Wait what? You like Snow? I question your existence.Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover
Back on topic, in my opinion both of these games have issues with their cast of characters. In FFXII the only party members which I genuinely thought to be interesting was Ashe and Balthier. Basch was inherently an interesting character as well, but after a short while he for some reason permanently loses the spotlight, and would've ended up a rather forgettable character had it not been for the rest of the cast, which is bad to say the least. Fran is there for obvious fan service, but I didn't find her design particularly alluring, nor does her voice acting do her any favors. She's just Balthier's sidekick.
On to Vaan. He suffers from the same problem as Basch, about 1/3 into the game it's painfully obvious that he has nothing more to contribute to the story, and he eventually ends up as just the guy you hear talking in the back during cutscenes together with Penelo. Who doesn't matter AT ALL, and she has a shockingly bad character design.
Ashe and Balthier ends up as being the only interesting characters in the main party. Ashe, since THE STORY IS ABOUT HER, WHY ISN'T SHE THE MAIN CHARACTER??? And Balthier because he's witty and has an interesting backstory. What really plagues FFXII in my opinion though, is that none of the characters have a particularly good design. They're all simply a bit... Gray and lifeless, in my opinion.
Moving on to FFXIII, I actually found Lightning to be an overall good character. Her personality kinda reminds me of Cloud's, and if I had to put up with being around SNOW all the time I wouldn't probably have severe anger issues as well. Sazh, I liked him too, but has been said countless times already he eventually ended up as a background character. And there's a chocobo living in his afro. How can you NOT like a guy like that?
Fang and Vanille earned a spot on my team simply because Sazh wasn't a terribly good combat character, and the other choices where Hope and SNOW. The kawaii-desu factor of Vanille would have gotten on my nerves in just about every other game, but in this game they were a pleasant respite for listening to the endless arguments with Hope and SNOW.
Which brings me to Snow and Hope. The insane amount of cutscenes between those two characters nearly caused me to break my vow of never skipping cutscenes the first time I'm watching them. And they're all about the same thing, that Snow is somehow responsible for his mother's death, when he knows Snow couldn't possibly have done anything about it. And that's Hope's entire reason for being there too. And Snow, Snow is in my opinion the absolute worst character of the entire series. His design(and voice) simply makes him seem like the greatest douchebag that ever lived, and he never offers any sort of cohesive plan other than "YEAH LET'S DO IT".
To sum up, I'm glad both of these games have a party limit of 3, so I can let the background characters in FFXII slide back to the shadows where they belong, and so I don't have to spend more time watching Snow or Hope than what I was forced to in their grotesquely awful cutscenes. But if I had to pick either, I would have to go with FFXIII, simply due to more vibrant and interesting character designs.
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