Time To Finally Figure Out Which Final Fantasy Character Is The Strongest!

The Final Fantasy/MTG crossover set pre-releases this weekend! The full spoilers are up and we now know every card that is available in the new set. Do you know what that means? We now have a DEFINITIVE and OBJECTIVE way to figure out which Final Fantasy character is the strongest! We can finally put all forum debates to rest! The good folks at Wizards of the Coast have settled things once and for all! We can go home folks!

Let’s start this process in the most straightforward way possible: who has the highest power of any Final Fantasy character. The answer has a touch of nuance, unfortunately. If we are judging based on how much damage an attacking character will do, the strongest FF character is the Jumbo Cactuar from FFVIII. Attacking with 10,000 needles for a whopping 10,000 power, the Jumbo Cactuar has the highest power in the entire set. Just a slight issue though, Jumbo Cactuar has a measly 1 power when it isn’t attacking. That’s not very powerful at all. 1 is hardly a “strongest character ever” power level.

Adjusting for Jumbo Cactuar’s difficulty playing defense, the highest powered character in the set is a two-way tie between Bahamut from FFX and Clive Rosfield from FFXVI in his Ifrit form. Both Bahamut and Clifrit are 9/9 creatures (very big, very scary) that decimate the board and take over the game when they are summoned. However, because both Bahamut and Clifrit are summons, they do not stick around forever. Summons are represented in this set by Saga Enchantments that are also creatures. This means that summons come into play, do some fun effects over a set number of turns, and then die. They’re the desert wildflower bloom of the MTG world (look it up, it’s so pretty). Clive can only maintain Ifrit form for a scant 3 turns. Bahamut only sticks around for 4 turns. How can these two really be the strongest FF characters if they die of natural causes in a dang card game? They can’t be.

Okay, how about we look at the highest power among cards that aren’t summons and don’t have some caveat like Jumbo Cactuar? Surely that must be easier. Well at a whopping 8 power we have another tie: Ancient Adamantoise from FFXV, Shiryu (Zenos) from FFXIV, Omega from FFXIV, Diamond Weapon from FFVII, and Absolute Virtue from FFXI are all tied. Out of all of these I’m loathe to give a clear tiebreaker. The Ancient Adamantoise has the highest toughness of the bunch, but it also can’t heal its damage after a turn ends. That means the Adamantoise can literally die from a thousand cuts. Shiryu can win games of commander with its ability, but it’s otherwise just a big dragon. Omega is just a big idiot with a mediocre set of abilities so it’s definitely not the most powerful FF character. Diamond Weapon is immune to combat damage, which is pretty cool. Yet it somehow doesn’t trample over things or fly around things. Diamond Weapon can be held off by a single blocker turn after turn, like a weeny. Then there’s Absolute Virtue, the terror of FFXI raiders everywhere. He is a boss so notorious that he had to be adjusted for humanitarian reasons because too many FFXI players were physically exhausting themselves trying to beat him. Well, he’s an 8/8 that makes the player that summoned him immune to everything, but he himself is completely vulnerable once he’s in play. Lame. Very lame. This raw power thing isn’t working. Maybe I need to turn to hypothetical power?

Okay so the raw numbers aren’t doing the trick. How about what character has the most theoretical power? The first contender is Neo Exdeath, a trampling monstrosity with power equal to the number of permanent cards in its owner’s graveyard. If you assume that a player has a normal 60 card deck and the game has gone very long, Neo Exdeath could be a 30+ power creature! That’s very strong! If you want to play a ridiculously big deck, Neo Exdeath can get even stronger, though the odds of drawing him get a lot weaker. How about Vivi Ornitier? Vivi gets a +1/+1 counter every time you cast a noncreature spell, meaning that looping artifacts or spells could give you a very large Vivi indeed! Heck, if you create an infinite loop of bouncing and replaying artifacts, which is entirely possible, Vivi could become infinitely powerful! Unfortunately, Vivi doesn’t have trample so he could be blocked forever despite his very powerful black mage pinging abilities. However, Vivi would deal infinite damage as he’s getting infinitely large. Seems like a nice workaround! Zodiark from FFXIV can also get infinitely big if you can assemble an infinite sacrifice loop, this is also entirely doable. Even better, Zodiark is indestructible! There’s no killing him! He can be blocked forever, but at least he won’t die without some very specific circumstances. I assume this means he never, ever dies in FFXIV. I think we have three solid contenders for “strongest FF character if you’re willing to grant them a little prep time”.

After all of this sorting through power I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a dark horse candidate (he even rides a horse) for strongest Final Fantasy Character: Primal Odin. You see, Primal Odin is a summon that kills a player if it deals combat damage to that player. Seems like winning the game in a single Zantetsuken is just about as powerful as things get. Odin has all of the usual summon caveats and also has fairly unimpressive stats on his own, but that Zantetsuken is probably the most powerful effect any card can have. I mean, winning the game all by yourself is pretty darn good!

Well I’m glad we were able to finally settle the debate about who the strongest Final Fantasy character is. As we all can clearly see it’s Jumbo Cactuar, unless it’s Bahamut or Clifrit. Then again it could be Shinryu. Maybe it’s Vivi? Nah, it’s gotta be Neo Exdeath. Wait, maybe Primal Odin? That Absolute Virtue though…