Yeah, this sounds like more of a writing problem than heroes being hard to relate to. Just because an author may write a hero with no deeper motivation than baseball and apple pie, doesn’t mean complex, imperfect heroes are impossible.
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Zidane is the happiest/stronger willed FF protagonist I can remember, actually.
He joke, he flirt (many times he is just a big fail) but he always try to give courage to his friends. Only at one point toward the end of the game he actually have a very emotionally distressing moment, and he get over it with his companions help.
Passing from such a supportive character to go to Tidus that is for half the game the manual of “daddy issues” mixed with “spoiled rich boy” was quite a shock for me, and I believe other players.
Can’t say I dislike him, but I don’t like him either.
Cloud is much less a serious character than what is presented in the movies/popular vision of the character: I was actually surprised myself when I played FFVII: the guy go throught quite some embarassing stuff! 
from being forced to dress as a woman to attract an old pervert, to becaming part of dance in the theater (in my case with Tifa) after a day at the amusement park. Plus are not rare the moments where he actually joke around.
Much less serious than depicted outside the game.
I did say nowadays
I was just giving examples of opposite situations, I know monkey boy is one of the more beloved character though I only know him from Dissidia (the psp one, haven’t played the new one)
Spoiled rich boy? The worst thing I remember from him is utterly stepping on the Yu-Yevon before he had thought it was hocus, he didn’t seem all that spoiled to me. Though daddy issues hah, that’s a pretty large part of it. And then the fans love his dad too on top of it. (Anyone else didn’t realize the minigame to get the jecht shot was a minigame at first?)
I feel like the final fantasy villains are automatically popular compared to the hero party…
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Ok, you two, remember that the topic is about the relatability of protagonists, not how popular they are.
Popularity is, after all, not a measure of relatability. The most popular characters in Jurassic Park are Jeff Goldblum the dinos, but they are much less relatable than the human characters.
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I very much relate to the dinosaurs They work at a not so good job, have high stress lives, and the urge to rip to shreds those jerkass people who have to make just trying to get through the day difficult.
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Personally, relatability has little to do with it as long as the character is written realistically (so it doesn’t take me out of the narrative) and layered. I can put myself in the shoes of any protagonist, really, as long as they’ve been written well.
For example Joel from the Last of Us was mentioned. I really fundamentally disagree with most things he does, especially in the ending. I think he’s a terrible person, truly, and is more a villain than a hero. While I am playing him, though, I’m all in. I’m going for it, my goals are his goals and I’m feeling everything he’s feeling to the point where it took me about an hour to realize, after the game had ended, exactly why it left me feeling so unsatisfied. (It should be noted that I think tLoU is one of the most interesting video game narratives out there rn simply because of this disconnect and how polarizing the character’s actions are and how it plays with player motivation vs. charcter motivation)
Of course that’s all a lot more challenging in an IF game since the character is fundamentally more vague and less set. The reader has to do their own characterization heavy lifting, the game can only give a coarse overview of the character if it isn’t an established one.
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Like what other people said, I don’t think I need to relate to all characters in stories to like them. I can’t personally relate to say Rick Sanchez, Xanatos, Batman, or Metal Sonic(Well, I can a little bit).
In fact, I think the idea of characters needing to be “normal” so the audience feels connected hurts more than helps.
Did anyone seriously feel like they actually were Master Chief because they never saw his face and he had no personality? Or did they feel like someone playing as a space marine in a video game? Does that make him a bad character? No. But even among fans of the series, I never saw anyone go “Him having the personality of cardboard makes it feel like he’s just like me!”
And I doubt anyone whose seen the Transformers Movie cares about what happens to the human characters. Technically, yes. They are relate able since they are basically average people against a serious threat, but what’s the reaction here? For audiences to say “Who cares about your problems? Giant robots are fighting.”
So…basically…no. I think a lot of times, people only THINK they want to relate to characters when more often then not, they prefer an actually useful or interesting character.
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That’s definitely true. Nobody ever went to a Transformers movie to see Sam Witwicky be awkward. They go to see giant robots best the tar out of each other, because even though giant ancient alien robots are minimally relatable, they’re awesome.
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The thing about Villain Protagonists:
Unless you actually give them reasons to be sympathetic, no one relates to them, no one likes them, and the only reason people are playing your game in the first place is because of the kick of being the villain for a change, and not because they are actually engaging with your character. I don’t know too many people that think of say, The Postal Guy or the protagonist of Hatred as sympathetic and relatable characters, and they are both quite definitely villainous.
There’s also the fact that unless you have horrible self esteem – or unless you have a very skewed sense of what evil is, like the protagonists of too many NIS games for me to count – you won’t necessarily think of yourself as a villain, or that what you do is evil.
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I don’t agree. The Joker doesn’t really have the audiences sympathy but people love him. Well…as much as you can love a clown.
People see the Joker as an interesting and entertaining character, sure, but do you actively root for him to succeed? Because that’s the difference between whether someone is an interesting side character or a protagonist. Especially if you’re playing said character.
Yes, I often found the protagonist unrelatable. As said in another thread, I identified more with the villains as child because they were coded as me and often where in possession of traits I either have or admire.
Meanwhile the protagonist were often either relatively blank slates, more reactionary than active, the goodness more tell than show and/or stunningly hypocritical.
It doesn’t mean that I never liked a protagonist and - or loved every villain, but reading fantasy and sci-fi as a kid certainly left that impression - which has never left me.
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