Spin-Off Time!

General: I don't think SE has ever made a good continuation to any FF game. They're either poorly written rip-offs of their original game (Crisis Core, The After Years) or they're muddled messes that no one could agree what they wanted to do with it (Legend of the Crystals, X-2, Tactics A2) and I feel the franchise would be better if SE had never pursued this path for the series.

X-2: My biggest dissenting opinion for this game is that I honestly don't think the combat is good. Most of the interesting moves have too long of charge times, switching jobs and the entire garment grid mechanic honestly slows combat down even with animations shut off, and I feel the accessory mechanic is spread too thin in a sad effort to create the illusion of meaningful options when that's pretty far from the truth. The annoying puns and one-liners by the chatty cast does it no favors either. The job system also doesn't feel terribly balanced and like Tactics series, I feel you spend too much trying to unlock the "good stuff" instead of actually enjoying the jobs for what they are.

Crisis Core: It's awful and a serious slap in the face of the characters and narrative of VII. Genesis is the worst character to ever grace the series, and the character assassinations on Aerith and many of the other VII cast is appalling, and that's coming from someone who doesn't even like VII's cast. The gameplay is also just bad, and I often hold this game as a an example of how not to make an Action RPG. Also, I hate how they did the ending and retcon Zack's final moments.

The After Years: Is largely a lazy fanfic sequel to a great game. It even manages to bring in the two worst sins of a sequel, making the story about the main casts kids who are just less developed expies of their parents with little personality and the plot is basically a thinly veiled redo of the original game's main plot. This game also cranked the fanservice for the two most overrated characters in the cast to 11, with much of the plot revolving around Kain and Rydia.

FFTactics: I don't agree that it's the best version of the Job System like some fans do. I do enjoy the fact that abilities are expanded to include reaction, support, and movement skills but I don't feel the classes are as well balanced as they could be. The pacing of getting skills is also really skewed against the player, made worse by the fact the devs couldn't really think up enough good skills for each class and thus many of their moves are fluff.

Tactics Advance: I don't like the Mission mechanics in this game, I feel it bogs down the flow of the game. I also hate the use of IX's skill system as I feel the RNG factors of the game ruins all pacing for building a fun team. There is also an overwhelming bias of favoring Humes and Viera over other classes in the series as most of the game's most broken classes or combinations seem to be found exclusively in this title. I also love the Law mechanic and feel people who whine about it are simply too lazy too understand how to manipulate it to their favor or see that it exists to add variety to a game that asks you to play 300 variations of the same battle. Also, I'm firmly in the Marche camp and feel the rest of the cast were being selfish jerks to overwrite the world for their benefit.

Dissidia Duodecim: Was more of a director's cut/remake of the original Dissidia than a real sequel, especially since the bulk of the game is basically the original Dissidia with the new game's UI. I also feel that while the original did a pretty decent job of trying to make every character equally interesting and important, Duedecim's prologue plays too much lip service to Lightning, Kain, and to a much lesser extent Yuna, over the other new cast members. I can't even remember what Laguna and Tifa even did in this game. I also feel the re-balancing seriously screwed over certain characters and I don't feel they even bothered touching the characters who needed to be nerfed like Golbez and Jecht.