Just beat chapter 7. Finally starting to like Hope. Love Snow, Fang and Sazh, Vanille's improving, Lightning's meh.

And to address the Hope debate, what really annoyed me is the fact that it takes 2 hours into the game before Hope gets angry. I may be wrong, but if I saw my mom die, I would probably be either hellbent on revenge from the get-go, or I would let the people responsible go, and mope for a while. It feels as though Hope does the latter at first, and then transitions into the former. It just feels unnatural to me. Also, I feel as though the Sanctum would have been a far more appropriate scapegoat than Snow, or even Anima itself. Hope just picks the easiest target.