The JRPG genre is much more diverse than a lot of people give it credit for. I don't think Final Fantasy is a good representation of how JRPGs as a general genre have been going. The series which leads it is Dragon Quest, if Final Fantasy does something viable for all games in the genre, some will follow, if Dragon Quest does it, everyone follows.
The Dragon Quest games, I have heard people describe as being 99.9% the same as one and other; though this usually comes from people who have not played them before, or have only played one of them. The games look similar in art style, and have similar monsters, and battle systems; but overall, the games are very different:
DQ1 - 1 player
DQ2 - 1 player with two allies
DQ3 - 4 Party based, and a class system (while FF1 came out a few weeks earlier, DQ3's direction was probably known before development began on FF1)
DQ4 - Chapters which follow different stories of different characters which all link up to each other.
DQ5 - The game follows the life of a character from childhood to an older age, you can select a wife, have children which fight with you.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
