Wolf Kanno Ranks the Final Bosses of Final Fantasy

[Wolf Kanno]

I broadly agree. ExDeath was definitely a tricky smurfer and took me a few goes the first time. I learned of the power of the Samurai $toss that day!

It's difficult to judge difficulty though as it's such a subjective thing - in as much as if you want to grind your characters up to level 99 and master various skills then almost any boss will become a triviality. Likewise, if you don't, it can be a real challenge. When I first fought Sephiroth and Ultimecia (the first two final bosses I ever fought) as a dumb kid they both absolutely stomped me and pushed my trout right back in.

Difficulty is subjective, and to be fair, I don't think there was a villain up here I didn't lose to at least once due to trying to get a feel for them. Difficulty for me really comes down to how much effort do I have to put into the game to beat them on a first go, which is why Braska's final aeon got higher score than it should because even if the Celestial Weapons trivialize him, it still means I have to play through mini-game hell to do so. There are also just cases where that isn't going to work, like Zeromus, due to the game's leveling system being a bit less straightforward than players thought. Frankly, if you have to grind to win, then the boss is obviously difficult.

One factor I didn't bother to mention was version. Not a big deal for later games, but the 2D entries have had a few ports that try to smooth over some of the difficulty curve. While this wouldn't necessarily affect Cloud of Darkness in my standings, it would have an effect on Zeromus who kind of runs the gambit of being a push over (SNES/Easy Type), to mostly average (GBA/PSP/Mobile) and back to brutal (Famicom/DS). Course, I'm a bit of a purist, so I based most of the rankings on their original introduction.

Satisfying presentation and story importance tend to slightly trump challenge for me when it comes to final bosses, especially if that boss has been a great villain, so I would push Ardyn (my favorite FF villain in a long time) up to #7, Vayne to #4 and Kefka to #1. I also deeply dislike Giant Space Fleas from Nowhere, so Cloud of Darkness joins Necron at the bottom.

Otherwise, solid picks. *approving nod*

Originally, this was suppose to be about difficulty , which would have shot Kefka and Sephy into the bottom rankings, but the fights were just too damn memorable for me, so I decided to expand the concept to more factors to make for a more interesting ranking system.

I mean, Ex-Death is an evil tree named Ex-Death. Pretty hard to top that

images.jpg