They have slightly different motivations, but its so silly that they just seem to be slashing their way to the end of the game. They want to resolve everything with one thing: fighting. Most of the conversations can be resumed in 1-enemy appears 2-useless banter occurs 3-let's solve this by fighting!

I think this game would have been so much better with a lot less story. Yeah, it's weird to say that with a Final Fantasy game, but this is a fighting game. In most fighting games you get a couple of lines of dialog before each important fight (which is just the final one, most of the time) and that's enough. This game grinds its way through the conversations, and its all so hollow discussion and sometimes it just doesn't make sense at all. I was skipping EVERY conversation and cutscene on the last characters because I knew it was just 5 to 10 minutes of the character and the enemy taunting each other while delivering asinine comments about some silly quest or purpose.

To recap things real quick:

1-The warrior of light is an asshole

2-Firion is a pussy and wants a world covered in roses so he beats the living snot out of everyone who stands in his way.

3-The onion knight is supposed to be like a super smart genius but he falls in such silly traps and delivers lines so crappy that I ended up feeling a bit dizzy from all the eye rolling I did over all his nonsense. so stupid...

4-Cecil was actually cool, his story made a lil more sense than the others, and there was some conflict goin on with him.

5-Bartz was a breath of fresh air with his cheery attitude but the humor was a bit childish and.. not so funny.

6-Tera is as insecure as ever but I was very glad she wasn't sulking around all the fucking time like in ff6.

7-Cloud was just cloud being cloud. That is, a crappy character that is emo all the fucking time for no reasonable reason and is lusting for sephirot all the time, pissing me off to no end in the process.

8-Squall... was... *gulp* actually an interesting character! wow! what the fuck, I thought I would never say that in my life. But in this game, he wasn't emo, he was kinda badass, and there weren't ALMOST any "whatever.."s and the "I will be a stupid asshole for no reason"moments were almost non-existant! He wanted to be a lone wolf, but just because he wanted to protect the friends he cared about! best interpretation of squall, ever.

9-Zidane was as meh as ever and as interesting as the coffee-soaked napkins sitting below my empty coffee mug.

10-Tidus is cheery, brave, and all around the same character that I love in ff10 but that some retards tend to hate because he isn't emo all the time about stupid crap.

About the villains, I can safely resume them all in 4 words: boring, pointless, blabbering idiots. Except for Kefka. Kefka is great, he's the same psychotic clown that enjoys inflicting pain on others just for the sake of it, or because he's just bored. Or maybe he doesn't have a real reason and just want to see everything buring and each one of his enemies suffering while he eats popcorn and watches, literally. He's the ultimate troll. He's the same Joker on steroids plus superpowers, and I loved him for staying in character since ff6.

So there you go. Some of them I felt changed for the worst, and really, this game should have been much, much more lighter in story. Anyways, this game is still a must for anyone who enjoys FF games, even if it's not a classic FF RPG.