I've never played a final fantasy game,but they seem to publish the games that I've enjoyed this gen,such as tomb raider,sleeping dogs. I also love the kingdom hearts games,so there 50/50 for me. Not my favorite,but certainly not the worse.

As far as I'm concerned, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics are their only saving grace

Never a company i could connect with because of their bias towards Sony and my bias towards Nintendo. Also i don't like turn-based games. The only games i've bought in the last few years that is any connection to Square Enix are Batman Arkham Asylum and Tomb Raider, which aren't really Square-Enix games at all.

Eidos has always been a non-factor to me. I've played some Square Enix games, and they are all right (issues with the endgame of both Final Fantasy III and FF Tactics A2)

In terms of software strategy, i feel they're rather dumb, outside of the Eidos acquisition which was a smart move (unless they go bankrupt and take Eidos down with them)

Square Enix as described by me:

A company with its collective head rammed up its rear end. Their budgets are over bloated, their development times are unbelievably long, their localization habits have been slipping, and their communication skills blow.

And I may be alone in this, but I never did see them as great storytellers. That being said: Final Fantasy XIII's last 3 chapters; all of XIII-2; Dirge of Cerberus; Advent Children (It's basically one big fight scene); Final Fantasy X-2; and Dissidia/Dissidia Duodecim were just plain bad story wise and then there was 3rd Birthday which was utterly attrocious. Most of the other stories were at least adequate, but these last few years they just went down the toilet in terms of story telling.

But criticisms aside, they get way too much hate.

Final Fantasy XI WAS NOT a bad game. It reviewed well, was received well by those who actually played it, and sold well. In fact, it's considered the most lucrative FF entry according to Square. But because it was an MMO, it was doomed to "WORST FF GAME EVER!" from the start.

Final Fantasy XII was also NOT a bad game. It reviewed amazingly well, was received well (8/10 and above for most sites for user scores), and sold well.

Final Fantasy XIII, at least according to the majority of user score aggregates, is around a 8/10 or above with tens of thousands of scores. However, there's that vocal section of the fanbase (just like with XI and XII... probably the same people) who want everyone to believe that XIII was "consensus bad". It wasn't: it was polarizing. That's it.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 was basically a massive apology game as they added in towns, a dedicated shop, mini games, sidequests throughout, hidden items, NPCs, ability to backtrack, hidden endings, etc. despite the fact that they didn't want to. They wanted a "Cinematic" experience. Players didn't. They went with what the players wanted. Granted, the story was extremely lacking, but it was still a step in the direction the vocal fans wanted. I personally didn't like it, but hey, that's just my opinion. Again, there is no "Consensus" on the "fact" that it was bad.

And now Lightning Returns is basically Square saying "Yeah, we get that we've been stuck in the past. Here's the customization, increased mobility, increased environmental interactivity, open environments, massive emphasis on sidequests, massive emphasis on towns, massive emphasis on NPC interaction, etc. you've been screaming for". Yes, it's STILL part of the XIII universe, but they don't have the time or money at this point to make XV. Take what you can get and laugh at the how bad the story is as you enjoy the gameplay.

Overall:

Square Enix is a company that clearly doesn't know what the hell to do anymore: They don't know when to try to innovate and when to try to refine what they have; they don't know how the hell to tell a story (NONE of those directors or writers do); and they clearly don't know what direction to take their flagship franchises. They seem to be floundering at the moment. But damned if they won't try their best to please fans while bringing in new people. That's more than most other companies who just up and drop their fanbase when they find greener pastures.

The problem Square had with the N64 was that, as a cartridge based console, the games could only hold so much.  An N64 Cartridge could hold a maximum of 64 MB.  A Playstation disc?  650+ MB.  Final Fantasy VII already took 3 of these discs.  They would have had to cut most of their assets if they would have gone with the N64.  

The N64 was also very hard to program for; the cartridges were more expensive to make and took much longer to manufacture to boot ; and there were several technical limitations that had to do with texture rendering (again, something Square wouldn't tolerate for VII). 

Square wasn't the only one to leave Nintendo, and the ones that didn't produced fewer games for them.

As someone who was enthralled at the first Final Fantasy and used to be a huge Squaresoft fan ever since they started releasing amazing SNES RPGs, then PSX RPGs left and right, the company has took a major dive. The best games that have been released have been studios that they've bought up, not from their core studios.

Ever since Final Fantasy 10s release they've started to go down hill. Games like Final Fantasy 10-2 may have been good because of the gameplay alone, or Final Fantasy 12 did everything right except for the gameplay and license board where they did just about everything wrong. It's like most of Square Enix's games are like this now days. Unless it's a remake of an already great game, Square Enix fails on one or multiple aspects of what makes a good RPG.

The problem is that Square Enix has people like Nomura, Kitase, and Tabata running the show and ruining games. They no longer have people like Sakaguchi, the real reason behind the series being so great, or Matsuno who's been behind amazing game after amazing game. I look at FF12 being as good as it is because of Matsuno. Every huge flaw in the game had to be because him stepping down from the director position and someone else ruining it.

They went from my favorite developer in the ps2 generation to the company that disappointed me the most this gen. What they have done on consoles this generation to their 3 biggest franchises:ff, kh, and dq has been a disaster. Where is ff13vs or kh3? Why is DQx a mmo?

The best thing Square-Enix has done this gen is to acquire Eidos Interactive before they went under. The Western Eidos branch has since released Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the new Hitman. A decent number of releases that each sold a good amount (regardless of their unrealistic expectations).

The Eastern branch on the other hand has just been a comedy of errors. Starting with the mismanagement of the FFXIII development team, the constant delays of announced titles (Versus anyone?) and a horribly expensive release of a very poor subscription based MMO in FFXIV.

I like them. They brought me tomb raider and some other good games this gen.