The knight job is a hallmark of theFinal Fantasyseries, one that began with the first entry with Bahumut blessing a warrior and upgrading them to the famous role. To this day, the idea remains ingrained in the series, withXVI’sClive Rosfield often proudly calling himself a knight of Rosaria. Knights can make a game feel more like aFinal Fantasytitle. Any job system without it feels lacking. Yet this means they often appear early on and thus get forgotten by the middle of the game.
It’s telling that from as early as the fourth entry, the series made efforts to put a different spin on the job when it appeared. It has had mixed fortunes over the years: Clive might well beone of the strongest protagonists that the serieshas ever seen, but then it is questionable whether he is considered a traditional knight.
As the series has become based in more technologically advanced worlds, the knight has become less prominent. It would be a push to describe anyone inXV,XIII, orVIIIin that way. Yet for such a series staple, it seems cruel to see them forgotten about and left to rust in the annals of gaming history.
Celes Chere is the closest to the traditional knight in a game without a job system. She’ll both get a lot of use while quickly being generic. Celes is one of two characters that can use magic at first, a claim to fame that very quickly disappears. Her other unique command is runic, which absorbs magic and is theoretically useful. Yet this requires an awareness of attack patterns to the extent that casual players will use it in two battles but rarely elsewhere.
Her default heavy equipment options, andrelevance to the story, will see her being used a lot in the game but this isn’t because she’s particularly unique. She also benefits from moments of the party being split up, where her equipment options make her reliable compared to the mage types. Yet for all of what she brings to this title, being the strongest knight or character isn’t one of them.
This job inFinal Fantasy Vdoes have some redeeming traits: good defense, and access to powerful knight swords, but it’ll be overlooked before players realize it. Its initial strength is counterbalanced by other jobs like the monk, and other jobs offer worthy alternatives in exchange for less defense.
The two-handed ability is a shortcut, especially when using the quickly-obtained mystic knight class, but ultimately will be replaced by the ninja’s dual-wield. It is a job that can be entirely avoided in a playthrough with little detriment to the player.
Auron is a great character who plays a key role in humanizing protagonist Tidus. An older, wiser head with critical ties to the past and is the character that most resembles a traditional knight inX. This title does a great job of making every character feel useful. The problem is that italso has Kimahri, a character who is deliberately vague from a gameplay perspective and who can take on any other role.
Kimahri can quickly take on Auron’s somewhat limited traits and add more to them by borrowing from other characters. Auron is a victim of X’s wonderfully customizable sphere grid system, but a knight who can be easily replaced isn’t very good at their job.
The knight job in the originalFinal Fantasy Tacticsisn’t a bad one by any means, but its role faces an impossible hill to climb. Later on in the game, players acquire other characters with access to variations of the magic sword ability, which cannot be learned by the default job. These abilities can easily dominate the late game, but unfortunately, these characters will fill that high-damage, one-man-army role.
It’s not entirely useless, players will need to use it as apathway to stronger jobslike the monk or the samurai, but its long-term qualities are limited. If players are thinking tactically, then the knight will not be a major job outside the first chapter.
Steiner is a lovable oaf and often the primary set-up for the whimsical sense of humor in the ninth entry. The game is a love letter to the series, returning to a moretraditional, classical setting. Steiner plays like a classic knight with one major difference; he can team up with black mage Vivi for the sword magic ability. In practice, it’s incredible, and taking on enemies and blasting them with a Firaga sword is always fun. Yet Vivi needs to be in the party for the ability to be present, and it falls under Steiner’s commands, not Vivi’s.
It means that a major component of Steiner’s weaponry revolves around keeping one of the defensively weakest characters alive. Also, to get the most out of the title, making use of other characters representing less traditional jobs is a must. Steiner’s inflexibility and his strengths being covered well by three of the four other characters means he will almost certainly be the first to go.
Final Fantasy: All The Bravestis in the debate for the worst game in the entire franchise and even it doesn’t give the knight job any credit. A game beset by issues of charging real-world money to heal characters, with a battle system that requires players to effectively just tap the screen and with an enormous amount of DLC.
Yet even here, the knight is an early character and outclassed by the vast majority of other classes in the game. Much like the game itself, the knight is best forgotten here.
Final Fantasy IIIhas always been a curious entry in the franchise. It is stuck in a no-man’s land of not being the first game in the series, not having the story of the other titles, and having a job system that isn’t on par with the fifth entry.
The knight is obtained early on, among the jobs obtained from the second crystal, but hopelessly outclassed by numerous later jobs so players might forget about it. Unlike other titles likeVandTactics, jobs cannot carry over abilities, so once a better job comes along there’s no need to look back. Like the game itself, it’s not the warrior job from the first crystal, and not as useful as the latter dark knight, black belt, or ninja.
Reks, thetragic decoy protagonistofFinal Fantasy XIIwhoyou control for the prologue, is not a great knight in any sense. His equipment is basic, his abilities are limited, and his level is low. He is, unfortunately, a character best known for being dead following his death at the end of the prologue.
He fulfils the wider definition of a knight in theFinal Fantasyseries: access to heavier equipment, and small amounts of weak white magic, albeit unusually with some black magic as well. He doesn’t have a quickening, the game’s equivalent of a limit break, nor any development potential. He is though, the first character the player controls in the game, but his strength is not something he’ll be remembered for.
While Leon is seen as a dark knight in the first character-drivenFinal Fantasytitle, he is also more of an issue for the player than anything else. By the point that Leon stops being a villain and joins the party, but he arrives under-leveled, leaving players wanting just about anyone else in their party.
Final Fantasy II’sbattle system focused on being rewarded with individual stats being raised depending on players' actions, as opposed to distinct, overall levels. For a game first released in 1988, it was very farahead of its time, but this meant that it was tough to know where he should be stat-wise when he joined. The answer they settled on was far weaker than the rest of the characters, to the extent he feels like another guest character as opposed to a proper team member. He’s not awful, but he stands out uncomfortably.
The After Yearswas a strange playthrough with a plot that mirrored the first game to an uncomfortable extent. The release date of The After Years, some 17 years after the original, was emphasized by Ceodore Harvey, son of two of the main characters of the original game, being 15 years old. For all the smiles it’ll bring to long-term fans of the original, Ceodore is left without a practical role in battle.
Everything he does is comfortably bettered by someone else. He is essentially a weaker version of his father Cecil, the protagonist of the original game. This game already has a large character roster, which only makes it worse as he’d be a bad pick in a smaller game likeIX. Unless forced to, it’s very hard to justify picking Ceodore.
