It really feels like I'm being punished for not playing FFIV. I needed to complete whole MSQ all the way to 6.0 just to be able to play 6.X, I needed to do that terrible manderville storyline just to get (buy from vendor) relics, Ivalice to go to Bozja and so on.

But having to play 30 years old game just to enjoy and understand references in MSQ is really far fetched.

I'm happy for you guys who are excited about stuff like Zeromus, but I just have no clue who or what that is, so I really feel left out. This is beyond mere references. Other references seem more subtle, or if they were "love letter" to other games, at least it was optional content like Ivalice. Doing this in MSQ seems very off to me.