I could not agree with you more.
I wish Square-Enix would go out of business because their glory days are over. No wonder RPGs are dying, because Square turns them all into boring, incomprehensible messes. They killed the Grandia series with Grandia 3. They killed Star Ocean with "The Last Hope" . And Final Fantasy has been dead for a while. Now they're coming out with FF13-2 because you know everyone loved the first one so much (not really). It's like they're disdainfully making them out of obligation instead of inspiration.
I also like the screenshot you used from Skies of Arcadia. That's one of my favorite RPGs of all time.