Zenos Appreciation Thread [Massive Spoilers]

[Kling-Klang]

So...where is the Zenos mini, yoshi?
edit: I also read on reddit that they mentioned in the LL that we can go back to the garden!

[JMadFour]

.....

Zenos was as generic an anime villain as it gets.

I mean, as a Boss he's fine, especially since he beats you twice. but as a Character...he's just bland and uninteresting. I don't see why everyone seems to be fawning over him.

Fordola, imo, is the best villain character of the expansion so far.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

.....

Zenos was as generic an anime villain as it gets.

I mean, as a Boss he's fine, especially since he beats you twice. but as a Character...he's just bland and uninteresting. I don't see why everyone seems to be fawning over him.

Fordola, imo, is the best villain character of the expansion so far.

He's hot and he's fun. I don't need much to have a good time.

#icanfixhim

[Hallarem]

He had a fitting ending, until he was resurrected to become a bland boring "villain?" that somehow got shoehorned in and jumpsharked into the final fight via some plot contrivances while being kept in the sidelines forever.

I honestly think they didn't know what to do with him, so they just jammed him in somewhere because he HAD to be used at that phase. Great VA though.

Didn't like him at all, in fact hated him, not because he was a good villain to hate, but because they used him wrong and jammed him into places he shouldn't have been apart of, but I get the appeal.

[LyraShu]

Oh? Are we playing Necromancer with this Zenos post???

bet

Love this guy, the ending choice he gave us still makes me thing to this day. I loved it, though I wish they had more of an ending that focused on him and not "oh look he is here now"

[Rueby]

Since this has been necro'd and the name made me giddy with excitement once more. I miss him so much...I think Zenos got the short end of the stick in every expansion. The fact that his side story was locked behind a sold out book that they decided to resell after EW was abit yuck. I think he's really interesting and I sadly got alot of backlash for loving him as a sprout that SB was spoiled for me because people 'hate' him and think he's bland/generic. I'll forever be salty about that.

Smol Rant

"I hate Zenos because he chose the easy way out he absorbed a primal and killed himself" casually dropped in voice chat when I was in early SB. Yep. Don't care about your opinion anymore, don't want to hear it. You ruined it for me. Alot of people were super pushy too when it came to liking him, as if I told them I love Hitler or something and it did go from 'Zenos is a bad char' to 'you're bad for loving such a bland/poorly written char'

That aside, I appreciate him because he's an amalgamation of all my favorite characters, he fits right up in my alley and he kinda dethroned Vergil who was 11 years No.1 favorite character. Maybe I have a thing for samurai mains. Long blonde hair? Zechs Marquise, Alucard (Castlevania). Katana check? Vergil. Appealing voice? Albert Wesker. Abit craycray? Albert Wesker, Adam (NieR), Dio (JJBA). But to me he's better than all that....The thing missing about him is the vampire check, which he compensates for in that speech in Ala Mhigo. I was so taken aback by it lmao. He's perfect and I love him, I also kinda do relate alot to how empty he feels and I love the way he doesn't really give a shit about what people think....but I won't go much into that. I think I learned to stand up more for myself and my opinions rather than succumb to the flow because loving him earned me so much pushback- so yay irl growth.

Potentially divisive opinion/spoilery suff

I was hoping he comes back, but seeing how every character devolves to become a parody of themselves eventually...I think as much as it pains me, I don't trust the writers with him anymore...I coped for 2 years for him, ugly cried over his stupid ass.

I'd still rather have him at my back than the scions, someone reliable, strong and actually doesn't need you to run their errands because they're too pepega to do it themselves....

[Ayalu]

I disliked him personally and would have been content with him staying dead the first time. But he certainly got reactions out of me.
But Character enjoyment is subjective after all.
Some might be more popular than others but most characters have there fans.

[BelladonnaXIV]

A TEST OF YOUR REFLEXES

[All_Nonsense]

Based necro-post. Zenos turned out to be an amazing character in the end, and I loved that he was the only one who truly acknowledged why most of us are even here in the first place:

"But there is more to you than that. You know this to be true. As surely as you know the thrill of pushing your body and soul to their limits. Of confronting ever-mightier foes, dancing ever closer to the precipice, wondering if this will be the one to finally, finally...fill the void. Such pleasures, you seek for their own sake, and no other reason. Is this not so...adventurer?"

And he finally gives us an opportunity to say it at last: "That, I can't deny."

Here's to the only character in the game who truly understood us. Our one true friend.

[Turtledeluxe]

I think Zenos has tropey moments and some tropey dialogue, but I also think he's one of the most consistent and well developed characters in the entire game. The end of EW doesn't just come out of nowhere or feel unearned, it's the culmination of what he has really been saying even since the end of STB. That's a long time to not have the writers totally fumble and ruin the character. So nice job imo.

In relation to DT, Zenos is like the opposite of Zoraal Ja. Instead of being defeated by alienation, it became intrinsic to his own sense of purpose. Zoraal Ja is sort of embarrassingly unaware of what he's even doing, moreso a generic victim, while Zenos was self admittedly a bored psycho. But I think what makes his admission about it so good is that his dialogue and tone also clue us in that he has the intelligence and self awareness to know that he is an atypical personality and perhaps even harbors a tiny doubt about his own projected comfortability with that truth. His "I...." at the end was perfect imo. The whole game he's been an unflinching monster but at the very end we see that he did have some doubt.

One of the best lines of dialogue in XIV honestly. And it's just "I..." lol. Sometimes leaving things ambiguous and unresolved can say more than loaded exposoiton.