It was emotional! Seeing Light become vulnerable, Hope become cold, Snow become desperate, Sazh giving up, or Vanille being... well, Vanille!

As far as a story about a subservient population being used and deceived, it was no more shallow than Zeal in Chrono Trigger or Glabados in FFT. Plots like that don't really provoke a lot of thought from me, since I basically got a Bachelor of Science in oppression so I've kinda studied the real deal, and ironically, it's science and technology that oppress and deceive in the real world, not religion or politics.