Is it weird that I like Zenos as a villain?

[MetalSnakeXI1]

I thought that was dumb. Even Captain Madison from Sastasha can trounce the player if they fought him mono e mono. The game from the very start has conditioned us to fight bosses with a party, so having to fight a tough boss one on one establishes nothing.


And it's a stereotypical anime villain setup. "I'm so powerful, I don't have to care." Or "Your 1000 years too early to face me!" No reason for why he's powerful, no backstory for why he's so sadistic, no reason why he's got the loyalty of so many disloyal ashats. I can't even say he's two dimensional. Just another insane person that's been given power in the world because we needed a bad guy to do bad things.
"He's the most diplomatic man I've ever met! Promote him to Ambassador at once!" - Probably Zenos


Lady Iceheart made a better villain because she was three dimensional. She had motivations, beliefs and could be reasoned with. She wasn't all about power or destroying the world. Some may even debate if she was a villain. That's the mark of better writing.

This reasoning doesn't work because with the Sastacha captain....you just can't enter a dungeon under-leveled no matter what and only are allowed to go solo if you're unsynced above the level cap

In all solo instances however,the game always trained you that all enemies are at the same level as you even ones you're scripted to lose against......not Zenos though and it that helped emphasized the power he had over the Warrior of Light at the time and how,in story,the WoL worked his/her way up freeing both Ala Mhigo and Doma and gaining bit by bit enough strength that would culminate in the Battle with shinryu in the Royal Manigerie

[Edax]

This reasoning doesn't work because with the Sastacha captain....you just can't enter a dungeon under-leveled no matter what and only are allowed to go solo if you're unsynced above the level cap

In all solo instances however,the game always trained you that all enemies are at the same level as you even ones you're scripted to lose against......not Zenos though and it that helped emphasized the power he had over the Warrior of Light at the time and how,in story,the WoL worked his/her way up freeing both Ala Mhigo and Doma and gaining bit by bit enough strength that would culminate in the Battle with shinryu in the Royal Manigerie

And yet when you confront a boss, even a story boss, most of the time you assemble a party out of nowhere to fight them. Yet for some reason, you don't get a party when you fight Zenos. There's no distinction why Zenos gets special treatment.
For example, when we fight that Ascian when Minfilia was kidnapped, when did we canonically have time to find a party?


And I as I said, it's the typical shonen anime junk of "Your 1000 years too early to fight me". So what, next expansion we get wowed by a boss that's level 80? Am I really suppose to be so impressed?

[MetalSnakeXI1]

And yet when you confront a boss, even a story boss, most of the time you assemble a party out of nowhere to fight them. Yet for some reason, you don't get a party when you fight Zenos. There's no distinction why Zenos gets special treatment.
For example, when we fight that Asian when Minfilia was kidnapped, when did we canonically have time to find a party?


And I as I said, it's the typical shonen anime junk of "Your 1000 years too early to fight me". So what, next expansion we get wowed by a boss that's level 80? Am I really suppose to be so impressed?

No one said you're supposed to,I'm just giving my own reasons.

I'm not disrespecting your opinion,I just find myself unable to agree with it.

Besides,it would be boring,at least from a story-telling perspective,to have villains that you can beat immediately on your first encounter with them.Cuz that's also a "shonen anime junk" troupe thing to do....

[MicahZerrshia]

I thought he was boring as a villain. Just another spoiled prince, bored with life, yada yada. I would much rather have had Yotsuyu as the main antagonist this expac. She was complex, had an elaborate and interesting backstory, was crazy and hell and just plain evil, yet you sympathized with her due to the cruelty she had to endure and you could understand what drove her to hate everyone around her so much. They could have done so much more with her storyline and character with the complexity they had already given her. The focus on Yotsuyu is what made 4.3 one of the best story patches to date in this game.

