The characters are just rancid! Play 6-10 and throw 13 and its two stupid follow ups hardly anyone wanted that could have gone into FFVIIR time in the trash where they belong and will hopefully forever stay.
The characters felt like real people reacting to these situations, the story was not that bad, and the ending was so good. BUT, XIII-2 was trash besides some fun battle gameplay and LR I played about 30 min of.
Whether or not it ever existed FFVIIR was destined to be vaporware & it’s time we all gave up on it
Lightning was obviously a successful character, but I felt more raw emotion and character from just about any hero in FF6 from text and sprites than I did from any of the sideline cast of FF13. I feel sorry for anyone that had this as their first Final Fantasy.
To me they all represented different human reactions to hardships. Lightning closed herself off to other people, Hope focused his negative feelings on the wrong person to avoid dealing with his mother’s death, Vanille ran from her problems pretending nothing was wrong, Snow put up a false positive front that you could see some cracks in,
Sazh was the realist and then almost killed himself (which felt like a forced moment tbh), and Fang was angry as hell at how unfair the situation was. And in the end they all gained strength and grew as people. Fang & Vanille becoming a pillar to save the very thing they tried to destroy was really moving imo