The characters weren't the worst part of the game. I'm struggling to remember as it's been so long since I played the game but - I didn't remember finding the characters annoying really, including Vanille! It's just that I didn't care about them. Well apart from Hope. He's probably the only character I disliked when playing a video game. People talk about Tidus, Rikku, Squall, etc. as being examples but I liked them all. But Hope started blaming Snow for his mothers death when he had nothing got to do with it. It was annoying.

To be fair though, the characters were IMO hurt by a poor story. They throw words at you like 'L'Cie, and Fal'cie, and I was expected to know it from the get-go. 80% of the time I had no idea what was going on in the game. I had to go to Paloompaloompa or whatever it's called. Why? All of sudden a guy wearing a wedding dress is my enemy. Why? It didn't make sense. And the reason I came to know all that is because I had to read through data-logs to scrub up on it. It was so much fun.

Storylines have been SE's huge downfall since the merge.