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Since this is the internet, I'll take a moment to say these all express opinions, so when we disagree, fling insults at me like a monkey throwing poo, because that's just how I'll treat it. First, I haven't played all the Final Fantasy games, so here's a list of what I have played, so if I've not played it, it isn't likely that it's on the list.
Final Fantasy I, II, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Dissidia, and Tactics
Naturally, spoilers ahead, as I will be providing explanations. The lower part is riddled with spoilers top to bottom. Do keep in mind this has nothing to do with the gameplay, just the story and personality.
So let us start with the top 10 favorites!
#10: Yuna from Final Fantasy X is at the bottom of this list. She's here for the sheer fact that she was willing to sacrifice her own life for the better of man kind, even though she knows she's not bringing a permanent end to the suffering of the world. I'm not overly fond of Fina Fantasy X as a whole, but I believe in giving credit where it's due, so kudos on to Yuna, though I've not got much to say. However, the fact remains that X could have been a much better game if Yuna was the main character. I heart X-2 ruined ehr entirely, but I never played it.
#9 : Kefka of Final Fantasy VI who also made an appearance in Dissidia. Kefka in Dissidia was extremely average, but from what I have seen from the videos and reviews of VI, he's pretty good in those scenes. I'd like to play VI to get a better grasp on the character, but until then I have to keep him low on the list. From what I am to understand, Kefka was given so much magical power that it shattered his mind entirely, turning him into a maniacal murderer who loves the sounds of screams. To top it all off, he succeeds in the end and manages to destroy everything even if for a short period of time. Unfortunately, I can't place him any higher as I've not actually played the game...Yet.
#8 : A character from Final Fantasy IX, General Beatrix. Throughout the game she's loyal to her queen, even willing to go against her formal ally, Stiener. She does the majority of this out of complete loyalty rather than her will. Beatrix is perfectly committed to her duty, yet she questions her queens actions. This explanation is short and sweet as all I can really say is that I love the internal conflict between personal beliefe and loyalty to the crown.
#7 : Red XIII Otherwise known as Nanaki in the world of Final Fantasy VII. Nanaki is a strange dog-like animal of a mysterious race that presumably consisted of warriors. He's on this list for less of who he is and more of who his parents are. Nanaki had thought his father a coward who ran away when his people needed him, but when the man Nanaki called Grandfather showed hi the truth, the story was touching, at least to me. His father turned out to be a brave warrior who fought to protect the people of Cosmo Canyon single handedly. The only thing Nanaki can think to do is howl and respect his family from that point. I'd really like to replace this spot with Seto himself, but Seto was just a spec of Nanakis history.
#6 : Auron from Final Fantasy X is pretty much a badass. He's one of the extremely few redeeming points of the game. We're talking about a man who watched his two best friends give up their lives for the better of man and then had to try to single handedly crawl out of a city filled with the spirits of the dead and riddled with monsters and refused to die. His body had taken a serious toll from it and left him as a dead soul wandering the plane of the living to make his words and promises to his friends be fulfilled. A true badass indeed.
#5 : The only character from Final Fantasy XII I can appreciate is Balthier. He was a former judge of the Archadian Empire, but watched his father begin to lose his sanity. That coupled with his disagreement with the political choices by the empire, Balthier left and became a sky pirate. At one point he even leaves his best friend with a task while he finds Vaan and helps him despite having no real connection to him. Throughout the game, Balthier is constantly weighing options, being indifferent about some things such as freeing Basch, the supposed King Slayer, but also being skeptical of various things, such as when Ashe asks for his help in using the nethecite. When he is skeptical, he'll still keep his sky pirate behavior in that he will accept payment as well. He's also self sacrificing when it's for the better of the people, effectively risking his life in the crash of an airship where he is assumed dead. It's later revealed a year later that he and Fran survived. At the very end, he gives back the ring that Ashe gave him stating he found his true treasure.
#4 : Zidane from Final Fantasy IX. It was nice to see a main character in the 3d era that wasn't an emo and angsty git with nothing better to do than pester the player with some of the most annoying dialogue ever written. From the get go Zidane clearly has an issue with his memory, knowing there's somewhere he was meant to return to, which we later find out was Terra. However, he wasn't happy when he found out as he was meant to be an angel of death, having been created to destroy the very friends he had made and brought together. His existence is then attempted to be removed and turn his body into a soulless vessel, but when his friends all got together, he managed to pull through in the end with sheer will power.
