I believe that the problem is because Ramza is your typical and stereotypical good guy with a sense of justice. We've all seen this before, so he seems extremely bland and boring in an entourage of backstabbing manipulators, which, you must admit, at the time wasn't exactly a common element in RPG's to aim upon, and there are way more spineless worms in this game than good guys.
Although I love Cidolfus, he's pretty boring himself, and I only paid attention to Agrias when they gave her that funky accent in the PSP port.

To be fair, Ramza does have some character progression going on, (As mentioned with his realization of the nobility's disposition.), -technically- although besides chopping off his ponytail, it seemed to me that said progression was him going with the game's story rather than anything else.