I'm rewatching the WoD cutscenes tonight in preparation for ShB and one scene I had forgotten about was actually rather nice. The bit where Arbert and Urianger are talking in Thanalan, and he shows how stressed he is about his situation and a hesitance to kill the WoL. It actually did make me feel for him more than I had earlier today.
Unfortunately the storyline also had scenes like the Xelphatol one where they were super cliche villains. The Miqo'te especially.

Seeing it also made me realize that before we learned their names the class titles they were identified by were all FF3 classes. That's really cool in retrospect with ShB featuring Crystal Tower.