#3 : Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII. Most people like this guy because of his dark appearance and a lot hate him for said cliche, but he could be a bright colored jazz lover and I'd still love this guy. His pas is riddled with scars that left him to self remorse in a manner most characters don't do. Most self remorse is all about themselves, but Vincent doesn't hate what happened to him, he loathes entirely what he let happen to the woman he loved. As a Turk he was assigned to protect a female of the Shinra research department. Having worked with his father, she drifted away from him, which drove her into the arms of another man. When she became pregnant, they decided to use the child in a human experiment. Protesting to this, Vincent was shot and then his body was experimented on, turning into what he considers his own punishment. I just love a tragic history, and this guy has it.
#2 : Vivi from Final Fantasy IX is always on my lists for good characters of any game. He's a black mage manufactured for nothing more than war and death, and yet he has the soul of a child. This innocent and pure being isn't sure why he was created, fears his early death that seems inevitable, but still lives a happy life even with such a young soul. His emotional troubles are not only justifiable with his age, but he's actually very strong willed. The saddest part of all is that it's assumable, though not cannon, that Vivi is dead by the ending sequence of the game.
#1 : Ramza Beoulve of Final Fantasy Tactics. Not many put this game on any Final Fantasy lists, mostly because they consider it "non-cannon" despite all games being in different worlds entirely. This irritates me when they consider Final Fantasy XII "cannon" since they are in the same universe. I like Ramza because of his entire journey. This is a man who gave up his noble blood to do better for mankind, faced against the church, labeled as a heretic, and forced to face against both of his brothers simply to uphold the honorable name of his family. Speaking of his family, he was huge on family, he didn't want to harm his brothers. Most of what he did he also did for his sisters sake, he loved his family. Imagine killing the two people you love most in the world. His entire path to truth is paved in blood, but he does it to force off an evil force despite being declared to be an enemy of not only the church, but also the two political powers that are waging war. At the end of all of his struggles, he is a forgotten blemish on history. Anyone that declares him to be a good man is burned at the stake despite his deeds of good. To think that he started as a loyal knight for the crown in which he was labeled as an enemy.
Now let's move on to the worst.
#10 : Squall Leonheart. Squall is pretty annoying, mostly because of his angst. There's worse things going on in the world than his life, yet he sits there and wonders why he has to put up with so much crap. Throughout the game he's rather boring in terms of developement. He ahs trust issues that go back to things nobody could help, but in the end, his only character developement was that he could now talk about his feelings with a woman and he falls in love. That's just lazy writing, but at the same time, I'd probably feel the same if i was surrounded by as many annoying as hell people as he is.
#9 : Amarant from IX. He has no real reason to be there despite being a good character to use. His only plot device is nothing but a petty rivalry between a former body guard and a thief. Wouldn't it have been easier to prove his innocence? Nope, he decided to take in the life of a thieving bounty hunter and try to get vengeance for losing his job. There's no real importance to him at all.
#8 : Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII. Let me be clear, I also love this guy. I hate him, and i hate that I love him, but I can't lie, he ahs his good points. What I hate about him is his entire identity crisis. I understand after playing Crisis Core that he was in a comatose mako poisoning state and infused with Zack, Sephiroth, and jenova cells, so his identity crisis was well justified, but I can't help but feel as though Crisis Core was nothing more than an explanation after enough people asked and Square didn't even know for themselves until they decided to produce the game. But, I can get by this, that's ok, I've seen worse. What really irritates me is in the movie, Advent Children, his pesonality is changed from a cocky and determined man with a good heart, to an angsty emo git. If you don't get it by now, i hate when people get angsty while the PLANET AND ENTIRE WORLD is in danger.
#7 : VIIs one and only Tifa. I will admit the largest reason I ate Tifa is the gigantic hype following her as if she's some sort of sexual goddess. But, setting this bais of mine aside, I still don't like Tifa. She's only there to make drama within Clouds messed up love triangle. She's an annoying and clingy woman that wants to stick by Clouds side even when it's inconvenient. She was an ok character to sue in the game, but her backstory was flat and her personality was udnerdeveloped, yet the game gave the player the impression she was of plot importance. Let's face it, she wasn't. Yuffie, the optional side character, had a better back story.
