Final Fantasy XIII Lightning is a great character. She had a solid character arc and at the end of the game was a better person. Post Final Fantasy XIII lightning is a POS because she mostly abandons all the progress she made in XIII (except for her confrontation with Snow in Lightning Returns).
I think she redeems herself at the end of Lightning Returns when she realizes who Lumina is. XIII-2 is a world where only Lightning and Serah remember the truth and with the fall of Coc00n going on I can see why they chose to revert Lightning back to how she was at the start of XIII. It's more realistic as well because how many times does someone change and then stay that way forever?
People are always going to resort back to old tendencies and with the situation Lightning was in fighting Caius she had to be more serious, hard-headed, stoic. Lightning basically goes through the same change as she did in XIII all over again in Lightning Returns. Starts off thinking she knows whats best, realizes she was wrong and starts being more honest especially with herself, and at the end she's just Claire again, she doesn't have to be Lightning anymore.
WHaat I cant even
How does one get to the point where they even utter those words
Other than complaints that their "too anime" I don't see any reason not to like Serah and Lightning. If you don't like anime characters, why play Final Fantasy?
Serah's nice but you don't wanna get on her bad side
Lightning puts on a tough act but thats just for show.
