I myself feel like the final fantasies just became less and less final fantasies after sakaguchi left. It started with X-2 having only 3 characters and became critical when XII lost (my opinion) the best thing of which you could tell it was a Final Fantasy: the battle system. I think that was one of the most important parts of Final Fantasy. Also, neither X-2 nor XII have the original "limit attacks". XII's quickenings are just not the same. XII also lost the feature of enemy skills and I cannot compare the espers to aeons/g.f.s/summons. Also, what I hated about XII is that you couldn't really "enter" the Strahl. You couldn't walk around inside it. And it doesn't have any minigame with chocobos. This I cannot forgive. VII had the whole breeding, VIII at least had the woods minigame and if you had a pocket station chocobo world. X had a number of minigames concerning chocobos and X-2 did too. But XII? All it has is the possibility of riding them. And I don't count the fact that you can reach areas with chocobos that you couldn't without as a minigame.

I must admit that I haven't played IX, but I did like Final Fantasy better when you could still walk around on the world map.