SE to churn out a FF title/year?!

[Betelgeuzah]

Fair enough.
That said, I played my first FFs as a teen, and still enjoy those ones the most. There was that "little something" (best word that comes to mind is '"atmosphere") that could not be achieved with just gameplay or graphics.

That's because you play the "Back in My Day VII".

In my language there is a different word for experience and experience. It is, ironically, much like of a drug in that you can make it occur once but you can't simply reproduce it by experiencing the same thing again and again.

SE's games are much like it, in that they give you an experience and anything after that will not be the same. As far as being games, they don't do that well, but you are mistaken if you think that I don't keep the experience in a higher regard. However, unlike some of you I understand that it is not so simple as to play a similar game to get back the feeling (or as you would say, atmosphere) to return. Right now what makes me play their newer games is only the fact that I think they are more entertaining as games as they were before. When previously you would have been hard-pressed to play an FF title if the story, music or characters were not compelling to you, today it is possible to like the entries for being games alone. I don't have to like the story or characters for it to be entertaining.

I had my experience back then with FFX and to some degree FFXI. I still think that playing those games were the best entertainment I've had in my short life, but that shouldn't stop me from looking at them objectively and with the eyes of now 21-year-old me. When somebody criticizes FFX, I think the complaints are legit. That still doesn't take away what I got out of said game long time ago.