Warning: This article contains spoilers for the game Final Fantasy VI.
Itching for the release of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, I predictably found myself reminiscing about all the older Final Fantasy games I’ve played over the years. Interestingly, my thoughts turned to the villains of the game, and I started to wonder who my favourite is.
The general consensus is that Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII is the best, therefore the most adored and revered adversary of the series. However, I’m one of the few whose personal favourite is not the silver-haired creep with the oversized katana; mine is a psychotic effeminate clown of pure evil.
Style
Final Fantasy outfits have never been subtle, but Kefka really raised the bar. With an outfit that would put Joseph’s technicolour dreamcoat to shame and make Vivian Westwood look reserved, his mish-mash of stripes, polka dots, and colours marked him out as a beacon of madness and frivolity among Final Fantasy VI’s rustic pastoral shades and rusty Steampunk browns. Only Lulu’s dress of leather belts in Final Fantasy X coming close to being the piece of avant-garde high fashion that Kefka sports.
When you include his white face-paint and blood-red eye make-up, it’s no surprise that comparisons to a clown are common. But this makes him all the more absurdly brilliant. Why would a clown be hell-bent on destruction, and almost do it too?
Difficulty
Kefka, in my opinion, is one of the hardest Final Fantasy bosses. Not just because of the damage he can do to your party – instant kill, reducing everyone’s HP to 1 etc. – but just the sheer amount of health he has and the number of reincarnations you have to go through to defeat him. The final boss battle – or more precisely, battles – become more of a stamina test that anything else, really testing you mettle as a gamer, and highlighting the need to unlock all characters and grind-up their levels.
Original concept artwork for Kefka Palazzo. Courtesy of Square Enix.
Character
Kefka’s personality is what endears fans to him in their droves. Starting out as just a pawn for the Emperor as he tries to exploit Magicite to create Magitek, Kefka quickly deposes and disposes him, gobbles up all the magic he can, and turns into some omnipotent sorcerer determined to destroy the world.
But that’s not to say that Kefka is without depth and intelligence. His philosophical view is deep, but rather bleak.
“Why create, when it will only be destroyed? Why cling to life, knowing that you have to die?”
But he doesn’t mope around in maudlin wallowing trying to rationalise and ruminate about the futility of life. No, he just says, “f*** it,” and gets on with plunging the earth into oblivion, not before building a monumental tower that fires a giant laser out of the top of it.
He also prances around in an incredibly campy manner (more apparent in his characterisation in Dissidia) that makes Chris Crocker look butch. By all accounts, his effeminate nature and ridiculous outfit should make him a laughing-stock. But with a complete disregard and contempt for all life, and a reckless and dangerous ambition to go with it, he’s becomes a most intimidating foe.
What I love most about him is the air of Victorian melodrama. Kefka has all the best put-downs and one-liners, all delivered with an air of a jilted Oscar Wilde. He is written with a great amount of wit and twisted humour. He’s also one of the most knowing characters of the series. When the game’s protagonists try to decry his world-view with a heap of individual epiphanies, he causally disregards them by saying they all sound, “like pages out of a self-help book”! It’s a perfect antidote to all the over-emotional guff that the genre spawned, and still continues to spawn. He’s a villain with a fantastic sense of scathing panache.
Everything Else
The other thing that people remember fondly about is his trademark laugh. Making fantastic use of the SNES’s 16-bit sound card, his cackle was something strange, creepy, and incredibly endearing, even if retrospectively it sounds a little like Dr. Zoidberg on helium.
Furthermore, what other Final Fantasy villain gets a full three-minute organ solo as part of their boss battle music, and then transforms into a massive fallen angel worthy of the Sistine Chapel?
It also helps that Final Fantasy VI has one of the strongest, richest, and varied storylines of the franchise. He’s placed in a game which has one of the cult gaming moments; Celes at the opera house. Not to mention an insane amount of playable protagonists who are some of the most rounded and varied in the series.
PWNED!
With an overkill of class, one of the most striking outfits seen in Final Fantasy, and requiring an exhausting level of skill to overcome him, if you’ve ever played Final Fantasy VI he will be the character you’re least likely to forget, and the first to come to mind when you think about the game.
But what really marks him out is that there’s not really been a villain with such an amount of flamboyance and crazy since. Seymour in Final Fantasy X came close, but lacked the heartless hedonism that drove Kefka’s character. Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII was far too brooding, and Kuja in Final Fantasy IX a bit too over-dramatic.
Who would win in a fight between Kefka and Sephiroth? Probably Sephiroth. He does have a rather large sword after all. But in a battle of wits, charisma, and psychosis, Kefka is a clear winner. As the most stand-out and unique adversary in the series, Kefka Palazzo is by far my favourite.
