I think you need to actually play FFII before you engage in threads that discuss the entire series. The entire world gave up hope in that game.
That's not quite true. Hilda and the Resistance still had enough hope that they opposed the Emporer.
If you played Chrono Trigger, you would see that even with the Super Nintendo, updating levels was not a hard thing to do, even the world map was altered several times depending on what you did.
Well, there's the fact that FFVI was Mode 7, which showed how much more advanced it was than regular 2D graphics whenever you flew on the airship. I think it might have made a difference.