And Final Fantasy is kind of getting into Sonic territory where it used to be a well respected series and has since become a joke. FFXIII and XIV have both been rather poorly received.
I think this may be relative-- maybe where most FF's were universally lauded, 12 and 13 were....still lauded, but not by all. Including myself (not lauding it, that is).
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Like how, for example, FFXII basically plays itself so you're mostly just steering your character to the next cutscene?
Which is exactly why I didn't like them. To be perfectly honest, I never played 13 (I don't have an HD console), but even if I could, I wouldn't have because it apparently has a similar combat system to 12, which I played for about 10 hours and wanted to email Square Enix, asking for my time back. Oh man, did I hate that game. And I bought it at launch for full price. I saw it used 2 months later for 30 bucks at gamestop.
I love active time battle. Love it. I'm too old to give a rat's ass about story in games, because stories in games will always suck compared to..oh, I don't know, BOOKS. So I play games for gameplay. Actually playing the game. It's the only significant flaw I see in these modern FF games, if they went back to ATB or something where you actually play the game, I will go back to that series. If not, the buh-bye. I know it's just one thing, but it seems like a central gameplay concept that I just can't get over.