The Final Fantasy series has caught an increasing amount of flak over the years for its use of depressing sad-sack characters and anime-bait "emo" storylines, but we can go all the way back to 1999's Final Fantasy VIII for one of the franchise's most annoying male characters, in protagonist Squall Leonhart. As much as I love FFVIII, it pales in comparison to the previous and subsequent games in large part because Squall is such a misery-guts. He's hard to warm to, with Square trying to portray him as edgy and mysterious, but mistakenly characterising him as a disconnected introvert of few words. Even ignoring his emo-esque flamboyant hair style and wacky dress sense, he's just not very likeable, which is really the major problem above all else: had the game at least done us the service of giving Squall a redemptive arc of sorts, perhaps this would have worked, but for the most part he's an impenetrable whiner and the sort of maladjusted twerp who shouldn't be the protagonist of anything. Had we even the remotest sympathy for the guy, all this could have been salvaged, but no.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
