Whew! We’re halfway there. Before we continue, let’s take a look at a few Honorable and Dishonorable Mentions. The villains who ALMOST made it on the list but didn’t for whatever reason, and the villains who would have no business being on that list. Let’s get to it, shall we?
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Honorable Mention - Zemus
(Final Fantasy IV)
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Zemus is powerful and intimidating, and he had the whole planet assimilation plot down before IX’s Garland did. His final fight is also one of the better ones in the game. However, I left him off the list because of his lack of personality and, more importantly, his overreliance on mind control. We have two characters- Golbez and Kain- who are set up to be really cool villains, but it turns out they were just being mind controlled. Zemus’s overreliance on mind control is the real reason he’s not off the list, since other than that I think he’s better than Garland, especially for the time.
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Honorable Mention - Jenova
(Final Fantasy VII)
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Jenova’s not really as much a villain and more of a plot device. Her design is insanely creepy, and the bosses against her are also very disturbing. Her importance to the plot of VII cannot be understated- it was her arrival that wiped out the Ancients, and her cells are what give Cloud and Sephiroth their power. But while she is technically alive, she has no real agency in anything as she is being controlled by her kinda-sorta son the entire time.
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Honorable Mention - Yu Yevon
(Final Fantasy X)
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Similar to Jenova, Yu Yevon would’ve been on the list somewhere if he had any actual character outside his backstory. In concept, he’s just fine- he created the being known as Sin as an unkillable armor to carry out his goals, but he was ultimately reduced to nothing more than a parasite who requires Sin to live. I can even forgive his zero-effort boss fight, as that reinforces he has no power of his own. But again, he has no defined character or even dialogue, and it’s all too easy to skip over his backstory because of how out of the way it is.
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Honorable Mention - Venat
(Final Fantasy XII)
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Venat is another character who works well in concept, and at least has character. As a rogue member of the godlike Occuria, it’s actually kind of refreshing that her relationship with the human villains isn’t manipulation, but an actual, legitimate friendship. There’s so much going for Venat, but she does very little aside from provide support for the other main villains. She never really interacts with any of the protagonists. Again, a great idea for a villain, even to the point that she is potentially main villain material, but she is sadly underused.
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Honorable Mention - Livia sas Junius
(Final Fantasy XIV)
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Livia isn’t really much more than a lackey in the grand scheme of things. Her motivations are simple, her boss fight is underwhelming, even her design is nothing to write home about. But Livia was the first time something Final Fantasy XIV, an MMO, managed to affect me emotionally. Her brutal massacre of the Waking Sands set the tone for everything that happened in later parts of the plot, and it made me actually care about the world. And for an MMO to tell a meaningful story is impressive.
And now, let’s go over the villains who deserved to be talked about for the fact that they are not very good at all. These aren’t all the bad villains in the series, but these are the ones I felt like talking about.
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Dishonorable Mention - Xande
(Final Fantasy III)
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Xande was the first villain to have an interesting motivation and backstory in the series, but that’s literally all he has going for him. He has zero presence in the story, his design is lame, there is nothing special about his personality that sets him apart from the other villains of the week throughout Final Fantasy III. And of course even though his goal was to freeze time to save himself from his own mortality, when he is killed by the party, he claims his goal was somehow already fulfilled before being usurped by the Cloud of Darkness.
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Dishonorable Mention - Genesis Rhapsodos
(Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core)
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Introduced for the prequel game Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, Genesis is… ugh. He’s just terrible. His design is dumb. His penchant for quoting bad poetry got real grating, real fast. He was insultingly shoved into one of the most iconic moments from the original game for no other reason than that Crisis Core needed a villain other than Sephiroth. Him being basically a self-insert fanfic character written by a Japanese pop star doesn’t help. Genesis may very well be the worst villain in the entire series.
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Dishonorable Mention - NORG
(Final Fantasy VIII)
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There are lots of things about Final Fantasy VIII I like. NORG is not one of them. Without any foreshadowing whatsoever, this weird obese mashed potato man is suddenly living in the basement as the financial backer of Balamb Garden. His attempt at wresting control of the academy from Headmaster Cid comes right the heck out of nowhere with no buildup and is never mentioned again after his defeat. His only role in the story is to reveal Cid’s relationship to the supposed villain, Edea, and that’s literally all there is.
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Dishonorable Mention - Barthandelus
(Final Fantasy XIII)
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I’ll admit that as far as villain goals go, Barthandelus wanting to kill a large enough number of humans to throw open the gates to the afterlife and bring back his creator is actually pretty unique. However, the game tries to tell us he’s a master manipulator when all he does is taunt the heroes and tell them what to do, and the only reason he gets anything done is the heroes go exactly where they know he wants them. His mere existence creates a plothole in the way the godlike Fal’cie communicate with humans, his true form’s design looks dumb- like Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda custom-made a pipe organ with his face on it- and most of his dialogue is pseudophilosophy that is less profound and more pretentious. Don’t believe me that he’s pretentious? His human form dresses like the pope, and his freaking name is BARTHANDELUS.
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Dishonorable Mention - The Nifleheim Empire
(Final Fantasy XV)
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Okay, look, I know that with an evil empire, there’s only so much room you have to work with it and make it interesting, but the Nifleheim Empire from Final Fantasy XV doesn’t even try. The emperor only appears alive for one scene, Versitael, the evil scientist pushed heavily in marketing gets EXACTLY ONE LINE (and DLC doesn’t count), Ravus barely qualifies as a villain, Aranea DEFINITELY doesn’t count as a villain, and the one entertaining member of the Imperial forces- namely, Loqi- appears for one boss fight and then dies. I think he does, anyway. I asked my friend who likes XV more than I do and he doesn’t even remember. Of course, there is one exception, one Nifleheim-affiliated character who is legitimately good, and if you’ve played XV you know who it is. If you don’t know who I’m talking about… well, stay tuned.
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