I think the main issue is that most developers focus more on making an attractive game as opposed to something groundbreaking. It seems to me they don't have faith that their game ideas will be able to sell on their own, so they gussy them up... or maybe it's because they know people will buy the pretty-looking game. Either way, I won't say that there are no good games these days, but I do believe we have been in a bit of a drought.
A lot of people say that games today are better than they were in the past. In some regards, yes, they have improved. However, the things that improved aren't necessarily essential to the game, but just make it easier for the player to enjoy them. You have the same basic game, but with a few extra features and some bells and whistles. Boring!
I think part of what made games so good in the NES/SNES days were the facts that it was still a new medium and the technology wasn't that powerful. Because of that, developers had to know that their game ideas were good enough to sell on their own merit. In addition, because of the technological constraints, they needed to be more creative in everything they did. They still tried to mislead the consumer with box art, especially in the Atari days, but I believe that just goes to show how much they cared about appearances even back then.
Having said all that, I must ask... how can you honestly say what you did about Final Fantasy 4? That game was the perfect evolutionary leap in the Final Fantasy time-line. It was the best possible result of working from what came before it. The music is superb, the gameplay is superb, the graphics at the time were superb (and still look great), the characters had the right amount of depth, and the story worked very well. Every now and then I pick up one of my old SNES RPGs (Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, FF4, FF6, SMRPG, Zelda: LttP, just to name a few.) and start a new turn just because they're such good games. I admit it's different experiencing those games through the lens of an adult instead of a child, especially having already played through them as a child, but they are the classics for a good reason -- they're amazing games. Hell, I still load up Duke Nukem 3D every once in awhile. Or maybe Blood, that game is fucking badass. Shadow Warrior is pretty good too. I was pretty partial to the Quake series, especially Quake II... I loved me some RailWarz!
Anyway, yes, there were a lot of bad games back then, too, but that's to be expected. The difference is that there were a lot more gems back then. Even the mediocre games were fun enough to play through once!