As a longtime customer of the Final Fantasy franchise, I've gotta say that Ray's pretty on the money. Especially story-wise. Replaying the games after experiencing other media geared at other audiences, a lot of what I used to find moving winds up looking quaint at best, trite at worst. Thankfully, I found X and XII to be mostly on the quaint side. (Having played a lot of Western RPGs, I can at least say FFXII's story, while lacking a bit in player immersion thanks to a POV character who literally has nothing to do with the story, is at least better than Neverwinter Nights 2's and Oblivion's.)
The exception being FFT, which had a good run even through the horrible translation of the PSX original. A Final Fantasy story about historical deception, corruption, politics, ambition, loyalty, and an honorable man in an unjust world. Even quirky lines like "Surrender or die in obscurity!" couldn't take away from that. And this wasn't even a marquee title for the series. It was relegated to the sidelines as a curiosity, followed up by an Ivalice game that wasn't even a FF--Vagrant Story, which had a better and more well-told story than most Final Fantasies.
(Personally? My perfect RPG would be something like the Baldur's Gate reskinned to look less-generic fantasy and a bit more like Akihiko Yoshida's work. Because Ivalice was the only reason I kept going back to Square, and I'm a bit sad that it's become the purview of kids' games on handhelds.)
To compare the Final Fantasy series to other games in other genres, Half-Life 2's story is simpler but more stirring, especially including the Episodes released afterwards. It's the difference between "Plot" and "Narrative." Plot is the "what" of the story, Narrative is how the story is told, and in Narrative HL2 and HL2:Ep2 succeeded in ways that the Final Fantasy franchise doesn't.
I'm no professional, so it's hard for me to describe, but if RPGs are meant to be "experienced," then a good chunk of one RPG franchise was outdone by an engrossing and cinematic FPS.
As an old fan, I've something of an idea as to why Square-Enix doesn't have the same grip over my wallet as it used to. Consider the original director of FFXII, Yasumi Matsuno. He intended FFXII to be a darker story about redemption centered around an older protagonist fighting to protect a princess who didn't trust him. (And judging by that blurb, one presumes the creator of XII actually meant to cast Basch as the protagonist, and the revelation that he was NOT the murderer of the Dalmascan king was supposed to have been in doubt for more than a few hours or so--which would've made a more interesting story, too, as it's treated as a throwaway plot element in XII.) The Squeenix execs told him, no, they wanted to pander to a particular audience--young ladies who like pretty boys--and so designed Vaan by committee and had him shoehorned into a plot that was meant for other characters.
To highlight why this was a mistake, most female fans ignored the effeminate Vaan in favor of the much more charming Balthier. Who was even *more* charming dubbed in English.
And this left FFXII with a story that was slowly neutered from the director's original design to something less involving, less ambiguous, less ambitious, and less interesting than what it could have been.
From the looks of it, Yasumi Matsuno, who left on account of "health concerns" (I still wonder if Square's trying to cover up an internal conflicts there, Japanese companies are loath to admit internal problems especially when leading up to a product's release), was well aware that the Final Fantasy series seemed trying too hard to pander to as many of its fans as possible and tried to do something a bit more mature, a bit less cartoony to bring the franchise up to speed with an older target audience who grew up with Final Fantasy (one that, hey, happens to have jobs and earns its own money). And was subsequently rebuffed by corporate, who hate to take a risk when the formula's working so well.
From what I can tell, FFXIII doesn't sound like its story or design is going to break from that any time soon. It revels in being a mostly adolescent fantasy, and old fans like me have to find greener pastures elsewhere. The best young-demographic media is media that can also be appreciated by adults on their own level, but Final Fantasy doesn't seem willing to treat its audience as anything other than teens.
That's fine for Square, since it's working for them thus far, but I'm still a bit disappointed. And I find that I kind of agree with the article.
And that's why I'm no longer a Square fanboy. I'm more than willing to buy Atlus games, though--they know how to shake things up and keep things interesting.
tl;dr: Basch should've been the main character. Vaan is the scrappy sidekick at best and should've been wearing his new FFTA2 shirt from the beginning. (He just can't pull off shirtless, I'm sorry.)
