FFI: Chaos--even he didn't know what he was talking about with all that time-loop giberish.

Actually, I, III, and IV had an awful problem with developing their main villains. Well, FFI had little development of any kind, but a villain who doesn't really engage the heroes and unveil the entire purpose of the story until the final battle is hardly a villain at all. Knowing, or at least dropping ever more revealing hints as to what you're up against and why you should defeat it besides the generic "that's what good guys do" is an important part of a fantasy adventure.

FFIII: Zande wasn't even the final villain, but although the world's problems during the course of the game could be traced back to him, we know almost nothing about him. He held a grudge because he was gifted with his mentor's humanity. It's not a bad idea, but it's given no more than a few sentences of dialogue in the entire story. On top of that, he was being gleefully backed by the Cloud of Darkness, the real villain, who wanted the Void to overcome everything. Again, not a bad idea, and certainly the Dark Warriors concept was cool, but there is like one sentence devoted to her(?) until after you kill Zande, and by then there is less than an hour of game left to even care whether you defeat her or not besides just getting the game over with.

FFIV: Continues the mistake FFIII made with its main villain...Golbez was cool, but springing Zemus on you 80% of the way into the game as the dude who was controling Golbez is shoddy storytelling. It's like "SURPRISE TWIST!!! WHO YOU THOUGHT WAS THE VILLAIN IS REALLY NOT!" :rolleyes2 I'm sure the people who developed the story for Square thought they were being immensely clever. Perhaps back in the day it was, but in retrospect it's a bit of a joke. Zemus's entire development as a villain comes in the minute or so before you fight him, and the gist of it is "mwhahahaha I'm EEEEEVIL. You'll never destroy me! mwhahahaha!" :rolleyes2 Okay, I know FuSoYa explains about the Lunarians and what not, but there's not enough depth to Zemus to reason that he had any other purpose behind assaulting Earth other than being a 100% evil racist.

Leon in FFII. There's a thread about this in the FFII forum. If it wasn't mind control, which I believe it wasn't, why did he become the Dark Knight in the first place? The game hardly addresses it. Also, the quest to obtain the Ultima Magic was a major contrivance to get you to do a dungeon, considering the spell is not really necessary. Actually the entire game is filled with contrived kidnappings, secret all-important items, places you can only go with a certain vehicle, etc. etc. that just come up to get you to go do some quest to continue the story. I'm a big fan of the overall plot, but by FFII they still hadn't quite figured out how to incorporate plot points into the story without the standard "fetch" or "rescue" quests.

The World of Ruin in FFVI was basically nothing more than a bunch of side quests and optional leveling/skill acquisition. After you learn that Kefka sits in his tower zapping things with his death ray there's almost zero development along the main plot line. You just go face him whenever you're ready. Ho-hum. (Kefka rocks though)