Top Five: Set 1

[kd7sov]

ceitfianna asked about my top five video game characters. So, without further ado...

1. Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda series)

I wanted to do a collage of pictures of several Zeldas, but I don't feel up to looking for images that won't stretch the screen in all directions.

So. Yes. Zelda, Princess of Hyrule. More of a legacy character than an individual, but she's cool. Affiliated with the Triforce of Wisdom, more often than not an orphaned or semi-orphaned only child, and quite capable of taking down baddies (see: Ocarina of Time, Spirit Tracks, and the non-canonical Wand of Gamelon).

2. Felix (Golden Sun series)

Let's be honest, you didn't expect this kind of list without him, did you?

Felix is an interesting case on this list. Everyone else has either a sufficiently unique name or some canonical identifier that makes image searches easier. Felix does not; he's just Felix. Admittedly, one of the suggestions Google made was "Felix golden sun", but that's not a canonical identifier. For some reason, the first eleven results for a plain Felix image search are of Felix the Cat.

Felix is in an interesting position: in the first game, he's a significant antagonist, but in the second he's the main protagonist. Over the course of his journey he has to make world-changing decisions.

3. Rydia (Final Fantasy IV)


Rydia, sometimes called Rydia of Mist, is one of the Final Fantasy series' more interesting characters. For one thing, she's one of only a few who undergo significant changes during the course of a game. She's also the only story-related summoner (as opposed to characters in job-system FFs who happen to have the summoner job at a particular moment) who uses black (attack) magic rather than white (healing) magic. And, of course, there's her triumphal reappearance - believed dead (not that that matters in this game; only one party member ever dies for real), she returns, years older, to utterly demolish Golbez and save Cecil much like he saved her earlier.

4. Professor Herschel Layton (Professor Layton series)


Professor Layton is, you might say, the Indiana Jones of academia. Or perhaps of mysteries. An archaeology professor at Gressenheller University (which we have yet to see, although there's some reason to believe it's in London), Layton's true passion is for puzzles. He cannot see a puzzle without solving it. This causes a certain amount of irritation to police detective Inspector Chelmey, who wants the professor to stick to professing and let him do the detective work. That Layton is better at it than Chelmey is probably also upsetting.

What is really amazing about Professor Layton, particularly as the main character of a video game, is that he's not some kind of warrior or adventurer. He's a scholar, a man of the mind. And his is a particularly active mind - in the end of Diabolical Box, he ends up in a sword duel. While he has apparently studied fencing, over the course of the duel he analyzes his opponent's actions, and by the forty-five second mark is much more confident and skilled than at the beginning.

5. Galuf Halm Baldesion (Final Fantasy V)


Galuf is perhaps the most individually awesome person on this list, so I don't know why he's here in position 5. Ah, well. He's one of the greatest things to come out of old-school Final Fantasy. Yes, there have been other elderly party members, but he's by far the most lively and cheerful. He has amnesia when you meet him, but it turns out that not only is he a king, he's already saved the world once. He doesn't quite do so singlehandedly this time, but what he does is nearly as great:

The Big Bad, Exdeath, has tricked the party members into destroying the seal that kept him from the Crystals of Ultimate Power (or some such). Familiar story, no? So Exdeath unleashes powerful magic on them to keep them down while he retrieves the crystals. Bartz, Lenna, and Faris are completely crushed, out of the picture. Even Galuf's granddaughter, a powerful character in her own right, is brought down by Exdeath. But then Galuf stands up, despite Exdeath's hate-fueled magic, and delivers an epic smackdown. The game switches to a battle screen, with the player controlling Galuf alone against Exdeath. Exdeath's first or second shot probably zeroes Galuf's health, but he doesn't let that stop him. He continues beating on Exdeath for as long as it takes, despite having 0 HP. Once Exdeath is defeated (though, of course, not permanently) he finally dies, but he continues on by giving all his skills, levels, equipment, and so on to his granddaughter Krile.