So, Aerith

[NeoCracker]

...Socially inept? What? XD

But regardless, she's there for most of the first disk. I would still argue that was more then enough time.

I have yet to see a character type that one cannot make interesting and enjoyable within a few hours of game time, at most.

Any character that can be made "interesting and enjoyable" within a few hours of game time is a shallow and likely stereotypical character, at best.

However, my point isn't really that the time Aeris was on-screen wasn't enough time to develop the character, but given what we did see, had she stayed in the game I think the character would have evolved into something more enjoyable.

Characters that were interesting within a few hours that were much more then shallow an StereoTypical:
Rand (Breath of Fire 2)
Cid (Final Fantasy VII)
Chaos (Xenosaga)
Fei (Xenogears)
Citan (Xenogears)
Melia (Xenoblade)
Bundban (Xenoblade)
Mao (Disgaea 3)
Naoto (Persona 4)

All of these character immidiately caught my interest, not even after an hour. And all of them still get a lot of development past that point, expanding upon their characters. I could actually come up with a lot more examples of characters that are both interesting in the first hour and not shallow, but I'll leave it at this.

Getting a person interesting in a character from the get go is a sign of good writing, it invests a person early. Mind you early interest is mostly pointless if it sees no pay off, which can happen. (To use another example of this from Xenogears, Rico is an example of a character starting off interesting and intriguing, but getting no pay off regardless.)

Edit: Well, Rand is a bit stereotypical thinking back on it, but hardly shallow. ;P