I have to agree. I have been a die-hard Final Fantasy Fan over the years, hell, my first game was FFVI for the Playstation One (Bought by my parents who had no idea that that game was not for a six year old). But even though I'm a die-hard fan, I can't push myself to pick-up a rental copy of Final Fantasy XIIIl, let alone buy it. I've looked at cutscenes on Youtube, seen character profiles on the Final Fantasy Wiki, and none of the characters seem as compelling as a Cloud, or a Squall, a Terra or a Cecil.

What I feel made Final Fantasy lose its magic with XIII, noting that I haven't played it extensively, is that its taking the direction of a Western RPG, but going taking a different direction at the crossroads that Bioware met when making Mass Effect and Dragon Age; the wrong direction. From watching the game, there doesn't seem to be dynamic between characters like Lightning and Snow, and even in the trailer in the first scene, their 'moment' is cringe-worthy.

I'm not sure if I agree entirely. I think the problem is more that the series has retained its dedication to a certain audience, and you're not really part of that audience anymore. It's the same thing that happens with TV shows that are made primarily for an audience of young boys, or one made for teenagers. I personally hated Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, for instance, because when it came out I was already too old to be part of its audience. Other shows like Voltron though, I enjoyed at the time, but looking back on them now they were just awful. 

When I play a FF game now I have to seriously ratchet up my disbelief suspension and try to think of the storyline like a teenager might. FF13 is the only final fantasy game since FF7 that I didn't take a year long break in the middle of before beating it. It did take me 4 months because I was deliberately pacing myself to keep from getting gorged on the teenage melodrama that the games wallow in. 

I actually find it hilarious when people complain about the storyline and characters of Final Fantasy games, then turn around and hold Dragon Age and Mass Effect up as having interesting characters. For games rated M, the romance systems are utterly childish and juvenile in those games, and the characters seem mostly bland and uninteresting to me, just like the archetypes in FF games. Every type of fiction has archetypes that make sense to its audience, and drifting outside those archetypes make it harder for you to quickly connect with your audience.  It's a design decision. I think that FF13 did a good job with it's archetypes, but not a great one, and managed to tell a decent story with them despite the melodrama. They even had one character that truly broke out of the mold that prior FF games had cast and was probably the most interesting and deep video game character in a fair number of games.

Having watched the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica just last month, I find much of it to be pretty predictable, and the rest to be filled with stuff that seems to throw their character's personality and loyalties around randomly. Adama's decisions in the first two season finales are so bizarrely opposed to each other that it hardly makes any sense at all. The whole Paranoia-with-higher-force-constantly-manipulating-and-experimenting thing is getting tiresome too.

Well said!

The growing anti-Final Fantasy sentiment has been growing and growing across the gaming landscape. I'm no on board. I find the JRPG to certainly be no more played out than the FPS or the RTS.

I loved Final Fantasy 13, and I hated 12, but you know what? I appreciate both. I think Square is just trying to find their footing this generation. Who knows what Final Fantasy 15 will do?

A lot of this stuff about JRPGs being tired actually has to do with the fact that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (the two premiere representative franchises of the genre) are at such high numbers in their series.

When people hear others talking about what FF15 might be like, they automatically assume that the franchise must have gone stale like a zillion entries ago. This is simply not the case. Final Fantasy isn't like Madden or Tony Hawk. Change has been endemic to the franchise since the beginning, and each entry into the series is wildly different. I think what people have grown tired of is mopey, sad sack characters. I'd say that concern is somewhat legitamate. That's why we need a real Chrono Trigger sequel!

Also, I strongly agree with this:

"Blowing up the world shouldn't just plop your group tidily back on the beach ready to gallivant towards a final level. It should mean something. And it does in Final Fantasy 6."

@James No, they don't need a Chrono Trigger sequel. What Square Enix needs is people to stop looking at games through the memories of their youth and evaluating them as they are now. 

