Over the years, Final Fantasy has give🌄n us a cast of characters that rivals The Simpsons. The cherished memories made with the likes of Aeris, Cecil, and Terra are all intertwined with the nightmares we’ve fa🐻ced with Sephiroth, Ozma, and beasts like Yiazmat. And while some of the friends and foes we come across can end up practically being forces of nature (in the case of Terra, literally) in battle, some of them just don’t live up to their legends. In one way or another, they end up disappoౠinting us and we either destroy them in a blaze of anticlimactic wonder or they wipe our team because they sucked so much.

Final Fantasy has always been a game about discovering new and interesting people, places, and monsters to battle,𝐆 so when you end up meeting some new adv♚ersary or new ally, finding out they’re not what they claim to be is an exercise in frustration. Especially in the case of the enemies on this list, the lore surrounding some of them builds them up as so powerful that it seems impossible that your ragtag group of heroes could ever hope to defeat them. It makes for a perfect underdog moment when you emerge victoriously and vanquish the evil back to whence it came.

Today, I’m here to talk about twenty different times the Final Fantasy❀ series let us down with executions that just couldn’t mana𓂃ge to live up to their amazing character design. Since this list ends up running the gamut of FF games from the beginning to now, there are going to be some spoilers, so please read on forewarned.

20 Fran - Final Fantasy XII

It’s realꦅly disappointing I had to put her on this list♋. Honestly, I loved her in Final Fantasy XII because she was the only female characters in the game I could stomach. Then again, the other two choices I had were Penelo and Ashe, so mayb𝓡e that’s not the proper🌞 way to sing her praises.

Fran is this awes𒁃ome Viera sharpshooter, with an archery skill second-to-none and they only person capable of matching wits with her partner, Balthier. The problem is when it💦 comes to combat, her raw stats just can’t compete with her other teammates, and she ends up getting trounced far too easily when trying to go up against the tougher bosses in the game.

But hey, when you kicked her off your main team,🌺 at least you got toꦿ see her walk away...

19 Edge - Final Fantasy IV

Quic🍎k FYI:🦄 Edge’s real name is Edward Geraldine. Yeesh. I’d go by Edge, too.

Edge is a really so🎃lid all-around character when you first get him in Final Fantasy IV. He’s got ninja magicks that can take out an entire group of enemies when all you can do with Rydia iღs annoy a group of baddies a little. His Throw ability is also incredibly powerful, but it's reliant on items that you need to either find or buy. Of course, the best ones can only be found, which means they’re in very limited supply.

As the game goes on —and your other players get more powerful— Edge jusꦅt ends up taking a sideline. Things like Kain, Cecil’s Excalibur, or Rydia's insane summons can unleash end-game.

18 Cyan - Final Fantasy VI

He’s everyone’s favorite lone samurai named after a color. He was there when Sabin performed a . He witnessed Kefka poison his wife, child, and the entire city of Doma. He’s a technophobe and a man who has seen far too much death and terror for one man, so he has taken it upon himself to help Terra, Locke, Sabin, and th🦩e others to end Kefka’s mad reign once and for all.

Unfortunately, if we left the world-saving up to Cyan, Kefka would die of old age before Cyan could do any damage. His SwordT💜ech moves are amazing, but in combat, he’s so slow that it’s impossible to get more than one or two attacks before Terra or Sabin rip the enemy apart.

17 Asura - Final Fantasy IV

Eidolons are the p🔴owerful summons that aid you in Final Fantasy IV. As you play the game, you find out that they have t๊heir own world below ours, deep within the earth’s crust, below even the domain of the dwarves. Ruling over them are the incredi✱bly powerful King Leviathan and Queen Asura. Leviathan is a giant sea monster who can summon tsunamis at a whim. As for Asura, she’s modeled after several Hindu goddesses, most notably Kali.

Where Kali would absolutely trash her enemies, Asura is a bit more of a helper. Unfortunately, her summoned aܫbility is less help and more hindrance. When summoned, she casts one of three random spells: Curaga (on the whole party), Raise, or Protect (on the whole party). It’s completely situational, and something that you could have Rosa do without having to worry about which spell she’s going to cast.

16 Typhon - Final Fantasy VII

This summon from FFVII was named after an endgame boss in Final Fantasy VI (afte﷽r the world goes all wonky). He’s essentially a giant evil ghost thing with two faces, which I guess makes him tꦉhe Final Fantasy equivalent to CatDog?

