Final Fantasy games are story-driven with many hours of gameplay, meaning you really get to know the characters. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Other times? Not so much. Here’s our tribute to the 13 characters that made us want to jump off a Mako Reactor.
1. Yuffie Kisaragi (Final Fantasy VII)
No Final Fantasy party is complete without an annoying, hyperactive teenager. But unlike your other spunky companions, Yuffie isn’t content with merely giggling and offering up the occasional idiotic quip: She’d rathersteal all of your material, leaving you without magic for an entire section of the game. The worst part? Yuffie’s a secret character, so you have to do extra work just to have her screw you over. Sephiroth himself probably did less damage to the party, and he straight up murdered one of the main characters.
2. Gau (Final Fantasy VI)
Inside the Square Offices:
-“Mr. Kitase! I created a new character for FFVI. He’s a wild boy who adds nothing the game’s central plot, speaks like Tarzan with a developmental disability, can’t equip weapons, and doesn’t have an “attack” command. In fact, his only real option in battle is “Rage,” which makes him use the same move over and over again no matter what the player wants him to do.”
-“You’re fired.”
-“Yeah, I kind of realized that halfway through.”
3. Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII)
Gamers went nuts for sullen hero Cloud in FFVII. Square, excited that they had finally designed a character that resonated with moody, socially-constipated RPG gamers worldwide, decided to crank the angst-o-graph up to 11 for the next installment and gave us Squall Leonhart, one of the gloomiest assholes in video game history. Squall is the type of person birthday clowns refer to as a code “oh shit.” He can suck the happiness out of a room faster than Ghandi at a steak-eating contest. Not to mention the fact that his signature weapon, the gunblade, couldn’t actually fire bullets, so it was basically a regular sword with a revolver grip. Or as engineers would call it, “stupid.” Bottom line: Gamers were stuck playing through FFVIII as a guy who was afraid to dance with girls, wore a fur-lined jacket and emo bangs, and carried around a huge metaphor for his own erectile dysfunction. And people play these games to escape from their own lives.
4. Tidus (Final Fantasy X)
Square heard players complain about playing as a Trent Reznor lookalike all through FFVIII. But instead of just scaling down the emo, they decided to pull a full 180° and punish us for our hubris. Enter Tidus, the cheery beach-blonde protagonist of FFX, who dresses like he was at ground-zero of a cosplay explosion. But that’s not to say he’s one-dimensional – Tidus spends a lot of the game struggling with a deep hatred for his own father. But since his dad is a giant monster who’s massacring the entire planet, it’s not like that’s an unpopular stance. Besides being generally shitty, Tidus is also an avid blitzball player – blitzball being a fictional sport that takes the difficulty of soccer and combines it with all the fun of drowning. Halfway through a match, you’ll want nothing more than to murder your opponents, your teammates, and everyone inside the stadium. It’s too bad you can’t, because a rampage like that would have made Tidus the greatest FF character in history, zippered lederhosen and all.
5. Brother (Final Fantasy X)
You don’t have to be playable to be annoying, and there’s no better example of that than Brother. Sure, the mohawk, tattoos, and talking to himself are strange, but perhaps the most disturbing thing about Brother is his undying love for his cousin. But unlike FDR, Brother’s desire to keep love in the family isn’t exactly endearing. In fairness to him, you can get away with almost anything when you’re in a wheelchair…and salvage a nation’s economy, help win World War II, and don’t dress like your posing for a “Firefighter Hunk of the Month” Calendar.
6. Edward Chris von Muir (Final Fantasy IV)
There are three lessons RPG developers can learn from a character like Edward:
1. Bards are NEVER cool.
2. A harp is not a weapon.
3. “Sing” is not a valuable combat skill for a person who has to fight giant flying eyeball monsters.
The only real redeeming quality Edward has is his ability to make everyone else in the party seem infinitely cooler than him. In addition to singing songs for your enemies, Prince Edward also has the infuriating ability to “Hide” whenever his HP is low. He also enjoys complaining to the party about his dead girlfriend, which is awkward and somewhat out of place in a game for the Super Nintendo. For the brief period of time that Edward is in your party, you’ll wish he was dead. And when he does end up dying over and over again in each and every battle you fight, you’ll wish he at least knew a couple Queen covers.
