It took me quite some time to decipher your post, I think I finally got it, well, more or less. While I have immense respect towards Hironobu Sakaguchi I have to kindly disagree with his "HD graphics being unnecessary" point. Graphics are in my opinion equally important as every other aspect of the game, better graphics equal realistic and more believable characters and the world they're in.

As for the quality of newer games, people bitch way too much and judge even the slightest change to the series, be it for better or worse. Fans also glorify older games way too much for no good reason, point out flaws of newer games, but keep a blind eye to same if not worse flaws in same games they so much adore. Take Final Fantasy IV for instance, a game praised for it's story and characters, but if you stop and look at it for a minute you can see how moronic, cliched and simple minded both characters and story, especially the story, are.