Very thoughtful and well-written post. You've done a great job of distinguishing between pretty scenery -- which I think this game has -- and a world that's alive -- which Eorzea arguably lacks.

As Hotorori and others have pointed out, there are some of those little touches in FFIXV. Skeletons spawn at night around Camp Cedarwood (or at least they used to; haven't checked in a while). Some incap moves make the mobs look different -- you can break off an aldgoat's horns; you can break a coblyn's shell, you can knock off a skeleton's head, etc. And there are some areas that have neat little touches -- the bridge across an apparently bottomless canyon in Coerthas, the apparently abandoned houses in Coerthas, the glowing tree in the Black Shroud (youtube link).

So some of those touches are there. But the fact that the details are kind of limited in number contributes to the feeling that the game was rushed to release before being fully fleshed out.

Also, you mentioned beastmen tribes. They were included in Yoshi-P's letters as something that will be implemented in the future. Link 1 and link 2. So that's something that they appear to be working on.