EoFF RPG Thunderdome 2020: Round 1 Match 18

[Wolf Kanno]

Match 18 is up, the category is best villain!

Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter
77315
vs.

Mass Effect
77316

[Lord Golbez]

Wish I could pick BoF, but the truth is I never played Dragon Quarter.

[Wolf Kanno]

Cally me Betty Bias, but while I would concede that ME1 has the best villain in the series and the only time the Reapers felt legitimately scary. I am still more inclined to give this BoFV. You've got the Regents who are a superhuman group of nearly immortal people who maintain a dystopian regime with a heavy handed caste system that has people so low in it that they can legally be kidnapped and experimented on by their local Gene manipulating corp that makes these people into disposable air filters. The local rebel faction is heavily implied to be a creation of said Regents to give people who hate their system an outlet for their anger, meaning they are designed to be ineffective as possible.

Another villain is your former partner who turns out to be a sociopathic narcissist brought on by being the son of one of these godlike Regents who gave him training from hell as a childhood to give him an massive inferiority-superiority complex that makes him go utterly batshit insane the further you get into the plot as your low D-Ratio ass keeps thumping him. Eventually merges with the remains of a dormant dragon that is just as equally insane and godlike to boot.

Finally, the leader of the Regents is the former host of the dragon powers Ryu has who purposely chose to go against Odjn's wishes because he couldn't tell if reaching the surface and undoing the social order was his own desire or if he was being controlled by Odjn. So he purged the dragon from his person, took over the Regents after he thoroughly thrashed them and made a deal with Odjn to prove that leaving the Sheldar world was actually something people really wanted. Did I mention his design and character are based off of Fou Lu from IV?

Don't get me wrong, Sarin is cool and Sovereign was a nice surprise, but I feel BoFV has the more nuanced rogues gallery.

[WarZidane]

In a move that'll absolutely shock anyone who's had a conversation with me about Dragon Quarter, my vote goes to BoF. Luck was on its side, this is possibly the only aspect in which I'd vote for BoF5 over ME :p

Wolf Kanno pretty much said all that needs to be said in the BoFV department. The regents are horrible in a good way, Bosch is batshit crazy in a good way.

On the topic of ME, I would add that while I appreciate the fact you can actually talk Saren down, beyond that I think he's a pretty generic "he's just being used" villain. And I'm not above admitting ME3 retroactively ruined Sovereign for me (don't get me wrong, I still liked ME3, but certainly not for its treatment of the reapers)

[Fynn]

The Dragon Quarter love in this thread warms my dead little heart