The nice part about Squall is that he actually gets better as the game progresses. He comes out of his shell to a point and I think a lot of teenagers can really empathize with that which is one of the reasons a lot of people enjoyed the game years ago but not quite so much today.
The really sad thing is that as the game progresses, Laguna gets more screen time and Laguna beats the living daylights out of Squall at pretty much everything from personality to battle theme. I think if the game had been about Laguna instead of Squall, I'd have enjoyed it much more.