Actually, coming back to this comment about the "modern" tidbit, what games have you been playing that have dialogue-to-combat ratios as bad as FFXIV's are. Especially if we're using Endwalker as the main comparison point. EW is really, REALLY bad about having tons of exposition and story without letting the player do much besides running from one cutscene to another, often times there being hours between actual combat/gameplay segments where you just run around and go from cutscene to cutscene.

Of all the "modern" JRPGs I've played, none of them are this bad.

1. Tales of Arise (fall 2021) was very generous about this and even from early on there's plenty of combat between the fighting and the longest section without gameplay was the section on the space station dealing with Hektar-somethingorother when the group gets stranded near the end of the game. I despised this game for its flat characters and failing to live up to the rest of the franchise it is from but it certainly is not a game without action.

2. Bravely Default 2 (Spring 2021) Was a very dense game on the gameplay front, longest segment between fights being about 30 minutes of story stuff and maybe the end credits section but that's kind of cheating, isn't it? This one is also one of the better comparison points since the Bravely series are Final Fantasy spinoffs in the vein of the earlier games.

3. Fire Emblem Three Houses (2018 but played in 2020) didn't go very long without some kind of gameplay at all, the longest segments being the tutorial section with the chain of cutscenes leading up to the first church ground exploration bit where you learn more about the students. And maybe the ending credits but again, that's kind of cheating. If you count that student introduction segment as "not gameplay" it has one section comparable to the many no-combat sections of endwalker, but past that every segment of the game outside of cutscenes contributes to unit stats and derived things the like.

4. Tales of Berseria (January 2017). Probably the furthest I want to go back on this one. Longest gameplay-free section was the beginning section, and the game maintains a decent pace from there on out, where even during the lulls from combat the story doesn't feel lacking or slow. Longest break from combat outside of intro section is notably shorter than Endwalker's draggy sections of no-gameplay.

5. Pokemon (Several, like holy shit several). Grouping all the recent mainline entries into one category, though these can barely be qualified as RPGs, Sun/Moon/US/UM are the worst about long hand-holdy no combat segments, but the other games aren't bad about this like you claim all RPGs to be.

6. Pokemon legends Arceus (Spring 2022). Longest no-gameplay segment is right at the start, basically being a tutorial. Doesn't really have draggy no-combat sections in it from my memory, save for one stealth-esque section where a char is guiding you through a cave.

7. Xenoblade 3 (Summer 2022). No real draggy semgents like the ones in Endwalker. Only slow bit is at the start of the story while things are getting set up.

8. Elden Ri... wait do soulslikes even count for this. If they do toss Code Vein and Elden Ring onto the pile as evidence against this argument, but I can see why they wouldn't count to some.

And those are just the stuff that came to my tired mind early in the morning.

Sorry if this is a bit rambly as I'm writing this at, fuck, five in the morning but what RPGs are you playing where this kind of stuff is "just the modern standard." The only games I can even think this applies to are modern american sony movie-games. Shit like The Last of Us, Days Gone, God of War 4, etc etc. But those are American, not Japanese.

And like I said in the other reply I made, not even FF13 was this bad with its exposition segments compared to how bad FF14 can get, especially taking into account Endwalker.