Quote Originally Posted by Egami View Post

As far as characters goes, Zidane was so happy go lucky and one note as to be unrelatable and had practically no character growth or depth. Cloud was a far more intriguing and compelling protagonist with a better handled and fleshed out arc and he being an unreliable narrator was quite refreshing and further drew you into the story. As for the rest of the characters in IX, the only interesting one which showed any kind of internal struggle and development was Vivi but his arc is not really followed through once the bit about Zidane’s past comes in. Freya sort of got a bit of background during the part at Burmecia/Clerya but this line is basically shelved after that. Amarant’s arc is poorly paced with next to nothing happening for him for the most part and then some sort of rushed development happening at the last hour. Overall the game doesn’t really does a good job at tying up the characters stories.
Putting aside the Cloud stuff...

"...interesting one which showed any kind of internal struggle and development was Vivi"

How about Dagger? Heir to the throne of a kingdom, a naive child struggling to prevent a war caused by her mother's sudden thirst for conquest. The mother she knew became lost to greed, and died tragically, forcing Dagger to rule a kingdom and immediately defend her people from a terrifying and unstoppable power. She fails at her duty, watched her people die and her country be all but destroyed, loses her voice to grief and is forced to overcome these and find the courage to face Kuja once again and rebuild her nation.

To me, that's quite significantly more interesting than Cloud's little "Obnoxious and unskilled kid gets injected with Mako and pretends to be someone more interesting until he falls into the lifestream and gets his memory back" arc.

Also: Steiner and Beatrix! To suggest they didn't have interesting character arcs just seems silly to me.