Kefka was evil. Plain and simple. His only idea in life was to destroy and ‘create a monument of non-existance.’ No dictator or tyrant in the histoy of the world was ever considered criminaly evil. Nobody; because they all had a cause they were fighting for, and they though it was right. kefka had no cause to do what he did.
Sephiroth was fighting for a cause that he thought was for good. kefka was just killing others because he was insane.
I know that, but how come that seems to be the more generally accepted background over the whole Jenova storyline? So Sephiroth’s background is fleshed out and he’s wimpy, but Kefka’s isn’t and he’s cool? 
I’ve heard people around here say it.
Kefka wasn’t a very convincing character to me. Yeah insane guy who loved evil. There simply wasn’t enough character expasion there, for me, to accept his lack of motif and utter badassedness. There was barely any, and for me, that translated to poor villain. Sure Kefka can hold his own in a battle of FF end bosses (they all seem to be different from one another, which is interesting) but pitted against any of them as a character and he falls flat. It’s like they just made him insane just so they didn’t have to give him more than the 15 minutes he deserved.
The poll was about who was more badass, not who was more evil. I didn’t find Kefka very evil or badass, personally. At least not compared to Sephiroth.
Spoken because Sephiroth is more popular, as I stated before.
Badass and evil are interchangable.
In simple terms, I guess you could say kefka was shallow and Sephi was confused.
That is so not true.
That is so true. In this case, we’re talking about which villain is more bad ass, and everything goes back to what each villain accomplished and suffered through. So nyah.
But it is possible to be badass without being evil, and the other way around. Shadow, Magus and Scias are all badasses but not evil.
I fail to see the comparison. What a vilian does and accomplishes is how they are defined, not by how baddass they are.
It’s just a generic term. “Seph is badass because he did this”. I mean, if you want to get incredibly anal and define it to a T like these people have already, then, great 
The entire flaw in the argument here is that when people think of cool they think of “badass” and when they think of “badass” they could somehow think of it as how evil the person was. I guess.
If people are going to rant about how Sephy was just a pawn who was being controlled by Jenova, then I could say the same about Kefka being a poor character driven insane by Magitek experiments. They were both driven crazy. They both did evil things to gain the same things in the end…becoming a God.
sigh
I’m sorry, but a guy in a clown outfit is not going to be as badass. If Kefka had had a katana in a burning village…well, no, that wouldn’t have worked either.
Seph is cooler. The inconsistencies that led to his demise (his real demise) with Cloud suddenly gaining Herculearn strength, well, that kind of dims his star if you ask me. That, and am I the only who doesn’t find him as cool after you realize that the entire time you’ve been fighting some guy who’s the clone of some naked silver-haired guy who’s frozen in a chunk of…ice or something?
I guess it’s just me.
You could say that about anything. In fact, I could say that you just said that because it’s a popular fallacy to exploit these days, though most people, like yourself, do it wrongly.
The fact of the matter is that I’ve already stated my reasons, and you’re just plain wrong, kiddo. Sorry.
Kefka wasn’t badass because he wasn’t bold. His methods were cowardly. Sephiroth burned and diced up an entire city with his own hands. Kefka merely poisoned a single castle’s water supply, with zero risk to himself. Kefka gave the world a face-lift by moving “magical statues.” Sephiroth wanted to outright destroy the world by summoning a giant plasma-englufed meteor.
It’s not what they did, it’s the way they did it. The way Kefka did things certainly wasn’t nearly as badass as Sephiroth. Kefka was underhanded whereas Sephiroth just said “this is the way things are going to be, and anyone who gets in my way is going to be cut down.” Kefka was typically the one BEING cut down.
It seems to me that moreso than anyone is a slave to popular appeal, you’re a slave to traditional appeal. You esteem Kefka because he’s from an old game, and that’s funny because he wasn’t even a very worthwhile villain. UNLESS, of course, you can back yourself up with true premises, but I’m not holding my breath.
