Disappointing Viallins Part Deux

[Wolf Kanno]

Brought this thread idea back (and hey, I'm keeping up the tradition of bad title spelling) but let's discuss villains that disappointed you throughout gaming.

[Karifean]

Ikutsuki

[FFNut]

Gigas from Earthbound/Mother 2. First time I fought him I basically put my controller on auto and walked outside to play baseball. He did no damage, but soaked up a ton where a regular battle never phased him. Out of desperation to finally finish it I used Paula's weak pray ability and finally defeated him.

[Forsaken Lover]

Vayne Solidor. It's not really his fault - he's just not as interesting as the billion other villains in the game. Dr. Cid, Gabranth, the Occuria, Venat....they all have a lot more going on yet Vayne is the main bad guy?

It's kind of impossible not to feel let down by all the main villains in Chrono Cross. That's one area the game really falls apart. They needed more focus.

Barthandelus in FFXIII. There's so much potential here with how the human-fal'Cie relationship is set up and then subverted. The machine gods are the real slaves and the fact Bart really just wanted to die was fascinating. But you don't see him enough or interact with him enough for it to work.

[KleinerKiller]

Caius Ballad (FFXIII-2) - Interesting character design, abilities, and extremely sympathetic motives, ruined by sloppy writing (as with many things in the XIII timeline) and being physically and mentally overpowered beyond all suspension of disbelief, to the point of literally rendering the whole game pointless by the end of it.

Skull Face (Metal Gear Solid V) - Started the game as a terrifying, ruthless enigma responsible for inflicting numerous atrocities on the main characters, and a surefire new hit among MGS's great lineup of villains. Ended the game -- after a sum total eight minutes of screen time through the rest of it -- as a dopey, hammy clown with a scheme that never comes into proper focus and is now most known for the stupid "SUCH A LUST FOR REVENGE" line.

Arkham Knight (Batman: Arkham Knight) - If I'd wanted Red Hood / Jason Todd, I would have asked for him; he has no relevance to the previous games and falls completely flat when he's revealed. Not to mention that despite only ever being set up as the physical and mental perfect match to Batman, you don't get to throw a single punch at him, because this was the game where Rocksteady abruptly decided that shooting tanks in the Batmobile was way more fun than personally fighting bosses.

[Wolf Kanno]

Sephiroth - As I mentioned time and time again, I simply feel that Shin-Ra was the more interesting antagonist throughout the game. I mean Sephiroth played Cloud like a fiddle but it's not like it required real effort on his part to do so, and so much of the plot tries building him up, that by the time he finally enters the main stage for real, it's a bit underwhelming compared to other bad guys within the series.

Most of the villain cast from FFXIII and XV - So much potential, so much wasted potential. :cry:

Troy - Oh Suikoden IV, you have so many problems and Troy is just one of the major narrative issues. He is built up so much in the early sections of the game and then proceeds to do nothing for the rest of the story, only to swoop in at the very end of the game to fight a pointless duel for pride I guess? This is made even more annoying because the game's actual main villain isn't exactly great either...

Iskas - What is with the Suikoden IV part of the Suikoden franchise that under-performs so much? Iskas is more annoying than Troy because he's not only the games main villain but he is actually pretty compelling, if the game ever bothered to actually focus on the politics of Kooluk and build it up into something good. Instead we got a petty nobleman using magic radiation to assassinate the royal family because he thinks he can run the kingdom better than they can, and even after he succeeds, he just does the same thing to himself... because... reasons? There are good reasons why no one talks about Suikoden Tactics.


Izanami - I get the symbolism the game is trying to go for, but talk about a poor execution. My issue is that Ameno-Sagiri kind of worked better and I felt he sort of answered most of the game's lingering questions rather well. Repeating the same "man behind the man" cliche just kind of killed it for me. I would probably had cared more if Ameno-Sagiri had simply been dropped from the script entirely instead of being another freaking Red Herring in a plot that has too many of them.

Hi-no-Kagatsuchi - Man, talk about a serious tease. So many fans thought that the Malevolent Entity was going to by Nyarlathotep from the earlier Persona series, and instead, he's a one off villain with an excuse plot motivation. The issue is that the ramifications of him being Nyarlathotep just had so many better possibilities for the series as a whole but nope.

The Reapers - Man they were so cool in ME1 but as you learned more about them in the sequels, they just lost so much of their luster. I think the first time I took one down in ME3, I felt more disappointed than "oh wow, I'm awesome!" cause by then, their eldritch mystique was gone.

I'll think of some more later.

