Final Fantasy's lost its magic

I hate to speak too soon since I'm not very far in the game (especially for most RPGs), but nobody would say it's too soon since Final Fantasy XIII came out more than a year ago now. I heard nearly everywhere that fans were disappointed by the game and I didn't want to try it too much, until now.











I've been a fan of earlier games of the series, but have been lately disappointed, like XI (I don't plan to pay a subscription for an MMORPG at the time) and XII of which I just didn't like the real-time automated simplified gameplay (that's how I call it), but most importantly the story was uninteresting to me. Now XIII where the story seems both stone cold serious and at times ridiculous (come on, there's the stereotypical comic relief black dude... with a bird, a chocobo, hiding in his afro). Furthermore, the gameplay is even more simplified and automated where I'm at.

I went through all the fights without doing anything more than choosing the auto command, I can only play using the leader, no character building (I expect something later on that permits me to upgrade characters or this is total shit) and no rest between dungeons right now, just a long walk with many fights and a couple people here and there that are of no importance. The rest seems to be cutscenes every 5-10 minutes of gameplay and the thing seems to be more linear than ever.

I think Final Fantasy had it back in the SNES days and even PS1 with VII, which was just one of the most amazing games in the series despite coming out before it was fully developed (from what I observed), and IX, which was a good nostalgic experience clearly made for fans of the series.

At some point they decided to forget the roots of the series to freshen it up a bit I assume, but the magic was then lost. I hate to be saying to stay the same all the time and never change, but that's not what I'm saying anyway. There was PLENTY of change between earlier games while still being Final Fantasy games. You can't just use a series to make anything, apart from a couple spinoffs (and certainly not a lot) or else the series means nothing anymore.

Final Fantasy XIII and similar culprits who share the same root name, you're not Final Fantasy, you're impostors claiming the title for its fame and to make some easy money with no merits of your own. I sincerely hope I change my opinion by the end of the game, but after a few hours of play already, I can just expect it to become a little better than my initial presumptions, but still not very good.