I’m probably in the minority again (as usual 😞) but I just didn’t care to see the villain’s story route.
Square Enix probably wondered why anyone would want to play as the villains. But who wouldn’t want to see their story?
But there are two problems with this.
First, villains are boring and predictable. We play as the heroes because they have an arc that allows them to overcome their character flaws. Villains don’t. They embrace their character flaws as a strength, and that becomes their downfall at the end. So every cutscene we learned about the villains in the original game…is it. We’ll learn nothing more, an psychopaths and liars have no inner life.
Second, villains always lose. You can only get so far with a villain in that game. You could write to them to win and face off against Cosmos, but isn’t she just a figurehead of goodness?
In the end, they lose to the heroes. The heroes are on the path of truth, righteousness, and justice.
This might be a moot point, as I hear in Dissidia Final Fantasy NT no story route exists. This is a satisfying compromise.