“It’s true that once the wheels of justice begin to turn, nothing can stop them. Nothing.”
This is our list of the top 25 female characters of all-time.We’re counting down one by one until we reach the best of the best on Sept. 30.
17) Jill Valentine (Resident Evil) – 4 votes/119 points
Chris: Let’s be clear up front: I love this vote as long as we’re talking pre-Resident Evil 5. The series started to make a number of terrible decisions between RE4 and 5, but there may not be a more egregious sin than turning Jill into a bleach-blonde bimbo who’s stuck under Wesker’s mind control because she fell out of a window.
Originally, Jill was one of the early characters who carried the mantle for strong females in video games. She survived everything that was thrown her way in the first Resident Evil games, be it zombie dogs or trap-infested rooms or an omnipresent Nemesis or Carlos’s incessant nagging. She was a badass, no doubt.
I wasn’t real thrilled with RE5, because it undermined a lot of that just to give Chris something to chase. (It also failed to have zombies and started the series’ descent into action over survival horror and had its final boss throw a missile and REFUSED TO SHOOT ANY VILLAIN BEFORE THEY INJECTED THEMSELVES WITH A VIRUS OH MY GOD–)
Sorry. Got distracted there. Look, Jill’s great, and it’s a testament to her history in the series that she overcomes the hand she’s dealt in 5. And she seemed perfectly fine in Revelations, though I never played it. I’m still bummed, though.
Shaun: I struggled with where to vote Jill Valentine. On one hand, she’s one of the most iconic and recognizable female in gaming. On the other, she’s never been particularly well written, her character oscillating between “decent” at best, and “painfully cheesy” at worst.
And yet, she’s faced some of the most horrific monstrosities in history, went toe to toe with Nemesis and won, and continues to willingly enter zombie hell, even getting brainwashed into a super ninja at one point.
Jill has the courage of a thousand zombie-killing suns, and she gets bonus points for being in the last great Resident Evil game (Revelations). Cheers, Jill, and here’s to your next million zombie kills.
Joseph: I don’t like zombies. And I don’t mean conceptually. I think they’re great as an enemy. Like Nazis, it’s easy to get a player behind slaughtering a nation full of the living dead. And if it comes down to it, I will be that player, because I enjoy changing the living dead back to plain dead. Even in reality (not saying it will happen), I think I would hold up well against the flesh-eating legion.
In that respect, I am similar to Jill. Then she has to deal with zombie dogs. Sure, I’m on board. And weird wall-crawling mutants. What? And prehistoric sharks. Well, I can never go near water again. And giant
snakes. Yeah, I’m probably dead now. And giant spiders. Okay, I give up. I’ll eat the barrel of my gun. Plus ravens. IS THERE NO PLACE THAT IS SAFE?
And to top it all off, you also get to fight Wesker. I think you all get my point. There’s the zombie apocalypse, then there’s the zombie/mutant/nightmarish catastrophe Jill has to wade through. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for her. If she survived all that, it’s no wonder she made this list.
Jason: The first Resident Evil game (remade on the Gamecube) might have very well been the first time I made the conscious decision to play a female character in a video game (outside of, say, fighting games). The game literally gives you the option of picking some generic looking cop dude (sorry Chris!) or a bad ass looking lady cop who can pick locks cause reasons. Jill was clearly the better choice.
Since that game, Jill has been about the only redeeming feature for me in the Resident Evil series. Jill doesn’t screw around, and still manages to somehow be cool even when the developers decide to give her a skin-tight suit and make her a mind-controlled ninja. She didn’t let the travesty of RE5 get her down! Oh no, instead she went on to be one of the main characters in RE: Revelations, perhaps one of the best games in the series to date.
Jill is tough, focused and a damn good cop, and totally deserves to be on this list.
Michaela: One of the faces of the Resident Evil franchise, Jill has always been a strong, capable protagonist. She’s survived the zombie apocalypse so many times I bet it doesn’t even phase her anymore. And if she teams up with Leon in a future Resident Evil game, they would be an unstoppable duo that would headshot every single zombie in sight.
TOP 25 FEMALE CHARACTERS
Introduction/Honorable Mention
Objection Network 