You can pretty well pinpoint the exact era the stories in FF games went to shit. FF1 through FF6, they were either really simple or pretty good. Anime stories, but still good. Then FF7 hit and Sephiroth was a big deal for the fans. FF8 was the big nomura showstopper, building on the angst and 2edgy designs from 7, and all the FFs afterwards (minus FF9 and spinoffs) have been Mega Gay.
Even FF9 probably has Nomura's stink on it somewhere, if you look really hard.
The less said about bravely default, the better. It promised a return to the FF5 heyday, but provided a shallow retread of FF5's job system mixed with a new, mostly shit "brave/default" mechanic, and a truly awful nomura story.
The brave and default stuff is mostly terrible because there's not much strategy unless you're fighting a boss. You just spam brave with your damage dealers x4 on everyone and the enemy dies. If they survive, well, that's why you have 1 character use default, so they can heal until you can brave x4 again. It's a joke.