They call him Bahamut. King of the Dragons. Sometimes, he plays a vital role in a Final Fantasy game's proceedings. Sometimes, he's barely a blip on the narrative radar. Always, he has presence. Even as Ifrit's prominence seems to rise with each modern entry, Bahamut casts a fierce, arguably unrivaled, shadow.
Is there, in truth, an objective best Bahamut? Of course not. Everybody has their favorites, either for a laundry list of reasons or just because they look cool. All valid. Will that stop us from searching for our own answer to a question 35 years and counting? Of course not.
What about Final Fantasy 13-2? Where's World of Final Fantasy? Won't anyone please think of poor Final Fantasy: All the Bravest? We readily admit this list is far from exhaustive, as a full accounting of every Bahamut in the Final Fantasy franchise would clock in at nearly 60. It's far more realistic - and frankly, far less mind-numbing to get through as a reader, we bet! - to stick to the core mainline entries here!
16 Final Fantasy 13
If you've followed some of our other Final Fantasy summon rankings, you may note we've not been especially kind toward Final Fantasy 13's Eidolon representatives. With all due respect to the game's fans, we feel like the game tried something bold in radically transforming their signature looks, and mostly missed the mark. FF13 Bahamut looks a bit like someone merged a Mass Effect 3 monster with a collection of antique shields, gave it claws, and called it a dragon.
This purple fellow certainly has more lore to him than some, but it's far from the most compelling in the batch. We'd be remiss in skipping over those cool parts when the entire party hitches a ride on him, though. That was pretty cool.
15 Final Fantasy 3
The best thing about Final Fantasy 3's Bahamut isn't even about him, but the temporary guest character Desch, whose intro involves the sickest burn in the game when he laughs at the party for getting caught by the fierce dragon alongside him. It's such a goofy thing, this guy who's also about to be eaten, ridiculing the other four people who are also about to be eaten.
There's no such thing as a bad Bahamut, but between his somewhat primitive design, relatively little impact on the story, and downright oddly long neck after he becomes a summonable monster, we're not exactly in awe.
14 Final Fantasy
We don't really subscribe to the ranking theory of 'the original gets a ton of sway because it's the original' or else we might have placed the first Final Fantasy's Bahamut higher on the internet totem pole. To be sure, he plays a vital role in the game, being the means through which to upgrade the party's job classes the one and only time that's possible.
Only ever seeing the guy in sprite form rather diminishes the power of his design. Plus, he'll only upgrade your classes when you give him a Rat Tail. A Rat Tail. That's a proper noun, so we're capitalizing it, but it shouldn't be, you know? It's the tail of a rat. This isn't some fetish, is it?
13 Final Fantasy 7 Remake
We're keeping Remake as a 'mainline entry' in our rankings, and if you disagree, we understand, but it certainly feels big enough.
The original Final Fantasy 7 famously has three obtainable Bahamuts, albeit with a complete lack of story presence. The expanded universe of FF7 piles on plenty more. These are all good things... with mixed results. Of all Remake's summoned monster reimaginings, Bahamut is oddly the biggest miss. He's wicked-strong and dominates his battlefield, and it'll take careful planning to bring him down.
It's just. Look. At. Those. Wings. They are so veiny. The veins are practically bursting out. It's hideous. Thank goodness it's only a virtual reality representation of the big guy. Chadley, what were you thinking?
12 Final Fantasy 6
Final Fantasy 6 is a fabulous game with an underwhelming Bahamut. This is his first appearance in the series to lack any form of story beat; instead, his Magicite is a reward for defeating Deathgaze, an optional boss creature who roams the skies in the World of Ruin. It's a neat fight with a good reward, but that reward feels almost like an afterthought, all things considered.
FF6 Bahamut has striking red eyes and icy-blue wings, a strong design that remains impressive to this day. On plenty of other summon-ranking lists, he'd go farther for it. Alas, here we are.
