You can find handfuls of people who will say that exact thing about every single game, to be fair. Plus I'm sure there are entire cities full of Japaneseies who would disagree with anything being wrong with the series.
(And I actually enjoyed 13
. I mean, the linear part pissed me off - but I think they created a good story, and a very visually pleasing world with an interesting history [if you read those dossier-type things like in the ME series].)
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But anywhoo, I believe that a big part of "the problem with final fantasy" is that the North American gaming core who loved the series when it was first released for the NES, and played it when the series matured during the PSone days - has aged. We aren't the whimsical children we once were who were satisfied with a JRPG with frilly music, and girls in tight clothes with big tits (....).
We want RPG's like Mass Effect, Fallout, Bioshock. A dark world with gritty, dark surroundings, and girls in tight clothes with big tits. We as a gaming core have evolved, the types of RPG's we like have also changed. We like realism over magic and fairy tales, with some tight clothes and tits.
We don't care if our fake-real-world has magic in it like Bioshock, or Mass Effect as long as the world is dark, and mature enough, and has some tits. Not that some of us don't still like JRPG's, or will play them. We just tend to like 'North American' RPG's more. We would consider them to be vastly 'better' as a whole, Which makes sense.
Maybe part of the only reason why we liked Final fantasy so much as kids is because it was one of the only options at the time to play a game, and see girls in tight clothes with big tits - or if there were other options, they all looked like Final Fantasy anyhow.
Plus if your friend plays a game, as a kid - you want to play it to then be able to talk about it and share the experience - and back in the day
everyone knew someone who played those games and would lend it to you. Now those people play Mass Effect and Call of Doody.
I really do still like the series though, and I'm currently playing through 12 again - and I'm noticing so many different things this time through that are making this a lot deeper than I originally thought it was. Plus turning off those goofy coloured action lines and film grain, with turning the attack gauge speed to maximum are making the game so stupidly fluid and nice to just sit back and watch. I don't use gambits much, though. For little tedious things that occur all the time, I do [or if it's late at night and I just want to sit back, smoke a joint and watch how beautifully successful these characters I've designed fight on their own] - but I typically like to control the battles oldschool-style, every action for every character every time - which is easily possible in this game. Playing it that way and just switching the character you're controlling simply for perspective is pretty cool. It feels (to me) like I'm playing an old FF game, because of those things.
blah blah blah blah blah.