I never played the main games on PS2, so I can't compare, but I didn't enjoy this one either. The gameplay was halfway decent at best, and voice acting, characters, and writing were laughably cheesy in a really bad, self-important way that only Square Enix could possibly pull off
Voice acting was... on par with the PS2 games. So was the story, really. Sounds like you just don't like the IP (which is fine).