ryuzaki57.
the man to blame is Hinirobu Sakaguchi tbh, the commerical failure of The Spirits Within led to the bankrupcry of Squaresoft and led to his departure. since then the person as the head of prouduction team 1 had become Yoshinori Kitase, who contrary to common belief is NOT a qualified game designer. he is in fact a film graduate, who was inspired by things like Star Wars, etc, big theatrical motion picutures.(i have no source for this by the way, but the information is out there).
anyway the problems imo began with FF8, when Sakaguchi took a backseat to development to focus on The Spirits WIthin. Kitase, Nomura, Nojima, (and whoever is a key part of production team 1) focused on telling a more teenage drama, instead of the epic sweeping story. this wasnt necessariy a bad thing, but a lot of people cite Squall and the rest of the cast as poor and the story about time compression, Ultimecia, also poor. but the transition to photo realism and cinematic action was what attracted people to it. and those were great things, but they've taken FF to the depths it has sunk to now.
FF9 was done by a different team, and was meant to draw from the series roots, instead of doing things like FF8 did. they did a great job, but the sales were very weak compared to FF8 & 7. Sakaguchi had more direct involvement this time, despite his comitments to the TSW.
FF10, featured the combined force of Sakaguchi and production team 1, who did a good job at the time. but the title aged badly, with the voice acting and dialogue being key culprits. FF10 did feature excellent gamplay however (imo) and incredible production values.
since then Sakaguchi left, and FF went completely downhill. FF10-2 was the beginning of a nightmare for fans such as myself. we've had remake after remake, sequel after sequel, the FF7 compilation has been nothing but an ego trip for Nomura (imho) and a disasterous FF12.
i've already talked a lot, so i wont go into FF12, but theres no doubt the problem with FF has been the departure of Sakaguchi, and the direction Kitase has taken the series in FF13. his background has significantly reduced the element of gameplay in FF13 in favour of 6 hours of teenage melodrama. this imho is a disaster. and without the marketing they would not have achieved these sales, and this would never have sold 6 million if it didnt have FF on the box, just like every other IP this gen from Sqaure has been met with poor reception.
