I've only ever played the first 7 games but I like to consider myself a big fan of the series. My first exposure was VII and since then I've mostly stuck to the SNES games (mostly V and VI which are the ones I had actually finished years ago.), V being my favorite for the incredible job system which I never get tired of.

Recently though I played Dragon Warrior (DQ1) for the first time and that gave me the itch to get into the first FF games, so I started playing the first and before I knew it I had started a series playthrough/replay haha. I'm currently on V and having a blast.

FFI is awesome, I was surprised by how well it held up. Maybe a bit grindy but what game isn't. It's surprisingly simple and fun for a JRPG on the NES but the replay value that comes with the party building is really the cherry on top, if not a whole other layer to the cake.

FFII is the one that took my by surprise. Everyone hates on this game for how the leveling system works but I found that if you try not to abuse it too much and play by its rules, the game becomes very smooth to progress through and is very good at keeping you engaged to every single battle you fight and it was a very interesting experience. Combine that with the general flow of battles and you have a game that feels so much more strategic than FFI and it really shows how ahead of the time the devs were. Of course, the game has its flaws (especially the FC version) and the dungeon crawling feels a lot tougher than it does in FFI. But wow, what a game.

FFIII is one I had actually finished before (both the FC and DS versions) but replaying it now with my experience with the first two games gave me a whole different perspective on this one. It feels like a natural evolution from FFI while also doing a lot of things differently. In general it feels very good to play and is by far the most polished out of the first three, but I hate how the job system has a linear progression and some dungeons towards the end can be an unimaginable pain (seriously why did they have to make the Cave of Darkness like that.)

FFIV is my least favorite and I'm not sure if it's because the game just doesn't stand out much to me or if it's because I've tried playing most versions of the game and never got engaged enough to finish the game until I played the PSP version (let's not talk about me losing my save files twice on the Steam version.) I don't really have much to say on this one. I can only imagine that game was really cool for its time but nowadays it just does nothing to me gameplay and story wise.

I already talked about FFV so skipping to VI, I actually replayed that one first (before playing DQ) so it's already out of the way. It's really fun! I'd definitely recommend it as the starting point for anyone who wants to get into the older games in the franchise. Good story, good characters (funnier than V's ngl), and very solid gameplay. My only problem with it is that I don't like the magicite system too much, but you can still do a lot of stuff with the characters' unique skills and other systems, so it's not the end of the world. Also, having a large cast of playable characters is always a positive to me. Besides that I also think the beginning of the game is very slow, but the World of Ruin being as cool as it is compensates for me.

Right now I'm looking forward to my FFVII replay since I haven't played that game since I was a kid. I remember being very overwhelmed by it for its scale and complexity, so replaying it now with all my knowledge of the previous games will surely be interesting. And I guess if I'm still in the mood afterwards, I might try playing VIII and IX for the first time. Maybe even X but I doubt I won't be tired until then lol.

Sorry for the long post. I've been thinking about the series a lot lately and just needed to let my thoughts out.