#6 : Another character from VIII I disliked was Selphie. How this girl managed to become an official SeeD is beyond me, she's definitely not mercenary material. Maybe an analyst, sure, I can buy that in such a world, but a full fledged mercenary is pushing it. And then, of course, you get the Ragnarok, and she isntantly knows how to fly thi machine that presumably takes professional flyers a long time of training and educating to fly. But she needed a purpose, right? So she can fly machines with no prior knowledge and calls it easy. VIII was full of lazy writing in my opinion.
#5 : Sephiroth, the antagonist of VII. I know this one will get me some hate, but hear me out. Sephy did absolutely nothing that just anyone could do other than return from death, which isn't that big of a deal in the Final Fantasy franchise. He used the black materia to summon meteor, which I get took a strong will to summon, but anyone with a disgruntled past that saught to damage the world in a significant way could ahve that will. I get that Sephy used to be a hero, I played Crisis Core, I learned a lot of his story, but he's just so plain, and when we do see him as a villain, he wants to merge with the life stream and become the god of the planet. But why? Because his mommy wanted to. Get your own motivation, then try to be the antagonist you glorified mammas boy! Hojo was a better, and arguably the real, villain in this game.
#4 : Pacman sound dude. I mean, Wakka, from X. Setting aside the fact that his weapon in combat was a goddamn ball that others took impact for FUN in a sport, this guy was just annoying. He was pretty strict with his personal beliefe in Yevon and despises an entire race of fellow humans, the Al-Bhed. That's right, he's a racist. I hate racists. He then goes on to instantly trust Tidus to meet Yuna, which seems rather unjistified. It's later revealed that Tidus looks like Wakkas brother, and so he hands him the sword his dead brother used to use. "Oh, I jsut met you, but you look like my brother, so here's his sword, one of my last momentos of him." This guy has some heavy issues.
#3 : Quina in the world of Final Fantasy IX has an extreme lack of character overall. Even Amarant had a certain deree of character developement, but all Quina wanted to do was eat and eat and eat. The only reason it joined the crew was to eat all of the things! Seriously, it was as if they just wanted to bring back the class features in IX since they hadn't in VII and VIII so they slapped together something completely random and called it a blue mage. It should ahve been an optional character, since there was no back story and no real motivation other than eating everything in sight.
#2 : Vaan and Panelo from XII. Ok, why are there two in the same spot? Not only indecision, but the fact that I hate them for the same reason. They are the two starting characters, usually the starting characters have the largest impact on the plot,a s they are important in one way or another. Not tehse two. They follow around the main crew as nothing but the occasional speaking spectater with no relevance and cause some frequent trouble. It would be much easier to leave these 2 out, but this would keep the cast of the game small, so instead, they slap in these two for the sake of numbers even though you kind of forget about them entirely. They're so useless that I don't even have much to say why they are useless.
#1 : Tidus from X. I know he also has a ton of fanboys, which I can't understand. He's a whiney and kind of awkward boy who hates his emotionally abusive father...Or so they say. His father left and never came back, was kind of a jerk, but that doesn't make him emotionally abusive. hell, if that's abusive, I must have been lashed to the bones with my hurt emotions by my step father. But as we progress, more about his father is revealed, and at the very end, we find out his father left and sacrificed his life to help the world enter a temporary period of peace. And what does Tidus do when he meets him? Say he hates him. If that were any real person who hated their father for being a complete jerk, that's the moment you apologize for demonizing them in your head. But he says he hates him. What. The. Fuck. Get over your whiney childish behavior, I'm glad you die. He's worse than the others in that he was an attempt to be a good character, but my god was it done wrong.
____________________________________
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I liked Final Fantasy I, it was good, but there were too many limiations, characters never had a line. I'd like to include the warriors of light on my list, but all we have for them is the plot. It was a good game, but it didn't fit onto this list.
Final Fantasy II was an ok game but it faceda lot of the same issues as I. The characters had more depth, yes, but there wasn't enough to establish a pure connection to the characters. I liked the characters, and in soem cases a fair bit, but it didn't fit into the top 10, sadly.
Cid from VII was pretty awesome, he ahd a nice backstory filled with crushed dreams, but he wasn't an emo bitch about it, he was just a dick. His dialogue was also pretty fun at times. GET THE GUESTS SOEM FUCKING TEA!
