Yuffie has also benefited from the best exposure beyond the main game, turning up big in Advent Children, Kingdom Hearts, Crisis Core, and even… ugh, Dirge of Cerberus. She has a much larger following than she used to thanks to Square shining favorably on her and recognizing her cult following, twenty years too late. She wants to steal all your Materia, so she’ll just hang out around until she can. Plus, she has the best motivation of the entire cast.
With all the angsty drama surrounding our team of troublemakers, just a smidgen of that genuine light-hearted appeal makes her the most memorable playable character, like a wayward Dragon Quest character who stumbled upon a Neon Genesis Evangelion plot. I brushed her off during my teen years, more interested in the dark and brooding Vincent, but upon revisiting Final Fantasy VII as an adult, she’s become my favorite of Cloud’s crew. In fact, she even messes up your carefully constructed Materia placement at the end of her secret mission, meaning that there is actually a reason to hate her because of the confusion she brings to the mechanics.
Her failure to in any way impact the overall plot goes against her for one thing.
One of Final Fantasy VII’s “secret characters,” Yuffie has long been the target of universal ambivalence.
