually the first game that convinced me to spend money on it ($100) I loved the skins on everything and the emotes. I was actually sad to see it go tbh

TFS was my favorite battle royale so far, despite it only being on mobile devices, i really enjoyed playing it. However, the decisions they made like adding Zack Mode and Zombie Mode made it worse for a long time. Eventually I played less because of this, which is sad because I was actually real good in it. Maybe I'll play other battle royales...

I will always be upset over First Soldier. It was the first Battle Royale of its kind and it's was very fun. Lack of marketing and porting is what killed the game. I wish somebody can reverse engineer it or something .

The main lesson is, don't ever bother with mobile games.

Chocobo GP was such a good game the only time I had bought Nintendo membership was to play it online. It's just a shame the menus had a mobile vibe to them and offline play wasn't as good. World of Final Fantasy is such a great game the story towards the end is so good. It's a shame we never got a proper 2nd game.

I mean the overall lesson from all these games is don't be scummy with over intense gacha mechanics. Some are fine. Ok even. But when the drop rates are trash to encourage barely better drop rates from gacha pulls, therein lies the death of your game.

What they did to Final Fantasy Dimensions 2 should be a crime. The first one was SO GOOD, making the second one a weird gacha game with garbage mechanics should never have made it past the status of idea.

The mobile market is such a blight on Gaming, this entire list is proof of that

If First Soldier played more like a DOS FPS (DooM/Quake/etcetera), it probably would of taken off a lot more effectively. Battle royale games are basically FPS gimmick games based off of the first game to make it big with the gimmick, Unreal Tournament. ... I'd love to see a collab between id Software and Square Enix. Right, like Bethesda would allow it. 🤣

Wait they fixed Chocobo GP? Thank you for telling us this now im gonna play it.

I get that mobile games tend to be more popular in Japan. In that case, why not just create complete mobile games as opposed to these failed cash grabs? I’m noticing a trend that many involving/pushing micro transactions just end up dying eventually. In my honest opinion, it seems like a waste of investment as a consumer, and a waste of game development.

Final Fantasy Legends/Dimension 1 , felt like abit of FF 4,5 and 6 into 1 FF game, I hear people mention they hated it, but never say why, guessing because it's a mobile game?

i know there was that one Final Fantasy game that got shut down around 4 months where you unlocked classes for your custom character on the phone i cant remember its name though but one of the weapons you got for pre-registry was Brotherhood from FF10

If you're going to make a mobile RPG, the best approach is probably Fire Emblem Heroes. All the plot is sectioned into books and chapters so you're able to engage as deeply or as shallowly as you want. You don't have to sit through 50+ hours of cutscenes in the waiting room of the DMV.

I didn't mind The First Soldier. I wasn't playing it religiously or anything but it was the first battle royale game that I haven't hated so that was kind of disappointing.

Chocobo GP is the saddest title here. Love the game and didn't mind buying the season pass since it added up to the price of a full game, and it would pay for future season passes. However, people on social media were doing some wild math, adding up the prices of every single item in the store and finding issue with it. Yeah, okay, but would you really want to buy paint jobs for every single character? Obviously, what we got was less than ideal, but it really wasn't as bad as people were making it out to be. Sadly, the toxicity destroyed my enjoyment for the otherwise clean game. Never had a kart game with so many characters I vibed with. Hell, I remember when it was going to be made for the 3DS and got canceled. I was really looking forward to that gem.

This is why I refuse to get invested in any mobile game and ESPECIALLY spending money in any of them. SE cancels so many of their mobile titles especially

I hate how WoFF is effectively dead and in the water after the failure of the Meli-Melo. It reminded me of how early Kingdom Hearts, the battle mechanics were really good, and the monster taming aspect was on point. I bought it on both Vita and Switch and i kinda want to go through it again sitting here thinking about it. When it comes to monster taming games (outside of Pokemon), WoFF and Digimon Cyber Sleuth sit comfortably at the top of my list.

