Final Fantasy 6
This long snes classic has you battling against an immoral empire, and eventually against a super powerful madman named Kefka. This is one of my favourite games ever made, mostly because it had an incredibly good story with great characters. Plus I love the fact that there's a one year gap in the middle of the game, I always thought that was so cool and enjoyed finding my guys after a year of being apart.


Final Fantasy 8
This controversial installment took awhile for me to warm up to, but eventually I did. The story was cool, Squall was a great character, and there were some scenes that were so well done (like when you first try to assassinate the sorceress) that I literally got adrenaline rushes from them. The biggest downside here is that you have to keep watching the same summon animations over and over again to be effective in battle. In addition to that, I hate how enemies level up with you, that defeats the purpose of leveling up.


Final Fantasy 9
This one was a beauty. The leveling up system worked, you could gain new powers from your current set of equipment, some parts of the soundtrack were incredible, great prerendered cutscenes, well done graphics for PS1 hardware, and so on. One thing I really enjoyed was how your group was sometimes split up. I liked being in the middle of some adventure while thinking to myself, "I wonder what my other characters are doing right now?" This was done alot in FF6 as well, but I don't see it happening alot in other rpgs, where your group tends to stick together.


Final Fantasy 10
Truly a beautiful game with excellent production value overall. It's the first Final Fantasy to feature voice acting, and beautifully integrated CG cutscenes into the experience. It had some great characters, and just to make the story more involving, some of your guys actually die, unlike in FF9. The biggest flaw in my opinion is if you think about it, the whole game's structure is that of a giant hallway. You're always moving from one end of an area to another end, until eventually you are done the game, with no world map to travel freely on.


Final Fantasy 12
This one is rapidly climing the ranks, and could possibly be the best, or second best, Final Fantasy that I've ever played. It's even more graphically impressive than FF10, yet allows you to travel much more freely, and encourages some good old sidequest/leveling up gameplay. There is so much depth to this game, you can buy licenses, go on hunts, attain new powers, and basically do whatever you want whenever you don't want to advance the plot of the game. The combat system is much more like an mmorpg, but it still has that Final Fantasy feel to it. In fact, I like this system better, it makes fighting way faster, and removes the boring and repetitive process of going into a special battle scene environment and seeing all those menus every time you fight someone like in the older games.