Well let me rephrase what I said then; DS1 did its cliches a lot better. The characters felt like people. They were archetypes of characters, not stereotypes. DS2 is basically nothing but stereotypes. Off the top of my head, the only well-written characters with any sort of development or depth to them are Makoto and maybe Yamato. I'm not interested in what ends up happening to any of them, honestly.
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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.