Square Enix when it comes to their mobile games are a hit or miss when it comes to how long they’ll last with most lasting less than a year like Echoes of Mana and the global version of Star Ocean Anamnesis but then there are games like the FFBE series with WOTV and base FFBE, FF Opera Omnia, SinoAlice, and Romancing Saga Re;univerSe that have lasted way longer with all of them being 3+ years old. Granted SinoAlice is ending service soon with the Global version lasting 3 years while the JP version of the game is one of Square Enix’s longest running mobile games with that version lasting 6 years and unlike most mobile games Yoko Taro was allowed to fully tell the story of SinoAlice and give it a proper ending for each of the 3 versions with the Taiwanese and Global version having a traditional happy ending while the JP version seems to be the true ending of the game. Also SinoAlice was also the only mobile exclusive IP that Square Enix has allowed to last that long and judging by how popular it was for 80-90% of its run I wouldn’t be surprised if Square Enix revisited the IP in the future.

Sqeenix has been failing because they're obsessed with chasing modern trends rather than innovating like in the turn-based days

Most of these games in a nutshell: Mr. squenix how much monetization do you want in this game ?(insert any of these games here) Squenix: Yes

sad that companys offten really really screw up with really agressive monetisation

So moral of the story: actual games one buys and plays = mostly a success; microtransaction-based money grabbing schemes = fail

I was some the few who was real excited for Chocobo racing, I even went out my way to get it physical cause I hated the idea of it being digital only overseas but indeed what hurt it most was that BP Mario kart doesn't use a BP, so what on Earth made them thing remaking a classic racer and putting a BP and locking characters who were in the original free of charge was a good idea? In my opion FF Explorers was real underrated on the 3DS I feel SE nor Nintendo did enough to get its name out there with folks shame that its follow up which I didn't even know existed was also strapped down with monetization they really need to cut this out its not working and the more they push it the more I fear we could repeat what lead to the merger with Enix and Squaresoft.

I was really looking forward to Explorer Force. 💔 it didn't make it over to the Enflis side.

Seems like every entry contains the phrase “Unfortunately, the monetization…” You’d think Square would learn eventually, but “Ever Crisis” is currently making that mistake all over again.

I loved the first soldier. My phone was just old and didn't run it very well. Oh well.

One square enix game i loved on mobile was Echoes of mana it suffered the same fate as these games

No way I don't believe it

Genuinely feel that Nomura is more of an issue than he is a boon at Square nowadays.

You think FF7: Ever Crisis won't last long huh?

I tried First soldier. I uninstalled it after 10 minutes as it was just so clunky and not good to have that kind of genre on mobile

I actually finished that FF dimensions 2... The story is very FF indeed~ and seriously a paradox or maybe time loop huh~ I enjoyed overleveling lol~

"Let's hire ATeam! Tell us what you make!" "We make NFT games for the metaverse!" "Great, make a battle royale game!"

Square just be throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks😂😂

Anyone else sensing a pattern here? Seems like the games they design to be microtransaction cash cows are the ones they consistently cancel due to the player base not enjoying the microtransation elements.

i genuinely fucked with the first soldier but like stated elsewhere the controls held it back imo. i tried my hardest to consolize the experience, streamed it to my big screen and used a dualshock 4 on my phone but the experience was so laggy i wanted to wait for an actual console port (like how Bleach Brave Souls was then recently ported to the ps4)

No player likes paying for a full-priced game...then being required to dump hundreds or thousands MORE into it to get locked content or to even advance....like Chocobo GP. I was considering buying it....until I learned how aggressive the microtransactions were. Also...for all these "gacha" games...I feel sorry for those who dumps loads of money into them...only to end up wasting it due to the games being shut down. Here's a tip....whether a game like that lives or not all depends on how predatory or aggressive the microtransactions are. If you are literally FORCING players to keep dumping money just to proceed (or make it "pay-to-Win,")...it won't last. The ones who actually get screwed are the ones who actually DID dump hundreds or thousands of dollars into them....because they don't get that back. Digital gaming right there, folks. ...but...this is "modern gaming." Even simple mechanics are being locked behind a paywall now (Dragon's Dogma 2, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, etc.). These AAA publishers have to meet their un-realistic quotas for the share-holders SOMEHOW....and since these tactics actually work, despite all the bad press and backlash...they'll keep doing it. It's time to start looking at smaller devs and publishers...because they are doing it the way it's SUPPOSED to be done. Take Larian Studios, for example. They have no share-holders they have to keep happy with the unlimited growth and expected unlimited returns....so they are actually able to make games the way they envision, and how they WANT. AAA publishers only have, "How much can we monetize this game? How many required microtransactions can we force in?" on their minds.

