Vaan was a girl?!

Define what you mean by 'pretty girls'.  If you mean girls specifically meant to sell the game based on their looks, then I'd say pretty much every game since FFVII on up has had one, starting with Tifa.  If you mean just 'Pretty Girls', I would argue that again, nearly every FF game starting with at least FFIV has a character who is suppose to personify that character trait (Rosa, Celes, Aeris AND Tifa, nearly every woman in FFVIII who conveniently hits on a fetish, Garnet, every girl in FFX, etc doewn the line).

No i rather have all the girls be hot. I hope FF XIII sells well.

FFXII, even though I haven't played it much, from what I saw of it, it has a fairly realistic female character design, especially Ashe, she is pretty but not unrealistically so.

I know, he looks like Kate with a bad dye job.

Umm. Maybe it is defined like "a girl who is pretty" and there aren't many of them on final fantasies. I can't think of any other than Lulu.

Pretty girls = Increased sales everywhere

That's pretty much it. The only formula SE care about when making these games. Of course then there is:

Lady-boys = Increased sales in homeland of Japan + normal sales everywhere else (albeit begrudgingly).

But... didn't FFXII have that weird Cat woman thing?

I agree, even the male characters look female.

Not if you know what people from either Scandinavia or east Asia look like. To me they look more like idealized versions of certain body/facial types, with cherry-picking of features from all over the place.

I am sorry but I am pretty sure Reks is just a crossdresser.