I don't think so. FFXII was in the top 5 in Play magazine's greatest jrpg list of all times that they released a couple of years ago (it might have been in the top 3), and it got a 10 out of 10 review score at Play, a 9.5 at IGN (same as FFX and FFX-2), and was IGN's Playstation 2 Game of the Year for 2006 as well as a 40 out of 40 from Famitsu.

The series is generally only put down by people that don't want to see the Playstation 3 have the same kind of success due to Final Fantasies as past Playstation consoles.

Well, I agree that it received high ratings, but I should have been more clear. Ever since the PS2 versions of Final Fantasy came out, they haven't been of the same from the first through the ninth. It just doesn't feel like Final Fantasy since the PSOne days and before. In fact, I've always felt that FFXI should have been separate from the FF series titled something like "Final Fantasy Online," very much like what Sega did with the Phantasy Star series with Phantasy Star Online. I think that Squaresoft called their online version of Final Fantasy "Final Fantasy XI" to make non-mmo FF fans buy the game because it comes between FFX and FFXII. Otherwise, you'd have a gap in the FF series without it.

This will contain spoilers... When it comes to FFX, I felt that not having a worldmap to navigate like in previous installments took away from the FF feel. It was also too linear even for an FF title. Also for Titus to be nothing be a creation from a dream was also to fantastic even for an FF title.

When it comes to FFXIII, the battle system sucks... peroid. Everything I've mentioned might be in of itself fine, but they deviate from what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy. And I do understand that franchises will evolve over time, But in this case, it's gotten too far from what supports this franchise in the first place, it's fanbase.

Granted that all companies are going to milk their franchise to some degree, why is it that I find that most of the maiin characters of FF "spin-offs" have been FFVII characters? Granted that FFVII was probably the most popular FF siince the PSOne, SquareEnix keeps going back to FFVII which is a sign to me that most anything thereafter (especially the PS2 FF's) just isn't going to cut it. That's some of the reasons why I think the "quality" has gone down. Not so much from a technical stanpoint, but it just doesn't cater to the FF fanbase anymore.

The gameplay might suck, but what rpgs gameplay doesn't suck from bad fps corridor crawling in Western rpgs like Might and Magic to wading through seas of random enemies to make one step in the earliest jrpgs to be considered classics. What appeals to me about rpgs are the stories and the characters. And you're not going to find a character model that looks as hot as Lightning's in any other jrpg released so far this gen.