You're right, I should have pointed out that XIII deviates from the pattern in the first place. But my reason for not doing so was that I feel that it completely undermined what steps forward it had taken in breaking the pattern when it failed to actually develop any of its characters past the tropes it set for them right from the beginning of the game. In previous FFs, the female characters may all have fallen into a set of archetypes, but at least they developed as characters within those archetypes--and yes, I've played plenty of FFs too, I've seen the rehash, but there are still elements within each of the female characters of those games that allows me to love them individually. In my opinion, the characters of FFXIII barely have personalities or development at all. By the end of the game (okay, very near the end, as admittedly I haven't quite beaten it yet), I don't feel that I know any of them as people at all.

So I didn't bring it up because for me, if the characters aren't people, then that completely defeats the point of breaking the pattern to begin with.