For not having anything new in it essentially? Really I must say FF got lucky. Lots of games get that and usually they are brutally criticized for it. Last big brand though was Twilight Princess by a select few reviewers. Although Zelda is always in the face of someone wanting attention because they complain if its too radically different or not different enough haha.
Personally I think it is the silliest excuse ever. A game should be good in its own right first and the compared second. If it truly is a fantastic game then why not let that be the judge. For the sake of Uncharted 2, sure the Uncharted franchise is a knockoff game from that of RE4, but that doesn't mean we have to go back and say every time how it is worse off because of it (reviewers don't say this because they wouldn't dare do it on in the west haha for big brands). I personally think the majority of a review score should be based on a video game's own merit and then a little shove for how it represents the industry and makes strides or doesn't. Now I could agree with not giving a game a perfect score because of it (Majora's Mask at IGN got taken down for this as the gameplay setup was exactly the same despite being a radically different game to begin with).
But hey what ya going to do about it. I got issues with the review system anyways and I don't think they do their job correctly. A game is about how much pleasure it gives to that of the player and then you can start discussing whether or not it deserves to go higher than that based on outside things. But never should be the sole reason you bash a game being because it is too like another game. Not speaking directly at FF13 right now but you get my point.
Famitsu though has really worked themselves in a whole by giving out way too many perfect scores. It's not to say the recipients weren't deserving, but the problem of saturating the "perfect score" is you provide a range for what "perfect" is. When you only have a perfect game a year or a decade or whatever you keep that range to an idealist perception of perfection rather than a range between certain previous recipients.
