I know this a somewhat random topic for this board but it has oddly been on my mind for the longest time.

Who would you prefer between Lightning (Clair/Eclaire) Farron and Milla Maxwell? What are the reasons for your preference?
How do you feel about either? Who do you think is stronger? Which is a more capable party leader?

They're both heroines of the the 13th Mother Ship titles of their respective series so the comparison weighed on me for a while. I have seen this topic in other forums but since I believe that on this site there is a fairly balanced fan base for both Final Fantasy and 'Tales of' I figured that this would be good place to get unbiased responses.

I'm simply interested in peoples' opinions on this.

-Definitely prefer Milla exponentially more than Lightning.

-Milla actually has a personality I really like, her dialogue is hilarious a lot of the time as opposed to Lightning's groan-worthy dialogue, and Tales of Xillia is one of the games I prefer over FFXIII.

-In terms of strength, I think that would depend entirely on the game. I can't really think of any one thing that one has over the other in particular so it would probably be a fairly even matchup all in all.

-I feel this is a trick question. Neither are party leaders. Neither game had party leaders. FFXIII 1 had a bunch of people whining about what they're going to do next ESPECIALLY Lightning, 2 was not led by Lightning, and 3 I believe consisted of a party of only Lightning which doesn't count. Tales of Xillia had a group consensus of which Milla may have been the main driving point behind some of the decisions, but she did not "lead" the group, and Tales of Xillia 2 was led by Xilliajesu-I mean Ludger.

/twocents

This is a valid point. Also I always felt Milla was XilliaJesus, XD.

Milla~ One of the first female protagonists I really liked!

Lightningcangodieinafire.

Lightning. For no particular reasons.
Though Xillia was one of the worst Tales of for me, so I didn't get to know Milla that much.

I'm just wondering what these people are from

Lightning is from Final Fantasy 13
Milla is from Tales of Xillia

Lightning likes to act like a strong-willed badass, but when you look at what she actually does in the games, she basically just does whatever the bad guys tell her to do (but she's got a terrible attitude about it, so, yay, free will?). Plus, she literally has a speech about how stupid her own name is, and generally acts like a petulant teenager.

Milla, on the other hand, is the real deal. When she suffers a crippling injury while fighting the evil empire, she has to be physically restrained from dragging herself halfway across the continent to continue the fight. Which, granted, isn't the most intelligent of plans, but badassery isn't about *intelligence*. Heck, she gets her soul flayed to the point where she's just a vague, emotionless shadow of herself, and she responds by carving a path of destruction across the afterlife until she storms God's abode and heals herself, because that's the most fundamental part of her.

Now, if by "Who do you think is stronger?" you're talking about *physical* strength, then obviously Lightning wins because she's ridiculously overpowered. Even if you can somehow overpower someone who solos superbosses, she'll just erase the battle from the timeline and come back an hour later with a loadout especially tailored to kill you. Please note, of course, that this isn't a statement about relative artistic merit; I still like Milla better as a character, I just don't think she could physically kill Lightning.

As for the better leader, as Chibideath said above, neither are really leaders. Milla just sort of does her own thing and lets the rest of the party tag along; her attitude is always "I have my mission; you can help me or leave as you see fit." I mean, she's a leader in the sense that she makes the big decisions, but it takes a lot of character development before she starts seeing to the group's needs. Lightning, of course, isn't even *close* to a leader; half of FF13 has the party scattered across the map dealing with their own personal goals, and the other half pretty much forces them to stick together. If *anyone's* a "party leader" in that game, it's Barthandelus.