And the bligatory honorable mention to all the cahracters from the games I have not played. Maybe someday I can get around to them.
Feel free to comment or make your own list below.
Final Fantasy I, II, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, Dissidia, and Tactics
Naturally, spoilers ahead, as I will be providing explanations. The lower part is riddled with spoilers top to bottom. Do keep in mind this has nothing to do with the gameplay, just the story and personality.
So let us start with the top 10 favorites!
#10: Yuna from Final Fantasy X is at the bottom of this list. She's here for the sheer fact that she was willing to sacrifice her own life for the better of man kind, even though she knows she's not bringing a permanent end to the suffering of the world. I'm not overly fond of Fina Fantasy X as a whole, but I believe in giving credit where it's due, so kudos on to Yuna, though I've not got much to say. However, the fact remains that X could have been a much better game if Yuna was the main character. I heart X-2 ruined ehr entirely, but I never played it.
#9 : Kefka of Final Fantasy VI who also made an appearance in Dissidia. Kefka in Dissidia was extremely average, but from what I have seen from the videos and reviews of VI, he's pretty good in those scenes. I'd like to play VI to get a better grasp on the character, but until then I have to keep him low on the list. From what I am to understand, Kefka was given so much magical power that it shattered his mind entirely, turning him into a maniacal murderer who loves the sounds of screams. To top it all off, he succeeds in the end and manages to destroy everything even if for a short period of time. Unfortunately, I can't place him any higher as I've not actually played the game...Yet.
#8 : A character from Final Fantasy IX, General Beatrix. Throughout the game she's loyal to her queen, even willing to go against her formal ally, Stiener. She does the majority of this out of complete loyalty rather than her will. Beatrix is perfectly committed to her duty, yet she questions her queens actions. This explanation is short and sweet as all I can really say is that I love the internal conflict between personal beliefe and loyalty to the crown.
#7 : Red XIII Otherwise known as Nanaki in the world of Final Fantasy VII. Nanaki is a strange dog-like animal of a mysterious race that presumably consisted of warriors. He's on this list for less of who he is and more of who his parents are. Nanaki had thought his father a coward who ran away when his people needed him, but when the man Nanaki called Grandfather showed hi the truth, the story was touching, at least to me. His father turned out to be a brave warrior who fought to protect the people of Cosmo Canyon single handedly. The only thing Nanaki can think to do is howl and respect his family from that point. I'd really like to replace this spot with Seto himself, but Seto was just a spec of Nanakis history.
#6 : Auron from Final Fantasy X is pretty much a badass. He's one of the extremely few redeeming points of the game. We're talking about a man who watched his two best friends give up their lives for the better of man and then had to try to single handedly crawl out of a city filled with the spirits of the dead and riddled with monsters and refused to die. His body had taken a serious toll from it and left him as a dead soul wandering the plane of the living to make his words and promises to his friends be fulfilled. A true badass indeed.
#5 : The only character from Final Fantasy XII I can appreciate is Balthier. He was a former judge of the Archadian Empire, but watched his father begin to lose his sanity. That coupled with his disagreement with the political choices by the empire, Balthier left and became a sky pirate. At one point he even leaves his best friend with a task while he finds Vaan and helps him despite having no real connection to him. Throughout the game, Balthier is constantly weighing options, being indifferent about some things such as freeing Basch, the supposed King Slayer, but also being skeptical of various things, such as when Ashe asks for his help in using the nethecite. When he is skeptical, he'll still keep his sky pirate behavior in that he will accept payment as well. He's also self sacrificing when it's for the better of the people, effectively risking his life in the crash of an airship where he is assumed dead. It's later revealed a year later that he and Fran survived. At the very end, he gives back the ring that Ashe gave him stating he found his true treasure.
#4 : Zidane from Final Fantasy IX. It was nice to see a main character in the 3d era that wasn't an emo and angsty git with nothing better to do than pester the player with some of the most annoying dialogue ever written. From the get go Zidane clearly has an issue with his memory, knowing there's somewhere he was meant to return to, which we later find out was Terra. However, he wasn't happy when he found out as he was meant to be an angel of death, having been created to destroy the very friends he had made and brought together. His existence is then attempted to be removed and turn his body into a soulless vessel, but when his friends all got together, he managed to pull through in the end with sheer will power.
