I agree. I considered FF9 to be a great homage to the 16-bit era Final Fantasy games, which I also love. I do agree with
ObscureJigglypuff that the franchise has lost its way in later installments once Square went all in on action and ditched the turn based systems entirely.
I think that Final Fantasy declining popularity hasn't much to do with gameplay changes. This sounds insane, I know, but the popularity of FF-Games from FF7 onwards was always rooted in two other things:
1. Its technical spectacle like its CGI sequences
2. Its coming of age story about teenagers characters discovering themselves, falling in love and saving the world
3. FF7 specific the huge marketing push that Sony made for Square, which Square could not and still cannot do on its own
If you go back and look at how Sony marketed FF7 in the west be it in trailers, magazine adverts or even on the back of the game box they always show scenes from the CGI trailers or impressive background renders iE technical spectacle. The most you ever see of gameplay is a 5 second clip that shows a summon attack which is also just technical spectacle.
Beyond that technical spectacle used to lure in customers what then made people actually fall in love with the game were its story and characters but again not its gameplay.
Now why is FF popularity in decline?
To go back to Point 1 remember how, in the 1990s, Square would create a new graphical benchmark with every FF game. Back then no one could even come close to Squares CGI-cutscenes.
That really isn't the case nowadays, a lot of companies are as good or even better when it comes to creating beatufiul grahpics, and technical spectacle in general is a far less of good lure just based on how similarly good graphics from 10 years ago look to good graphics today. Compare that to how much graphics improved in the 2 years between FF7 and FF8 and then again 2 years later with FF10.
Without that technical spectacle and huge marketing push made possible by Sony to help lure in younger customers and make them long term fans, FF is mostly stuck with the remnants of its millennial fanbase that FF7 created. That fanbase has been and will only continue to lose members just from people aging out (FF7 is 28 years old after all thou I would say that process already started with FF12 and accelerated hard with FF13) and losing interested in FFs coming of age stories which most people have already experienced multiple times by now just via the FF franchise and cannot relate to as well anymore since they themselves are middle aged adults by now.
Obviously a new break out hit ala Persona 5 could create a younger hardcore following and I think that FF 16 producer had the right idea when he said that: ‘‘it would be good to look to the future and bring in a younger generation, with more youthful sensibilities, to make a new [
Final Fantasy] with challenges that suit todays world’’.