I lack the context for ps2 but I know the DS games were limited by hardware and not a design choice to make them overly obtuse and difficult. World was the goal and they fell short until world in my eyes. You can see this with Rise, it takes far more from World than the older Nintendo titles. 

No matter the case it is following a trend of cadualization and lavk of challenge, now with fights taking no time preparation or effort to check stats for people who want it balanced that way and it has crossed the line. Some reviewers said they were forgetting to eat and it made no difference. It crossed the line with how easy Rise was but I could forgive that cause the arcadey nature and small maps and handheld, it made sense from a game design perspective and it was great fun solo but having world go even easier and literally no reason to change gear and power through, not even in the end game. At least Rise had one difficult fight with the end of story dragon boss and a few of the end game High rank fights which took me upgrading gear in Sunbreak to fight without severe difficulty. This has none of that and the, "we'll make the expansion more difficult" BS is not on cause they over compensated with Sunbreak and forced MP/NPC gameplay for the only reason to have aggro off you for a while cause monsters were so overly aggressive. MR 4+ monsters one shot even after grinding Gear and it became battles of attrition that were no fun, dipping in for a hit and out. World had perfectly balanced difficulty, not to easy like Rise and not to hard like Sunbreak. Just spot on, regardless of how difficult the older titles were. 

Day 1 ofc. Been a fan of the franchise since Tri and im hyped.

Nice. I hope you find it as enjoyable as past entries.