As he stated in the beginning it is his opinion. Though he need to play them all to get the full experience he is not on the wrong path. Just to list five favs with so many characters is hard to do. Age doesn't matter much as long as you take the time to play them all regardless which ones you grew up with. I am only 21 and started with FF I on NES and played them all as they came out. A REAL fan will love them all for each of their unique attributes.

Makeing a list based on category and alignment.

Villains-
5.Exdeath V
4.Cloud of Darkness III
3.Edea VIII
2.Kefka VI- Even ending the world his psychotic nature doesn't compare to #1
1.Hojo- (as stated by lollerskates) Without him most of the trouble wouldn't have happened without him in VII. Even though i didnt put Sephiroth, Hojo is the only reason why he is the badass that he is. Reason why he is my favorite is because of all the f*cked up things he did. Killing Vincent then making him into the monster he is not before impregnating Lucrecia Crescent(Vincents love) with sephiroth (his own son whom he only viewed as a specimen). Making cloud into what he is. Enslaving and experimenting on Nanaki(Red XIII). Kidnapping and enslaving Aerith and her mother for 7 years while killing her father Prof. Gast in the process. So in short, if it was a living being it was considered to be anything he could experiment on for his own sick pleasure in the name of science.

Heroes-
5.Balthier XII, Locke Cole VI and Yuffie Kisaragi VII -Every now and then you have to a theif or a pirate to spice things up. Each one adds comic relief and extra detail to the story.
4.Cid Highwind VII- Only cid in the whole series to ever be put in the lead character role ever(when cloud falls into the life stream).
3.Cecil Harvey IV and Kain IV- They were the beginning of there roles in the series. Lead the way to many other jobs and classes similar in later series. with out these two many of them wouldnt exist.
2.Cloud Strife,Vincent Valentine and Vivi Oruntitia IX- They all deal with their inner demons throughout the whole game trying to overcome what is tearing them apart inside. Because of this its motivates them to push on and prevent others from feeling their pain.
1.Nanaki(Red XIII)- One of the most unique characters every put in the FF series, a young we'll say firecat/wolf, who is the last of his kind. Though they never really publicized him as much as most FF characters (Only because of the lack of fan base) He still is one of the most unique and mysterious FF character ever created.

There is everyone put in order by Favorite and Pretty much favorite category. Like i said there are so many characters its kinda hard to just name five on a list. Reguardless it wont stop some morons from spewing insults at others opinions. Keep it to yourself and post your own list.

Leon is just the name for Squall in KH

Oops forgot about Leon from FF II

The list begins and ends with Shantotto. Total badass.

%$@# this list,:(, seriously, where is shiva, or bahamut, H*** even kefka is better, and it took me over 3 months to get past him

Tidus FF X
Clad FF VII
Squall FF VIII
Edea FF VIII
Firion FF I

Fovorites FF :

+++
1. FF VII
2. FF VI
3. FF I (psx)
4. FF IV
5. FF V
6. FF III
7. FF IX
8. FF IV
---

Oh, but i can't agree that Cloud is a real GREAT character. Cloud is well kind of, depressive, and not nearly at all close to being the greatest final fantasy main character at all, IN MY OPINION. Cloud is kind of to arrogant, hard to get along with, and well, you said he makes the others seem like cry babies, well Vaan in my opinion is not a cry baby, in fact he rarely ever complained. He kind of just rants a little bit about things he did not like, and was very adventurous, like the teenager he is, and Tidus was trying to cope with everything in the world, but at least he had a positive attitude with his party, and tried to make things better one them, unlike cloud who seemed miserable through out the entire game, and didn't work really hard at all give a positive outlook on the party, except for Aeries, and as soon as she died, he became the real cry baby of the final fantasy series. Cloud is cool, and a great character to some extent, but BY FAR NOT a GREAT character, just a decent character.

If your hometown and parents were killed by sephiroth, then killed yourself by him. Then brought back to life the same way that they made sephiroth. Then your best friend dies not to long before the one you love is killed by sephiroth, you would be a sad panda too. Not to mention every person he promised to protect was pretty much killed right in front of him. Despite his depression, its what makes him stronger to overcome the obstacles in his way(kinda like Goku) making a great character story wise.

Actually,

5)Vincent
4)Kefka
3)Terra
2)Kuja
1)Cecil Paladin


I Think Cecil is a great character, a little whiny at the beginning and kind of emo, because of everything he is doing, and how it affects him, such as killing innocent people, and him being destined to be a dark knight, but after he became a Paladin, he began to kick some major fucking ass! ahha:P Cecil is an amazing character.

My top 5:


5) Cloud
4) Vincent
3) Terra
2) Kefka
1) Cecil Paladin

yes sepiroth IS No.1
he ROCK for being an evil guy who never gives up ^^
and i see nothing wroing with this order it's ok..
but even so i think leon should have ben ther from (ff8) he's like No.2 to me :p

Honestly, I've never played more than 30 minutes of the Final Fantasy series. But I can tell some people take these character rankings seriously...

Dude where is leon

wow, seems to me alot of you are stuck up pricks. the dude said it was his opinion so back off already if you dont like it go cry in a corner. although i will agree with him that final fantasy X was a great game and my favorite considering how you learned with tidus as to how the world worked.
as for my list i cant place my favorites although

Rikku is def my favorite just because of her crazy and jumpy personality

Zack Fair is my second. the dude is a one man army he was unstoppable till the end when he was finally brought down by oh 200 soldiers 10 helicopters probably a few tanks, and even then he killed most of them lol

as for the rest to close to call

My top five:
5) Sephiroth
4) Ultimecia
3) Kuja
2) Exdeath
1) Kefka

I prefer the villains over the heroes.

