I'm sticking with Kefka, because he is just a guy you love to hate. He is the most sinister of all the villains. he will play cheap if he gets the chance. All the other villains wanted to wipe out life. He wanted to make everything into a living hell.

While Kefka is good, my vote goes to Kuja. His brilliance was insane, the sheer power of his manipulation was awesome and when it came to the crunch he wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty.
He had the best adapting skills (finding out his origin), he had the coolest lines (read my sig.) and he was (I feel) the best manipulator, taking souls and making them into killing machines...

Dang...

I quite like Seymour as well though. The idea that removing "death" from the world (and becoming it... shh!) was insane and his means were... harsh... to say the least.

the coolest villain is choas FF1 and whats its name from dawn of souls FF2


Mod Edit
Please put more thought into this. You have to give reasons.

Kuja was epic - he truly was. He decimated a planet purely for shits and giggles. His trance shows that he does have emotions and a conscience which to me shows just how brutal he is in the way he conducts himself. When he uses Brahne as his bitch and she fails. He goes in and does it himself - something most villains wouldn't do eg. Vayne.

I'm going to go with Kuja here, as well. Of all the villains in the Final Fantasy series, Kuja definitely went through the most growth. As an antagonist, he was ruthless, and as a character, he was realistic. His actions really succeeded in making you hate his guts. He murdered, cheated, destroyed, and abused until the very end. As I played through those first Discs, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I would enjoy putting a stop to his reign of terror. However, even so, it was plain to see that he was just as human as the protagonists. Despite his malicious intentions, he, too, had thoughts, dreams, motivation, and fears of his own. He developed, in other words. He was a dynamic character if I ever saw one, which is way more than a lot of the FF Villains can say for themselves.

That's pretty much what I like most about Kuja. It's clear that the developers put just as much work into his character as they did into Zidane's. Ordinarily, a villain's character pales in comparison to that of the main protagonist. They're typically treated as nothing more than an obstacle in the hero's path to saving the world/kingdom/galaxy/universe, which I, personally, find quite disappointing. Final Fantasy IX, however, doesn't have that problem. Kuja is regarded with just as much humanity as the other characters, and even serves to personify mankind's fear of death. He develops as well, eventually coming to terms with his own demise when all's said and done. As far as I'm concerned, there's no better villain than one like Kuja. Hating him is not at all difficult, yet his humanity also makes it easy to sympathize with him...if only just a bit.

Oh, and the guy is a freaking badass. When a villain is secure enough with his masculanity to wear a thong in public, in front of his enemies, and in battle with his enemies, you just know he's incredibly tough. Notice how nobody in the game ever says "Lawl, yur weerin a thong." That's because anyone who does gets a Thundaga. Even before going into his Super Trance, Kuja took a Mega Flare from Bahamut and received nothing more than a small cut. Speaking of Super Trance Kuja, that guy is just a juggernaut. He took out an entire planet with that Ultima of his. A planet. Do you know how hard Sephiroth and Kefka had to work to do that? Yeah, Kuja did it in about five minutes.

Sephiroth comes in at second place, but he falls short of Kuja by quite a bit in terms of how much I like him as villain and a character. Though there's certainly nothing wrong with him, he just can't compare to the Ultima-toting powerhouse that is Kuja. As of right now, however, I suppose there's really nothing special about Sephiroth. In my experience with anime and JRPGs, I've seen much better villains (such as Mithos from ToS or Vicious from Cowboy Bebop). So, at the present time, there's not a whole lot he brings to the table. Still, that's to be expected, considering every other video-game designer copied off of Nomura's design once they saw how popular Sephy became.

Still, at the time of his original creation way back in 1997, there really weren't any villains like him in RPGs. Keeping in mind that this was back when RPGs were simpler, Sephiroth did actually raise the bar quite a bit in terms of what was expected from a villain. Before Sephiroth, you see, antagonists along the lines of ExDeath (shadowy figures operating from the background) were commonplace. Sephiroth, however, was different in that he was given a somewhat-realistic motivation for his actions. The player actually got to see him descend into insanity rather than just being told "This is Generic Villain #392. He's psychotic for reasons we don't have time to explain. You have to stop him now. Yeah."

Of course, his character has been completely destroyed in the FF7 Compilation...Remember the original script for Final Fantasy 7? Remember how scared all the little kids were when they saw Sephiroth come on-screen? Well, Square-Enix has effectively ruined whatever impact Sephiroth had with Advent Children and Crisis Core. No longer is Sephiroth a genuinely complex, interesting character. Rather, he is now an overpowered mass of eye candy for the fangirls. It makes me sick to see such a great character go down the tubes like that...Oh well. I'm not trying to defend Post-FF7 Sephiroth. I can still enjoy FF7 Sephiroth, right?

Falling into a very close third is Kefka. He and Sephiroth were so close, in fact, that Kefka gets a mention here, as well. Now Kefka...he was just fun. Square-Enix certainly didn't pull any punches with this guy. He wasn't a super powerful tank of a man, he was just a greedy little coward trying to conive his way into power. Simple but definitely effective. I'm not going to pretend that Kefka wasn't cliche, even at the time of his introduction. Despite what some people say about him, Kefka can, in fact, be summed up in one word: psycho. Of course I realize that he's a villain, but you should NEVER be able to summarize any character in one word.

Even so, Kefka is still a very enjoyable villain. I really had a lot of fun watching him trip up when he fought the party before the World of Ruin. But despite how comical he was Pre-WoR, I couldn't help but despise him come the final confrontation. He was just...evil. While I hate 2-Dimensional villains under most circumstances, I'm willing to make an exception here. Just don't expect me to move him up to first place anytime soon.

So yeah, basically it goes something like...

1. Kuja
2. Sephiroth
3. Kefka
4. Everyone Else

Kefka would definitely be my top choice. He's evil, darkly funny, and you hated him the moment you saw him. If I may quote the FF retrospective from gametrailers, "Kefka was not a supernatural being, or the collected sum of all evil, or a mind-warping god from another planet. He was a man. Albeit a twisted soul, who sought supreme power over all else. He wasn't a puppet to a higher power, or a victim seeking revenge. He was just an awful human being. And a wonderful bad guy."

Kuja has taken Sephiroth's place, hands down. What a perfect DIVA he is! His crimes become greater and greater through out the game, and the more I learn of him as I go on, the more I just wanna KILL him on Disc 4. Have to agree with everything you said about him, Ronin.