Quote Originally Posted by VeloZer0 View Post
With that said, many (including myself), feel that the plot was written to serve the character development
Seems to be, although it's not quite forward enough about it. FFVI does something similar but is vastly more successful, and Kefka is probably the best villain in the whole series because the writers don't try to make him anything more than just a smurfing asshole. Barthandelus (if he should have been in the story at all) only needed to spill the beans of his plan to the party early on, and more character-writing probably could have taken the story all the way home with few hitches. FFXIII's plot really didn't need to be anything more than frustrated and downtrodden people on the run, but all the fal'Cie/Cocoon plot twists really take away from it and shift the focus onto the badly-written camp.

I thought the flashbacks were quite well done and was sad to see that aspect of the characterization get shoved to the side for things like Cid taking over as Primarch or whatever. Around Chapter 4-8 I felt like the story was going somewhere interesting with the characters and was quite enjoying the game despite its restrictive gameplay design. But once that went out the window... yeesh.