I think it's Square organizationally after Sakaguchi took major step back after the movie failed. So Square management was visionless in its time of financial peril and that brought on the need for the Enix merger

/rant about ff14 feel free to ignore

I play 14 and I would say right now lots of players are very unhappy with the game

mostly:

1. main story was by far the worst they've had in an expansion

2. combat content is good but the punishing design is confusing players as they made it very open to casual/beginners yet they made it so making 1 mistake ruins it for everyone (chaotic alliance, forked tower)

3. people are saying "raiders are eating well" except they release a raid tier where the gear doesn't matter because they won't release an ultimate for this raid tier, meaning you finish the raids and for what ? yeah there's a mount to get but if you want the mount the content doesn't last you more than 8 weeks, consider even getting the mount right away which means the content is essentially dead after your first clear

I love the raid design but clearing the extremes 300 times can only be so fun, I'm almost done clearing ex3 for the currency it gives you for the mount and after that I guess I have to do ex4 100 times as well

For me this would be about right but I felt X was peak FF.

I think the big hit to the series was voice acting. When it's read, it's fine. When it's voiced, Final Fantasy's need to be esoteric filled with game specific lore jargon makes it sound like a bunch of nonsense. A lot of people complain about JRPG writing as anime-y, I don't think Final Fantasy games writing would make it to production for an anime that had to stand on its own merit, no FF association. Feel like FF writing quality is somewhere around Fist of the North Star but not as endearing wheras modern shounen anime is post-Yu Yu Hakusho where its not just mature themes but where it reads like the author really believes in what they're writing rather than thematic checklist writing by a collection of writers and producers

The Sakuguchi games I think balanced the edgy grim dark "Final Fantasy" apocalypse stories with some lighter moments that give the world and characters more well rounded characters. I think that's the magic. It's apocalyptic but there's a sense of hope and magic and perseverance in the writing and art