The ability to summon powerful monsters to aid the player in battle has been a staple of the Final Fantasy franchise ever since Final Fantasy 3 launched in 1990. The strongest summoners in the series have access to summons that can easily turn the tide of battle and transform what looks like a certain defeat into a sudden victory.

Related

6 Final Fantasy Games With The Most Jobs, Ranked

After such a long and illustrious history, Final Fantasy has produced a wide variety of jobs, but which game serves up the most choice in one sitting?

Sadly, not all summons are created equal. The franchise is also full of summons that are so incredibly weak. they're next to useless. Sometimes they're simply starter summons who don't have the stats to match other options. Other times, they lack offensive abilities completely and only offer less-than-helpful buffs. Occasionally, they were clearly included to troll the player. These summons are such weaklings that the majority of players only use them once or twice and then quickly drop them in favor of something else.

10 Eggman - Final Fantasy 5

Designed To Punish The Player

As one of the best Final Fantasy games on the Game Boy Advance, Final Fantasy 5 had quite a lot of cool features. One of these is the Magic Lamp, an item that grants the player the ability to call on the game's most powerful summons at no extra cost. The only downside is that, with each use, the monsters it summons become progressively weaker. It peaks with Bahamut and bottoms out with the utterly terrible Eggman.

Related

Final Fantasy: 6 Protagonists Who Are Stronger Than Cloud, Ranked

Cloud might be the poster boy for the Final Fantasy series but that doesn't mean he's the strongest protagonist in the franchise.

To summon Eggman, the player needs to have abused the lamp by having already used it 31 times. The last 20 or so summons will have been the pretty terrible Chocobo summon, so it's safe to say most players never even used Eggman. His attack, Egg Chop, always misses, and the developers didn't even bother creating a sprite for him. A truly useless summon, he'd be ranked in first place if he hadn't so obviously been included as a joke. We're saving the higher rankings for summons the developers actually expected players to use because this one can't even manage to hit that low bar.

9 Belias - Final Fantasy 12

We Have Ifrit At Home

Final Fantasy 12 tried pretty hard to differentiate itself from other entries in the series. One of the ways it did this was by introducing a whole load of summons with weird new names fans had never heard before. Divided into three levels, the best of these summons were incredibly hard to unlock. The only summon that wasn't an optional unlock was Belias, who left a lot to be desired.

A giant fire demon with horns, Belias was clearly modeled after Ifrit (who was traditionally one of the first summons to be unlocked in a FF game). In Final Fantasy 12, summons take up two party slots and can't be commanded directly. When summoned, Belias repeatedly casts "Painflare," which is a weak fire spell, until either his timer runs out or he's knocked out. He then casts his final attack, Hellfire, a so-so area-of-effect fire spell. Simply put, in exchange for two party members, the player gets a weak knock-off version of Ifrit that's useless against any enemy with high-fire defense.

8 Diablos - Final Fantasy 8

Can't Hurt Bosses

Diablos is one of the coolest-looking Guardian Forces in Final Fantasy 8. It's just a shame he's also one of its least useful. After defeating Diablos inside the Magic Lamp, the player can summon him at will. His attack, Mega Flare, does damage as a percentage of the enemy's health compared to Diablos' level range. That means, at lower levels, he can be pretty useless, but at level 100, he's guaranteed to either kill the enemy instantly or reach the damage cap of 9,999.

So what's he doing on this list? Well, his attacks are gravity-based, which means nearly every boss in the game is immune to them. Furthermore, by the time the player has leveled him up to Lv.100, they likely have plenty of other attacks that hit just as hard but don't come with such a long windup. Diablos is only really useful against enemies with high defense, like Tonberrys and Adamantoises. He's a great concept shot down by a single weakness.

7 Valefor

Outmatched By Other Aeons

Lots of Final Fantasy 10 fans have a soft spot for Valefor. Not because he's powerful (he's not), but because of his close relationship to Yuna, one of Final Fantasy's most selfless characters. His moments of tenderness towards her really helped give the big birdbrain a bit of personality. Valefor is the first Aeon that Yuna unlocks, and he can come in clutch in some of the game's earliest boss fights.

3:21

Related

Every Main Final Fantasy Game, Ranked By How Long They Take To Beat

Final Fantasy has been entertaining gamers for more than three decades as well as upping the time on how long it takes to beat them.

Sadly, his usefulness quickly drops off a cliff as Yuna unlocks more and more summons. Even as Valefor levels up, his stats remain mediocre compared to others, and the list of spells he has access to is underwhelming. He's easily the weakest summon in Final Fantasy 10 and ranks poorly compared to the majority of summons from other games. We love him anyway, though.

6 Fat Chocobo/Choco Mog - Final Fantasy 7

Cute But Weak

Final Fantasy 7 is regarded as one of the most influential turn-based JRPGs ever made, for a host of reasons. One of them is the game's amazing graphics, for the time. The first time many gamers used a summon, they couldn't believe their eyes; they were a far cry from the pixel-art summons and simple animations they'd seen before. Final Fantasy 7's summons were full-blown mini-movies in comparison.

