1. It snows quite often in spring in many parts of the world. Nothing special there.
2&3. Sure, I imagine that after years and years of creating video games that Square will end up creating characters that look similar.
4. Probably Square's attempt at making characters show their personalities by having them over-act, ala FFVIII.
5. They are some type of body art, like piercings or tatoos.
6. It's not too bad a game.

And in closing, there are many responses that this game is too short. It's supposed to be short. You're supposed to play it through 3-4 times to get the whole story. Also, it gets harder every time you play. As your gain more power, your enemies will as well. So the idea behind the game is that you will have a real challenge to beat the game multiple times so that you can get the story behind all of the main characters in the game, which is truely beating it, as beatin git once doesn't shed much light on the story.