I agree... It definitely lacks the "epic" feel of previous final fantasies... And about the cartoony thing, this game does take time to get used to it because of the lack of humans.. Most FFs since 1 had mostly humans with the occasional whatever-race character thrown in (such as Red XIII in 7) so at first I hated most characters :P they all looked stupid and silly to me... And dont even get me started on how Quina, a clumsy frog-eater is the most powerful character in the game...

Again, in my opinion, FF V succeeded much better at the whole humorous plot thing, specially because of Gilgamesh :P