They took a big chance with FF8 and it sucked in terms of characters, story and world but was still a fun game to play and my favorite FF in mechanics and sidequests. Unfortunately this sent them running back to the traditional style with FF9 (still a decent game) only to fail and then just continued onward ignoring the failure of FF8's visual appeal to make every game afterwards done in the same visual style of FF8. Essentially every game since FF8 (excluding FF9) has been the Emo/Goth: "I buy my clothes from Hot Topic / makes 13 year old girl's squeel" drama whoring formula. FFX was a great game, and its visual similarity to FF8's art style could have been ignored given their starkly different worlds and stories if only it hadn't been the beginning of this wretched trend in FF visual style.
Basically the visual styles of FF go like this:
FF1-6 = Fantasy (Masamune Shirow)
FF7 = Punk
FF8 = Emo/Goth
FF9 = Retro Fantasy
FF10-12 = Emo/Goth
