Looking back on it, I haven't been impressed by a Final Fantasy game since 6; I only really enjoyed them at the time since there was nothing better. FF7 was decent, but then I found a better JRPG series, Breath of Fire (excluding 3... and Dragon quarter. bleh). After that, I eventually found the Western RPGs, to the tune of Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, the Baldur's gate series, System Shock 2, and Deus Ex, and I can't remember what I ever saw in JRPGs. I guess I like the more western style of giving the character some personality, rather than having it all force-fed to you, so FF 12 shouldn't have been a letdown; I should have seen it coming, but I think I have some kind of condition that prevents me from having any decent foresight.
As for Neverwinter 2... I did end up avoiding that. Neverwinter 1 had its good points, no doubt, but I'd rather play CoH if I'm going to play a repetitive game anyway, and at least get good character models, more people, and (surprisingly) better story...
Edit: I just remembered one of my biggest annoyances with JRPGs: the ending. Most of the time, the story gets worse and worse as you get close to the end, with in extreme case it becoming a contrived pile of bullshit (I often call this 'FFX syndrome' as that is the most pronounced case, but ALL the FF series sees this). Some of them don't do this; Breath of Fire 4 had a decent if slightly bland story throughout and this didn't change towards the end, though earlier games in that series fall under the same syndrome. Western RPGs typically don't do this either; at least, they usually don't (KoTOR2 did... and hard). That's not to say FFX was all that bad; the story was fairly shitty looking back on it but I had fun playing it, and that's all you can really ask for. FFXII was fun for awhile, but it kept drying up and feeling pointless, as do the other FF games whenever I try replaying them.