Villains/antagonists or otherwise.
I’ve been watching some Fable 3 lets plays and was reminded of how much I absolutely hated Reaver. You can tell Lionhead was really going for someone that you would “love to hate,” but every scene with him in it is miserable. Absolutely ridiculous that you can’t kill him.
For a character from an actually well written video game, Eric in Tony Hawk’s Underground. Hitting the last line in the game and watching your character punch him out in a cutscene afterwards is extremely cathartic.
It’s been a while, but my impression was that Hop’s entire character design was “what if Hau got really depressed after losing a two or three times?”