In my personal opinion, NONE of the characters stood out to me and I'm on Chapter 10. I was having a hard time deciding whether or not to continue with the game, I think I will after dropping it for a few months. The reason being that the combat system is different from any I've played before. They've built a system that allows players to choose the stereotypical party builds and swap between them almost instantaneously. I have no problem with the linearity of the gameplay and the characters are tolerable.
I judge games based on their marketed overall experience. For example, there's no reason to judge Tetris with a story portion. However, FF series has always marketed their story and world immersion as an important part of their games. With that in mind, it's hard to rate this game highly. I can recommend trying the battle system but I don't think I can push for game completion.
I'm not sure how Versus or Agito will play out. I'm alright with the hack n slash system but I'm not too fond of the card system they've used for which I heard the Agito system was based on.
