I'm of the exceedingly unpopular opinion that the glory of SquareSoft ended almost immediately after Final Fantasy IX, and almost invariably. X was missing some serious magic. I view Kingdom Hearts and especially Dragon Quest VIII as exceptions (DQVIII is one of my favorites of all time), but XIII, all the spinoffs, even the VII remake is just so disappointing. They're mutilating it. I think maybe the most painful one is XV because there was some groundwork there for an amazing game. The characters were wonderful. The world was gorgeous. But they couldn't rope it all in with a good story and you need that in an FF game.
I played FFVI, Chrono Trigger and SMRPG back to back. I couldn't believe how good it was. Even then as a kid I was asking myself "Stuff can't always be this good, can it?"
It cannot.