80. Setzer Buries His Grief (VI)
'It was a year later when I found the wreck of the Falcon in a distant valley...'
The next Final Fantasy VI character in line for their 'crowning moment of awesome' (as TV Tropes would describe it) is Setzer Gabbiani, the gambler and airship pilot who hides grief behind a veil of cockiness. He first appears around a third of the way through the game when he attempts to kidnap a beautiful opera singer named Maria, though he is instead tricked into offering the player's party his flying services and gradually becomes their ally in their fight against the Empire. Like Edgar and Sabin's, Setzer's backstory is told via flashback. Involved with a girl named Darill both romantically and in the development of airships, he was forced to locate her remains after she was involved in a crash, entombing her and her ship yet never truly getting over her loss. Most of this isn't revealed until World of Ruin, where Celes can find Setzer can find Setzer wasting away in a bar having lost all sense of purpose in life. He is initially unwilling to join her fight once again, but is eventually persuaded to do the right thing and manages to finally put his grief to rest in the process by locating Darill's tomb and fixing her long-lost airship for use in the party's quest (his own having been destroyed by the actions of Kefka).
79. Seymour's Monologue (X)
'Death is a sweet slumber. All the pain of life is gently swept away. Don't you see, if all life were to end in Spira, all suffering would end. Don't you see? Do you not agree?'
Few knew what to make of Seymour when they first witnessed him during their initial Final Fantasy X playthroughs. How were they meant to take a guy with ridiculous blue hair seriously, particularly after he was outed as an antagonist? Thankfully, Seymour's cold-hearted villainy was one of the greatest things about the game, and he has several standout moments as a character. Initially presenting himself as an ally of the heroes and fighting alongside them during Operation Mi'ihen, it is discovered that Seymour murdered his father to inherit his position as one of Spira's religious leaders. This is something that the party confronts him about; resulting in a battle that seemingly kills him. He returns as an unsent and reveals his nihilistic intention to become one with Sin and destroy the world, releasing everybody within it from the sorrow and suffering of life. In Bond villain fashion, he reveals this to the party during a lengthy and awe-inspiring monologue, in which he kills his supposed ally (and onetime friend of Auron) Kinoc in order to prove his point about the futility of life. Seymour racks up a larger body count as time goes on, but this speech is by far his most infamous moment.
78. Temple Run (VII)
'There's plenty of stuffed toys like my body around, but there's only one me! Don't forget me, even if another Cait Sith comes along. Goodbye, then! I guess I'm off to save the Planet...'
Cait Sith (a robotic cat riding atop of a giant stuffed moogle toy) is something of an oddity compared to the other characters of Final Fantasy VII (excluding Red XII). First appearing as a fortune teller in an amusement park, he forces his way into the ranks of the player's party and is soon discovered to be under the control of Reeve, an executive from the Shinra Company who is using the position to track the party's movements for the corporation. Reluctantly taking the daughter of party member Barret hostage to maintain his place in the party's ranks, he joins them on their travels to a location known as the Temple of the Ancients, where an artefact known as the Black Materia, which Sephiroth seeks to use to call forth the destructive Meteor, is located. It transpires that the Temple itself is the Black Materia and has to be shrunk into an orb from within, crushing the individual that carries out the process. Cait Sith, whose controller has begun to question the direction that Shinra has taken, opts to volunteer, earning Reeve (who turns on his fellow Shinra executives and starts to spy on them instead) the trust of the party. Cait Sith's 'death' is immediately followed by the arrival of a duplicate (cleverly desensitising players and making a later death all the more shocking), but his redemptive move allows the party to pre-empt Sephiroth and get their hands on the Black Materia, briefly giving them an advantage over the superhuman being until Cloud (with whom he shares a mnetal connection) is coaxed into giving him the artefact.
77. Cutting Through The Templars (T)
'Then it's true! You are not my father'
After the death of Isilud Tengille during the Horror of Riovanes, the blame for his demise (as well as the other atrocious happenings that occurred during the event) is falsely placed on the shoulders of Ramza, who is one of the few people aware of the truth that the Knight's Templar led by Isilud's father Folmarv were the actual perpetrators. Someone who is not aware of the truth is Meliadoul Tengille, Isilud's sister who has no reason to suspect that her father killed her brother, not knowing of his plot to bring about the return of Ultima. As a result of this, she tracks down and attacks Ramza, refusing to listen to the truth on several occasions until she hears it from the mouth of a Lucavi that Ramza engages following his defeat of its human form. Following this, she joins Ramza's battling party, though given her inferiority to the mighty Count Orlandeau (who joins the good fight earlier) many players opt never to use her. She is a compulsory inclusion in one of the game's final battles, however, where her efforts help to bring Folmarv and his subordinates Loffrey and Cletienne to their knees. The game's final series of battles (where Meliadoul is an optional inclusion in proceedings) follows, where Ramza and company systematically take down the Templar's leadership one and a time, defeating Loffrey, Cletienne and another individual named Barich before coming face to face with the Lucavi form of Folmarv, who players can opt to have Meliadoul perform the final blow on. For storyline reasons, said blow doesn't quite finish him off, but there's certainly some poetic justice in allowing Meliadoul to avenge her brother's loss and contribute to the saving of the world at the same time.
76. Mix And Match (D)
'Cosmos, the goddess of harmony. Chaos, the god of discord. Reigning from distant realms, the two gods had gathered warriors from all lands to lead them in savage war'
As the Final Fantasy series began to rapidly approach its twentieth anniversary in the mid-noughties, plans were put in place for the release of an array of titles to celebrate it. All of these were enhanced remakes of earlier games in the franchise with the exception of one Dissidia, a hybrid of the action and fighting genres with RPG elements. Featuring a hero and a villain from the first ten entries of the series (as well as a sole hero from XI and a sole villain from XII), the game offered players the opportunity to make fantasy matchups between their favourite characters, allowing for the creation of bouts such as Kefka vs. Sephiroth to supplement the battle royale (off-topic, a survival-horror-action game based on the Japanese movie of the same name would be nothing short of excellent) seen in the game's opening cinematic, which sees Cecil and Cloud teaming up against Garland, Terra duelling Ultimecia with magic and Zidane squaring off against Kefka. Ultimately, the game was a little underwhelming, but its premise was nothing short of spectacular. A sequel, Dissidia 012, added more characters to proceedings (such as Laguna, Yuna, Lightning, Gilgamesh and Kain, but sadly not the likes of Ramza, Locke, Celes and Seifer), though it offered little to distinguish it from its predecessor. Should Square Enix opt to create a fighting game again (perhaps for the series thirtieth anniversary in 2017), then perhaps something in the style of Soul Calibur featuring around fifty to seventy characters (the standard for a title like Tekken or Street Fighter these days) wouldn't be a bad idea.