Ah well Frazier retired before I was even born, I think it's true either way though. The FF's Hironobu didn't work on were X-2 XII and XIII, which ones are the most hated by the original fans?

I blame a lot of their problems on management though, everybody wanted to blame Tanaka for the way FF14 tanked, when your bosses tell you "have it ready by X date or you're fired" you end up releasing an incomplete game. The person who should have stepped down was Yoichi Wada. Here's a part of his quote on wiki
Internally and externally I feel there's an expectation of Square Enix to offer something new, and I really think that the Final Fantasy team could create something completely different, but at the moment they're strictly catering to the particular audience they have now."
That's the pattern you've seen out of the FF series for a while, this idea of fixing a formula that wasn't broken. So focused on reaching out to a "Larger audience" and making something "New" that they punish their real fans that liked their games the way they were. I wish they would bring back the world maps, random encounters and NOT moving around in battle, worked for almost 15 years why change that?

That's the good thing about the Dragon Quest series at least, DQ 8 felt just like playing 1-7.