The Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend series were North American marketing strategies to entice others off of name recognition which was a bigger factor in selling games at that time.

Like Del Murder said, Secret of Mana was one of my favorite games. I think it would have been nice if the game was repackaged or remade with an emphasis on online play and multiplayer capabilities.

I think that the profitability of the series as a whole might not be as good as some of the other series that Square Enix markets, so maybe that is the reason that the direction of the series as a whole has changed? I am not familiar with the internal workings of the Seiken Densetsu series enough to speculate on the reason for its perceived decline in quality.