11 Final Fantasy 12
Final Fantasy 12's Sky Fortress Bahamut, the last destination in the storyline, is a spectacular warship with an almost corkscrew-like design capable of unleashing unthinkable carnage upon the enemies of the villainous Vayne Solidor. And when Vayne is battled, he even takes on various attributes of the fabled dragon. It's rad.
But also, uh, it's a dungeon, not a dragon. FF12's spin on traditional summons involves naming the Archadian Empire's fleet of flying vessels after them, favoring instead the distinctly Ivalician Espers like Belias and Famfrit. It's hard to rank a big piece of metal that fires torpedoes on a list about a dragon, but we think this is about as far as it can go, nifty though it may be.
10 Final Fantasy 11
Final Fantasy 11's Bahamut totes some of the richest lore in the series, as befits a Bahamut who factors heavily in the events of Vana'diel. He's one of the high marks of the excellent Chains of Promathia expansion. These are all good things.
We can't get past his head. We're deeply sorry. We just cannot. Get past. His head. It's so small. It's so much smaller than it should be. It's... why is it so small? And it doesn't work on any level, because this is one of the most big-headed Bahamuts around from a narrative perspective. Please just fix your head!
9 Final Fantasy 5
By the time Final Fantasy 5 rolled around, Bahamut's dominance as an exceptional summoned monster was well established. Introducing this iteration as a mighty menace unleashed upon the Merged World as a consequence of the heroes' actions, he then awaits their arrival atop a mountain - kind of like in FF3, except, you know, cooler.
The return trip to North Mountain feels appropriately momentous. Bartz and the others are en route to prove their worth to the King of Dragons, and it's one of the tougher fights in the game.
8 Final Fantasy 15
FF15's Ifrit is savvy, its Shiva suitably melancholy, its Titan and Ramuh bombastic. Its Bahamut is... weird. His wings are swords, his form is humanoid, he's garbed in armor. It's a rather love-or-hate design, and truth be told, we've not met many who love it. We don't get to fight it, even when it feels like perhaps we should - alas, the alternate-future planned DLC was canned and given book form instead - and really, he's just a very mean guy.
But he's also got some hefty-good lore to him. FF15 Bahamut's the God of War, and he's the one who gifted the Ring of the Lucii to the Lucis kings and gave the Oracles their powers. Without a shred of remorse, he breaks the news to Noctis Lucis Caelum that the poor boy's got to give his life to save the world. This is a classic example of personality trumping design, and it's a questionably moral personality at best, but that's what makes him memorable.
7 Final Fantasy 4
Capping off the series' 2D era is Final Fantasy 4 Bahamut, a dude so durable that he doesn't even deign to fight Rydia and her friends until she's defeated both Leviathan and Asura, the reigning monarchs of Eidolon-kind. What's a bigger deal than a king and queen? A god, and that's precisely how FF4's lore regards Big B.
Bahamut is a god who dwells in the Lair of the Father on the Red Moon. Isn't that a spiffy sentence? As well, he's known as the Hallowed Father and the First Sire. Look, it's a good battle, and he's got a pretty decent design, but it's all that style and flair bestowed upon FF4's Bahamut that seals the deal.
6 Final Fantasy 14
Anyone who's watched the legendary FMV that capped off Final Fantasy 14's ill-fated 1.0 version has every right to be up in arms that we don't think even more highly of Bahamut. He's gargantuan, he's threatening to the max, and he's quite literally the instigator of the world's newfound Seventh Umbral Era.
On the flip side, his significance is eventually dwarfed by Midgardsormr's, Hrasevelgr's, Nidhogg's, Azdaja's, even Ratatoskr's. Those are a bunch of other dragons, by the way, for those who have not adventured across Eorzea. There are so many fantastic dragons in Final Fantasy 14 that, even with the decade-old Coil of Bahamut raid series, he's beginning to feel like a mythic has-been.
