ok, time to unleash my inner dork. as far as characters go ToA was pretty disappointing in my opinion. generally speaking the main characters in tales games are the type to act first and tend to be on the agressive side. while i will agree that change is good this really wasn't a step in the right direction since the idea of "an emo kid with spiky hair who is thrown out of his element, thus forcing him to save the world..." has been hammered to death quite a bit since FF7. while it may be a matter of personal prefence i would rather not have a character such as that be the main focus in a game. even in ff6, a game which i competely love and rate highly, i couldn't stand terra's character and was happy to see celes take over as the main heroine of the game as the story progressed.
Well, as you said, this sounds like personal opinion. Personally, I've come to accept that most Japanese protagonists (in every medium from anime to film to games) are similar. But again, this is not uncommon in any mainstream medium. While I do praise original characters, I am more than satisfied with slight deviations on the same old formula.
As for cecil in ff5, he was flawed as all hell. sure he wanted to do the right thing but he was far to loyal for his own good, somewhat gullible and a bit to trusting, and would often get stumped or discouraged when he didn't know what to do next.
You seem to be misunderstanding what I mean by "flaws". And by that, I mean that Cecil was basically a true hero in every sense of the word. As you said, he was virtuous, courageous, and trusting. However, these are not specifically "flaws" within his character. As a matter of fact, these are the sort of qualities a person is SUPPOSED to have. Luke, on the other hand, begins the game selfish, spoiled, whiney, impatient, vain, and several other things that would take too much time to mention. However, unlike most heroes, when Luke finally does convert to being a virtuous, loyal, and courageous hero, it's because he's actually given a
reason to change. As I said before, the primary focus on the game is about Luke's character development and his desire to redeem himself for his past. FFIV had a similar theme, but Cecil's sins weren't even his own fault.
And finally to brush on Lodoss, the only true villian in the story is wagnard. now i'm not really an anime fan so i can't really go into detail about of characters similair to ashram but he certainly wasn't your typical bad guy but rather he was fighting for his homeland. if the story were from the perspective of marmo, ashram would be considered a great hero because he fights to restore his homeland
As I said, I like Ashram, and I like Lodoss, and I agree that Ashram was noble. But, I don't see how it's possible to compare him to the main villain in TotA in terms of characterization. Being a game that lasts for several dozen hours, a lot more time is given to developing Van than was given to Ashram in Lodoss War, the Chronicles TV series, the Lodoss manga, or Legend of Crystania combined. (And yes, I've read/watched all of them.)
Edit: As a side-note, why does everyone call Luke "emo"? Luke didn't fit the emo archetype at all. For one thing, the generally-accepted definition for "emo" is someone who is emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted, or angsty (taken straight from Wikipedia) with thoughts of depress, self-injury or suicide (also taken from Wikipedia). The closest that Luke comes to any of that is emotional, but 1 out of 7 does not an emo make. A better word to describe Luke at the beginning of the game would be "snobbish". Even near the end of the game, when Luke is struggling with redemption and could arguably be called "depressed", not one time does he talk about suicide or self-injury. In fact, the game makes a point in saying how much Luke does NOT want to die.
For comparison, valid example of an "emo" character would be Squall from FF8: (shy, sensitive, introverted, angsty, and arguably suicidal). Standing him side-by-side with Luke, I fail to see the comparison.