Lady Lilith was good until you beat her. Then her resolve goes out the window, and she asks her better-future equivalent to take her place in the darker timeline, and give those people hope, all the while saying all of a sudden she wants the timelines to be separate rather than have hers dominate the better future. I still love her design, however. Also, she wasn't the villain of the whole of XI, just of one expansion, and even then she was working under Odin, who was for some reason evil incarnate for two expansions.
Though, yes, you did include two other antagonists. One of whom was basically a puppet for the other, and the latter was a puppet for his child-like older brother, who basically wanted to bring back their people at the cost of the five races of Vana'diel.
All three of XIII's villains can be summed up as, "I want you to kill me to trigger my master plan, and the only way to stop me . . . is to kill me." Probably the first time Star Wars copied FF rather than the other way around. <_<
Ardyn started out entertaining, and basically the template for which XIV's best villain would be copied, but the ending gave me too much of a headache to call him good.
Gaius and Zenos were fine for the times we initially had them. One came back a la. "I got better" and, as a result, went from a dead villain to a wanderer bent on vengeance against Ascians that would just be reborn anyway, to helping deal with a Weapons project he disagreed with, to trying to save his children, to trying to help people he'd once subjugated now that one of those children was finally safe and got the closure she needed to recover from her catatonic state.The other should have stayed dead, but here we are, and that alone limits my hope regarding 6.0's main story. Again, they were fine, but not really outstanding.
Thordan was a beard-twirler in charge of a religious order, who showed his true colors once opportunity showed itself. The most depth we see is when we beat him, and he fears our nigh-godlike silhouette standing over his perishing form. So not really a villain so much as a cookie cutter antagonist.
And then we have Emet Selch, the man with too many names. When we first see him as a player, we are introduced to an apparent lunatic. Then we meet him as our respective characters and see his depth, where he and his have been coming from for so long, which was long overdue. What seals the deal is that, unlike most of the villains in the other games on this list, he comes to peace with his loss and gives us a bitter-sweet victory; "Remember us. Remember that we once lived." No bitching about Eorzea needing a good ruler, no screwing over the moe of the month by making her live forever in another timeline, no convoluted scheme behind making you kill him, no nonsense about forgiveness and resting in peace that is immediately thrown out the window. Just, you won, he lost, and his hopes and dreams fade with him.
Sometimes the ending must befit the villain, or a bad conclusion will weigh on them for all eternity.
