Best Final Fantasy VII Remake characters

Tifa Lockhart leads the Final Fantasy VII Remake ranking with 1678 ELO points over 88 duels, ahead of Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.

Tifa Lockhart dominates the ranking with a commanding 130 ELO points separating her from Cloud Strife in second place. This gap between the top two positions is the widest in the entire ranking, underlining the community's clear preference for the Seventh Heaven bartender. Cloud Strife himself holds 1548 points after 107 duels, while Sephiroth claims third with 1518 points. Aerith Gainsborough follows in fourth position with 1460 ELO, and Yuffie Kisaragi rounds out the top five at 1345 points after facing the most duels among the podium finishers with 137 matchups. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Palmer languishes at the bottom with 926 ELO points, trailing Weiss and Nero the Sable, suggesting these characters failed to resonate with players in the same way the game's protagonists did.

This ranking draws from 4984 duels contested by 61 players across 25 contenders, updated on 11 October 2026. The scale of participation reflects sustained engagement with the expanded cast introduced in the Remake and its Intergrade episode. Head to VAINKEURZ to cast your own vote and shape the ranking by choosing your favorite character in head-to-head matchups. Every duel shifts the balance, so your preference counts toward deciding who truly stands at the top of Midgar's roster.

Updated on October 11, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →