I think things changed a bit with MIDI with the introduction of Soundfonts, and even more with dedicated MIDI sound cards.
I bought a Roland SCC-1 [1], and fell in love with MIDI. It was basically a CM-300 in a PCI card. I could program music that sounded like it was coming from a Roland keyboard. Such good memories.
But like you, I also was not a fan of FM produced MIDI, and that was only exacerbated by the SCC-1.
Soundfonts made it possible for games like FF7 to sound identical to the PS1, which was miles ahead of FM MIDI.
I bought a Roland SCC-1 [1], and fell in love with MIDI. It was basically a CM-300 in a PCI card. I could program music that sounded like it was coming from a Roland keyboard. Such good memories.
But like you, I also was not a fan of FM produced MIDI, and that was only exacerbated by the SCC-1.
Soundfonts made it possible for games like FF7 to sound identical to the PS1, which was miles ahead of FM MIDI.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_SC-55