>>718929909
I feel like TSW suffered a lot from Square stretching themselves too thin with their newfound success, and Sakaguchi splitting his attention between a movie and three games.

Also the attempt to mimic Hollywood casting hurt it a lot, as a lot of the appeal of the brand was the Japanese fashion and character designs.

Advent Children finding such success hurt the franchise just as much as TSW's failure. XIII's entire development was admitted to be an attempt to make a "playable Advent Children", which they have been trying to do ever since.