Top Fave Heroes and Villains: General Gaming Edition

[Wolf Kanno]

Same as the RPG thread, who are your top five heroes and villains in gaming?

[Depression Moon]

Heroes: The entire Final Fantasy IX cast, Mario Bros., Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, Kirby, Yoshi

Villains: Meta Knight, Kuja

[Forsaken Lover]

Heroes: Ling Xiaoyu, Jin Kazama pre-Tekken 6, Kain, Raziel

Villains: Heihachi Mishima, Moebius the Timestreamer

[Lyndis Highwind]

In no particular order my heroes would be:

Kain Highwind from FF IV

Ike from Fire Emblem

Captain Falcon from F-Zero

Lyndis from Fire Emblem

Link from Ocarina of Time

As for my villains though, Ganondorf from Ocarina of Time is really the only villain that I really like. I tend to pay more attention to the heroes than I do the villains.

[Karifean]

Heroes

I'll only pick four since there are too many candidates for fifth place.

4. Rintarou Okabe (Steins;Gate) - Man I just love this guy. Hilarious when things are light-hearted, engaging and likable when things are heavy.
3. Leo Shishigami & Rose Haibara (Rose Guns Days) - Can't give it to either of them ignoring the other. Leo is the guy who physically acts, Rose is the one who leads. They work together so well, especially in early Season 2.
2. Kotarou Tennouji (Rewrite) - Probably my favorite thing about this guy is how he changes depending on the route you're going through. But he never stops being the likable and swell guy he is. I'd put Tomoya instead for a Key protagonist but since there's no actual adversary in CLANNAD I hesitate to put him on a top heroes list.
1. Battler Ushiromiya (Umineko no Naku Koro ni) - He's thoughtless, horrible at reading between the lines and screws up REALLY bad sometimes, but I can't help but love him. His heart is in the right place and when he thinks good of you he's one of the most trusting and understanding people you'll ever see. Plus he's the one who doesn't sit back and do nothing while everyone else gets offed, he actively tries to tackle the witch's mysteries. And, well, thinking about everyone else he is the only character I'd consider remotely capable of solving the mystery.

Villains

5. The B.E.T.A. (Muv-Luv) - I wonder how long it took for them to come up with a proper phrase that abbreviates to BETA (it ended up as "Beings of ExtraTerrestrial origins that are Adversary to the human race"). Either way these things are scary. Nobody knows what the hell they are or where they came from but they landed on earth and just started obliterating people. And mankind is losing the war against this alien threat. Any encounter with them is scary as hell and that's exactly what a superpowerful opposing force should feel like.
4. Gabriel Kaburaya (Rose Guns Days) - I was actually a little disappointed by this guy since he never took center stage but remained a manipulator behind the scenes instead, and a lot of characters never ended up knowing about his influence and role in masterminding everything, but the more I think back on it the more I think that was actually a pretty solid choice. Either way, it's frightening having a character that would feel right at home in Umineko suddenly turn up in the comparatively light-hearted and likable cast of RGD. And watching him make friends with people as he's scheming to have their little sisters murdered is pretty sickening.
3. 'Maou' (G-senjou no Maou) - Don't you just love it when characters that are smarter than you and almost always one step ahead of you consistently stay smarter and one step ahead of you? The only thing that does him in is himself. I can't elaborate much on him because his identity is kind of important to the plot but I really do like how the game presents and characterizes him.
2. [MASSIVE SPOILERS]Miyo Takano (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni) - Not gonna elaborate for spoiler reasons.
1. Guess Who? (Umineko no Naku Koro ni) - There is no fictional character I'd be more terrified to ever meet than her. She's not the kind of villain who'd kill you, instead she'd take great pleasure tearing down every single one of your beliefs and stomp on them and then go on to ripping apart everything you value, until you eventually end up just wanting to die already. And she does it simply because it helps her escape boredom for a little bit.
0. Zero (Zero Time Dilemma) - His motives are complex.

[Loony BoB]

Heroes
1 - Crow (The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, Dreamfall Chapters) - The real hero.
2 - Nathan Drake (Uncharted series) - He made Uncharted what it is. Without his wit, the game would have been just another well polished shooter.
3 - April Ryan (The Longest Journey) - April beats out Zoe because I just remember loving her dry humour. Specifically in TLJ, that is.
4 - Sergeant Cortez (TimeSplitters series) - Action comedy hero straight outta the style used in action comedy flicks of the 90s.
5 - Zoe Castillo (Dreamfall, Dreamfall: Chapters) - Even though Crow & Zoe beat her rather notably, she's still an excellently written character. Juuust edges the honourable mentions.
Honourable mentions: Snow (FFXIII), Tifa (FFVII), Sully/Chloe/Elena (Uncharted), Trevor (GTA V), Urist (Dwarf Fortress), Ellie (The Last of Us).

Villains
1 - Shinra (Final Fantasy VII) - Might be cheating since it's a group of people rather than an individual, but Shinra was just excellently done.
2 - Vaas (Far Cry 3) - Sure, he might be a cliché to many, but to me, he was the mastering of the pyshonutter. I loved every moment.
3 - Wheatley (Portal 2) - I adored his character from start to finish.
4 - The Joker (Batman: Arkham Asylum) - Because you can't go wrong with Mark Hammil's Joker.
5 - Pagan Min (Far Cry 4) - I admit that I was struggling to think of villains at this point. Min edges out a few others on comedy value.
Honourable mentions: Sephiroth (FFVII), The Reapers (ME), Kefka (FFVI)