What are some unintentionally unlikeable game characters?

[Hikari.EXE]

you're welcome.
there are only so many ways to tell a story; everyone is bound to repeat some stuff. no one minds knowing where the destination is if the journey there is fun and interesting.

Agreed! ??

 

[MasterEn]

Maybe she was intended to be unlikable but she's so popular I can't tell. I always found Yuffie to be obnoxious.
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there's no real telling. this game was started over three times for 3 different systems. snes, n64 and psx. she's also seemingly completely optional. not entirely sure if you can skip her, but i think that you can. she also doesn't appear in any of the cg portions for the ending; same with vincent.
i hate her with a burning passion because i kept screwing up her recruitment [pretty sure i spent nearly an hour doing this] and i'm pretty sure she took all of my materia. wasn't keeping track of that, but after 15 tries i think it was; i despise her.

 

[miguk]

Another question: Was XC2 your first game of the series? I'm gonna be honest, all of this sounds like it stems from frustation of playing the second game first.

I also used to freely hate XC2 when the game came out, saying it wasn't a true sequel to the first game, so imagine my shock when I find out that the 3rd game was gonna need knowledge on both games, so I swalloed my pride and played it... I didn't hate it, but it didn't live up to my expectations of the first game either. The second game is in a weird spot where I like many of it's aspects, but also deeply hate many, MANY of it's flaws, the story only got mildly interesting in chapter fucking 6, many of the characters suck until the cavern of backstory where everyone tells their sad story, and I fucking hated Rex from start to almost-end, it was after the simulation part where Rex was living his "ideal life" and he reconizing it was all fake that made me feel something for the kid... But other than that, nah fuck the kid (hot take: I do find him way better in the 3rd game, at least he tries to connect with his children).

All in all, I only played the second game due to the third game coming out, had more fun than I expected, and I only persevered throught it due to having knowledge of the first game expecting a pay off at the end... It kinda did? I don't know, the development of this game was convoluted as fuck, it was a launch title for the switch so the big N pressured Monolith to release the game early, dosn't exlcude the bad story I know, but at least there's a reason why everything felt off. Hope I gave some reason why I still like this game besides it all.

My first game in the series was Xenogears. I skipped Xenosaga, as I wasn't a PS2 owner until late and didn't have it in the budget. I played XC1 on the Wii before the Switch even existed.

My frustration, if anything, is from playing previous games and enjoying them, only to realize that the series hit bottom in XC2 and might not get back to the quality that it used to have. So far, I haven't been fully convinced that it is back.

And as I said in another thread, XC2 has some good things about it. The main plot is good if you ignore the awful characterization of the party. The music is good as usual. And the gameplay is okay if you can figure out what they fail to explain. None of that makes up for the beyond-the-pale characterization IMO.

Nothing made me feel sorry for Rex. Even when he saw what Heaven really is, I had to hold back a chuckle because finally he got some comeuppance for his behavior. That's how bad his characterization failed: that a moment when you're supposed to feel heartbroken for him felt like sweet justice. Had they tried to make him a less one-track minded person, and had they tried to make him more respectful to the ladies, then I might have felt differently.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't buy a new copy of the game, as Monolith and "family friendly" Nintendo don't earn my money for it. Every game in the series had a rushed and convoluted development process resulting in massive changes pre-launch, usually resulting in dungeons or extra discs being cut. This is the only one that didn't cut anything but the likeably of its characters.

 

[MasterEn]

I thought we were talking generally about characters who are commonly deemed unlikeable even though it wasn't the intention, not necessarily characters we find unlikeable/dislike personally?
I dunno, I might've misinterpreted it, though.

no, i'm pretty sure that you understood the title of the thread: "what are some unintentionally unlikeable characters?"
unintentional means - by accident
unlikeable is self explanatory.
you explained the character in your post very well. a guy who helps out but feels overshadowed by the main character who is seemingly capable of doing everything. that's not really an unintentionally unlikable character, as long as you are paying attention. some people don't do that. others may just go with what they hear others say. presentation and interaction with the character is important too. if you don't have a good first impression of a character, you most likely won't go out of your way to learn more about them. i'd guess that is why some people don't like Junpei.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

no, i'm pretty sure that you understood the title of the thread: "what are some unintentionally unlikeable characters?"
unintentional means - by accident
unlikeable is self explanatory.
you explained the character in your post very well. a guy who helps out but feels overshadowed by the main character who is seemingly capable of doing everything. that's not really an unintentionally unlikable character, as long as you are paying attention. some people don't do that. others may just go with what they hear others say. presentation and interaction with the character is important too. if you don't have a good first impression of a character, you most likely won't go out of your way to learn more about them. i'd guess that is why some people don't like Junpei.

