Most powerful FF Villain...

[Wolf Kanno]

...before they get their godhood power form later on. So It's Garland not Chaos, Kefka not God of Magic Kefka and so forth.

[Laddy]

Kuja literally destroyed a planet. To be honest I don't think anyone comes close except perhaps Ultimecia.

[Wolf Kanno]

Kuja literally destroyed a planet. To be honest I don't think anyone comes close except perhaps Ultimecia.

Yes but not before obtaining Trance. This is asking the questions about who the strongest was when their plots began.

[maybee]

Sephiroth maybe ? Since he was already born with Jenova cells in his body and has trained to be a powerful and skilled Solider warrior.

[Fynn]

Xande? He was a powerful wizard who summoned the Cloud of Darkness and put the whole world to sleep.

[Laddy]

Kuja literally destroyed a planet. To be honest I don't think anyone comes close except perhaps Ultimecia.

Yes but not before obtaining Trance. This is asking the questions about who the strongest was when their plots began.

Everyone is presumably capable of Trance though. He didn't "learn" Trance, he happened to go into it and use it at an opportune time.

[Wolf Kanno]

Kuja literally destroyed a planet. To be honest I don't think anyone comes close except perhaps Ultimecia.

Yes but not before obtaining Trance. This is asking the questions about who the strongest was when their plots began.

Everyone is presumably capable of Trance though. He didn't "learn" Trance, he happened to go into it and use it at an opportune time.

No, he had to use the souls of Queen Brahne and the others killed trapped on the Invincible to actually obtain it because he didn't really know how to. He explains that to Garnet when he obtains the power. So technically he didn't have the power naturally.

[NeoCracker]

FF I-III can't really comment on.

FF VIII with Ulti she never really changes in power, so I'll exlclude her. Same with Sin from X. XII I can't remember enough of, and XIII? Yeah, no power change really happens there either. So...

FF IV - Zeromous
FF V - Ex-Deah
FF VI - Kefka
FF VII - Sephiroth

I'm going to wipe Sephiroth from the equation. Yes, he was the strongest soldier, but he was still only human, and never really showed anything excessively super human by FF Standards.

So...

Ex-Death - Kefka - Kuja

Bahamut had the power to eradicate an entire navel force with no effort. Kuja wasn't really threatened all that much by the thing either. It may have had vast reaching destructive force, but Kuja's ability to remain entirely calm in face of this thing leads me to think his power even pre-Trance is intense.

Kefka is hard, because he's gaining strength as teh game progresses. I'll go with how strong he was pre-statues. He was already able to beat your four man party at that point in the game, a think even Atma weapon was unable to do. So Kefka is likely the strongest entity pre-world of Ruin, with the possibility of Ghestal being superior (Which I guess is the case).

Ex-Death...for the life of me I can't think right now so I eliminate him by technicality.


So, it comes down to Kuja and Kefka. Pre-Trance, the FF IX team was able to take down Kuja.
Pre-Statue, the FF VI party was not able to take down Kefka.

That being said, I believe that (From a narrative stand point anyway) your entire party is their to fight Kuja (Nine people) where as FF VI you have only four people. This makes it rather hard to gauge.

If I were to guess, considering that Kuja's rise was modeled similarly after Kefka's, pre-god powers they are roughly equivalent.

[Rez09]

Hrmmmm, well, from what I remember . . .

FF1 - Garland is probably the weakest on the list, seeing that a solo level 1 white mage can beat him if they were an asshole and bought ruse in Cornelia.

FF2 - I have absolutely no idea how strong this guy actually is pre-hell, because I have no idea if the cyclone is powered by his magic or some form of technology. Looking at the Dreadnought, however, I suspect the latter. Going on that, and considering how much of a joke he is when you kill him, I'd say his mind is his strongest point and he's on the weaker side of things. He does have an evil empire and tornado castle at his disposal, though.

FF3 - Xande is an interesting one, as Fynn mentioned. As I recall, he doesn't just put the world to sleep under the ocean, but actually stops the passage of time as a whole as a means to escape his mortality, which is impressive feat. Then again, I'm not sure if he was responsible for that or if the Cloud was. Either way, he is still a contender for the most powerful mage-villain of the series, even being completely shafted by Noah and not getting Doga or Unne's gift. He also has that cursed mirror, which is implied to be inescapable if you don't have a cheating wizard floating across the world grabbing pure hearted people to save you, which NO ONE should ever actually have. He also has access to Meteor, which FFIV tells me is super strong. I suspect he's a fairly strong character overall.

FF4 - Um . . . I don't remember Zemus being particularly powerful. Don't get me wrong, mind controlling people on a planet from the moon is pretty impressive and all, but . . . I don't think he really demonstrates any other power pre-transformation, does he? I think of him like I think of the Emperor: his mind is his greatest power. Fairly weak. Has a sweet robot, though.

FF5 - Ex-Death seems to be getting a lot of love lately whenever I encounter discussions of FF boss power, and that makes me inclined to argue against him due to my terrible personality, but . . . I don't think I really can. He has unarguable magical power even before obtaining the power of the void, and, unlike Xande, he's also shown actively using it, and I'm fairly certain he's all but kill-proof until rather extreme forces come into play, a trait fairly exclusive to him. Easily one of the most powerful.

