That's the whole going down thing. FFX: Tons and tons of people hated it, but there were a good number of people that liked it. The only reason so many people bought it was because it was the very first Final Fantasy to hit the PS2. If people had known about the monstrosity that it would become, not many people would have bought it. If Square-Enix keeps dishing out FF's that produce these types of outcomes, then Final Fantasy will become the final fantasy sooner than we hope and expect. If Square-Enix hopes to keep the series alive, then the next game has to be a huge hit, which looks like it will be. The reason FFVIII was seen as being bad was because, since it was the successor to FFVII, people had very high expectations of it. FFVIII did many unorthodox things and at some points couldn't fit into FFVII's shoes, so people immediately labelled it as the worst FF ever. FFIX made a return to the medieval style of gameplay, so people hated it because of that, when, in all actually, the medieval style was what the entire series started with. FFIII was incredible. Only God knows why it was released in the US. The whole class system made it so that it had a high replay value.