To me the spirit of the question is a character that is dislked despite the developers intending for you to like them. The topic creator mentioned Scrappy Doo and Poochie the dog. I haven't played Persona, but it seems like they intended for that character to be somewhat unlikable.

 

[MasterEn]

To me the spirit of the question is a character that is dislked despite the developers intending for you to like them. The topic creator mentioned Scrappy Doo and Poochie the dog. I haven't played Persona, but it seems like they intended for that character to be somewhat unlikable.

yeah, but after a while, all of the easy to remember characters will have been mentioned and the pool of viable characters will run dry. this is page 5 and we already had a character that is more ambiguous and complex. there probably is a lot less of these than we think.

 

[Hikari.EXE]

My first game in the series was Xenogears. I skipped Xenosaga, as I wasn't a PS2 owner until late and didn't have it in the budget. I played XC1 on the Wii before the Switch even existed.

My frustration, if anything, is from playing previous games and enjoying them, only to realize that the series hit bottom in XC2 and might not get back to the quality that it used to have. So far, I haven't been fully convinced that it is back.

And as I said in another thread, XC2 has some good things about it. The main plot is good if you ignore the awful characterization of the party. The music is good as usual. And the gameplay is okay if you can figure out what they fail to explain. None of that makes up for the beyond-the-pale characterization IMO.

Nothing made me feel sorry for Rex. Even when he saw what Heaven really is, I had to hold back a chuckle because finally he got some comeuppance for his behavior. That's how bad his characterization failed: that a moment when you're supposed to feel heartbroken for him felt like sweet justice. Had they tried to make him a less one-track minded person, and had they tried to make him more respectful to the ladies, then I might have felt differently.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't buy a new copy of the game, as Monolith and "family friendly" Nintendo don't earn my money for it. Every game in the series had a rushed and convoluted development process resulting in massive changes pre-launch, usually resulting in dungeons or extra discs being cut. This is the only one that didn't cut anything but the likeably of its characters.

I mostly agree with what you said except two points: I still think that they can make good games from the series, and your hatred of Rex.
I dislike him a lot, but not outright hate him, he's a well intentioned naive dreamer due to being sheltered by his "gramps" so all he knows abour life is work and day dreaming, never really had any contact with anyone until being forced to become the Aigies Driver, a fact that everyone calls him out for since he's incredibly inept for the job. I do think that his character development would be better if at the end he did lose both Pyra and Mythra, so then he has to think and realize that he was way over his head with his whole naive outlook in life and that he lost the two most important people in his life due to his hubris and lack of commitment, but alas we live in a world where he did end up with everything he wanted and more, so yay (?)

 

[Tonberry]

In case I misunderstood the topic, here are some others. Boy, FFXIV is full of them.

Lyse.
Obnoxious, flanderized red herring character with a really unfulfilling twist. Doesn't earn her position in the slightest. She's a dimwitted bimbo fighter for 100+ hours you know her (which is fun because she's fun at that part), she has no place being a politician, let a lone running a governing body.
Which leads me to.

Wuk Lamat.
In many ways she's Lyse on steroids. Dumb as a rock, kind to a fault, and generally a good person. However, unlike Lyse, we don't spend 100+ hours getting to know her. She spearheads the main story while having a really basic "genki action girl" archetype which is really uninteresting. She earns basically ZERO of her accolades, and the few she does earn, she does so OFF-SCREEN. I don't mind my character taking the backseat in the main story, in fact I welcome it, but I don't want have to follow a shitty character around instead. For the community, her poor writing is seemingly what broke the camel's back,, but there's one I dislike infinitely more, which is...

Zero.
This stupid, uninteresting, boring bitch shows up, makes the entire story about her, then fucks off a year later. The living definition of a Poochie walking on Eorzean soil.
She's the "let's teach a robot feelings" archetype, but unlike good ones, like Tin-Man or Aigis (who learned that they had emotions all along), she's nothing but a shitty plot hole, contradicting the logic she explains makes her and her world at every turn. She reeks so much of writer's pet that I genuinely can't stand it. She made me quit playing several times because the story was so utterly dogshit around her. She's easily the worst character in the entirety of Final Fantasy XIV, and one of the worst characters in Final Fantasy, period.
Endwalker sucked, and the post-launch patches promised adventure. Instead I got stuck feeding overly dumplings to a LITERAL personality black hole (she literally moves through black holes), while having the entire already flanderized cast talk about how quirky and cool she is, while she learns how to help you take out the trash without requiring payment for it.

