History of Final Fantasy Summons

Summons have been part of the Final Fantasy franchise for over 30 years. With Eikons, Final Fantasy XVI's version of Summonable Monsters, playing a central role in the recently released game, we're taking a look at how Summons have evolved since their first appearance in 1990's Final Fantasy III. We also take a deeper look at all the major Eikons in Final Fantasy XVI, including the mythology they come from and their defining characteristics and behaviors.
Eidolons, Espers, Guardian Forces, Aeons, Primals…call them what you will, summonable creatures have been a cornerstone of the Final Fantasy franchise for over 30 years. Making their first appearance in Final Fantasy III in 1990, the initial roster included 8 summons, including series’ regulars Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Titan, Odin and Bahamut, all of whom are present as Eikons in Final Fantasy XVI. These creatures were summonable by the Evoker, Sage and Summoner jobs, and had one of three effects when called upon, depending on which job had summoned them. While lower level summons were available in shops, Final Fantasy III also introduced the long running tradition of defeating more powerful summons in battle in order to gain the ability to summon them.
By Final Fantasy VIII, summons found themselves playing a central role in the game's mechanics and story once again. Called “Guardian Forces”, they junctioned to a human host’s consciousness. A Junctioned party member could draw magic from enemies and the environment then cast it in battle or junction it to status attributes to increase speed, strength or add elemental defense or attack properties. Final Fantasy IX limited summoning to two characters, Garnet/Dagger and Eiko, and introduced the term “Eidolon” which, as previously mentioned, would be used in the DS release of Final Fantasy IV, as well as Final Fantasy XII. Eidolon’s were summoned via gemstones and are, according to Final Fantasy IX lore, manifestations of the planet's collected memories gathered by its crystal.
Final Fantasy X again restricted summoning to a single character, the Summoner Yuna, but also completely changed the way summons worked. For the first time in the series, rather than being an in-battle cutscene resulting in massive amounts of elemental damage, Summons acted as temporary party members, controllable by the player for a limited amount of time once summoned. In Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy’s first foray into the massively multiplayer online space, Avatars as they were called worked similarly, and remained on the battlefield under the control of a summoner player character until all their MP was depleted, to different ends depending on what blood pact the summoner used to call them.
A weird outlier in the series is Final Fantasy XII, wherein their version of Espers, a term originating in FFVI, all correspond to a sign of the zodiac. NONE of the standard summons appear per se -more on that later- in this installment of the franchise, though many of them correspond with the Lucavi of Final Fantasy Tactics which, like Final Fantasy XII, is set in Ivalice. Eidolons make their return in Final Fantasy XIII only this time they’re Transformers. No really, they’re all mechanical and transform into vehicles. They must be defeated in battle to gain access to their power via a crystal shard called an Eidolith.
Final Fantasy XIV featured two names for summoned creatures: Primals and Eikons. Well, will you look at that Yoshi-Producer of Final Fantasy XIV and also XVI. Primals are godlike beings, with each holding dominion over a tribe within Eorzea and manifest with enough prayer and aether. They're a destructive force deeply tied to the lore and story, and make for some major boss fights, too. Those who play Summoner must summon “fragments” of a Primal's power, known as Egis, to do battle with - incomplete enough for them to maintain control of them. This is also the first game wherein Final Fantasy began to explore the idea of humanoid Avatars physically assuming the form of summons, with the Primal Phoenix having been created from the Elezen sage Louisoix Leveilleur during the confrontation with the Primal Bahamut, which kicked off A Realm Reborn. In Final Fantasy XV summons were divided into two categories, Astrals, colossal beings that protect Eos and are worshiped as gods - and Messengers, magical beings sent to make humankind aware of the Astrals’ will. Astrals are unlocked as part of the story, with Noctis gaining their favor and ability to summon them upon completing their trials.
Exploring the individual histories and origins of every Summon to ever appear in the Final Fantasy series would make for a really, really, really long video so in honor of the recently released Final Fantasy XVI, we’ll keep our focus on those legendary creatures out here making big trouble in Little Valisthea.

[@ort94041]

One mistake in this video. Final fantasy 7 remake doesn’t throw away the lore of summons. It actually shows it happening. In the shinra facility there’s a cutscene showing the time of the ancients in which you literally see ancients creating the summons

[@telltellyn]

Another mistake FF10 does not have Titan.

[@dwasp27moto41]

yes that gorgeous cutscene shinra projector is movie quality

[@sdcard6447]

Another mistake, the Roman numeral for 9 is not VIX.