This doesn't mean all the game's summons are good, though. The worst of them is easily Choco/Mog, which has a 15/16 chance to summon a moogle riding a giant Chocobo. This attack does some non-elemental damage and has a 40% chance of inflicting Stop. 1/16 times, it summons Fat Chocobo, which deals considerably more damage but doesn't inflict a status effect. This is the first summon players to find in the game, and for 14 MP, it does decent damage. However, it pales in comparison to every other summon in the game, and even the player's normal spells will quickly outpace Choco/Mog's damage.

5 Gilgamesh - Final Fantasy 8

Give Us Odin Back

Final Fantasy 8 has three pseudo-GFs who aren't summoned by the player but instead turn up by chance. Phoenix can randomly summon itself to revive the party and save the player from defeat, and Odin can randomly enter at the start of normal battles and wipe out the enemy with Zantetsuken. The third is Gilgamesh, and he stinks. If the player managed to unlock Odin earlier in the game, then during their final fight with Seifer, Odin would summon himself. It's an exciting moment until Seifer promptly puts Odin down, killing a fan-favorite GF. Gilgamesh then appears to steal Odin's sword.

Related

7 Final Fantasy Games With The Best Villain Rosters, Ranked

The Final Fantasy series features some of gaming's most iconic villains, with some entries giving fans an entire roster of great bad guys in one go.

From then on, there's always a 3.5% chance Gilgamesh will be summoned at the start of a battle, or a 5.1% chance he'll appear if nothing happens in a battle for a few seconds. Not great odds. If summoned, he has four moves: the insta-kill Zantetsuken, the heavy-hitting Excaliber and Masamune, or the incredibly weak Excalipoor (which does a whopping 1 HP damage). Each attack has a roughly 25% chance. Even worse, he has a nasty habit of trying to use Zantetsuken against bosses, which is guaranteed to fail. He's the first summon on this list to be so weak that he's on the verge of being truly useless.

4 Asura - Final Fantasy 4

A Last Ditch Summon

In Final Fantasy 4, Asura is the queen of the Eidolons (summons) and has a really cool design. Using her four arms to wield multiple swords, she looks like she should be an awesome attack summon. In reality, she's a support summon, capable of either healing or buffing the player. Support summons are always a little underwhelming, but when used wisely, they can really help a clever player out.

Except Asura is a really weak support summon. When summoned, she will use one of her three heads to either cast Curaga, Raise or Protect on the party. Curaga and Raise are powerful spells, but a 1 in 3 chance of a summon casting the spell that's really needed isn't great. The only reason anyone would ever use Asura is if they're positive that their party will be wiped out next turn, and they're desperate. Even so, they'd probably be better off casting one of the spells themselves, or an item.

3 Carbuncle - Final Fantasy 8

Poor Support

Carbuncle has appeared in quite a few Final Fantasy games, and it's pretty weak in all of them. Carbuncle traditionally uses Ruby Light, a spell that casts Reflect on the entire party. Reflect does exactly what it sounds like; it bounces any spell cast on the party members back on the caster (usually with increased strength). In some Final Fantasy games, the spell will pinball between party members who have the Reflect status before hitting the enemy for big damage.

The problem is that its usefulness is incredibly situational and comes with some pretty major downsides. First, party members hit with Reflect can't be healed using magic; doing so will heal the enemy instead. Second, enemies aren't as stupid as they look. If they can, they'll cast healing spells on Reflected party members to heal themselves, or elemental spells that they can absorb. Reflect also has a nasty habit of running out just after the player has cast a spell on themselves, leading to friendly fire. In Final Fantasy 8, this is all made worse by Carbuncle's wind-up time, during which the player completely loses the use of one of their characters.

2 Remora - Final Fantasy 5

Terrible, Even For 2MP

Final Fantasy has its fair share of summons that are underrated. Remora isn't one of them. It's easily one of the weakest summons in the entire series and is rarely worth summoning, even for its meager 2 MP cost. It's also pretty unimpressive to look at, represented by a group of fish that swim at the enemy. Wouldn't snakes have made more sense?

Related

Final Fantasy: Best Optional Dungeons In The Games, Ranked

Final Fantasy's storied history is brimming with memorable dungeons that weren't crucial to the story, but were some of the best parts of each game.

Remora can cast Constrict (a version of paralysis) on one enemy. It doesn't do any damage and doesn't work on bosses. It also has a pretty decent chance of missing, meaning the player has wasted a turn. This summon is so weak, there's nearly always a better option out there.

1 Goblin (And Other Monsters) Final Fantasy 4

Don't Catch Em' All

Despite being released in 1991, Final Fantasy 4 had a feature that sounds strikingly similar to Pokemon. Occasionally, enemies drop items that allow the game's summoner, Rydia, to summon them in battle. If the feature had been implemented well, it surely would have led to the game featuring higher when the franchise is ranked by Metacritic score. Sadly, it wasn't, and instead, the game has a reputation for having some of the franchise's weakest summons.

Most of the summons based on normal enemies are pitifully weak, but the worst culprit is Goblin. For 1 MP, it will use Goblin Punch, an attack almost certainly weaker than any other attack at Rydia's disposal (although to be fair, it did get a buff in the 3D remake). Globins are famous for being cannon fodder in countless JRPGs, so the idea of summoning one just comes across as a bad joke. While most other summons on this list at least have some kind of utility, Goblin is a complete waste of time.

More

7 Final Fantasy Games With The Best Villain Rosters, Ranked

The Final Fantasy series features some of gaming's most iconic villains, with some entries giving fans an entire roster of great bad guys in one go.