I haven't played Persona, but it seems like they intended for that character to be somewhat unlikable.

I don't think so, personally. He just has certain traits that aren't innately positive, but I think that every good character should, because it makes them feel more real. His positive traits shine through way more, and it's kind of a theme with the "best bro" character, where they've dumbed them down more every game. In P5, the entire cast shits on Ryuji relentlessly, but his only sin is being nice and kind of stupid, which doesn't feel like comic relief, it feels like they're bullying him, but he just toughs it out. Fans love Ryuji though, it's just the characters in-game who shit on him a tad too much.
In a way I kind of think it's one of those instances where nerds dislike a character because they're either not funny enough or hot enough or badass enough, so they have an easier time finding them "bad", because compared to their peers they have more of an "everyman" vibe.

Sorry for the long reply, I'm tired so it's hard to explain, and probably not that interesting.

 

[miguk]

yeah, but after a while, all of the easy to remember characters will have been mentioned and the pool of viable characters will run dry. this is page 5 and we already had a character that is more ambiguous and complex. there probably is a lot less of these than we think.

That's likely to be the case. There are plenty of badly written characters out there in bad games, but we aren't all playing the latest Cheetahmen game,❉ and we likely forget those games on purpose. Thus, what we have left are the good games, but the good games have a limited amount of bad characters due to them being good. So at some point we'll just be listing bad games with bad characters if we list anything at all.

❉ It's a joke; don't get excited or ask me what the release date is.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Since we are on the Final Fantasy track.

Zack Fair

Anime Hero Himbo ala Goku. Writer's favorite character syndrome. His role was expanded in Remake/Rebirth to the detriment of the original story of FF7.

Laguna Loire

Another Nomura special doofus himbo character. Constantly interrupts you from following the more interesting main storyline. The payoff to his storyline is a complete wet fart.

 

[Tonberry]

Zack Fair

Anime Hero Himbo ala Goku. Writer's favorite character syndrome. His role was expanded in Remake/Rebirth to the detriment of the original story of FF7.

That's really interesting. I thought Zack was incredible in Crisis Core. He went through hell and came out the hero he wanted to be in the end.
Crisis Core has really corny ideas about "muh honor" but I thought his personal developmental arc was excellent all the way through.

As we all know by this point, I haven't played the Remakes yet, so I can't speak for those parts, but I'm sort of prepared to believe you based on Yuffie (and Sephiroth).

 

[MasterEn]

Since we are on the Final Fantasy track.

Zack Fair

Anime Hero Himbo ala Goku. Writer's favorite character syndrome. His role was expanded in Remake/Rebirth to the detriment of the original story of FF7.

Laguna Loire

Another Nomura special doofus himbo character. Constantly interrupts you from following the more interesting main storyline. The payoff to his storyline is a complete wet fart.

i like zack, but that's probably because i played ff7 first and i was fairly disappointed by most of the characters and the story. zack was better than cloud.
ff8 had half of its content cut out. there's no telling how his story would have concluded it the game was fully finished.
his story does just end. no argument there. he even has a line implying that he would divulge more of his backstory to squall later on. game ends before that ever happens.
his theme is pretty awesome though. the only music track that i got from the game to add to my music collection.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

That's really interesting. I thought Zack was incredible in Crisis Core. He went through hell and came out the hero he wanted to be in the end.
Crisis Core has really corny ideas about "muh honor" but I thought his personal developmental arc was excellent all the way through.

As we all know by this point, I haven't played the Remakes yet, so I can't speak for those parts, but I'm sort of prepared to believe you based on Yuffie (and Sephiroth).

That's entirely possible. I haven't played Crisis Core. But in Remake/Rebirth he comes in and completely overshadows Cloud when he isn't supposed to. FF7 is not the Zack story.

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his theme is pretty awesome though. the only music track that i got from the game to add to my music collection.

That's about the only thing I like about Laguna.

