Ultimecia vs. Zemus

[Forsaken Lover]

They came out of nowhere.
They made no sense.
I'M FROM THE FUUUUUUUUUTURRRRRRRRRRRRRE.
I'M FROM DA MOOOOOOOOON.
They took the story away from villains people actually liked.

But who was worse?

[NeoCracker]

Zemus wasn't bad, he was actually given good cause and reason to do what he did. (Though Zeromus was dumb as fuck).

Ultimecia.... Yeah. We were already talking about that in her thread. :p

Zemus, while not a great villain, wasn't bad and serviceable enough. Ultimecia was bad.

[black orb]

But who was worse?
>>> Necron..:luca:

[Wolf Kanno]

Ulitmecia, because the plot would have been so much better had it been handed over to Edea or Adel, she's just a third wheel. Zemus actually gets some back story and context and unlike Ulitmecia, his brainwashing (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoreThanMindControl) doesn't actually steal Golbez's thunder as much.

[MJN SEIFER]

Ultimecia didn't come out of nowhere, we knew of her in advance, I guess the same is true for Zemus, but I'm not sure who we know of for longest.

How did she not make sense?

[maybee]

Ulti was within Edea, during the parade, controlling Seifer's weaknesses, and asking Squall to be tortured by Seifer, and aiming the missiles at the Garden, that was all Ulti.


She didn't appear out of nowhere, because she was there from CD 1, just within Edea's shell, then Rinoa, and then she shows her true identity.


Zemus was more random, but in a way, he still makes sense, just bad writing. Zemus was controlling Golbez, and we do see very small subtle hints that Golbez wasn't doing his actions on his own.

When he's about to murder Cecil within the tower after Tellah's death, he stops and recognizes who Cecil is, and he gains control of himself for a few seconds.

It's just bad writing, though to be fair on Square, Final Fantasy IV came out about 20 years ago, and it would of been hard to tell a complicated story on the SNES system.

[MJN SEIFER]

^Excactly, in response to the Ultimecia stuff.

I need to refamilliarise myself with FFIV, but the writing may or may not have been hampered by the bad translation as well as the SNES's limitations, though I don't know if they did it better in the Japanese version.

[Forsaken Lover]

Seriously, what's with the double standards. A time-traveling Sorceress from the future being revealed to be in control at the end of Disk 2 is no less random than a moonman possessing somebody being revealed when the game is 90% over. (FFIV is a lot shorter than VIII so that accounts for that)

Zemus was "always there" too...

[MJN SEIFER]

Seriously, what's with the double standards. A time-traveling Sorceress from the future being revealed to be in control at the end of Disk 2 is no less random than a moonman possessing somebody being revealed when the game is 90% over. (FFIV is a lot shorter than VIII so that accounts for that)

Zemus was "always there" too... I don't think anyone said that Zemus wasn't "always there", so it's not really double standards. I would personally say that Ulitimecia was less randomly introduced because we knew that sorceressess exist, and also that it's possible to have concience sent to someone in the past, so being able to possess someone in the past isn't exactly out of left field.

I don't know if Lunarians (that's right, isn't it?) were foreshadowed or even heard about before Zemus being revealed as the villain, but if it's not then FFVIII has the advantage there.