@Andy Have you played the DS remake of FF4? You should and tell us if it still moves you. Same with previous remakes of FF6. Then compare to the stories of later FF games. Compare them from the perspective of today, not the past, and let us know what you think. 

@Jason You jus' be hatin' on some Chrono Trigger.

I don't look at Chrono Trigger through rose-colored glasses. I play Chrono Trigger all the time, and I still think it is leaps and bounds more fun that most modern JRPGs. I've never understood why you dislike it so much. I really, really like it's battle system, and I think it did multiple endings better than any other RPG I've ever played. Most other RPGs that have tried multiple endings that I've played (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Ocean, Chrono Cross) have multiple endings that play out as "slightly different flavors." (Star Ocean was the worst -- over 100 endings my ass.) Chrono Trigger has 13 completely distinct endings. No reused set pieces, totally different characters involved, and in the hardest one to get, you get to go to a room populated by the creators of the game. When you talk to them they give you all sorts of fun trivia about the game. I just think that's so cool!

I used to be a big fan of Final Fantasy games. But somewhere around part 8 things started getting disinteresting. I think it was because there seemed to be more emphasis on ultra-realistic graphics and long-drawnout cutscenes and the fun was missed. Plus the combat system sucked in regards to grinding just to get spells for part 8. I loved 9. I couldn't make it past the first several hours of part 10 and haven't touched the series since.

Final Fantasy, for me, began to lose it's luster in the PS1 era.  This was around the time that they started moving away from the fantasy aspect and into a more sci-fi theme for each subsequent installment.  With the exception of IX.  I loved the hell out of that game. 

Rich:

8 was a bit of a low point in the series. 9 had one of the worst combat systems in the series, second only to 4 in how badly they botched it. Oddly, in completely opposite ways. 4 was just too fast and fiddly and there was no way to keep up in many of the end game bosses. 9 was too slow with its animations, so it ended up being turn based where you had to decide 8 steps ahead what you would need to do that turn. (All your actions piled up, your gauge recharged even before 1-2 more actions happened in the queue, completely eliminating the "active".)

It's odd you didn't like FF10. It had by far the best combat system for me, finally ditching the played out and annoying active time battle system. FF13 has a drastically different and far more interesting combat system as well, replacing ATB with the far more strategic paradigm system that took far less fiddling, yet being far faster than ATB had been aside from FF4.

What EK Thomson said in #2 first para. Perfect.

@Jason Chrono Trigger remains awesome to you (and me) because we played the original when it debut, and got blown away in the process. Its always forever easier to jump right back into an old favorite, call it 'comfort food' if you will, and never get sick of it. I feel the exact same way about a lot of 16-bit RPGs, but the ugly truth is they aren't *that* fantastic anymore to someone who plays it now for the first time.

To give an example. I watched the cartoon M.A.S.K as a kid, and loved it to death. I never had a chance to rewatch it for over 20 years till I recently obtained the series episodes. Frankly, now it looks, sounds, and watches like shit and even I recognize that. Yet I still love watching every single episode over anything that plays on contemporary TV, simply because I experienced its magic decades ago, and already decided years ago that I loved it. Nothing will change that. Same with Chrono Trigger/FF4-6/Earthbound/Mario RPG.

Eugene: 

Nod, This is probably why I find it so strange when people like FF4. I was forced to skip the entire SNES generation and didn't got back and catch them until I was much older. FF4 is on my list as the absolute worst Final Fantasy game I've ever played. It's annoying and melodramatic. The true sacrifices of most characters are negated in the end by them all coming back to life and reappearing. The battle system is unbalanced, excessively fiddly, and underbaked. I played FF5, FF7, and FF9 when I was still in college, and enjoyed them. I don't know what I would find if I went back and played it now, but I suspect it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. I've been holding off on FF6 because of saving the best for last, but I wonder if I'll enjoy it playing it when I'm well past my teens when I start.

I blame the music. FF6 still has the best video game soundtrack of all time, and it's all been downhill from there.