Balthier has some of the best one-liners of any video game character ever. I would compare him to Sazh rather than Snow. Basch beats Snow by a mile. Why does anyone like Snow?

I would rate the casts pretty even between the two games. It's true the FFXIII focused a lot more on its primary characters but that wasn't always to the game's benefit. I would have liked to see more prevalent NPCs in that game.