@Satsuki:
Poor XII gets no love.
IMO; it doesn't deserve any. And while Balthier/Cid are easily the best characters in the game, they aren't as clear cut "major Hero- Major villain" as the rest. More just like hero and villain with most personality in game.
Also, I think an XII hero would be hard to make a moveset for. There's really no abilities/jobs/moves standing out for them, since every character was made to be a 100% customizable sheet. Like, Balthier could have moves involving guns…only +90% of players propably finished with an all-swords party.
I totally agree that it works sometimes. But not after we were lead on like that. Clones? Really? Not to mention this came off the heels of FF6 where we literally saw our villain grow from reject Magitek Knight to FALLEN GOD.
My take on the whole "no Real Seph until the end thing" has always been that if the thing you've chasen the whole game looks like, fights like, thinks like, acts like, and is controlled by Sephiroth (making for no real difference if he'd been there in person), I don't really care if Sephs' been in a crater all along. He's still the one you've chasen.
As for Kefka, he didn't really grow at all. He didn't have a plan, he didn't work towards a goal, he was just at the right place at the right time, found a button that read "press here For omnipotency", and pressed it.
And everything he does is because he had the magiteck equivalent of being hit on the head with a hammer…which happened pre-game. Kefka doesn't really change at all.
He starts calling Jenova 'mother' as if she had ANYTHING to do with his real mom and dad. He's still EXACTLY who he was and has been. But no. He latches onto Jenova like some goddamn freak. Lucrecia gave birth to a human, and because he got a few shots from Hojo, Sephiroth decides to HOLY SHIT DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!????
Sephiroth: My mother is Jenova. She died right after she gave birth to me. My father… What does it matter…?
For all Sephiroth knows, He was the son of a normal woman named Jenova.
Mom died, Doesn't know father, raised by Shinra, spending his life alone to become a super soldier.
That's all he knows.
Then comes along Nibelheim, with the Mother being a freakish monster that's being experimented upon by his lifelong guardians, the mako experiment -monsters, the finding out he's the test tube experiment of Hojo, pretty much the worlds biggest ass (Sephiroth himself hates him), and such and such. In short, his long awaited "homecoming" to the home he didn't think he had is not that pleasant.
Plus, we've seen that JENOVA experiments doesn't have the strongest record of mental stability.
So at least Seph had a reason to go crazy. Everything he does AFTER he snaps is just as justifiable as Kefka wanting to DESTROY EVERYTHING.