(dumb?) movement question

[blondiesavenge]

Although I have been playing for awhile, can someone help me with this:
can characters actually move on a diagonal. or do they essentially move like a knight in chess? I was playing recently and wanted to move a character diagonally through squares occupied by a friendly character and an opposing character. (There was a wall involved so I didn't have to break away.) My opponent said that no character can move diagonally-it has to move up or down or sideways through another square, and since that meant moving though the friendly character's square which put it adjacent to the opposing character (and thus would have to halt its movement), the character could not make that "diagonal" move. Is this correct?

[flatmatt]

Although I have been playing for awhile, can someone help me with this:
can characters actually move on a diagonal.
Yes. Moving diagonally is legal and only costs 1 square of movement.

[normalview]

Just to reinforce this (FF rules, page 7:

Move Actions
A character given a move action can move up to its speed value in squares across the battlefield. Characters might have special speed abilities (see Part 3) that affect how it can move. A character does not have to move its full speed value, and it can choose to move 0 squares. Characters can also move diagonally, as shown in Figure 7.

[tidge]

FWIW: Aside from the implications of figure in the FF Rulebook, after a cursory glance through the rules I couldn't find anything in the rules that actually says movement takes place between adjacent squares! Weird.