 

[MasterEn]

That's entirely possible. I haven't played Crisis Core. But in Remake/Rebirth he comes in and completely overshadows Cloud when he isn't supposed to. FF7 is not the Zack story.

he's technically not supposed to be there. the remake has it's own story reinterpreting the old story. and i remember reading that sepheroth is more or less going through the multiverse or alternate timelines to find one where he wins. might be wrong on that, but i don't like any part of ff7 besides crisis core; so i didn't pay too much attention.

 

[Jeanfranc]

Laguna Loire

Another Nomura special doofus himbo character. Constantly interrupts you from following the more interesting main storyline. The payoff to his storyline is a complete wet fart.

Interesting, Laguna is usually considered the best and only good part of VIII.
Obviously I disagree, because every part of that game is great.

Post automatically merged: Feb 20, 2025

he's technically not supposed to be there. the remake has it's own story reinterpreting the old story. and i remember reading that sepheroth is more or less going through the multiverse or alternate timelines to find one where he wins. might be wrong on that, but i don't like any part of ff7 besides crisis core; so i didn't pay too much attention.

The Compilation of FFVII was a mistake

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Interesting, Laguna is usually considered the best and only good part of VIII.
Obviously I disagree, because every part of that game is great.

Really? By whom? Never heard that opinion before. Even diehard FF8 fans usually feel kind of meh about Laguna.

 

[MasterEn]

Interesting, Laguna is usually considered the best and only good part of VIII.
Obviously I disagree, because every part of that game is great.

Post automatically merged: Feb 20, 2025

The Compilation of FFVII was a mistake

i was reading some comments on a video going over some stuff for final fantasy x-3, and apparently one of the original developers had a no sequels rule in place from 1 through 10 until his involvement in the games dropped a bit.. starting to seem like he had a very good point on that.

Post automatically merged: Feb 20, 2025

Really? By whom? Never heard that opinion before. Even diehard FF8 fans usually feel kind of meh about Laguna.

laguna's theme and quistis would be the only reasons that i would ever attempt to play ff8 ever again.

 

[miguk]

I mostly agree with what you said except two points: I still think that they can make good games from the series, and your hatred of Rex.
I dislike him a lot, but not outright hate him, he's a well intentioned naive dreamer due to being sheltered by his "gramps" so all he knows abour life is work and day dreaming, never really had any contact with anyone until being forced to become the Aigies Driver, a fact that everyone calls him out for since he's incredibly inept for the job. I do think that his character development would be better if at the end he did lose both Pyra and Mythra, so then he has to think and realize that he was way over his head with his whole naive outlook in life and that he lost the two most important people in his life due to his hubris and lack of commitment, but alas we live in a world where he did end up with everything he wanted and more, so yay (?)

So if we were going to strip Monolithsoft and Nintendo of their copyrights and remake the game without any control from either of them (keeping pants zipped on that one), there's a few things that would have to be changed:

• As you said, Pyra/Mythra would have to abandon Rex so he could come to a personal realization of his failures. I'd add Nia as well, who deserves better than being handwaved constantly. Rex really needed to just stop and think through his actions and try to be a better "boyfriend" to all 3 of his "girlfriends". He also needs to learn to stand up to bad influences, too, particuarly from his own party. This probably should happen earlier rather than later to correct other issues that pop up quickly.
• Nia needs to be less tsundere and more confident in herself. She should be able to get by without needing Rex to validate her. Rex should actually do something to earn her love, not bumble into getting a 3rd wife at that last moment.
• Tora could go a few ways. Ideally, he should have been building Poppy for non-sexual reasons. They could easily have made him a middle-aged man like Riki, but one who lost his wife and daughter and just wanted a family again. But if we have to keep him as is, then he should have been put in his place immediately. Rex and Pyra shouldn't have silently side-eyed each other, but called him out for being a pervert. They could even have taken Poppy from him and had her team up with a better driver that isn't looking for a loophole in statutory laws.
• Poppy is fine as is if they detach her from default Tora. She's actually very well developed when he's not around.
• Azurda is easy to fix: just don't make him a woman-hating Boomer stereotype. You literally need to remove a few lines to make him not hateable. Either that, or have Rex stand up to him instead of just going along with it so that Rex can develop into a better person. And let him die in the end; it's a plot hole that he's the only Titan who can defy God's plan by surviving the ending.
• Zeke is similar to Azurda. Removing his classist rant wouldn't be too hard. Having someone tell him he's full of ƒ¡‡ instead of letting him rant also wouldn't be too hard.
• Morag would require a rewrite of her whole nation. Even then, much of that would involve replacing some textures, giving her and her army new uniforms, and creating some form of modern non-"monarchical" government structure in her nation (which can be done through NPC dialogue).
• Deleting Newt from the game is a must; she is simply not reformable. She doesn't have any bearing on the story, so she can be replaced with another new character.
• Floren can either be deleted/replaced or reformed. It wouldn't take much work to make the people of Alrest not be horrified by a gender non-binary person.
• On that note, the whole gatcha needs to be redone entirely. It's a terrible gameplay mechanic that could have been done better. Ditto Ursula, whose gameplay uses the gatcha in an aggrivating way.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

