The time has come to determine once and for all who is the greatest character to ever appear in a Final Fantasy game. First we have nominations. First, let’s lay down some ground rules.
1. ANY named* character that appears in a game with Final Fantasy** in the title is eligible. That means all the numbered entries, Dirge of Cerberus: FFVII, FF Mystic Quest, World of FF, etc. The character doesn’t have to be a playable party member or even have a major role as long as they have a name.
* Since the heroes don’t have canonical names, I’ll make an exception for different classes in Final Fantasy I. If you want to submit White Mage or Fighter as a character, go ahead.
** Final Fantasy Legend I-III are excluded since those games were released as part of the SaGa series in Japan. Final Fantasy Adventure was called Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan so it technically qualifies.
2. The character must originate from the Final Fantasy series or its spinoffs. Guest appearances from other series are not allowed. For instance, Sora appears in World of FF but since he originates from Kingdom Hearts he can’t participate. Similarly, any characters from crossover events in FFXIV are disqualified.
3. State what game the character is from, even if you think it’s obvious. There are a lot of characters named Cid in the series, I don’t want to guess which one you meant.
4. (Optional) Please provide an image with your submissions, preferably official Square Enix art. This is just a convenience for me since I plan to include images once the voting starts.
5. (New rule) Monsters are eligible for the contest. For some reason when coming up with the rules it never occurred to me that some people might nominate some of the more memorable monsters who don’t have official names. I’m going to allow FF monsters on the basis that it’s more fun that way.
Otherwise the usual tournament rules apply. Make sure your character hasn’t already been submitted before posting and upvote characters you want to see compete (that means you should upvote your own posts), and ties will be decided randomly.
Schedule
I plan to make this a 64 character tourney, meaning only the 64 most upvoted characters will be in the bracket. For convenience, each round of voting will be posted on the same day as each Weekly Games Thread, around 8-9 am Pacific. Voting will end around 9pm the following day. Here’s the tentative schedule:
Thursday, Oct 2 – Round 1 Part 1
Monday, Oct 6 – Round 1 Part 2
Thursday, Oct 9 – Top 32
Monday, Oct 13 – Top 16
Thursday, Oct 16 – Top 8
Monday, Oct 20 – Top 4
Thursday, Oct 23 – Finals
Monday, Oct 27 – Results
Header image from here: https://en.as.com/meristation/news/the-15-best-final-fantasy-games-in-the-series-from-worst-to-best-n/