• Garland - He is pretty much the only option if I don't want to take someone who also has marginally any story like Matoya or Astos.
  • Mateus - The first villain in the franchise who fulfills some of my classic criteria for a cool villain. Also I think he deserves to be in a Fial Fantasy that is not so overlooked.
  • Luneth - Solid improvement on the blueprint of the Onion Knight.
  • Cecil - Good design, has the most mature relationship with his romance and has his own problems of finding out what he truly wants to be as a person as well as what his past looks like - Cecil is pretty much Terra's Prototype
  • Faris/Sarisa - Good design and adds a humorous element to the story while other moments from other characters do not really work for me. Also she is a pirate.
  • Setzer - Sephiroth's Prototype. Genius design and a free spirit. He has a pretty tragic backstory with Daryll which is one of the few backstories in Final Fantasy VI that I think of as way to sad for a side/backstory - just as that of Lock and Rachel. Also he abducts Celes and is tricked by her. The entire thing is comedic. Setzer seems to be very simple-minded at times as he does not really question the Empire until the others come and it is interesting that he at least considers listening to them as a lot would not do that so easily but that is also because of his free spirit-nature. And yet there is more behind this scared face than it seems at first glance.
  • Sephiroth - Tetsuya Nomura's best designed character and Kazushige Nojima's best written character of all time. Even these days I find myself surprised all the time that the story so casually has an alien lifeform in it. And not just that but people that where experimented on and on top of that, the ultimate partial human, partial alien lifeform. Sephiroth's entire appearance is so incredible. When you chase his newly formed body while he projects his consciousness into Jenova's headless one, it is always like you are chasing some sort of ghost. And then when you actually meet him he just underlines this feeling of being that superhuman ghost from beyond this world because of how he suddenly appears, how mysteriously he acts, how he speaks and everything. At this point he has already changed so much, left behind almost every bit of humanity that he has as he has decided to use his inhuman, way more powerful side to get what he wants. And YET all of that originally came from his human emotions. He always was a very distanced person. Never really bragging or anything (until later his arrogance becomes a more and more present trait) but he very well was aware of what he can do and was proud of being the living miracle. But he had a life that was not so different from that of people. Yes, he was a legendary hero. But he was an introverted, intelligent person that opened up for the few friends that he had. And his own curiousity made him realize that he was betrayed. That his life was a lie. That he was a lie. Sephiroth is such a perfect combination of the emotional humans that also have their instincts but also have their conscience and ego and the emotionless, merely instinctively acting calamity from the sky, he will never be topped by anyone in the franchise. He has together with Cloud and Lightning the most script and it is just me wanting to finish this post in less than 10 hours that I have to stop here.
  • Laguna - This is really tough. Style-wise I think I like Rinoa the most. Especially as I also like Squall, his feelings and his relationship with Rinoa. But Laguna is an entertaining person, one of two components of a tragic love-story that was never meant to be but reborn with the child of Laguna, Squall and the child of Julia, Rinoa. He is just as caring as Squall. Without him who knows in what trouble Ellone would actually be and how much she would be exploited. It is just a pity that so much of Squall, Raine, Laguna and Ellone's story had to be the way it is.
  • Kuja - The super-stylish main villain, so desperate when he sees his "little brother" that he sends him off to the other side of the planetary coin. It is really interesting to see how evil and manipulating Kuja has become especially as it seems to be so extreme but he is very similiar to Sephiroth. They both were used and they both think incredibly high of themselves. And while Kuja is no human, he also acts out of very human reasons. He values himself, he does not want to be a tool, he does not want to be a throwaway-replacable person. He does not want to die. Sephiroth also does not want to return to the planet as other than Aerith he thinks that letting go means that "he" will fade, so his consciousness will become non-existent (that means Sephiroth thinks that if he chooses to not just withstand the Lifestream, what a lot of people actually fear will happen; this is further explained in On The Way To A Smile - Black Lifestream). And I can understand many of Kuja's thoughts, just as I can understand a lot of Sephiroth's. It is the irony of fate that characters that are so much victim of manipulation end up being manipulative themselves. But it is also something that happens in our reality. I just wish Kuja would wear a better outfit with pants.
  • Seymour - The next tragic soul. A half-breed that has such a tough life that his mind gets so twisted he thinks the only way to end the pain of everything is to finally kill everyone. And he does not even care about them wanting to live as at this point his character is already so much defined to be not reasonable. He is one of the more intelligent villains and a very good speaker, yes - he actually even has many parallels with Tidus. They have this negative feelings for their fathers, they were care about by their mothers, their fate is somehow connected to [Sin] (well, okay, that is pretty much true for everyone). I wish Seymour would get the spotlight he deserves. The story shines on him, then it does not, then it does again and so on. This is not what would have done.
  • Vayne - Another good speaker with a stylish appearance. Also he turns into LSSJ Broly.
  • Lightning - Great character design, a lot of background story. She is a tough woman who swore on her mother's grave to be there for Serah and became "Lightning". And she is incredibly human. She cares the most about a person close to her and wants to protect her at all cost. For that she becomes incredibly distanced though and comes unable to see life in another light for a very long time.
  • Ignis - An absolute dependable person for Noctis and one of the best brothers and friends he could ever dream to have.