IMO there are a certain few things that go into a good FF.

There have to be these few things for sure, Chocobos, Moogles, Reoccurring monsters, a character named cid (playable or non-playable), great music (obviously) Shiva and Ifrit, and of coarse other summons. Turn based battle (preferably the ATB), More playable characters then the party can hold, adding the -ra and -aga to elemental magic was interesting and IMO a better way to denote stronger magic as opposed to fire1 fire2 and fire3, Big swords and lack of guns and ammo save for a few exceptions, not so much now a days but i still think it would be cool if they came out with a new game that had the boxed text rather then voices, a liniar story line with the option to explore, train and conduct side missions, separating the party at some point, spiky hair and one guy thats really mysterious.

Too much? Oh well just my own opinion.