[Slothy]

I actually hated the Reapers in ME1 more than later. Any villain that comes in saying tired bullshit like their motivations are beyond you is always lying. It's also just a really old, really dumb trope that's basically never true. Certainly not if you plan on actually explaining their motivations as almost all games do. Just lazy, lazy writing that. They still weren't great in 2 and 3 but at least they didn't try to pretend they were some impossible to understand eldritch horror when we all knew they weren't going to be anyway. And their ultimate motivations weren't even that bad if you ask me. Machines (sorta) who try and preserve the history and legacy of sapient species by preserving them in reaper form. It may be a bit of an old sci-fi trope to have the machines that are given a directive then go about implementing it in the worst way possible, but it's a good one and I didn't mind it here.

[Forsaken Lover]

How could I forget Corypheus. As for as villains who want to become god go, he's actually pretty fascinating because his motivation stems from his sincere and fervent belief that god makes life worth living. His god betraying and abandoning him and the absence of The Maker shattered him and now he wants to be a god so there is some purpose or design back in the world and it isn't just meaningless suffering.

But, well, this isn't touched on enough. He's mostly just an evil jerk who looks stupid and spends the second half of the game getting dunked on.

[Jinx]

Surprised on an FF board that Necron hasn't been thrown out yet.

[Wolf Kanno]

I actually hated the Reapers in ME1 more than later. Any villain that comes in saying tired bulltrout like their motivations are beyond you is always lying. It's also just a really old, really dumb trope that's basically never true. Certainly not if you plan on actually explaining their motivations as almost all games do. Just lazy, lazy writing that. They still weren't great in 2 and 3 but at least they didn't try to pretend they were some impossible to understand eldritch horror when we all knew they weren't going to be anyway. And their ultimate motivations weren't even that bad if you ask me. Machines (sorta) who try and preserve the history and legacy of sapient species by preserving them in reaper form. It may be a bit of an old sci-fi trope to have the machines that are given a directive then go about implementing it in the worst way possible, but it's a good one and I didn't mind it here.

See and my issue is that I wished they had stuck to them being an eldritch horror the lower races can't understand. The sequels spend too much time explaining them and by the time it's time to confront them it just cyborg alien space ships run by a crazy A.I. which was way more of a letdown to me. I'm simply disappointed the devs didn't stick to their guns an leave them as something more alien.

[Slothy]

Well the difference between us is I never believed for one second they'd actually do it that way. Not many developers have the ovaries to do something like leave their series villain unexplained,and honestly it's not an easy thing to do without screwing it up.

[Sephiroth]

Ardyn, as mentioned in another thread. Never have I met a villain that felt so much like "this needs to be another villain that people like therefore he has to be everywhere and a nuisance and funny and therefore a lot like Kefka when it comes to that while he also has his other traits but the most important thing is he needs to be in every scene and an entertaining nuisance".

It did not work for me.

[Skyblade]

I actually hated the Reapers in ME1 more than later. Any villain that comes in saying tired bulltrout like their motivations are beyond you is always lying. It's also just a really old, really dumb trope that's basically never true. Certainly not if you plan on actually explaining their motivations as almost all games do. Just lazy, lazy writing that. They still weren't great in 2 and 3 but at least they didn't try to pretend they were some impossible to understand eldritch horror when we all knew they weren't going to be anyway. And their ultimate motivations weren't even that bad if you ask me. Machines (sorta) who try and preserve the history and legacy of sapient species by preserving them in reaper form. It may be a bit of an old sci-fi trope to have the machines that are given a directive then go about implementing it in the worst way possible, but it's a good one and I didn't mind it here.

See and my issue is that I wished they had stuck to them being an eldritch horror the lower races can't understand. The sequels spend too much time explaining them and by the time it's time to confront them it just cyborg alien space ships run by a crazy A.I. which was way more of a letdown to me. I'm simply disappointed the devs didn't stick to their guns an leave them as something more alien.

I definitely agree. In Mass Effect, they were space Cthulhu. And it was awesome.

In Mass Effect 2, I think they're actually still okay. They're a little more defined, but it's all left vague enough that they still serve as a good eldritch horror.

It was Mass Effect 3, where they tried to actually define them and give them goals and logic and such that they completely fell apart.

Rule Number One of eldritch horror: DO NOT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING! The unknown is ALWAYS more terrifying than the known. Lovecraft made this same mistake in The Call of Cthulhu. Our own imagination can think up thinks so terrifying that we can't define them with logic, words, or reason. DON'T TRY!

[Wolf Kanno]

Well the difference between us is I never believed for one second they'd actually do it that way. Not many developers have the ovaries to do something like leave their series villain unexplained,and honestly it's not an easy thing to do without screwing it up.

Fair enough, but as I said, I still feel the final result was ultimately lacking compared to the initial potential. In ME1, the Reapers truly felt like an unknown and dangerous threat, but by ME3, I just felt like we were fighting the Borg.