5 Final Fantasy 7
This is getting hard now. Final Fantasy 7, as we mentioned in the Remake entry, has the boon of featuring a whopping trio of Bahamuts. There's the regular Bahamut, found at the Temple of the Ancients around the game's midway point. There's Neo Bahamut, located at the Whirlwind Maze a good bit further on, and finally there's Bahamut ZERO - yes, the word is fully capitalized - only obtainable if players successfully retrieve all four Huge Materias toward tale's end.
All three look fantastic, and Bahamut ZERO is summoned from space for crying out loud. You can't get much more hardcore than 'I just whistled for a galactic dragon to launch a veritably nuclear payload down upon you, just so you know.' The one thing holding these three back is their total lack of plot points, as is typical among FF7's summon stock.
4 Final Fantasy 8
Three against one hardly seems sporting, but Final Fantasy 8 Bahamut ekes out a narrow victory over its direct predecessors. What's the winning combo? First, this thing's a work of art. Those crimson wings. That steel-blue body. The spikes upon his wings. His summon animation's sublime; the way in which he emerges from the heavens like a submarine racing through the clouds, the volley of magical bursts followed by the flames.
To say nothing of the sheer power FF8's exudes. The questions he asks the party if you find him at the Deep Sea Research Center are the proper inquiries of a great ruler judging mere interlopers. Most of Final Fantasy's Bahamuts have no shortage of style, but this is one of his finest appearances therein.
3 Final Fantasy 10
The remaining Bahamuts on our list all play critical roles in their games' storylines. Final Fantasy 10's rendition closely follows perspective lead Tidus throughout much of his stranger-in-a-strange-land journey across Spira. There is no wielder of verbal revelation half as accomplished as this one; in FF10's back half, he drops several bombshells each worthy of recontextualizing everything first-time players think they know.
A feat in its own right, yes, but not the real reason we adore him so. Take a look at him. If ever there were a summon in this franchise that toed the line brilliantly between overdesigned and utterly glamorous, it's this guy. And he stands quite firmly at the very edge of glamorous. The vivid colors do not clash, even when they maybe should. There's a meticulousness, a delicate masterwork in choosing just the right amount of each. Plus, FF10 Bahamut straight-up crosses his arms in arrogance mid-fight.
He's got style, he's got flair, he's right there - that's why he's King of Style Bahamut.
2 Final Fantasy 9
Final Fantasy 9 rests comfortably in the middle of the era in which Final Fantasy was celebrated in part for its special CG cutscenes, far more intricate in graphical detail than the normal fare. This turned out to be a very good thing for FF9 Bahamut, whose dual cutscene appearances are among the best moments this tale has on tap.
The greedy Queen Brahne is first to summon Bahamut, but evil Kuja exercises a might so menacing as to successfully enslave the dragon and turn him against Brahne's fleet. Later, Bahamut is dispatched to the Kingdom of Alexandria, laying waste to the city before his narrow defeat by Garnet's summoning of Alexander. In both instances, we see Bahamut at full charge, ready and able to rain catastrophe down upon the world. It's all the sweeter, then, when we can call forth his dangerous arsenal on our own behalf.
1 Final Fantasy 16
Um. Wow. In a chapter of Final Fantasy chock-full of best-in-class and darn-close-to-it summon representations, Bahamut still manages to blow away the competition like a Mega Flare to a flea. In fairness, he's got a home field advantage here in Valisthea; he's not just a dragon, but a man, and not just a man, but one of the standout characters in a game with a similarly standout cast.
The honorable Dion Lesage, conflicted in a time of great peril, has quite possibly the most full-fledged character arc in FF16 save for protagonist Clive Rosfield's. He is the Dominant to a Bahamut plated in deep blues with the sovereign strength to shoot countless beams of raw energy upon his foes. This is Bahamut at his most savage, the perfect Hyde to Dion's Jekyll.
It's also our pick for the best fight in Final Fantasy 16, the zenith that lords over several more jaw-droppingly glorious bouts. If there is one thing Final Fantasy 16 does almost inarguably better than any of its peers, it's pure spectacle, and in a realm of pure spectacule, the King of Dragons thoroughly thrives.