To Kagari et al., with apologies if this is going too far off the FFX HD topic -
I do think that FF discussion, even as it's gotten far more rancid in recent years (for which I blame the drastically slowing drip of new releases to talk about), has gotten more interesting, or at least has the potential to be so.
FF releases starting with FFX have been much, much more experimental in a lot of ways. There's still a lot to point to in earlier FFs as far as points of differentiation are concerned - FF5's job system, FF6's intense sense of personality, the vastly differing aesthetics and ability systems from FF7/8/9 - but I'd argue that the actual *battle system* and *world design* remained relatively unchanged from FF4-9. This isn't a complaint about how it was handled in those games in the least, BTW, just saying that it was a constant, with only minor variations (casting times in FF4/5/6, the ATB freezing for summons/complex spells in FF9, assorted desperation attacks, etc.).
Starting with FFX, though, the games started designing their world-experiences radically differently from one game to the next, and doing the same with the battle system. FFX's initial linearity leading into an airship location menu, FFX-2's thoroughly open-from-the-start world, FFXII's massive maze of an Ivalice, FFXIII's no-backtracking-ever world, FFXIII's assorted totally disconnected zones and nonlinear time travel - these are all vastly different. Likewise, FFX's CTB, FFX-2's ATB Kai, FFXII's ADB/Gambit, and FFXIII/XIII-2's battle system are all far more radically different from one another than any of the FF4-9 games.
I think this increased amount of differentiation between games (combined with the slower pace of releases) goes a long way to explain both the increased vitriol of discussion and the more rewarding potential of FF discussion nowadays. It's just too bad that it rarely lives up to that potential.