[@EAchank]

Another mistake This video

[@abpunyaaccount]

❤vyvvvgv

[@unstoppableforcevsimmovabl1701]

Titan wasn’t in FF10 either btw

[@RingerMusic]

ok so i am not the only one tripping when that was said!

[@pockylovingranger]

Eidolons was used in FF13, not 12. That game used Espers again

[@fouracegaming4724]

All of you forget or are unaware the Garuda is unlocked as a summon in Ff15 after the ff14 crossover event mission and its a new design to Garuda that you summon

[@Dragonfury3000]

Ff15 also does have an interesting backstory for the summons which explains the interactions between 2 of them near the end of the game.

[@Aradinsc]

Fantastic job as always Emma

[@riverpb5250]

nice video, but i wish you expanded on FF9's eidolons. it was one of the games like FF6 and FF16 where the story is centred around the summons, or eidolons in this case. 2/3's of the game's story is about the villains trying to extract the eidolons from garnet to basically use as "nuclear weapons". the summons also play a role in shaping the world map. odin destroyed the lifa tree, atomos destroyed linblum, bahamut destroyed alexandria and finally, the reason why there are only 2 summoners in final fantasy 9 is important to the lore and the story. i remember the bahamut vs alexander scene as one of the greatest visual spectacle at the time, and they did that decades before FF16 (which can really feel like a spiritual successor to FF9 and FF12 at times)

[@XfitNerd]

This was really impressive when @finalfantasyunion did it...

[@jasonmullin3522]

The thumbnail even look the the format they use.

[@Fububoo]

Odin uses his lance in 7 if you summon him against bosses.

[@Synkhan]

Outside of the weirdly condescending tone she had towards some aspects of the series(not sure if that was meant to be funny?), and some minor errors, this was a well done video. Pacing was on point, and the real world mythology references were great.

[@vice.nor.virtue]

Wow , I've been wondering about what the deal was with summons forever! Thankyou so much for making this video!!

[@unstoppableforcevsimmovabl1701]

Great video

[@thepews1511]

This was a great video! Really well researched!

[@terry85mar]

Not really. They didn't do good research because this video is riddled with wrong information and mistakes.

[@jesus123lozano]

@@terry85marthis ! Allot of fact check oof

[@Jammineyeonline]

Is there any way i can import ifrit 2023 into the older ff games? Because this is the best i ever seen him.

[@chieftain9]

9 did not have Titan, it had Fenrir. Although arguable that Fenrir’s power was summoning a Titan punch.

[@Fububoo]

Pretty sure Ramuh’s design is to show a relation of Zeus.

[@carlosjuliop]

Fyffe for life. Great vid.

[@lampardkazemi8950]

Nice video ❤ i love shiva

[@jaysee8810]

🤔🤔Final Fantasy Union did many pieces on this topic

[@user-dx2ji7xm8d]

Awesome job, emma. Keeping it atrong

[@CliveRosfield16]

Is this Emma from schmoesknow movie trivia lol that’s awesome

[@BlackHand531]

I wish that you brought up the stuff from the spinoff games

[@ahmadkhalil4793]

Did you left alexander behind

[@w0310809]

They literally pronounce the name of the continent in the game several times and you still got it wrong

[@Thepeaces33ker]

I could be wrong because it's been years but I could've sworn Odin was in FFX as a lightning unicorn zebra?

[@BronzeMartin]

That was Ixion.

[@Thepeaces33ker]

@@BronzeMartin ahh thank you for the enlightenment

[@cvmaniac7286]

@@Thepeaces33ker Odin's replacement in FFX/X-2 was Yojimbo.

[@Kimm134Saya]

I just wish there's a game that explores how these gods and creatures from various mythologies and folklores appear in FF titles. Kind of like SMT.

[@Kimm134Saya]

I also want to know why some of the Eidolon designs are far from the source.

[@kalandarkclaw8892]

​@@Kimm134Sayasuch as?

[@jgodden8022]

​@@kalandarkclaw8892Pretty much most of them mate. Compare any FF design of Shiva to any actual Hindu depictions, for instance.

