by Alex Fuller

Though some effort has been made to mitgate villains whose names are themselves massive spoilers, as this feature/contest revolves around villains and other antagonists, readers should expect major spoilers for various games throughout.

Following the success of RPGamer's Battle System Royale in 2014, where Grandia II's battle system emerged victorious in a knockout competition against many other RPGs, we at RPGamer thought it was high time to revisit the idea. After some thought, the conclusion was reached that it would be a good idea to let the antagonists and villains duke it out between themselves, hopefully distracting them from whatever nefarious goals they have planned.

Our shortlist of villains has been nominated by the staff (with some weeding out for excessively spoilery entries). We are taking a slightly different structure to try and address issues both in terms of voting balance and the attrition from a long tournament. This time we are starting with twenty-four entries that have been split into four groups of six for the initial Group Stage. From this, eight we will emerge to battle in out in a series of one-on-one duels.

There are no hard and fast rules about what attributes we're looking for to decide our "Best" Villain, as villains generally don't care how they win. It can be most charismatic, memorable, evil, etc. — whatever strikes you as important. This is unashamedly a popularity contest. The only limitation is no Sephiroths*.

All discussions for the contest, including the various votes and matchups, will be held on our dedicated forum, so please join us in debating which villain wins out over them all.

* Not an actual rule, but he received zero nominations from RPGamer staff.