Actually, by that logic, Seph was also a coward. After all, all he did was sit around in his crater sending out clones to do his bidding. And then he created a forcefield over himself so that no-one could attack him. Yeah, that’s real Bold there. Sure everyone knew where he was, but everyone knew where Kefka was too, what’s your point?
Oh? And what about all the times Cloud or his party just went “Screw you” and cut him down? And then that MAKO cannon getting rid of his shield? Gee, that was REAL badass of him.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think he’s infinitely more badass than Kefka. Just that that logic is faulty.
Sorry for flipping sides but that’s exaggerating. I still say he’s not the awesome ultimate warrior that everyone claims he is, but he was still pretty damn powerful and the only pathetic loss he ever took was in the Nibelheim reactor. The only other occasion in which he was defeated was in the Northern Crater, and by then Cloud had grown strong enough to able to take down the human Sephiroth on a one-on-one battle.
Kefka was definitely evil. You can chalk it up to him being bonkers, but by the textbook definition of evil, blowing up half your planet simply because you can is still genocide and he was sane enough to realize what he was doing. No, he is neither cool nor badass but as many people forget these days, it is possible to like a character that does not posses those two characteristics.
I’m not going to argue whether Sephiroth was more or less evil than Kefka, because even though Sephiroth’s body count is exponentially lower that’s only because he was stopped before he could destroy the planet. It’s not clear if he really wants to specifically cause harm though, or if he just removes meddlesome obstructions like the Shinra president out of necessity to complete his higher goal.
Kefka indeed was not cool or badass, he was just purely insane evil. His character was the deepest form of a madman coming to power; he was a complete madman, and he posessed nearly unlimited power. Maybe in the videogame, it just made him seem shallow, un-badass or whatever, but think about what something like that would feel like in the real world. It would be scary as hell if a ‘Kefka’ got his hands on nuclear weapons.
Kefka is evil because he has no impulse control, no morals, and such a fragile sanity that he believes genocide to be a giggle-fest. If I had seen a man destroy a city and be a tragic anti-hero, angsty, on the ashes, I wouldn’t really see evil. If I saw a man destroy half a world, and laugh with perverse glee, on the other hand, that would seem pretty damned evil to me.
I never saw any joy in Sephiroth’s destruction, only anger, or cold logic, and he seemed to believe his higher goal to be the right thing to do. That, in my mind, makes him more misguided than evil. Kefka destroyed most of his world like it was his play time. He didn’t really believe what he was doing was for any good, he did it because destruction was fun for him.
Also, why do villains have to be badass: itsn’t that a good trait, something you like? Isn’t a good villain someone you truly hate?
A very evil and cruel villain that people seem to be forgetting is Sigma. He is pure evil, and programmed as such. He no longer has a shred of good or compassion in his body. He seems to enjoy making people (er… robots) fight and destroy thhose they care for, and the happiest you see him is when he causes the war between the Maverick Hunters and Repliforce, which he ends by seducing Iris and Duo to his side, and showing Zero what he once was.
Not really, he was just controlled by the Maverick Virus to take Zero’s place and then spread the virus around. Sigma hasn’t done a single thing out of free will since he fought Zero in the abandoned factory. In this case, the real bad guy is Willy.
But really, do you want to start discussing characterization of Megaman characters? MMZero is the first saga in the series that shows even a slight bit of work put into the dialogue and everything before it is… meh.
Traits of teh badass:
~Long white hair that defies gravity.
~Angsty eyebrows.
~Big sword that should wobble around cause its too friggin big.
~Black clothing, common in hot-topic trending fashion bugs.
No no, he is a badass… … he is…
I’m sure MMBN and Rockboard would disagree with you.
Rockboard? The one that was never translated? I heard there was a patch but I’ve never tried it. You are saying it’s got good dialogue?
You call the characters in Battle Network developed? I haven’t seen a good scene since “Luke, I am your [STRIKE]father[/STRIKE] brother” in the first game. They even managed to screw up Rock’s death scene at the end of MMBN3.
But I’m being unfair to Legends here, which was pretty nice.