Well, sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it, but I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels that way! I was afraid that it was my nostalgia talking. x) Lightning could have been a very cool character, I just felt that her hatred was really forced. She really didn't have a conceivable reason to be so hateful to Snow. I mean, it wasn't his fault that her sister got cursed by a fal-cie (I think I got that right... so many weird little names for things), or that he was the one she fell in love with. And she even got her anger boiling to the point where she wanted to give up on even trying to get her sister back. It made no sense. You are right, Cloud was much more interesting because he's so much more psychotic. If he just had the bad attitude, you could call him a male Lightning. But his bad attitude is a result of basically having his mind taken apart and messed up, and he copes by assuming the character of someone who was much stronger than him and was a role model for him. THAT is an interesting character with a lot of depth. Lightning is some jerk with a bad attitude who hates life. Hatred by itself is simply not interesting, it's annoying.
What's her name, the young girl, she was a pretty good character. Kind of like Aerith, but that's a cool character to work with. Oddly separated from reality, but also so in tune with reality that she appears to be almost clairvoyant. Sazh does seem to have some stereotypical stuff going on, but all the same, he's an interesting character. The chocobo living in his hair is pretty cool (like that kid who sells you lamp oil in Twilight Princess), and he has some interesting undercurrents that make him a fairly deep character. It's not the worst cast of characters ever, but it's pretty disappointing for a Final Fantasy. Though not half as disappointing as the gameplay, but I won't hash that out all over again. x)