Lightning wasn't a bad protagonist by any means, but she was just...bland, she did all the flips, kicks and all that good stuff, but she wasn't very compelling.
As for Snow, I do like him, but his actions did get people killed, which didn't help this character going to save someone.
Hope, honestly, it was the moping that annoyed me, he served to bring everyone's spirits down when they were trying to deal with the situation, when he tells you he fought because it kept his mind off his moms death, that was well done, but then he goes back to moping until he meets Snow again. He becomes actually likable in 13-2.
Vanille and Fang didn't leave too much of an impact. But Sazh? Damn, he was just awesome!
For the combat, I was pissed you didn't get to use that finger click-y thing from the games opening, that looked awesome! But it is never seen again (the things they use in Eden are different) Also, auto attack selects the best possible sequence of actions for the set paradigm, meaning you will only ever need to go into abilities to use a supermove which are obtainable until the last leg of the game! Setting paradigms is fun, but when it mostly consists of mashing the A/X button and occasionally switching paradigms, there wasn't a lot you were doing (Also, main character dying ends the battle and is annoying as hell) Also, some enemies and bosses took forever (Barthandelous in Oerba took half an hour and he sics doom on you like a *****)
For the story, the main cast just wasn't that interesting, I was digging the world and design, Cocoon and Pulse are freaking gorgeous, but then you have charaters like Rosch (whose's death was directly copied from Persona 3) who you are supposed to care about, but has so little screen time that you barely remember his name. Same with that pilot who was with Cid and the Cavalry (Rggdia or something)
Yeah, different strokes for different folks, but I was more interested in what was going on in Final Fantasy 13-2 than 13 (also, battles in that weren't nearly as tedious and long)[/quote]
I would have liked Lightning to have more back story. As I said, i can see a few similarities between her and Cloud. He didn't have much personality and would have been a very bland character too, if he didn't have such an interesting back story and personal connection with the antagonist.
Snow is a character that I always felt was just a normal guy who wanted to do good and desperately wanted to be a hero, but he just didn't know what he was doing. My biggest issue with Snow is that he never changes. After the events of 13, you would expect him to not still let his fists do all the thinking, in 13-2. Honestly, if him and Serah hadn't spent most of their relationship frozen in crystal or in separate timelines, I think they would have broken up a long time ago, hahaha. I can't imagine what they could possibly have in common.
I was so sad that Sazh was barely in 13-2. i hope he plays a bigger part in 13-3 (which is somewhat unlikely, unless they kill off his kid or something). I completely understand the criticism about the combat system but I don't know, I guess it was just never a big deal for me because in all Final Fantasy games I've played, my melee classes would always just use their standard attack most of the time and magic classes would use pretty much the same spell every time (unless it was a boss with a specific weakness or resistance. A bigger issue I have with the combat is that you only control the leader. In tougher fights I would sometimes be yelling at my team mates because I had no control over them and they weren't doing what I wanted. I feel the complaint that you just hit auto-attack and watch your character fight for you is only relevant in the earlier parts of the game though. Maybe I was just playing differently, but towards the middle of the game, I can remember switching paradigms every few seconds. Also, the lengths of battles was actually something I enjoyed. It made me feel like I was really working for my victories and it's something I didn't like about 13-2. I rarely needed to change paradigms much and just used all commandos or com/rav/sen for the majority of the non-boss battles. I was happy to see that the bosses weren't as doom happy in 13-2 though. Barthandelous was ridiculous and I feel like that fight was a lot of luck, but I also felt a big sense of accomplishment once I finally beat him. By far, the toughest fight in the game (at least in the main story).
Hahaha well I think I proved your point, because I don't remember either of the characters you mentioned. Really I'm just not big on time travel. I think a big reason I couldn't get in to the story of 13-2 was that I was just so confused for the majority of the game. I love mysteries but I need to have some idea of what was going on. That's why I liked 13's story. It was pretty much laid out, early on, that this is what they were going to do and the rest of the story was mostly just about them dealing with the situation and was focused more on character development. Whatever the reason, I finished 13 in about a week and 13-2 took me a couple months, despite being about half as long, according to my game time.
