Let's talk about old-school FF games? Well, okay, but I'm sure we've discussed them before. At any rate...
FF - What can I say? Classic. Honestly, my only beef with this one is the lack of save points, as well as the problem of hitting air when all your characters attack the same bad guy. Yes, I know, it makes it harder...but there's two types of hard. Challenging hard (good) and frustrating hard (bad). Those two things about this first game fall into the second category, making them bad. Dawn of Souls fixed two of these things, but at the expense of one thing I thought was a challenging hard: the removal of the spell levels in favor of the MP system. I much preferred the spell levels of the original...it made it so that you had to cast spells wisely, instead of having your black mage nuke everything like in Dawn of Souls. Sucked a lot of the challenge right out of it. Heck, in DoS you were even able to reach level five and beat Garland in like ten to fifteen minutes. That was IMPOSSIBLE in the original NES version.
FF2 - Aside from the level up system, which I loathed, this one was pretty good, honestly. Solid storyline and well developed characters.
FF3 - Haven't played too much of this one. This one introduced the Job System. I'm not sure how it works in this one, as I only played it for about twenty minutes before my folder on the LAN at work got wiped. >< It didn't seem to be well-developed, though, so I'm not sure how it works as far as requirements for job switching or ability learning, or the like. However, it's nice to know where Lulu's Onion Knight doll from FFX came from.
FF4 - Great, great, great game. The PS1 version, at least. Cecil's Dark ability RULES. Great characters, lots of exploration, and HARD bosses. One of my personal favorites.
FF5 - Started out strong, but I lost interest in the end. One of the few FF games I haven't beaten, and probably never will. It had a good storyline, and
[SPOILER]The merging of the two worlds near the end was an AWESOME idea, very well executed.[/SPOILER]
However, it fell flat near the end for me. Running around fighting random battles to gain job levels is only fun for so long. Besides, I like to beat all the optional bosses, and I have yet to find ANYONE who can tell me how to obtain a Dragon Lance so I can beat Shinryu, and DO NOT tell me to mug Crystal Dragons in the N-Zone, I've mugged about twenty of the things and all they give you is Elixirs.
FF6 - Excellent game, almost as good as my favorite (Tactics). The characters had unique abilities, but all could learn the same magic. I like that. It gives every character uniqueness, and at the same time it gives a sense of flexibility if you need a healer or a nuker in an emergency (almost as good as X's sphere grid, but not quite). Forever Rachel still stands as one of my favorite FF songs ever. They REALLY need to make an arranged version of that song. :/ The plot twist at the middle was VERY well done, and Kefka was probably the most evil FF villain of all time.