I'm missing "Mobius final fantasy" 😢

chocobo GP suppose to be smartphone game rather than exclusive nintendo switch

What's really sad is a lot of these great games died off and didn't succeed but yet Final Fantasy IX probably the worst Final Fantasy in the entirety of the series somehow was able to thrive and succeed to where some people for some reason are actually calling for a remake of that garbage game. The first Soldier should have never been a mobile game that should have been a console game right off the bat

I very much feel Ever Crisis will be on this list. It’s greed is ridiculous, and prompts to spend more after milestones are super aggressive. Not to mention it’s basically asking players to spend $15 a week with $20 a month on top of the ~$300 cost to get items that are limited every two weeks… that’s even not if you want to maximize the power. If you get base items (which the game is expecting you to want to get 10 total of at a 7% facial rate.). You are still only able to assist whales in content. 😅

damn... that FF explorer would be effin cool if it releases on global AND not an item lock on paywall

I enjoyed first soldier quite a bit, but I could never justify playing it over other stuff, let alone spending money on it

I miss final fantasy record keeper 😔😔😔😔😔😔

Ever Crisis is becoming pay to win, I hope they don't go the same path as always.

There's a notable amount of sequels that introduced aggressive monetisation. It's a pity that it killed those franchises since it wasn't the quality of the game but more so the actions of Square-Enix that killed them

Dude, FFRK is a gacha hell, but their ideas to prolong that game to include so much mechanics towards it's lifetime was actually pretty genius. I really liked that game RIP.

Never heard of first soldier. Unfortunate. Pubg and CoD kinda overshadow everything else in that genre.

I'm still salty about Mobius

I'm actually really surprised the FFXV mobile game did so well considering it's a shit game.

imo the battle royale game isnt too bad maybe if they released it on consoles/pcs it might have helped. i never find fun in playing shooters on mobile

I don’t wanna sound like an old man but when I think of final fantasy I do not think about mobile. I understand that a lot of these mobile games rely on micro transactions. I just can’t do that. I’m into the grinding.

man if they choose to launch on console and pc that game will reatain solid part of the community, it so sad that this kinda br is actually good on right platform its just apex with more freedom in character build.

Final Fantasy:The First Soldier I played a ton & got a lot of good content from it I loved the Chocobos & the trickster class & dragoon Chocobo Gp would have been a grate game sad it's dead but glad it a reburth Final Fantasy:Explorer for 3DS is on my wish list I'll definitely be getting it World of Final Fantasy I only know of it from FF:RK so idk how to feel about that 😅

I miss Airborn Brigade most of all.

I’m still bitter that First Soldier never got a PC port.

worst part is the one mobile game that was fun and i played a ton they ended in the US. Final Fantasy record Keeper! only game i played on my phone for 4 years then gone.

it feels like that FFXIV is SE's only big Live Service Success and even that Game's only getting carried by it's Story ^^;

I realy miss FF Mobius 😢😢

no dont.... don't show me my favorite mobile final fantasy mobius final fantasy I loved that game and even bought a warrior of light class cause I enjoyed it so much and I never able to finish the story or catch up due to it getting dhut down T_T

im one of the very few who like to play first solider. I love just have more shinra and it was easy on my phone. Really sucks they stop the game.

They really dropped Dissidia NT for First Soldier that theyre gonna dropped also huh

First soldier should have been a console game. They literally had controller support for it