There is nothing to sympathize with or special about Zenos and his character is very one dimensional. He is just another yawn-worthy, emo villain with a big sword which is a all too common and much overused character type in the FF series already.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

I thought he was boring as a villain. Just another spoiled prince, bored with life, yada yada. I would much rather have had Yotsuyu as the main antagonist this expac. She was complex, had an elaborate and interesting backstory, was crazy and hell and just plain evil, yet you sympathized with her due to the cruelty she had to endure and you could understand what drove her to hate everyone around her so much. They could have done so much more with her storyline and character with the complexity they had already given her. The focus on Yotsuyu is what made 4.3 one of the best story patches to date in this game.

There is nothing to sympathize with or special about Zenos and his character is very one dimensional. He is just another yawn-worthy, emo villain with a big sword which is a all too common and much overused character type in the FF series already.

Personally, while I agree the Tsukuyomi scenario was great and that Zenos is kind of whatever in motivation, the thing that won Zenos out for me was that he was at least unapologetically evil.

Yotsuyu spends the whole game killing Domans and then the story tries to play the sympathy card by giving her a family so unsubtly evil that

they had her brother kicked her dying body after shooting her repeatedly while calling her a whore. And this is AFTER he triggered her sex slavery PTSD with her similarly evil parents who immediately scream at her that she's worthless and want to sell her back into sexual slavery as soon as they get a moment alone.

It felt a bit hamfisted, especially compared to Fordola's similar background of being isolated and mistreated by her country men.

Zenos is just "I have eye powers. Guess I'll become a dragon." Sure, it's not deep or emotional, but it feels less jarring than a woman who tried to make a son kill his parents for laughs suddenly getting a tragic story.

[SenorPatty]

It's because he's not an Ascian.

Ascian's are oxymorons by their vary nature. They're everywhere and yet they don't have enough presence as villains. They're more cloak-n-dagger than a rogue's guild but once in a while, they popup and you find yourself racing to smash them before they scurry away. In short, they're nuisance akin to bugs in your house.

Zenos is in your face pretty much all time time. He's in your face when you get your butt handed to you the first time. He's in your face when you almost get strong enough to face him the second time and he's in your face when you finally match him. Even in death, he leaves a mark. If you weren't following any of the story before SB, you'd think he was the main villain of all of FF14. He has devoted followers. People talk about him all the time. People have tried and failed to assassinate him. Whether you find him hammy or not, likeable or not, one dimensional or not, Zenos has presence.

Ascians don't.

[Fynlar]

I don't think it's an oddity, loads of people liked him. The oddity was the fact that he was specifically created to be an unrelatable, unlikable asshat character, but yet the steps taken to make him such are what ended up endearing himself to the playerbase anyway.

Personally I just thought of him as a boring invincible Villain Sue.

[Soge01]

Wish they would add Garleans as a playable race.....problem is Garleans can't use magic normally

Yeah, unless this were another RPG game that limited specific job classes to a particular race I could easily see Garlean fitting in as another race or even another clan. But you never know, something could happen in the future of this game that allows us to play as then. I mean, they can already produce magic in a way via their magitek machinations and their magitek armor already puts them at a far superior level in terms of combat capability in comparison to even the Warrior of Light.

I want all of the named Garleans to have their armor available as gearsets.

I totally agree with you 100%; I've personally been craving Nero, Zenos and Livia's gear for so long!

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think it's an oddity, loads of people liked him. The oddity was the fact that he was specifically created to be an unrelatable, unlikable asshat character, but yet the steps taken to make him such are what ended up endearing himself to the playerbase anyway.

Personally I just thought of him as a boring invincible Villain Sue.

I don't think I've met anyone more aware of his own fragility than Zenos. He's hopeful, but very prepared for life to hold no promise for him. In this case, his VillainSue-ness seems to me to stem wholly from his antipathy, which he is wholly conscious of -- though also of his lacking ability or desire to force a change in. (Honestly, for a villain of any sort, or even the tragic hero archetype, he's got the makings of a catch 22 that rarely fails to sell to an audience that's not immediately dismissive (or, one that doesn't hate him just for the tropes introduced with or upon him).)

For that, I can't really brush him off. If you treat him from the start as caricature, he meets expectations, but the same is true if you treat him from the start as a real character.

[Fredco191]

Not at all. I like him as a villain too.