You know, you were kidding with the whole "text box" thing, but I find I like a lot of Japanese games BETTER without the voice acting. All that anime dialogue isn't so bad if it is just text that you read. Take Vanille from FF13. Damn, that bitch is super annoying. If I didn't have to listen to her goofy voice and could just hurriedly read through her lines at my own pace, I bet I could tolerate her.
On a more serious note, FF was better back in the day as the series was pushing the boundaries of what games could do with story. It's not really doing that anymore and games are so expensive to make now the entire game industry has had to cut back the scope of what they can offer with a single game. I guess this is why everything is some trilogy where they eke out the plot slowly. That's why I don't have much traffic with modern big budget games. My expectations were set by the SNES and PSX era. I expect to more bang for my buck than the game industry can currently offer.