What Final Fantasy character/s did you come so close to liking or try your hardest to -- whether because you thought their concept was interesting, they seemed great at their introduction, everyone else thought they were great, or some other reason -- but ultimately fell short in your eyes? This isn't specifically about characters you hate that everyone else loves, though you may well have ended up hating them from the hype backlash.
For me, it's Caius Ballad. I tend to love smart antagonists who have a complex master plan and play the protagonists like fiddles to accomplish their ultimate goal (part of the reason I'm so fond of XV's Ardyn Izunia), I thought his motivations were pretty unique and sympathetic on paper, and I liked his design. However, in practice, I couldn't take him seriously. He was too smart, too powerful, too impervious to any retaliation, to the point that it felt like he was only succeeding and eventually winning out in the end because the plot said he had to rather than because he earned those victories. The sympathetic motives weren't enough to overpower the strong feeling that he was more of a plot device to let Lightning Returns happen than anything else.