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I'm just going to blanket put down every character that can be summed up with this sentence: has their arc independently from the main plot and adds nothing meaningful to the dynamic of the group, or other characters' arcs.
Red XIII, Cid, Barret (after Midgar), Freya, Amarant, Kimahri, Fran, Basch, (really also Balthier), and pretty much every character in FF VI, but primarily Setzer, Cyan, Strago, Relm, Gau and Terra.
As far as FF VI is concerned Terra is especially a strange case since "what" she is - a half human half esper who can mediate between both sides - is important to the plot, and yet her actual character arc around finding love and everything relating to "who" she is and what she wants and wishes to be is totally segregated from it. Besides her the others are a bit more straightforward, although even characters like Celes, Locke and Edgar who are much more central have so little drive or reason to be part of this mishmash group fighting the Empire / Kefka, much less have any more than a handful of meaningful interactions with the majority of them.
FF XII I feel is kinda trying to do a thing where each character's arc feeds into Ashe's perspective and influences her to ultimately make the choice not to cut new nethicite atop the Pharos, but if that is the idea they really dance around it since Ashe has so very few double-sided conversations with her party members on the subject it never really feels like the other characters' arcs meaningfully contribute in the end. They as well as their characters in general could be cut from the story and it wouldn't feel unnatural for the outcome to be the same. Dunno, maybe I'm misunderstanding the fundamental idea, but it feels like an aspect of the game that could've been brought to the forefront a lot more than it is.
FF VIII, IX and X don't really have this problem much each for their own individual reasons. In FF VIII, the characters besides Squall and Rinoa don't really undergo 'arcs' as much as they're just human beings offering their own perspectives to the main duo who are the two actually getting proper development. FF IX has most characters with arcs undergo them over the course of the story. And FF X has the cast actually continuously influence one another *and* have their arcs not be diversions from the main plot, making them easily the most human cast in the series.
Well that's the main thing that comes to mind immediately. Might go over some more individual cases later.
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