You forgot the Tactics/Legends branches, and Crystal Chronicles. But they won't get many votes anyway. 😉
I haven't played much before VII (Like many people) (Except MQ, my first RPG!)
VII was awesome. VII is to RPGs what Goldeneye is to FPS. I could play through it 100 times and never get sick of it. The materia system is probably my favorite Final Fantasy system to date.
VIII had awesome characters and an awesome story line, but I really... really hated the Junction system and the fact that it was actually easier to play the game trying NOT to level-up.
IX was above average in every category, the side quests were fun and the game was just jam-packed with a solid story, classic battle system, and well-rounded characters. The only problem with IX is that nothing about it left me wanting more.
X is probably my favorite. It was a huge step up in terms of graphical quality and ability, and the truth is I really can't find too much to complain about with it. It's a stretch, but the only REAL complaint I can give is that it might be too linear. If you wrote out each step you had to take to advance the plot, there would be few or no points where it branches out.
X-2 was crap. I was excited at first because it was cool that they actually did a follow-up to one of them, but the plot sucked, the battle system sucked, and it was 90% a rehash of a game that I had already played. I couldn't even finish it, so I don't know if the ending was worth it. It actually annoyed me that there were multiple endings, too. I hate that, unless it's just a few minor cutscenes added in for completing a certain task.
Never played XI. Is it worth the cost to play online? Is it still popular? Is there and offline mode?
XII... I'm halfway through right now. I love the battle system. The characters started out as really cool... I like the license grid... but as it goes on it just gets dumb. Why bother with the license grid if you're going to restrict when you can purchase spells and armor and such? It should all be available within the first 1/3 of the game if you are going to do it that way... even if you have to take some roundabout way to get some spells and such. The characters... geez... I'm told I'm only a few hours of plot advancing from the end and there has been NO character development. Aside from learning a small bit of backstory no character has overcome some critical flaw or made a change in their personality. I like that you can wander off to new areas before you have to, but I think that if you are going to do it, you should have it more or less unrestricted and allow someone to wander nearly ALL main paths and areas and just block off certain places at the ends of those paths.
MQ was fun, but way to linear, even for an SNES era RPG. It was redundant and the plot seemed like more of an afterthought. Well-worth the $10 I paid for it back in the SNES days, but it's at the bottom of the food chain in terms of rankings.
My vote is for X.
