You're essentially saying that 2 is superior to 3 in large part because 2's plot matches up better to FUTURE Final Fantasy standards, and to me that's incredibly unfair. 3 did not suddenly "get worse" because the series changed directions later on.
Uh, I didn't say that? The direction of future FF games has nothing to do with this. What YOU'RE saying is that because the other NES games have no plot, I shouldn't take FF2 having one into account, and THAT is stupid.
I'm pretty sure the evil emperor ends up as a villain more often than his lieutenant does. Certainly the standing example of the evil empire trope when FF2 came out was Star Wars, and well...
Sure, I should have specified that I meant in Final Fantasy. Kefka, Sephiroth, Edea, Kuja... basically they went on a whole streak of this trope later on.
And complaining that the countries in the game aren't properly developed is... pretty asinine considering this is a NES game. Of course the plot is barely 2 pages of a book, and the characters paper thin. Nobody is arguing that FF2 is better than any of the post-NES games(except X-2), but compared to its contemporaries it's freaking Shakespeare.