Hating something due to hype and fandom isn't always a conscious choice. Sometimes the way people behave in regards to a game or the things they say, and probably over-say, can ruin your perspective and experience on a subconscious level. Happens to me all the time. And I tend to avoid games, movies, anime series, and whatnot for extended periods of time, years sometimes, due to hype. I -still- haven't watched Evangelion because of how people praised it to be the work of god or some crap. Fortunately I got to FF7 and Xenogears before the fans started salivating and got to enjoy those games for what they were

And for the record, I played all the american released Final Fantasies in order. And I hate X and Kingdom Hearts. And 6 and 7 are my favorites. And I'm not a rabid fanboy. So I guess I break that generalization. But I'm a hard person to stereotype anyway. I also didn't really care for 9, at all. It was boring slow and a chore to slog through for me. The characters barely caught my interest in the slightest. Its hard to enjoy a story involving characters and plot points you don't care about

Now that I realize that FF purposely aims at younger audiences and refuses to embrace the wonder of telling a mature and gripping storyline, its no longer a mystery why I can't and haven't enjoyed a FF since 7. And why I loved Xenogears so much. Unfortunately I couldn't make it through FFT. Mature and gripping as the story may have been. Its the most complex and convoluted tactical RPG I've ever played. And I got tired of trying to memorize things. And the difficulty sky-rockets way to rapidly in some places for my taste. I loathe grinding in any RPG. But I'm used to TRPGs having a standard pace where you should only have to go from battle to battle. Not go back and fight one battle ten times to be able to survive the next battle. So its purely a gameplay mechanic disagreement. No real hatred for the ideas they tried to attempt for the game itself