All my efforts to see the reins of history back in the hands of Men!

Vayne was quite good. His overall goal of freeing man from the Occuria seems to come true, even in his death.

@@Dzzy123 Yeah. Even in defeat, his ultimate goals were realized. The Occuria lose control over history and Larsa succeeds him to the throne of Arcadia. It may not have played out like he intended, but it played out nonetheless

Vayne is very underrated.

Vayne was probably the best FF politician

Exdeath is so metal! Even his theme is metal! The Metal lord of Final Fantasy. Also I agree with you, needs to be 1 or 2 spots higher

exactly lol at first i thought he meant from ever final fantasy game.

THIS. The greatest FF villain that only like 25% of the FF fanbase knows about

Certainly the most sympathetic villain of the entire FF series, if not him.. then Elidibus.

"But more than that, the future you seek is not the past we loved. That is why we fought. And why I lost. But though you defeated me, my ideals are inviolate. Invincible."

Clicks to Emet because it's not just a ranking of every FF villain, it's a ranking of EVERY FF villain I haven't played the MMOs, if you don't like that, that's life Bruh moment.

im not even to shadow bringers its like 500 hours to get to it. the game also is bad until the dlc starts

Many wish for for a remake but sadly until FF7 run its course the remake love for FF6 will not happen in a long time.

This!

I think it's better to just keep the memories tbh.

I don’t know how they could make kefkas iconic laugh a realistic laugh. I do want a remake though cause 6 is my favorite

@@Ironcorgi2 it would definitely be tough

Same. Caius Ballad of the *FFXIII* franchise is definitely and totally one of THE Best Epic Badass Antagonistic Final Fantasy Villain I Absolutely Respect and Appreciate from that game. Liam O'Brien did a Fantastic Job as Caius Ballad from *Final Fantasy XIII-2 & Lightning Returns XIII-3* games. I also Respect and Appreciate Kam'lanaut from *FFXI,* Gabranth from *FFXII,* Zenos yae Galvus from *FFXIV* franchises, Jecht from *FFX* and Barnabas Tharmr from *FFXVI* game from last year, as all the Best Epic Badass Antagonistic FF Villains there is throughout the years, of the *Final Fantasy* Gaming franchise there is.

Facts. Caius is the reason why I ended up liking the whole trilogy in the end. And he’s just so cool!

Why does that make him a good villain? Anything about his motivations and personality?

@@blackdragoncyrus Without spoiling too much Caius was cursed of been immortal and seeing someone he cares about die over and over again. His motivation is just to save a friend. He's basically if you take a dash of Kuja style + the honor nobility of Golbez + the badassness of Sephiroth. Also.... **spoilers** One of the few villains/antagonist to "win" Which if I remember correctly are only Kefka, Ardyn and Caius

He was a well thought out character. Love him!

Agreed. I think Ardyn is super underrated and should be top 3

He is too much tell and not enough show until the DLC and even then, the DLC is like what? 2 hours?

arden was one of the worst protagonists if we're being honest

A shame his story couldn't be concluded in game form, the book develops him as he should have been in the game. What I find most admirable about him is that despite all that happened to him there is still a dim light within him. He could have fully abandoned himself to the star scourge and turned full evil god to destroy everything and anything blindly, but through his actions he still kind of tries to save the day by letting Noctis have a chance to end him and the star scourge. Some hope and benevolence still live somewhere deep inside him. He still is vengeful towards the gods and bitter towards his bloodline but that's not all there is left of him. Anyway FF15 was a train wreck and it's a damn shame, so much unrealized potential

Dosent ardyn take over the world for ten years to and ultimately succeeds out taking out the royal bloodline like he wanted to at the end of the game. He definitely should be higher

Kefka is incredibly overrated. What does he do? He giggles and kills people. Even his motives are bland. He's a one dimensional character. If this was a ranking of most maniacal villains he should win, as that's literally the only word you need to describe him. But it makes for a damn boring villian if that's all there is.

wdym he's not tragic/fallen? wasn't he literally driven insane by the magitek experimentation that gave him his powers?

@@badrapsample2212 Yes, but we don't know what kind of person he was prior to that. I mean, you could say there is some element of tragedy because it's a terrible thing to happen to someone no matter what kind of person they were, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he's a tragic character.