7. Rikku (Final Fantasy X)
An esteemed graduate of the Yuffie Kisaragi School for Hyperactive Teenagers, Rikku’s ability to annoy you is augmented vastly by what genre experts refer to as “Shitty Voice Actor Syndrome.” Within minutes of introduction, your tolerance for Rikku’s overly perky attitude will become even shorter than her ultra-jailbait miniskirt. If Tidus is your boring friend with a bad haircut, Rikku is his lame girlfriend that doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. It’s actually hard to believe that she and Yuna are cousins, since the only thing they have in common is their inability to have more than one character trait. And while Rikku may have helped defeat Sin at the end of the game, she’s also partly responsible for one of the biggest sins in gaming history: Final Fantasy X-2.
8. Vaan (Final Fantasy XII)
For those who might not have played it, Final Fantasy XII is essentially a rip-off of Star Wars with some rabbit-eared women thrown in for good measure (read: Japanese ear fetishists). Vaan is the eager, young Luke Skywalker clone who gets caught up in saving a princess and eventually taking down an empire with the help of a smooth talking pilot. The main difference, however, is that while Luke eventually becomes a badass psychic with a robot hand and laser sword, Vaan stays EXACTLY THE SAME. Not since Chrono has there been a more transparent main character in an RPG, but Chrono hung out with a robot and a talking frog, so I’ll let him off the hook. That being said, the name “Vaan” totally sounds like something George Lucas would have come up with.
9. Eiko Carol (Final Fantasy IX)
Little girls are made of sugar, spice, and everything nice. Good videogame characters are not. In fact, I’d say there’s very little room for a hyper, bow-wearing lass in a tactical, science-fantasy role-playing game. With any luck, Eiko will calm down and become less annoying with age. You know, when the survivor’s guilt from being one of the last two Summoners of Madain Sari starts to set in.
10. Bartz Klauser (Final Fantasy V)
We get it; he wants to wander around the world. The only difference between him and every other recent college grad is a really big sword and a bunch of crystals. Don’t be too impressed by all the crystal talk, the guys name is Bartz, not exactly the moniker of elegance. Did I mention his name was originally Butz? I guess when he went to go get his name changed, Fartz was already taken. It’s too bad his parents are dead; they probably would have loved to see their kid try save the world in an outfit so flamboyant it makes Johnny Weir look like Clint Eastwood.
11. Cait Sith (Final Fantasy VII)
Your main character wields a sword the size of his body. The first character to join your party has a gun where his arm should be. Cait Sith is…a giant marshmallow-bat with a cat that sits on his head. What. The. Fuck. Well, at least the big goof is harmless, right? HAH! Shortly after joining your party, it’s revealed that Cait Sith is actually a spy for Shinra, FFVII’s “Big Brother”. Sure, he repents in the end, but he’s not easy to forgive; especially considering that you probably didn’t like him in the first place. ...Unless you grew up around some especially nice marshmallow-bats.
12. Zell Dincht (Final Fantasy VIII)
Every Final Fantasy has its comic relief character. And by “comic relief character” I mean “character that makes you want to jam the controller through your forehead.” Zell spends the entirety of FFVIII incessantly talking, showing off, and searching for hot dogs. Seriously, part of the ending sequence is watching him choke on hot dogs. That’s how terrible he is. Also, he has a tribal tattoo on his face and wears jeans that look like JNCOs.JNCOs.
13. Everyone (Final Fantasy XIII)
Hyperactive teenager? Check. Shitty comic relief character who’s constantly cracking unfunny jokes? Check. A main character so emo that she makes Barrett look like Squall? Check. Even if you can get past these crappy Final Fantasy staples, you’ve got to deal with Hope and Snow — two of the most insufferable characters in Final Fantasy history. Hope is a whiner. Snow will not shut the fuck up about being a hero. Together they form the greatest coalition of crap that ever crapped. If you can successfully navigate through Final Fantasy XIIIwithout grinding your teeth into a paste out of frustration, then you have unparalleled patience.
Or really bad taste in virtual companions.
