I was running out of blog ideas and someone suggested that I list my favorite RPG characters. Now I know I’ve written blogs about my favorite Final Fantasy and Tales characters, but I haven’t listed all of them at once plus characters from other RPGs that I enjoy. So since I liked that reader’s idea, here’s a list of my favorite RPG characters. I tried to keep it limited to random monster encounter turn based battle RPGs, because if I listed characters from action RPGs like Zelda or Ys, my list would be WAY too long! So let’s get started.

Final Fantasy

When I was a kid, I never owned Final Fantasy on the NES. My friend had it and I was perfectly content just going over to his house to play it. We’d take turns playing, someone would hold the controller and the other would look at the maps and monster lists that we either made or ones that came with the game. But when it came time to name the Four Warriors of Light, my friend played a trick on me! He named me after the weakest character in the party: the White Mage. I was kind of annoyed about that (but not much, it’s just a game after all). Why couldn’t he have named one of the stronger characters after me? What’s funny is that now, I can appreciate the White Mage. One of my favorite strategies to do in RPGs is to keep healing my characters to stay at the top of their game. If I were an RPG character, I imagine I’d use a lot of cure type spells on my fellow party members, too. One time I even had a dream that I was a FF White Mage (but I was a male White Mage, most are female in these games). So yeah, now the White Mage is one of my favorite RPG characters. Did you ever notice the Ridge Racer lady’s outfit in R4 looks like the White Mage? Maybe that’s how the cars never get dented, she keeps casting cure on them!

Final Fantasy IV

Even though I played games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the NES, it really wasn’t until FF4 that I TRULY got into RPGs. As opposed to the first NES FF game, as soon as I rented FF4, I knew I had to own it. Surprisingly, my favorite character in FF4 is the most darkest, brooding hero, and usually I don’t like those. But I always thought Kain was cool because he looked neat and had that awesome jump attack. FF4’s Cid is also my favorite Cid character. I don’t know why everyone likes FF7’s Cid. He’s a jerk. And naturally, I like wizard twins Palom and Porom because they’re silly little kids. Heck, Palom and Porom are even cool in After Years all grown up. Who knew Porom had pink hair?

Final Fantasy VI

Not only is FF6 my top favorite RPG of all time, it’s also one of my top favorite overall games of all time, period. And naturally, my two favorite overall FF heroes and villains are from this game. Terra is my favorite FF character overall. She has a neat story, is fun to have in battle, she has green hair (well, in the game she does), and later on she can even turn into a pink cotton candy monster! And Kefka is the best FF bad guy ever. Don’t even try to argue with me about Sephiroth, you will not win. Nothing can beat a crazy clown who actually ends up making his evil plans work! And who can forget his laugh? Both characters also have awesome theme songs, and I can even play Terra’s theme on piano (it’s not very hard, as it’s all arpeggios). Most of FF6’s side characters are cool, too. I especially like Mog the Moogle, of course.

Final Fantasy VII

I don’t like FF7, but I do have respect for it for trying a lot of new and different things. Most of the characters I don’t care for either, but there are a couple I like. You can probably guess why I like Cait Sith and the red doggy Red XIII. Tifa is the only human character I like in the game, but it’s not why you’d think I’d like her. No, it has nothing to do with her looks. She’s just a nice character and is fun to have in battle.

Final Fantasy IX

FF9 is what 8 and 7 should have been, and it’s the last main FF game I really got into. Of course, little Black Mage Vivi is my favorite, as well as Quina because he/she/it is really weird. And I can’t help but love big, dumb knight Steiner. I should also mention that Chocobos in ANY FF game are cool. I especially liked them in 9 because the Chocobo Hot and Cold treasure hunting game was really fun.

Chrono Trigger

Sorry to focus so much on Final Fantasy in this blog, but I just really like old school Final Fantasy games, and the characters are pretty cool in them. But another one of my favorite SNES RPGs is Chrono Trigger. Nearly all the characters in the game are great, but I especially have a soft spot for Frog and Ayla. Frog because, well, he’s a frog, and I’ll just let you guess why I think Ayla is cool. I liked having them both in my party because they had a combo move called “Slurp Kiss.” Remember how I said I liked using curative moves in battles? Well Slurp Kiss was a combination of both Frog’s and Ayla’s heal moves, and it would cure everyone nearly all the way! And it was pretty silly looking on screen, too. Not to mention silly sounding. I mean, come on, “Slurp Kiss?” When brother Jeff was little, he always wanted me to play “Chwono Twigger.” On the second playthough, he made me name the characters after people we knew. I think he was Chrono, and I was Frog. But when it came time to name the time machine (normally called Epoch), we couldn’t think of anything at first. But then Jeff remembered my friend’s big grey truck, so from then on, the time machine was called Truck. So now every time I get to name a vehicle in a game (that’s not an animal), I name it Truck.

Secret of Mana

I just can’t talk about SNES RPGs without mentioning Secret of Mana. It was such a unique game for the time. I always liked the Sprite. Come to think of it, Secret of Mana is really more of an action RPG, which I was trying to avoid talking about. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. Speaking of action RPGs, my favorite Zelda characters are Princess Zelda (especially in Twilight Princess), and Scrapper the Robot from Skyward Sword. And my favorite Ys characters are the blind woman from Ys Seven, the lady with the harmonica in the first game, and Adol’s friend Dogi.

Tales Series

I always liked the action packed battles in Tales games. My favorite is Legendia, mainly for the music. But the characters are fun, too. My favorite is Grune because she has green hair and green clothes, she’s silly and ditzy, and she’s purdy. Pascal from Tales of Graces f was also funny, and Anise from Tales of the Abyss fought with a giant teddy bear. And Presea from Symphonia was a tank, and had an alternate costume based on Klonoa.

Mario RPGs

You can’t forget about Mario’s RPGs when talking about great characters. With his silly ‘engrish’ antics, everyone seems to love Fawful. He was pretty funny. The Paper Mario games also had some great characters. I liked Goombella from the GameCube game because some of her comments about the enemies were hilarious. It’s too bad that Sticker Star wasn’t as good as other Paper Mario games.

Blue Dragon

I appreciated Blue Dragon for trying to be like a classic RPG, but it was just missing…something. I don’t know what. I did like the little annoying Maru Maru guy in it, as I tend to like little annoying characters.

Dragon Quest

For some reason, I could never get into the Dragon Quest/Warrior games. But the happy Slime enemies are pretty darn cool. In fact, my favorite DQ game is Rocket Slime on the DS. I sure do wish Square would release the 3DS Rocket Slime sequel in the US!

Pokemon

I guess Pokemon’s an RPG, too, so I should talk about its characters. I’m sure I’ve written a blog about my favorite Pokemon critters, which include Snorlax, Wobuffet, Munchlax, Wynaut, Tepig, and Delibird. The Team Rocket guys are pretty cool, too, but that’s really more of a cartoon thing. Are they even on the cartoon anymore? I haven’t watched it in ages!

Conclusions

And those are all my favorite RPG characters I can think of right now. There are other RPGs that I like; it’s just that the characters aren’t quite as memorable. My copy of Ni no Kuni will arrive this week, so maybe they’ll be some characters in there I’ll like, too! I’m getting the special Wizard’s Edition, so expect an unboxing article about it on the GamerDad.com site soon!

In the comments section, let me know what your favorite RPG characters are. And let me know if there are any other RPG characters that you’d think I’d like. What RPG character do you think I’m most like? Let me know! Later! –Cary

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