​@@lefi75I couldn't agree more. He loses every confrontation he has, he giggles and he....moved some statues. Then you don't even see him the next several hours. He's the definition of overrated

​@@lefi75 By that logic, Sephiroth is overrated since you don't even see the real him till the end of the game, and it wasn't until the FF7 compilation that really fleshed him out.

I do have him second to Kefka, but agreed, Emet is a top-tier villain.

Uhh, nope. Ardyn and Vayne get exactly what they want by the end of their games, whilst Kefka's legacy is certainly undone at the end of FFVI He wasn't planning on "losing" in the ways the other two were.

Wrong. Ardyn and Caius both succeed. While Kefka's victory didn't last long.

"The only one who completed his goal?" He did not such thing. He wanted to erase the whole of existence and make it "a monument to non-existence" per his words. Sephiroth, Mateus Palemicia and Ardyn came closer to completing, completed and completed his goal , respectively.

@@Vayne_Solidor I think Kefka didn't really have much of a plan other than chaos and destruction. He achieved it. He was essentially like a sadistic child with a box of matches over an anthill but in Kefka's case its the world instead of ants. I suspect at some point he would have gotten bored and fully destroyed the world and himself along with it but I don't think that this was his ultimate goal. He just kind of makes it up as he goes along. With that in mind, I think OP's assessment of why he was defeated is actually quite plausible.

​@@user-zq1vh5cc8xThat was only his declaration right at the end, in the face of his enemies, but his goal before that had been power and destruction. He also effectively turned the world into a blasted wasteland.

@@silverblade357 I take his words at face value, he did wanted to destroy the world, in the end he destroyed 4 cities only and not with his own power, he just pushed this world's auto-destruct button.

At this point, no villain list for FF is complete without including 14. It’s a huge shame most series fans just completely skip it.

@@SaberRexZealotcompletely agree. Lists missing 14 like what? It’s got a huge following for a reason. Go watch the cutscenes online at least if you want to make a list

I feel that 14 is a bit of a special case as pretty much every era inn that game had it's own main villain and sometimes multible villains so I think that game would be better off as a list of it's own.

emet-selch/hades is easily top 5!

@@inspirations365can you really fault people for not being particularly interested in spending literally hundreds of hours on an MMO not to mention how tough it can be actually doing outdated end game content which is where a lot of the story is locked behind. Honestly it would almost be better in purely written form at this point for a large amount of people.

Emet is the best but i also loved elidibus, and fandaniel, and yotsuyu all absolutely amazing antagonists .

@@Angarato86 agreed. XIV has no shortage of very well written characters, even the antagonists

Not even close lol…. Maybe bottom 5? At best

Emet selch is number one and its not even close.@@chelseairene1015

@@chelseairene1015 This feels like some sort of rage bait that I will not even engage with 😬

@@99range92def let me ask you, did he die, go to hell, kill the devil, took over hell, and came back for revenge? because if not, than no, he isnt the best villain in the franchise...

Your metrics for a good villian are strange.@@marcosdheleno

Yeah as well as the "Squall is dead" theory but he did say that was an interesting one

Hey thank you!!! Big fan of your channel as well - also some high quality RPG content!

Kefka suffers a really big issue : the evil clown is the most cliché antagonist ever. What does it differentiate Kefka from the Joker ?

"That aren't about time travel?"

Well it's his top so I guess he puts whoever he wants where he wants, if you don't like it you can make your own top based on what you want.

yeah id agree. I love 12 but Vayne just isnt a great or iconic villain in the same as many others. There is no real personal struggle between the heros and Vayne, i appreciate him being more nuanced and deeper than most ff villians in some aspects but he is more of an interesting side character than a main villain. (watching the rest of the list id probably put him higher actually, Barthandelous is just a mess of a villain to me, while more personality i guess his plan and methods just dont win me over) his goal is somewhat noble, but its just swapping one dictator for another. Not really breaking the wheel. They would have needed a lot more from him to really make him a main villain, a few meetings with the heros for example, he shouldve met them briefly in Archadia and Geruvaga at least and not the final cutscene of the game, literally asking "who are you?", its cool but doesnt exactly sell a personal conflict between the party and him. Gabranth was a better option in some way but he was wounded by then that he wasnt a threat. So you have the personal emotional threat being Gabranth thats too weak and the main villian with no personal emotional tie not even knowing who maybe half the party is, he would know Ashe and Basch and probably Balthier through Cid but not Fran, Penelo or Vaan.

yep!!! That’s being planned. Might end up being next weeks video. Thanks for suggesting!

