*small spoiler ahead for chapter 1* Read at your own risk:

...

But it doesn't make him any more likable to me, although you're right in the sense that he's acting almost believably for a 14 year old that just saw his mum went the way of the dodo (and yes that's probably the part that doesn't appeal to me). Still there's some baffling scene even starting for Chapter 1.

For example: rhe absolutely retarded setting in which they went to the Pulse fal'Cie had me scratching my head though.

We're in the middle of a warzone! The enemy has flying freakin ship with BIG HONKING LASER going pew pew pew and people are dying left and right (including hope's mother!) and what the hell does he do? By himself, probably nothing as initially he reminds me way to much of Shinji from Eva, but damn with Vanille by his side, they freakin hijack a damn flying chicken leg and flew TOWARDS the epicentre of the fight in an effort to tell Snow that he killed his mum and needs to pay (which he never gets to say until chapter 5-6 or something.)

I mean good god! Talk about suicidal tendency and the 'yes mistress' syndrome here!

God thats stupid. Especially Vanille alloying a stupid kid to drive the flying chicken leg and almost crashing to their doom and taking him into unknown danger: a 14 year old kid!!!!

She acts like the village idiot most of the time and the fustrating thing is that I KNOW the reason they made her like this.

She's the typical 'Genki Girl' architype that is very very popular in Japanese otaku culture and having a Genki Girl in an Final Fantasy is almost a mandate: 'Yuffie, Selphie, Riku etc'. The problem here is that they didn't manage to translate her well into English, a lot of personality is lost thanks to the unique (and often childish) expression and idioms being left out, dropped or simply ignored because their is no comparable in English.

I blame this on the lack of 'moe' in western culture and learn to live with it.

Bah /rant over

Spoilers for chapter 1:

I totally agree on your chapter 1 criticism...how the hell they got to the place they did I DO NOT KNOW.

I mean did hope fly to it intentionally? He's meant to be scared of any kind of Fal'cie so why would he FLY to it? Just to tell snow, n then he doesn't even tell snow anything LOL

And Vanille was very irresponsible too.

BUT this doesn't change that I think Hope's attitude is very realistic throughout the whole game.

The characters apart from vanille feel like real people....they have been done VERY WELL imo.

I have played FFXII for 170 hours, while most seem to get 100% of the trophies for FF XIII under the 100 hours mark.

You can collect Eidolons, collect title's, there are way more superbosses in FFXII, there are more gear/ items to collects. etc...

And maybe you wheren't able to follow the story or perhaps a bad story to you means the lack of melodrama?

I don't get this part of decent sidequests. In FFXII, other than the hunts, getting the Order of Ambrosia rating and completing the License Board, what were the sidequests that it had? FFXII didn't had that much variety in sidequests as well, especially if you compare it to FFX, or even FFX-2

Order of Ambrosia includes getting all the little trophies, yeah?

The game had good sidequests, just that in a lot of places they didn't really feel like sidequests - like the whole fishing thing.

Yeah, pretty much getting the little trophies like Master Yen Badge and Omega Badge to forge the Wyrmhero Blade in order to complete all the weapons trophy, or getting all the bestiary complete and so on. 

It did have some different things to do outside the main scope of the game, yet they weren't full fledged mini-games like you would could the hunts in FFXII or the TCG on FFVIII/FFIX, or chocobo training in FFVII, or monster arena in FFX. At that scope, you have the 60 hunts in FFXIII, or in a similar degree to the order of ambrosia, the trophies for Loremaster or Weaponmaster  

You played for 170 hours and didn't collect everything? Sorry, but I call BS. 

I did 100% on my first playthrough on FFXII in less than 120 hours. On my second playthrough, I forged my first Tournesol at 65 hours and defeated both Yiazmat and Zodiark at 90 hours, finished everything up at 98 hours.

So you took your sweet time with FFXII and are trying to pass that up as a proper measure to FFXIII? At least, be fair.

Oh, and I love how you're taking your points to people less knowledgeable with FFXII and avoiding discussion with someone who probably knows as much or more than you about FFXII :P 

Nope, I did never beat Omega and played with a Strategy Guide, and you must be either a exceptional good gamer or just lying, because at gamefaqs there are people who have played it for more than 200 hours when they reached Omega.

Finding some hunts alone can take hours if you do not know what to do, it did take me 5 hours alone to beat Yiazmat, and it doesn't sound believable at all to reach Yiazmat and Zodiark at the same time when one the bosses literary takes a couple of hours and the other one is deep in a cavern (though he himself doesn't take that long to beat) and getting everything else 8 hours later. Yiazmat is not the strongest boss at all in FFXII.