Ah, right. My fiancé has our copy of the PS3/PS4 version, so I haven't played it yet. I've actually managed to find some games on the PS4 (both in the RPG category and in the fighting game category) that I'm enjoying, but I know what you mean due to there generally being a steady decline in good quality games as the generations go on.

Love-hate relationship makes sense -- FFX had a lot of great content, but fuck some of the farming and random side quests. Same for FFXII technically, but in this case it's due to the excessively long-winded side quests brought on by the game being a little bit too sandbox for its own good -- this game arguably did it before western RPGs (which usually don't interest me) started doing it.

You've pretty much nailed the whole problem with Vaan -- I think he could've worked as a character, but if you're going to make a character that annoying you shouldn't give them so little story focus that the audience doesn't see a redeeming side to make up for the obnoxiousness. Once they committed to including him, they should've put more focus into developing him. As it currently stands it feels like he got thrown into the game at the last second, sort of like how Fang (in FFXIII) was [i]literally planned to be a guy until the final stage of development[/i], to the point that I seriously can imagine her working as a guy character. In general though, I don't dislike Vaan so much as I dislike the way he was handled, though after Zidane and Tidus I felt like we were due a more serious protagonist again (those two were serious and well-developed, don't get me wrong, but I mean more openly serious).