FF6 - Kefka's power is very hard to gauge, both because it grows until the floating continent, as NeoCracker said, and because it is hard to interpret what you do see until then. He is able to wipe out espers en masse in Thamasa, but he appears to be doing it with a variation of X-Zone, which could simply indicate the espers aren't immune to death spells or that particular spell. He takes being stabbed particularly well on the floating continent, but you have no idea WHERE Celes stabs him. He kills Leo, but I don't suspect that was meant to be communicated as a fair fight. He's often credited with destroying the world, but I still blame that as much on Shadow as him, and it is the statues responsible either way. Overall, I think Kefka's strength comes less from him and more from proper use of the tools available to him, be it exploiting magical vulnerabilities, standing in anti-magic fields, poisoning rivers, disguising himself as the Emperor, or even just bringing stacked equipment with him (hello, paladin shield). Probably a more middle of the road villain, powerwise.

FF7 - From my interpretation of Sephiroth prior to being dumped into the lifestream, I generally consider him to have a solid mind and to be the peak of potential human performance, with respectable magical abilities as well, so while I think he is likely weaker than Exdeath, and would argue Xande as well, I do think he is stronger than most other villains in the series.

FF8 - I don't remember enough about Ultimecia to make a fair assessment.

FF9 - I don't remember enough about Kuja to make a fair assessment.

FFX - I don't know how to judge this one and have no assessment to make.

FFXII - I feel Vayne falls into the same category with the Emperor and Zemus, with his head being his greatest weapon. That said, he also has arguably the most effective 'evil empire' at his disposal, and access to nethicite, which, as an advantage, is hard to evaluate, but should disrupt magic to some extent.

Sooo . . . I guess my list ends up being . . .

Exdeath - Nigh unkillable; immense magical power
Xande - Inescapable(ish), unresistible stop spell; Meteor; immense magical power
Sephiroth - Peak human to superhuman performance; intelligent; magical ability
Vayne - Intelligent; Has functional 'evil empire'; Nethicite
Kefka - Potentially immense magical power; uses tools well; tons of magicite
Zemus - Limited mindcontrol; has a cool robot.
Emperor - Intelligent; evil empire; tornado castle; magical ability
Garland - Dies to angry shepherds with sticks

If I counted Sin in the list, I'd put it on/near Exdeath level; if Yu Yevon was on the list, I have no idea where I'd put him; Cloud of Darkness would be near/above Exdeath level; from what little I remember of Ultimecia, I'd put her near/above Sephiroth level; from what little I remember of Kuja, I'd put him near/under Sephiroth level; from what little there even IS of Necron, I'd put it around/under Exdeath level.

[Sephiroth]

Caius and Sephiroth. Caius was a L'Cie even before he had his super powers that made him even stronger than Lightning and Sephiroth always had his will power that is the source of his energy winning and how and with which destructive power he can use his spells and psychic power. X-Death is also a very good mention. It is more his endurance though. How powerful he and Euo were without the void cannot really be described.

[NeoCracker]

To judge Zeromous before he transformed you'd have to first judge just how strong the combined might of FuSoYa and Golbez were, as well as whatever the smurf that Crystal thing was.

Any attempts at FF IV in this discussion I don't know if they will matter because of how much of an unexplainable factor that crystal thing is.

[Fynn]

Caius may just win, actually. Too bad he's such a God-Mode Sue...

But yeah, sequels aside, I think Exdeath actually wins, now that I think about it, though Xande is pretty high up.

[Ayen]

I'm just going to say Sephiroth to irritate Wolf Kanno

[Wolf Kanno]

Breaking this down.

Garland and Kefka would probably be bottom tier. Assuming Kefka's basic power is shown in the Narshe battle, he's not terribly more powerful than average mooks in other games. Granted his Esper boosted form in Thamasa is probably much higher but I'm going to be stickler and stay with just his "natural" power after infusion. Garland has no real powers so he's probably the weakest. Seymour would also be on this list as he's pretty much a squishy wizard without Anima and even Anima couldn't save him from getting killed. Yu Yevon may also be in this list as well if other Summoners are anything to go by but there is so little info on him it may be safer to just omit him.

In third tier we have Golbez, Zemus, Sephiroth, and Kuja who are frighteningly powerful fighters able to take some of the strongest spells/summons in the series to the face and not be fazed by it. While they are all very powerful they don't exhibit the kind of doomsday size powers of other villains meaning they are certainly not people to trifle with but even they may trout their pants if they had to deal with higher tiers. The Shadowseer is here as well as well as Thamasa Kefka.

In second tier, we have Ultimecia and Emperor Mateus who both exhibit levels of power beyond the rest of the riff raff. Ultimecia's powers are probably no stronger than tier 2 but her unique ability to make thought into reality and give life to inanimate objects may actually mean she can create something that can easily dea with the lower tiers if need be. The fact she's one half of the power needed to even do Time Compression means we may not have actually seen her true normal power before the big battle. Mateus on the other hand is both wickedly smart, can create Cyclones powerful enough to level cities and carry castles, but more importantly he is pretty much a demon summoner who can conjure up an army for the others to deal with and this is before he becomes the Lord of Hell. Not bad if I say so.

In first tier we have Exdeath and Xande, Xande's magic is powerful enough to freeze time and doing so is enough to get the monsters on his side. He's also such a powerful wizard that even Doga and Unei don't seem really inclined to want to fight him head on and they got better powers allegedly. Exdeath on the other hand is an immortal wizard who basically starts with the power to level continents, create energy fields, planet scale earthquakes and fires and this is even before he gets the Void. He's pretty much proves throughout FFV why he is the only one who can control the Void.

God Tier is Cloud of Darkness who frankly could wipe the floor with all of them. Even the ending of III implies she was simply persuaded from annihilating existence this time, but will just keep coming back as she's a part of the cosmos itself. She is basically a god and the equal opposite to the crystals which are the only real omnipotent power in the FF mythos.

[Rez09]

No place for Necron or Vayne? D':