Let’s be real, Hojo is the _real_ antagonist of FFVII.

Yeah, FF15 is really eff'ed up once you learned the ins and outs of the story. I liked that its really just a matter of perspective.

@@thaneros Yeah, but in this case, they really went too far while trying to screw with the main antagonist. I’ve never seen this case before in a game where an antagonist is so relatable that he ruins the main characters motivations. Which is a shame too, cus the coolest moments that Ignis and Noctis (especially Ignis tho) had were when they fought against Ardyn, who as it turns out is the actual victim here

@@topfranluis1 Ardyn has redeemable qualities, but he's a monster. You can agree with his motivations, but you can't with his actions. Also, the fact he has a background, qualities, is fleshed out in many ways and has motivations to boot his actions makes him a better antagonist than 3 of the top 4 of this video. Neither Kefka nor Ultimecia are well written in any ways (Kefka is also one of the most cliché villain ever, it doesn't really help) and Sepiroth... well he's cool with a long sword and loves killing flowerist, but his motivations don't exist.

@@groudonvert7286 It was very clearly shown that Ardyn only went insane due to the daemonification. Why else would you explain to me that he had no malicious intent at all when he was first freed? Like, I know Kefka has a similar origin story, with him being mindbroken thanks to Magitek experiments, and he’s my favorite villain of all time, but on the other hand, Kefkas backstory doesn’t involve Espers actually being super evil and killing his parents or destroying his hometown or whatever. He was just evil for the hell of it. Ardyn is a victim, it’s not even a debate, that’s just how it frikkin is. That’s like calling Naruto a monster because he acted violently while being controlled by Kyubi Also, Kefka is literally anything but cliche. Normally, characters like him are the kind of antagonist that get tossed aside rather quickly, so him becoming the big bad was refreshing to say the least. Gestahl is the cliche one and not him. And Sephiroth, while he’s not my favorite, actually has motivations, which are that the corporation he was working under was destroying the planet and that he was imbued with the cells of what he thought was an ancient, a race of people who didn’t steal the planets life energy. If you’re really so oblivious towards all of these antagonists, I really don’t feel like you have any idea what you’re talking about with Ardyn either

​@@topfranluis1 Ardyn chose to become a monster, not because of Bahamut, but because he wanted it. Bahamut let him choose (I tried both choices, the result is the same). And no, Kefka has not the same original story (for what we know of it). Ardyn was a saint in his young age and chose to damage his body to heal people. The only thing we know about Kefka is he was a experiment that went wrong. Who was Kefka before that ? Nobody knows. And yes, Kefka is a cliché villain. An iconic laugh ? A nihilistic personality ? A background we don't know or changes all the time ? A villain that only wants chaos ? An evil clown ? Yes, that's the Joker ; Batman's 80 years old nemesis. I understand Kefka is your favorite antagonist, the evil clown (when done right) works very well in a story. But I can't considere Kefka as the best antagonist in Final Fantasy when he's basically a copy-paste of the Joker. By the way, it's not difficult to guess who's the main antagonist of FF6, when Kefka has the biggest amount of animations of all FF6 characters and his encounter theme is present in Battle Theme and Boss Battle Theme. Sephiroth wanted to save the planet ? By using a meteor against the planet and steals the mako to become a god ? Or he became insane when he learns his supposed mother was an ancient who tried to rule the world ? Yes he has motivations... But if he was blond, joked all the time, sang Chocobo music and fought with guns, he wouldn't have been the best antagonist in FF (yes, Sephiroth has the same background than Prompto... but Prompto didn't become insane for... no reason). Sephiroth is badass and has great themes (and I enjoyed playing as Sephiroth in Rebirth for reasons that has nothing with the character), but his personnality is inexistant and his flipback personality in Nifelheim doesn't make sense. Maybe FF7R's trilogy will explore that a bit more, but I doubt.

Sephiroth and Kefka are nothing alike. They desire completely different things and have completely different personalities. Kefka was a tortured nihilist and Sephiroth is a war hero who lost his mind with grief and manipulation. You proved you didnt get the story of 7 by not understanding Sephiroths motivation. He wants to become the next Jenova for another world. He is living up to the legacy of Jenova that he sees as his new birthright. So he wants to conquer and destroy other worlds. They are both great villains and when you try to defend your point by disrespecting a great character you lose all credit to your argument.

Dude...lol. Sephiroth has no reason.

And it wasn't an argument. I said for me, which means it's an opinion, my friend.