Regardless, when he’s summoned, he deals three different types of elemental damage and flips gravity for some reason. It’s a great attack in concept, but the three elements are fire, lightning, and ice, the most common elements in the game. Therefore, it’s quite possible that the enemies attacked have a resistไance to them, making the move much less effective. I mean, he flipped gravity. Can’t the attack just be that and we watch them fall into outer space?

Ah well. I guess when you’re a big pink Slimer lookalike with a face where your but♊t hole should be, you take what you can ༒get.

15 Seifer - Final Fantasy VIII

Seifer🌳 is a constant nuisance and semi-antagonist to Squall throughout most of the Final Fantasy VIII and then ends up being a real heel at the end of Disc three. In the game, Seifer is an incredible swordsman and fighter, becoming second-in-command to an immensely powerful sorceress. But he’s a pushover in combat, only doing low-level magic attacks and slicing haphazardly with his gunblade, which he can’t even use corr🌼ectly.

The thing is, when it comes to looks and design, he’s one of my favorite characters in the game. But he just cannot get his act together. If he was a bit more of a playable character, he’d probably be amazing. But that would mea𝕴n he’d get along with Squall, and I don’t think the world is ready for two brooding protagonists in one game.

14 Sazh - Final Fantasy XIII

Again, here’s another really awesomely designed character with two guns, an awesome outfit, and a frickin’ baby Chocobo living in his afro. It’s the cutest thing in Final Fantasy since the invention of the Moogle, and unfortunately, it’s on ꦚa character that’s going to need all that cute.

While I’ll leave his personal issues aside, Sazh is, unfortunately, an underpowered fighter with very weak stats, even for a support character. And if Gestalt mode wasn’t bad enough, his Eidolon ends up transforming into a race car for no apparent reason. It’s completely pointless, especially since his element is fire and he’s friends with a tiny little bird already. Why couldn’t his Gestalt transformation be into a majestic Pho💜enix he rides into battle? That’s even more in line with his role in combat - have it cast protective spells and💞 raise dead allies. It makes more sense than peeling out into a Behemoth.

13 Gerogero - Final Fantasy VIII... And Others

Gerogero is an enemy that’s representative of an ongoing controversy in Final Fantasy. He’s an undead monstrosity, so in the world of Final Fantasy, that means he can be killed with restorative magic and items. Which means that the very simple, very inexpensive items that you use to keep yourself alive, like the almighty Phoenix Down, can kill them in one shot. I picked him because he’s an enemy that occurs relatively early in the game’s storyline, and if you don’t cheese him out in one shot, he’s actuꦦally pretty tough to take down.

Also, I have no idea how something so disgusting and grotesque ends up being able to perfectly imitate the president of a country, and why the Sorceress chose him 🍬instead of, you know, doing a casting call for a normal person. Wouldn’t that be a lot easier to do?

12 Kimahri - Final Fantasy X

Kimahri, or as I like to call him, Big Catty Kain, is what happens when Red XIII’s race stands up and dyes its fur blue. His abilities in game focus on jump attacks and stealing, which is always a good time. But as is the fate of a lot of good thief-like characters, he just ends up trading far too much to be able to run off with hauls💛 of ill-gotten loot. His attack power suffers, and his magic is far too weak to be viable in the end game.

It’s a shame, too. I’d love to be able to run around with a giant fuzzy cat boy at my side, doing whatever I tell him to do. Oh,🍷 the possibilities...

I’m gonna stop here before this turns 🅷into a sl🎐ashfic that I’m one-thousand-percent sure has been written hundreds of times before.

11 Gilgamesh - Final Fantasy VIII

Gilgamesh✨ is from the Babylon🌳ian myths section of my D&D manual and has been a recurring character since FF♓V. He comes along in VIII as a replacement to a Guardian Force (GF) that you grow to love, taking everything that made it wonderful and turꦺns it to trash.

So let me backtrack. The GF is called Odin, named after the Norse god of having 𒁏one eye. You can’🐽t summon him in battle, but it doesn’t matter because Odin summons himself. When he does, he kills whatever you’re fighting before you can even get a hit in. You win without doing anything.

RIGHT?!? How awesome is that?

Well, you get Gilgamesh when he KILLS ODIN and takes his pla🍰ce. But when he comes around, instead of killing everything at once, he chooses between an array of attacks. One kills everything, and three do not.

HOW IS THIS AN IMPROVEMENT?