I think that many people fail to realize is that it's not Square who has changed. Back then, during the SNES-PSone times, they could develop a jRPG game and it would take them 1 year, then sell 300-500k copies of it and that would be enough to varrant a sequel. They could experiment, make new IPs - not because they were so cool and now they suck, but because it used to be cheap. And it's just not the case anymore. They cant make a game that fast, and selling 300k copies just wont make any profits. Not to mention that people in the West care less and less about jRPG games.

Golden era of the genre has ended, the companies cant act the same way they used to. If Square-Enix will act the same way Squaresoft did they will just go bankrupt in notime.

So personally, I like Square-Enix, much more than I ever liked Squaresoft. Because regardless of this difficult times they still try to innovate (TWEWY), they are not affraid of making changes within their most successfull franchise(FFXII, the best FF game to date) and they do support a load of smaller japanese developers like Tri-Ace, Game Arts, level-5, ArtePiazza, TOSE, Matrix etc.

The way I see it, the genre still lives thanks to Square-Enix.

Its a mixed bag. Now adays, we're seeing nothing but Final Fantasy coming out of the Square side. They've made over 20 games in the last 2 years with 'Final Fantasy' in the title, while not even producing (or publishing) a handful of other titles relating to Final Fantasy. Obviously, none of their major series are getting any new games aside from one new Front Mission and Mana game which hardly got any advertising or sales. And it seems they don't want any competition, outside or INSIDE, to come between their Final Fantasy name brand.

However the Enix side seems to be where their original titles are coming. And these are doing quite well. Especially the Dragon Quest works. Then you have Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean, The Last Remnant, and more on the way. Enix seems to be doing quite well with their Level-5 team up.

I hate to say it....but it really seems like Enix is holding up this company now. Both creatively and financially. The merger was just suppose to be a temporary fix to Square's financial problems, but Square has continued to be a one track mind. Nothing bunt 'FINAL FANTASY!!!!' In 5 years....no one is going to care. Especially if you make 10-15 games with the same name each year. That's worse than Mario, Sonic and DDR put together. And no fan, not matter how dedicated, can keep up with that.

And I find it Ironic that Square teamed up with Disney to make Kingdom Hearts because Disney is the one who did this in the Animation world.

I don't like as much as I used to, but I think that's directly related to Final Fantasy and the direction they're going with it.

I enjoyed Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time just as much as I enjoyed any of their older works, and I'm assuming I'll like Star Ocean 4 just as much..the only difference between now and then is that then, they released a lot more games that I liked..now, they're changing the formula too much and it's detracting me from a lot of the games that I used to like.

That said, I think they have a lot of potential, and I won't write off anything they do even if they put out a lot of bad product over and over, just because I know they have the potential to make a stellar game.