Top 30 Final Fantasy Villains - #11

#11 - Emperor Mateus

(Final Fantasy II)

Tell me if the premise of Final Fantasy II sounds familiar: There is a rebellion fighting against an evil empire who has a superweapon, and the hero has a family member as an enemy agent dressed in black armor. Yeah, that does sound familiar, doesn't it? Luckily, as far as evil emperors go, Mateus is one of the better examples in fiction.

There's not much in the way of backstory for this guy. Heck, he didn't even have a name in his first appearance, simply being called the Emperor. He made a deal with demonic forces, selling his soul for unlimited power and plow through the rest of the world with seemingly no resistance, destroying countless cities in his wake and killing a lot of people. Eventually he is killed by the heroes. But when the devil comes to collect, this guy MURDERS THE DEVIL and usurps his position, making the capital of hell his stronghold. That is hardcore.

Final Fantasy II may be a mixed bag, but its greatest strength was always its portrayal of war and the death it brings. Everything in the game has a bleak, hopeless atmosphere, and you feel the Emperor's hand in everything horrible that happens, despite the fact that you never meet him in person until the halfway point of the game. Not even his David Bowie-esque design really distracts from how big of a threat this guy is.

What else is there...? Oh yeah, this guy KILLED THE DEVIL AND TOOK HIS PLACE. I can't stress that fact enough. Bad guys attaining a powerful final form is nothing new, but this guy became the actual devil. That's hard to top. But it gets even better- The remakes of Final Fantasy II include a bonus campaign where you play as the characters who got killed off as they make their way through a strangely dangerous heaven, and you find out that when the Emperor was killed, his good half split from his evil half and took over heaven. Let me reiterate: HE'S SO EVIL, HIS GOOD HALF IS EVIL.

He's not the most complex of characters, but as a force of powerful evil, he fulfills that job better than almost any other version of the trope. He singlehandedly lifted Final Fantasy II from a nigh-unplayable mess to a nigh-unplayable mess with huge emotional stakes.