So, better post. Hopefully.
I personally think the constant attempts to reinvent the games from the ground up do the franchise more harm than good - that's no secret, I've said this before, if someone wants to ask about this, ask via PN b/c I don't want to hijack this thread. Incidentally, this doesn't mean I think everything leading up to IX (which is my favourite FF game) is 'perfect' either.
There are very personal cut-off points to "when did Final Fantasy stop being good" - according to Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, his point was after Final Fantasy VI, after which, according to him, the series (or rather, JRPG in general) became "more about spectacle than substance, always about skinny fifteen-year-olds dressed in outfits that looked like they were designed with an Etch-A-Sketch and fed through a thrashing machine; endless gaudy cinematics; retarded angsty drama; bloated, unwieldy menu-driven combat." (
Source) I don't agree with him fully, though his points can occasionally be spot-on, albeit I have more of a bone to pick with the genre I've dubbed
moé crawler - games like the Neptunia series.
If we're talking about each game post-IX individually, my opinions are as follows (I'll leave out some titles for various reasons and focus only on 'the big ones'):
X - I am mostly OK with this one. Not a fan of the main character and I have a fairly negative opinion on the subject of the character progression system, but I like Spira as a world, the overarching themes of dogmatism and freedom from religion appeal to me.
XII - I like it. Yeah, there's some ilk to be had with it, but I enjoy the parts I like about this too much to give a crap about the "bad" stuff (which I think is asinine anyway - the game's allegedly 'too political' and the subject of Vaan, who I think doesn't disturb the game at all). Like the combat, REALLY like the world they're building, love Sakimoto's score and Yoshida's designs. Also Balthier has the best lines of any FF character ever.
XIII - I think deep down, at its very core, this could've been a great game, had the overall proper narrative been better. But as-is, XIII is just a thoroughly miserable experience to me.
XIII-2 and LR - I do not care about these two. Played bits and pieces of them, but honestly, after the first one failed so thoroughly in capturing me, I have no intention of spending more time with this universe.
XIV: ARR - Need to go back to this at some point. I just love this game and this universe. Would really, really like to see an offline game like it, because I see so many people dismiss it because of it being an MMORPG (which is unfair, for the record).
XV - Haven't played it and I'm kind of critical about how they want to handle the story patching. Still, everything else looks like a good, straightforward no-nonsense RPG to me and it'll probably be one of the first titles I am going to pick up alongside my PS4.
I think FF can still be good going forward, though I hope they find some semblance of a red thread again. Will it have the same impact as it did back in the PS1 days? No - but does it need to? Not everything needs to change the world - sometimes, y'know... it's OK to be good in your own right.