#3 : Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII. Most people like this guy because of his dark appearance and a lot hate him for said cliche, but he could be a bright colored jazz lover and I'd still love this guy. His pas is riddled with scars that left him to self remorse in a manner most characters don't do. Most self remorse is all about themselves, but Vincent doesn't hate what happened to him, he loathes entirely what he let happen to the woman he loved. As a Turk he was assigned to protect a female of the Shinra research department. Having worked with his father, she drifted away from him, which drove her into the arms of another man. When she became pregnant, they decided to use the child in a human experiment. Protesting to this, Vincent was shot and then his body was experimented on, turning into what he considers his own punishment. I just love a tragic history, and this guy has it.
#2 : Vivi from Final Fantasy IX is always on my lists for good characters of any game. He's a black mage manufactured for nothing more than war and death, and yet he has the soul of a child. This innocent and pure being isn't sure why he was created, fears his early death that seems inevitable, but still lives a happy life even with such a young soul. His emotional troubles are not only justifiable with his age, but he's actually very strong willed. The saddest part of all is that it's assumable, though not cannon, that Vivi is dead by the ending sequence of the game.
#1 : Ramza Beoulve of Final Fantasy Tactics. Not many put this game on any Final Fantasy lists, mostly because they consider it "non-cannon" despite all games being in different worlds entirely. This irritates me when they consider Final Fantasy XII "cannon" since they are in the same universe. I like Ramza because of his entire journey. This is a man who gave up his noble blood to do better for mankind, faced against the church, labeled as a heretic, and forced to face against both of his brothers simply to uphold the honorable name of his family. Speaking of his family, he was huge on family, he didn't want to harm his brothers. Most of what he did he also did for his sisters sake, he loved his family. Imagine killing the two people you love most in the world. His entire path to truth is paved in blood, but he does it to force off an evil force despite being declared to be an enemy of not only the church, but also the two political powers that are waging war. At the end of all of his struggles, he is a forgotten blemish on history. Anyone that declares him to be a good man is burned at the stake despite his deeds of good. To think that he started as a loyal knight for the crown in which he was labeled as an enemy.
Now let's move on to the worst.
#10 : Squall Leonheart. Squall is pretty annoying, mostly because of his angst. There's worse things going on in the world than his life, yet he sits there and wonders why he has to put up with so much crap. Throughout the game he's rather boring in terms of developement. He ahs trust issues that go back to things nobody could help, but in the end, his only character developement was that he could now talk about his feelings with a woman and he falls in love. That's just lazy writing, but at the same time, I'd probably feel the same if i was surrounded by as many annoying as hell people as he is.
#9 : Amarant from IX. He has no real reason to be there despite being a good character to use. His only plot device is nothing but a petty rivalry between a former body guard and a thief. Wouldn't it have been easier to prove his innocence? Nope, he decided to take in the life of a thieving bounty hunter and try to get vengeance for losing his job. There's no real importance to him at all.
#8 : Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII. Let me be clear, I also love this guy. I hate him, and i hate that I love him, but I can't lie, he ahs his good points. What I hate about him is his entire identity crisis. I understand after playing Crisis Core that he was in a comatose mako poisoning state and infused with Zack, Sephiroth, and jenova cells, so his identity crisis was well justified, but I can't help but feel as though Crisis Core was nothing more than an explanation after enough people asked and Square didn't even know for themselves until they decided to produce the game. But, I can get by this, that's ok, I've seen worse. What really irritates me is in the movie, Advent Children, his pesonality is changed from a cocky and determined man with a good heart, to an angsty emo git. If you don't get it by now, i hate when people get angsty while the PLANET AND ENTIRE WORLD is in danger.
#7 : VIIs one and only Tifa. I will admit the largest reason I ate Tifa is the gigantic hype following her as if she's some sort of sexual goddess. But, setting this bais of mine aside, I still don't like Tifa. She's only there to make drama within Clouds messed up love triangle. She's an annoying and clingy woman that wants to stick by Clouds side even when it's inconvenient. She was an ok character to sue in the game, but her backstory was flat and her personality was udnerdeveloped, yet the game gave the player the impression she was of plot importance. Let's face it, she wasn't. Yuffie, the optional side character, had a better back story.
