In Final Fantasy 1, monks are the least versatile, and they only do more damage than an Xcalibur Knight around mid-upper level 30s, and it isn't necessary to level that high to beat the game. Otherwise, They can only best the fighter by measly amounts (like 50 damage tops in the latter half of the Silver Sword Days), and the horrible defense and lack of magic makes it enough that I'd rather have any other class in that position.

In FF2, bare fist fighting is the cheapest, and is extroardinally strong. Yes.

In FFIII, monks are never better than the Fighter, but the Master/Karateka is better than the Knight (mostly). But nobody talks about that because nobody cares since nobody should be playing it except as the very new and recent release (Which i don't know the numbers on)

In FFIV, I went a long way without missing Yang.

In FFV, the Monk provides valuable abilities in the arena of HP gain and cute skills like Chakra, but there are much better classes. Like in FF2, the novelty of being able to fight w/o weapond is the specialty.

FFVI had Sabin, who was more than just a monk.

And so, in conclusion, The BB only sucks in FF1 and 3. But he sucks hard because, well, everybody else is better. And if you like him, that's fine. He's like, good at what he does. He's like a champion pro wrestler. 400 lbs of raw muscle, 7 ft tall, trained by the best guys ever, and he's on his way to conquer a small country. I mean, he's awesome, but he's way too high level, his defense sucks, and, frankly, you'd be better off with a 90 pound nerd piloting a bomber jet.