At first I was skeptical about Sazh because I thought it was going to be another cliche caricature of the "token black guy" just inserted into an FF game to try and appeal to more audiences.

Needless to say, I was absolutely wrong on this, and I'm quite pleasantly surprised. He doesn't really look 40, but I really do enjoy his character a lot. They really worked a miracle with this character, and I think it was executed beautifully.

Slightly off-topic, but I enjoy almost all of FF XIII's cast. I was also extremely impressed with the voice acting work done for this game. I think they did a really great job, with the exceptions of all the "uh/ugh"s and excessive light laughter [I'm looking at Vanille here]. FF XIII is truly a great work of art in terms of the voice acting, the graphics, the cast, and their character designs. Best I've seen from SE in these categories for quite a long time. This is something like what Star Ocean 4 SHOULD have been.