So Lightning is worse than Quina, who's only motivation in the game is to eat stuff? Or Amarant? What about Yuffie? Or the masses of under-developed characters from earlier FFs.

And I don't think the Cloud/Lightning comparison is entirely fair. For me, Cloud is like a wimpy emo version of Lightning. Whereas Cloud continuously goes on about how he used to be from SOLDIER and he's a mercenary, Lightning is just cold and a bad-ass. She then develops and becomes less cold and more open, etc etc, which is predictable, although the path that got her there was a little bit unusual.

And Tidus wasn't that bad. Yes, I found his voice acting bad for the first half of the game. That strangely enough had nothing to do with me getting used to his voice, because when I replayed it (New Game + straight after finishing it), I found his voice acting in the beginning to be just as bad. But, he did (SPOILER)choose to defeat Sin knowing that he would disappear as a result which is fairly noble of him.