Well perhaps I missed Kefka's and Ex-Death's' amazing depth then. What was their motivation? Insane and just plain evil? Astounding.
Of course shallowness is not just in the older games. That's my bad. Ultimecia was a paper thin villain who's best motivation, never directly stated but just inferred from her dialogue throughoug the game, is that she hates SeeDs and persecution of sorceresses.
That could easily describe Shuyin as well.I think characters like Xande, Zeromus, and Seymour are dropped because their stories are very rooted in their own worlds and most don't have the real connection to their games main characters as people would think.