Luca Blight
Luca Blight is a main antagonist of the
Playstation role-playing game Suikoden II. In contrast to the ambiguous nature of its other enemies, the aptly-named Blight is unredeemably vile.
Born to King Agares and Sarah Blight of the Kingdom of Highland, brother to Princess Julia, Prince Luca's early life of luxury was shattered when the caravan he and his parents were travelling in was ambushed by
bandits. Luca and his mother were captured while Agares fled. Luca was forced to watch as the bandits
raped his mother, until the intervention of the Highland General, Han Cunningham. Since then, Luca harbored a great hadred towards the City State of Jowston, after learning that it was them who hired the bandits, and towards his father for fleeing and leaving him and Sarah behind.
26 and an unparallered swordsman at the time of the game's events, Luca Blight is a man consumed. He kills in great quantities, making and breaking promises of reprieve without a second thought. His bloodlust has earned him a reputation as the Mad Prince, which is a misnomer as he's fully coherent and grounded in reality - although a reality where he is the only being with any value. In this defence, he's not particularily interested in torture.
Becoming the head of the Highland Military, Luca starts a
war with the neighboring states. After capturing Jowston's capital, Muse, Luca has the Beast Rune - one of the
27 True Runes that inhabit the world - feed on the souls of the people of Muse, allowing the Beast Rune to awaken.
After this, Luca and
Jowy Atreides (at that point known as Jowy Blight) poison and murder King Agares, making Luca himself King. His position is short-lived as his night raid on the alliance against Highland runs into a massive ambush of hundreds of soldiers. Archers pepper him with arrows while he charges the finest allied fighters, who keep him at bay until the leader of the force duels with and slays him.
However, his position was short lived as he was ambushed by the main characters army after attempting a night raid on the Dunan Unification Army and was killed in battle. Jowy and his strategist
Leon Silverberg play a role in this as well, as Luca's death serves everyone's purposes.
Luca Blight is considered one of the more popular and charismatic villains in the Suikoden series. This is due to the story that was created around him. Compared to other RPG bad guys, Luca's life was believable to players and even generated sympathy as they explored his tragic life. The primary reason for his popularity can debatably be attributed to his very "human" power. In a genre of gaming that plays on elements of the magical and mythical almost exorbitantly, Luca Blight, the single most powerful warrior of all time (according to Suikoden maker) in the Suikoden world used no magic at all. Indeed, he used only a sword, and an item that allows the sword to be imbued by fire, but nothing else. His strength was purely and simply his own.
In the game he has extremely memorable moments, for example burning down a town full of people, trapping survivors with promises of freedom should they degrade themselves, for instance he forces a woman to crawl around in the dirt acting like a pig after which he butchers her anyway.
Another reason that Luca was so popular was that he was a genuinely powerful boss. Unlike some other bosses in other RPG's, Luca was very powerful, indeed, before his death, he takes on three teams of six characters, then is pierced by multiple arrows from your army, and at last has a duel with the main character. Only then, does he collapse, but not before stating that he is the true face of evil itself.
Luca Blight's defeat
