Bunch of whiners. Sometimes I wonder if it's just that we've gotten older and more jaded, because replaying the older games (including many for the first time), I don't see how they are some incredible heights. VII, V and VIII for me are the tip-top games, but the others are all decent at worst, good at best. Still my favourite series without a shadow of a doubt and I enjoy every game (arguably bar FFII) but yeah, if a person who had no knowledge of FF and just entered the series played them all I don't think they would feel the older games were that much more incredible than the newer ones.

I do think that they could improve a lot, and they aren't at the dizzy heights, but I don't know that any of the older games' stories and worlds, had they been released today instead of back then, would have "put FF on top of gaming". Most would have been blips on the radar, perhaps excepting maybe two or three titles.