#6 : Another character from VIII I disliked was Selphie. How this girl managed to become an official SeeD is beyond me, she's definitely not mercenary material. Maybe an analyst, sure, I can buy that in such a world, but a full fledged mercenary is pushing it. And then, of course, you get the Ragnarok, and she isntantly knows how to fly thi machine that presumably takes professional flyers a long time of training and educating to fly. But she needed a purpose, right? So she can fly machines with no prior knowledge and calls it easy. VIII was full of lazy writing in my opinion.
#5 : Sephiroth, the antagonist of VII. I know this one will get me some hate, but hear me out. Sephy did absolutely nothing that just anyone could do other than return from death, which isn't that big of a deal in the Final Fantasy franchise. He used the black materia to summon meteor, which I get took a strong will to summon, but anyone with a disgruntled past that saught to damage the world in a significant way could ahve that will. I get that Sephy used to be a hero, I played Crisis Core, I learned a lot of his story, but he's just so plain, and when we do see him as a villain, he wants to merge with the life stream and become the god of the planet. But why? Because his mommy wanted to. Get your own motivation, then try to be the antagonist you glorified mammas boy! Hojo was a better, and arguably the real, villain in this game.
#4 : Pacman sound dude. I mean, Wakka, from X. Setting aside the fact that his weapon in combat was a goddamn ball that others took impact for FUN in a sport, this guy was just annoying. He was pretty strict with his personal beliefe in Yevon and despises an entire race of fellow humans, the Al-Bhed. That's right, he's a racist. I hate racists. He then goes on to instantly trust Tidus to meet Yuna, which seems rather unjistified. It's later revealed that Tidus looks like Wakkas brother, and so he hands him the sword his dead brother used to use. "Oh, I jsut met you, but you look like my brother, so here's his sword, one of my last momentos of him." This guy has some heavy issues.
#3 : Quina in the world of Final Fantasy IX has an extreme lack of character overall. Even Amarant had a certain deree of character developement, but all Quina wanted to do was eat and eat and eat. The only reason it joined the crew was to eat all of the things! Seriously, it was as if they just wanted to bring back the class features in IX since they hadn't in VII and VIII so they slapped together something completely random and called it a blue mage. It should ahve been an optional character, since there was no back story and no real motivation other than eating everything in sight.
#2 : Vaan and Panelo from XII. Ok, why are there two in the same spot? Not only indecision, but the fact that I hate them for the same reason. They are the two starting characters, usually the starting characters have the largest impact on the plot,a s they are important in one way or another. Not tehse two. They follow around the main crew as nothing but the occasional speaking spectater with no relevance and cause some frequent trouble. It would be much easier to leave these 2 out, but this would keep the cast of the game small, so instead, they slap in these two for the sake of numbers even though you kind of forget about them entirely. They're so useless that I don't even have much to say why they are useless.
#1 : Tidus from X. I know he also has a ton of fanboys, which I can't understand. He's a whiney and kind of awkward boy who hates his emotionally abusive father...Or so they say. His father left and never came back, was kind of a jerk, but that doesn't make him emotionally abusive. hell, if that's abusive, I must have been lashed to the bones with my hurt emotions by my step father. But as we progress, more about his father is revealed, and at the very end, we find out his father left and sacrificed his life to help the world enter a temporary period of peace. And what does Tidus do when he meets him? Say he hates him. If that were any real person who hated their father for being a complete jerk, that's the moment you apologize for demonizing them in your head. But he says he hates him. What. The. Fuck. Get over your whiney childish behavior, I'm glad you die. He's worse than the others in that he was an attempt to be a good character, but my god was it done wrong.
____________________________________
HONORABLE MENTIONS
I liked Final Fantasy I, it was good, but there were too many limiations, characters never had a line. I'd like to include the warriors of light on my list, but all we have for them is the plot. It was a good game, but it didn't fit onto this list.
Final Fantasy II was an ok game but it faceda lot of the same issues as I. The characters had more depth, yes, but there wasn't enough to establish a pure connection to the characters. I liked the characters, and in soem cases a fair bit, but it didn't fit into the top 10, sadly.
Cid from VII was pretty awesome, he ahd a nice backstory filled with crushed dreams, but he wasn't an emo bitch about it, he was just a dick. His dialogue was also pretty fun at times. GET THE GUESTS SOEM FUCKING TEA!
And the bligatory honorable mention to all the cahracters from the games I have not played. Maybe someday I can get around to them.
Feel free to comment or make your own list below.