@Naz:

Zidane? Mature?

I'll grant you I like him more than I like Squall, Zidane or Tidus, but not because he's mature. Because he's not. Feeling someone's ass (without their permission) is not mature behaviour.

He just didn't take himself as seriously as the other ones did.

And FFVI had the best cast of characters in any FF, before or since.

I'll grant you that, he was childish in his humor, but not his actual personality. He had no fear of the unknown, massive self-doubts, or silly emotional baggage. He was confident, reasonably smart, and prepared to do whatever needed to be done.

FFVI's characters were not as well developed as FFIX's, but there were more of them so that's somewhat understandable. FFVI is my second favorite FF game after IX, but IX is and probably always will be my favorite. Mostly for its constant character development, nice love story without being cheesy, gorgeous and interesting world, heart-wrenching moments (Viv and the black mages), and enjoyable cast of characters.

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.

he is the perfect boyfriend for cloud

Thats fine, but I speak english, so the version I played had "whatever" Squall.  Its kind of like the anime Naruto, folks rave about it all the time, but I can't stand the main character because of his annoying  "BELIEVE IT!!!" crap that they dubbed in, and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.  Its kind of unfair to brush the "squall haters" opinions aside just because we never played the "true" version of squall.  I honestly doubt a few changed lines would make me like him any more.

Naruto had the "BELIEVE IT!" thing? i thought its just the abridged series.
don't really wanna check it out anyways actually

I never got this, everyone normally bashes cloud for being the infamous emo of final fantasy yet Squall is the one who takes the cake as far as emoness goes, cloud IS emo, but squall is more so...

As for lightning... lol... yep that outta' be good.

Here i always thought Squall got the worse rep for being more emo than Cloud.  I never got why people put Squall as being more emo than Cloud as he gets sorta gets over it by the end.

I know this quote's in page two and the thread grew to "epic proportions" and I'm not done reading it, but I whole heartidly agree.  I never related to any character, not even my hero Batman, as much as I do with Squall.

Oh and Squall isn't emo. The idea of Squall being a type of rock music is silly. Squall's an increase in wind. Duh!