Frankly, Kefka was a great villain, but I don't count him as the greatest simply because Spehiroth did it out of a lost sense of purpose and a twisted view of the universe that Hojo instilled in him by creating him. Kefka was evil, but Sephiroth was twisted.

My other comment on your recent post is I get tired of my fellow Pre-VII-ites failing to admit that Final Fantasy X was a great game, and while I love IV and VI, I don't think they top it and are uber-better then X like most seem to scream to the heavens.

It's whenever lists like these appear that you can see the divides in the Final Fantasy fandom. The original kids, who grew up as the series grew up, stating that VI was the last great game, the second generation who started with VII and maintains that it is the greatest (though they admit the others were still great), and the new kids who think they know it all because they played X, and will never think twice about the older games and their incredible stories because the graphics make their brains hurt. (Y'know, those graphics that were groundbreaking and revolutionary in their time, without which we wouldn't have our precious Final Fantasy X lifelike graphics and our 'White Engine' FFVII Demo and our FFXIII-using-four-of-the-six-internal-processors-of-the-PS3-it's-so-graphically-intense graphics.)

Even though I haven't played VI (and am a HUGE VII fan) I'm shocked that Kefka wasn't mentioned...and equally surprised that you claim no other villain matches Sephiroth's evil. I mean, Sephiroth is pretty dark, but Kefka is TWISTED in ways which Sephiroth could never be. Kefka is the sort of guy who kicks puppies into vats of acid for fun, the sort of guy who would eat a live kitten to prove how evil he was. He has no redeeming factors, unless you count 'is a GREAT bad guy' as a redeeming factor. Sephiroth has a freaking in-game FANCLUB, and is idolized by every young man in his world. He's a freaking war hero. He's not committing evil for evil's sake, he's on a divine mission, given to him by his 'ancestors' to carry out the will of his 'god(dess)' to become a new god. Kefka wanted to become a new god basically because it sounded good. You can almost sympathize with Sephiroth's motives (almost being the operative word), but Kefka is impossible to redeem. It's like comparing Two-Face (Used to be the paradigm of good and hope, fell into madness when great evil befell him) to The Joker (is just plain nuts).

Then there's villains like Kuja in IX, who took Sephiroth's looks and mysterious connection to the main characters and combined it with Kefka's crazy and magic, (Kuja was the *second* FF villain to actually succeed in destroying a world, after Kefka, and he did it while looking FABULOUS. His motivation? 'It wouldn't be fair for the world to exist without me.'), and Seymour in X, who seriously thought the world would be better if everyone was dead, and was just about as creepy to look at as Kefka.

So, I guess my lists break down into heroes and villains.

Top 5 Heroes:

- Zack (The unsung hero of FFVII; without him, Cloud would have been nothing. Literally.)
- Aerith (Her strength came from her unyielding spirit and her ability to profoundly touch everyone she met. Another who smiled at death, who was willing to give all to save all. Again, without her, Cloud would have been nothing.)
- Yuna ('Death smiles at us all. All you can do is smile back.' Yuna is so like Aerith, except that Aerith didn't know she was going to die. Yuna did, and was determined to die fighting to save her home. She accepted her fate with grace, and feared only failing in her task as Summoner.)
- Sephiroth (Once upon a time, Sephiroth was a hero. He somehow managed to overcome everything in his tortured youth and became a fiercely loyal friend to his comrades...so loyal, it was his own downfall.)
- Vivi (Another one for the Yuna and Aerith group, who bravely dedicated his life to his friends even before he knew he could die the next day. Plus, he's a Black Mage, and Black Mages are awesome. Always.)

Top 5 Villains:

- Professor Hojo (Everything bad that ever happens in VII happens because of this man. EVERYTHING. And it wasn't even some sort of 'accidental evil' that he committed, like 'When he went back in time with his time machine, he stepped on a butterfly, and now the fundamentals of history have changed and we're all going to die'. He was pretty actively evil to everyone.)
- Kefka (I've expounded on Kefka's villainous nature enough in this post. You get the picture.)
- Kuja (A master puppeteer villain, who pulled the strings in all the right places, and yet he stayed clearly visible the whole time, unlike Ultimecia, who basially fell out of the sky at the end of Disc 3 of VIII as the 'omg true villain'.)
- Sephiroth (Everything that made him such a great hero made him such a great villain when he fell. Plus, the guy has died three times now and keeps coming back. Just as he said, he would never become a mere memory.)
- Sorceress Edea (I know she wasn't the 'real villain' of VIII, but she might as well have been. I have no reason to hate Ultimecia, because I already hated all the sorceresses she was controlling in my time, and I got over it because /I already defeated them/. Add to it that Edea was the one who ran the orphanage that most of the characters were from and was the one who envisioned the Gardens that trained them into the heroes they became, and her story as caring woman turned evil murdering sorceress just seems /better/ than the others.)

i havnt played any final fantasy games besides X and tactics advanced but my name is Titus so in the 10th one i actually felt like it was me in the game the whole time lol and yah i did fall in love with yuna ;D lol

Jesus you people need to cool your jets.
Crud , it's this persons opinion on his favorite characters.
It's nice to list yours but don't bash someone elses. It's like telling a christian person to stop going to church.

The list is fine because it's your opinion. While I have yet to play any of the games.
-FAIL-
I can't sit through games like these for some reason but the story line interested me, maybe ill try playing them again later....

I got nothing to bash about it. Its a fine list. Give me a break is just another stuck-up person thinking that if you don't agree with him, you must be so horribly wrong that he has to insult you, instead of just doing his list and explaining why he thinks his are the best five.