[@singleplayerdad]

Why do you sound like @superbutterbuns?🤔

[@evelinecarolinelienhuaming1184]

They're so Mysterious!!! The Background Story of Summon Monsters are still Unexplainable!!! 💡🤔💡

[@YetiCoolBrother]

Is... is this SuperButterBuns? If not it sounds almost exactly like her

[@dvdmenyu]

Get those eggies

[@Z3storm]

I don't like how condescending she is while talking. Also the airship from 12 looks like the hideout

[@HWY.Bandoe]

And why does she sound like she could care less and annoyed to be having to make this video 🙄😑

[@nattobaby]

your pronunciation is all over the place, reminds me of that ff7 dorkly bit

[@brandsom18]

Titan isn't summonable in FFX

[@ncvietgaming]

None of these summons appear in FFXII. It has very unique summons.

[@jesus123lozano]

Regular summons appear in FF12 - 2 Revanent Wings but for regular Zodiac age you have basic 12 Scions in Espers form.

[@freelanceriders]

SuperButterBuns? is that you narrating?

[@GForceIntel]

What I've realized is that over the years we have less and less control of the summons, which is what made me fall in love with final fantasy. Now we just watch them and press or hold 2 buttons.

[@ciandoherty1152]

Less control? Less control than pressing the summon button and watching a fifteen second cutscene play?

[@ort94041]

Bro, In previous games we pressed one button and watched them attack and that’s it. In XVI you literally play as them, you get their powers, you have kaiju fights with full control In 7 remake they join you in battle and you can give them detailed commands. In 14 there’s a full summoner class. In 13 you also become them and play as them. The heck? Some people really making some huge generalizations based on 15 alone

[@charleshot25]

@@ort94041 The amount of times you actually get to use the summons in FF7 remake is laughably low because of the conditions that need to be met before the summon meter starts building. This is especially true for Bahamut. You'll be lucky to get to use him handful of times throughout the entire game

[@Zanark360]

I'm pretty sure we had more control over summons from ffx and onwards the only ff game that had summons like the old ones was ffxv, the video even shows you when we got more control over summons

[@Synkhan]

@@Zanark360 Out of the 16 games, we can only "manually" control full on party like summons in 10, 12, 11, and now 16.(I am not counting 14 cos they are basically glorified spells and not actual characters with health and all that). So no, cutscene summons is the norm, controlled summons are the rare thing in this series.

[@gmoyajpgaming]

GameSpot thank you for not being #&$ like IGN 👍👍👍👍

[@motbus3]

Honest q. Is ff16 so bad as people say? I don't know if I should buy it.

[@Zanark360]

I honestly think its worth the buy but you can just play the demo for yourself and see if you like it or not.

[@VicePup]

It's not bad, people are just salty because it's new and different. If you don't like cutscenes and action combat, then skip it because it's VERY heavy on both

[@ownagejedi]

It's not bad it sold over 3m copies in like a week

[@crazycrafter77]

Are people saying it's bad I've seen mostly positive reviews. It's certainly not a perfect game, but very enjoyable in my opinion

[@drewtheunspoken3988]

​@@crazycrafter77there are dozens of videos on KZbin hating on it. You can usually find a lot of comments on those that agree or tear it up even more.

[@jeaneximenes5433]

Add new colors in among us ?

[@ariadzmin]

FFXII was Espers, not Eidolons. I think you're thinking FFXIII. Get a gamer to fact check your videos GameSpot. :3

[@only1thatmakessense]

Are you available?

[@jasonmullin3522]

If there paying, most people would be happy to do the work.

[@bac483]

So FF15 gets no love ☹

[@Dragonfury3000]

FF15 did a great job with their backstories. And considering how Ifrit and Shiva are together in harmony and in love (in XVI) this makes that scene in XV more emotional.

[@Xivinux]

​@@Dragonfury3000BRUH never thought of that. Amazing!

[@rinks361]

Is this Superbutterbuns ?!?!?!?!

[@OMR6468]

wish 16 was still an RPG

[@damiendegagne7365]

The forced comedy aside not bad.

[@ralphtaylor7448]

Im glad ff16 is M rated

[@PeteyLeeTV]

The narrator of this video comes off as rude, snobby, and condescending, to the incredible history and lore of Final Fantasy. The disrespect is unnecessary and we can do without your toxic attitude.

[@Thunfischmayo]

1) Why is FF Dissidia not mentioned? 2) I'm sorry but the narrators voice is so painful to listen to. Please let someone else do it in the future!

[@jesus123lozano]

Final Fantasy Dissidia is crossover side game, if they mention dissidia then it may as well mention Tactic/Crystal Chronicle/Brave

[@only1thatmakessense]

FFVII , Quadra magic, knights of the round, now mine that and throw a couple of omnislash in , only Emerald and Ruby can take that 🪆