The beginning of a lot of FF games are pretty horrible. You very often have to ‘where’s waldo’ around some sprawling city trying to figure out WTF you are supposed to do. FF9 is a game that gets better and better the longer you stick with it, but that first couple of hours is…really annoying.
FF Tactics is still my favorite by a mile, both in terms of story and game play. FF games in general seem to almost all have the problem of sticking some incredibly frustrating and tedious mechanics that you have to suffer through to continue. In 10 it was those horrible temples, in 9 it’s the ‘do a bunch of stuff in some weird order to solve’ puzzles. These games love to be obtuse, and it’s pretty annoying I find.