Bro Square they had action RPGs on SNES. PS1. PS2 and so forth. Mana games which are action RPGs started as Final Fantasy Adventure on game boy. Crisis Core is a PSP spinoff in the middle of the Final Fantasy 7 spinoff craze. Dirge was an action game on PS2. They also had turn-based FF7 spinoffs on Japan mobile phones.  Crisis Core combat is nothing like 15 or 16's either.  13 was turn-based. The game sucks but it was turn-based and came after Dirge and Crisis Core. No 16 hates women. Women are evil for no reason. There is no explanation, no solid motivation. They just are like a cartoon villian. Women with powers randomly become helpless damsels. Women with ice god powers suddenly become helpless because the man is there. This is the most common criticism of FF16 and is as subtle as being hit over the head as a bag of doorknobs. It will not let women become strong in the game as characters. Anytime they get close they pull back and that woman becomes reliant on a man to do the job. When a woman is evil it's to service a man. We think hey Jill wants revenge cool let's go but they keep pulling back and most of the game is her acting like a child waiting for clive as she acts helpless.

Not sure I understand this hatred of women thing. Are you saying that men are just naturally evil, no motivation needed, but for a woman to be evil there needs to be some special explanation to account for that? From what I recall, the "evil" men and women in FF16 worked together for their shared goals, they had the same motivations regarding power and politics and all that. Then there was the main character's mother, who was all about status and basically survival beneath all that. Maybe a little bit of narcissism there as well, because yes, there are women like that even in the real world. Why should we put women on a pedestal and pretend they can never do wrong? That's not hate, unless you're ideologically made to believe so. There should be no special treatment in representation. We are all humans, warts and all.
I agree about Jill in the sense that she was one the most boring characters without any personality to speak of, that I have ever seen. But that goes for almost all of the characters in FF16, it doesn't even feel like Final Fantasy because of that. The game was too focused on the main character and he was a block of wood as well.

My God, they start Rebirth off as a blank slate... are they fucking crazy. This is part two of the game not a sequel. Ridiculous.

Edit: I was wrong, started at level 40 with some materia slotted. I just seen the buster sword and assumed.