Of FF games, I like FF7 most since it iss good in many area's . After that comes FF6 ,and then FF4.
FF7 had a cool story, because the main character was f#cked up. Pretty impressive to let the main character beat up one of your other characters
. It had also one of the most innovative systems regarding materia. (which TheWay notching system seems to be a bit like it, but sadly enough without the tactics/strategic descisions).
FF8 had some nice characters (Squall and Quistis for me), but the story was..hmm..lacking. It wasn't coherrent (sp?).
FF6 had a great story, but it had too many characters ,so there was not character depth as it could have been. In other ways, it was pretty perfect for a SNES game.
FF9 is nice, but I didnt like the skill-system much, neither did I like the characters much. I couldnt become attached to a monkey or a rat. And dont even mention that Q-thing.
FF4 was great. It had a classic story, although the characters werent as deep, but this is an old and relative small game (10-15 hours). It greatest strength is, that it didnt bore me as their was always "story" happening. (prolly because it was only 10-15 hours for a game).
Ofcourse, another of the best games from Squaresoft was not one final fantasy, but Xenogears. It had one of the best stories and like FF7 a f#cked up main character (Fei <-> Id ). Although I didnt care much about disc2 or the robot battles however. The problem of this game was that it just take too long ,so it got boring in some places.
Well, Chronotrigger was pretty good ofcourse and Chronocross was nice, but had little depth.
For me, story and characters are the main points. I do not care much about levelling up. I just level up as I go through the story. Ofcourse, if I do have to do battle, I would like to have some spiffy-looking skills and attacks