Quote Originally Posted by Rufalus View Post
Contrary to most people here I think Zenos is the villain we need. If you hate him and want him to die then he's doing his job. Many of the single player FF games used the same kind of arch nemesis, one that is a true black lunatic with no redeeming qualities, killing indiscriminately, allied to nobody, too powerful to defeat in our first encounters with them, gradually amassing power on their journey to reach a zenith of evil power which they achieve in their final form. This is a very FF antagonist. Important to note that his story is in progress so there may be revelations that alter your perception of him a bit.
The issue is that a lot of the criticisms of Zenos I have is not that I hate him and want him to die. It's more that I want him to go away, and am willing to admit that I don't actually care how, as long as he ceases to impinge upon the story. If this is achieved with his death, then fine. If this is achieved by his summoning another version of Bismarck and flying to the moon to tilt against Zodiark for the next twelve thousand years, also fine.

I feel that this means Zenos has failed to be an engaging character, and thus doing the job he was designed to do.

Zenos has simply failed to make me care about what happens to him, as opposed to what happens to his victims. He hasn't sufficiently sold his importance to our story, because he's so self-absorbed that he doesn't see it as "our story", but instead "his story", where this story consists of only the words "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT". Not very compelling reading.

It's possible that this will change in the future, but right now, after an entire expansion dedicated to him (and then some), I still don't care about him. He rates as an annoyance more than a nemesis: someone who should be removed if he causes trouble for us, but otherwise we really don't have a reason to even think about him.

And if he does create more victims in order for us to care about him, well, that kind of runs into the whole issue that we don't care about him, we only care about making him go away.

Obviously, Zenos is not the only instance of this happening, even in just the Final Fantasy series. Of the ones I've played, Zeromus kind of springs to mind.