Don't get me wrong, Tidus was even more annoying than that monkey moron from FFIX, and the english VA was pretty much horrible. There are a hundred other little things that are awful about the game.
BUT, there are so many things they did that were a breath of fresh air for the series AND the genre that I have to give it credit. These include an actually tactical (and challanging) battle system that made great use of status effects and buffs/debuffs. Interesting character customisation (on the expert grid, which yanks didn't get iirc, it makes a huge difference) and weapon customisation. Characters that remained a vocal part of the party throughout the entire game, rather than just poping up for their sidequest then being mute for the rest of the thing. Art design that hasn't aged nearly as badly as the PSX era games (sprites are immortal, so pre-PSX hasn't suffered). And finally, a good coherant narrative. Even if the characters were all annoying, the narrative that carried them remained constant and flowed nicely from scene to scene, which gave the game a more polished feel than previous itirations.
Basically, that is to say, despite much of it being smoke and mirrors I enjoyed being taken along for the ride even given the flaws. Not that I can blame anyone who hates it, the flaws were there.