laguna's theme and quistis would be the only reasons that i would ever attempt to play ff8 ever again.

Triple Triad is the best part about FF8. That and the GF summons.

 

[Jeanfranc]

Triple Triad is the best part about FF8. That and the GF summons.

VIII is a mess, a beautiful mess...
It's probably my favorite in the series

 

[MasterEn]

Triple Triad is the best part about FF8. That and the GF summons.

i didn't know that the card game was in there until i saw matt and woolie playing ff8 on the two best friends play channel. they got so into it that it was the only reason that they beat the game. they were wanting a chance to challenge ultimecia to a card game.
i don't remember anything about the gf summoning thing. i do remember reading a fan comic where the final fantasy characters were at a christmas party and rinoa had a misunderstanding with squall; he was talking about the guardian forces and rinoa thought he was talking about other women and ran off crying and calling him a jerk.

 

[miguk]

Triple Triad is the best part about FF8. That and the GF summons.

The summons are overly long and lose their luster over time. Square got really into stereotypical PS1 RPG territory with this game.

However, Triple Triad is itself a great game. They should have released a stand-alone version, as most of the replayability of FFVIII comes from playing TT. Or maybe a sequel where the world is at peace and everyone is just playing TT all the time.

 

[moonbits]

Alloy from Horizon Zero Dawn was rather cringey and annoying.

 

[medisinn]

Ava from Borderlands, they tried to do the "I made bad decisions, choices but now I am a better person" type of character but she does some many bad choices like being responsible for a character death, that at the end nobody liked her.
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I'm glad someone mentioned Ava. In a terrible story, she might be the worst part. I'm never a fan of annoying child/teeanger characters, but they often have at least some sort of character development, and Ava doesn't. She gets a fan favorite character killed, learns nothing, and somehow seemingly becomes the leader of the good guys or at least the central character of the story going forward by the end of Borderlands 3. So she does nothing helpful, but basically fails upward constantly. Supposedly there was cut content that would flesh out her character more, but we can only judge off of what was available. I'm unfortunately a glutton for punishment and will probably end up buying Borderlands 4 when it comes out, I can only hope that they minimize, retcon, or just flat out remove her character.

I disliked Tellah from FF4 even playing it as a kid. He's old and crotchety but meant to be sympathetic since he's suffered the loss of someone close to him. He's a hothead the whole time and ignores the advice of basically every other character to not be a vengeful idiot. Only when he leaves the party does he seem to be regretful, so he doesn't really have much of a character arc. It's supposed to be a sad parting, but I was glad to be rid of his old ass. Who forgets a spell like Meteor anyway? What a dingus.

 

[Nidoking's iconNidoking]

Both of them. Now I need to say I LOVE Final Fantasy X, it's one of my favorite games... but these two really tested my patience. Yuna got way better in the sequel, and I can't say I mind Tidus as much as some people seem to, but... yeah, given they're both the main characters and there's nothing indicating they're meant to be unlikable... they immediately came to mind.

You're meant to sympathize with his tormented past. You're meant to think he's a total badass. He's suppose to be a power fantasy for the player (and was literally that for the creator)... but I absolutely detest just about everything about him until the reboot.

Most of his plight is entirely his fault, he takes his anger out on countless innocent people and even several gods who did NOTHING wrong to him whatsoever. The thing that really clinched it, though? In God of War 3 there's a lever that needs to be held up, so he grabs Poseidon's princess and forces her to hold it, despite it taking HIM effort to move. Naturally, it absolutely OBLITERATES her. He literally did not have to do it that way, and she did absolutely nothing wrong. He did that entirely to spite Poseidon, which is worse given all Poseidon EVER did to him was defend Olympus. Fuck Kratos.