In order of my best to worst:
I have not played XI or seen anything of it other than soundtrack.
VII - In my opinion the greatest game of all time, although it is not perfect and that's why I am at Qhimm's, to correct it. What more can you say about this game that hasn't already been said? It has a top notch soundtrack, it was revolutionary in its day, it has an excellent story, great gameplay and characters.
X - A great game. Get's a lot of stick for the story but I thought it was well done, had good characterisation and an excellent ending. I was hooked from beginning to end. Lots of stuff to do, sidequests, minigames, puzzles. The last good FF game. **** you Enix.
VIII - Loved the story (some slight problems but overall was good), loved the characters, loved the gameplay, loved the card game and other miniquests. Had imho, the greatest game soundtrack of all time.
IX - Decent story but I don't think it is up there with the top 3 in that dept. Had some solid gameplay, art and music. An excellent addition. Unique among my favourite 4.
VI - Classic game, although totally overrated in terms of story. Solid gameplay and revolutionary at the time for RPG.
I-V - Not played them half way and so I cannot judge but I am going to shove them above the the below because I hate the ones below.
X-2 - Solid gameplay but crippled by the most moronic fan service, story, voice acting and characterisation in FF history. "Hiya Booyyyyyyyyyyys"
XII - After X-2 disaster I thought "Well it can't get any worse than that and that was a sequel." I was wrong. It did because this useless game arrived where all I did was press X with 2 gambits installed for 90% of the game. The story was the most pseudo self indulgent piece of twaddle I have ever seen for a game. No more deep than my bathtub. The character development was not there and nor was a game I could care about. I would dearly love to place this as the worst FF game but I can't because the turd to follow was even worse.
XIII - I never played it because I wasn't foolish enough to buy it after reading tons of reviews,watching many walk-through pieces on Youtube and seeing others on it (I got fooled by X-2 and XII but not a 3rd time). What is clear is this game at least has a story but it is contrived nonsense that even requires a manual for exposition. It has had the heart and soul of RPG ripped out of it to pander to the FPS generation. The gameplay is basic and mostly uninvolving. The balance is all wrong as graphics are now all the design team care about. We got this because people accepted XII.
------------ and I will go into scores:
On my travels through thousands of reviews, I did find one major problem which I think needs addressing.
A lot of the time, people who gave games 5,6 or 7 (average to decent scores) actually did not enjoy the game. I think sites give too much freedom for people to pick and choose how they score a game and this interferes with accuracy.
Now, to be fair, it isn't just those scores that suffer. People who give most games 1 or 2 out of 10 are also being unfair, and usually so are the ones giving games 10.
In order that people can make a more educated decision on a game, I think this is how it should be structured:
Story (if game is story inclined, if not, like mario, score option is not allowed). (out of 10).
Gameplay (out of 10).
Graphics [relative to the time period] (out of 5).
Music (out of 5).
and Longevity (out of 5).
and then an average calculated. The user is not allowed to just slap a number on it.
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So, if we take an example being my preference on the FF games, I would go with:
FF6-
Story: 4
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 4
Score 26/35
FFVII-
Story: 10
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 4
Music: 5
Longevity: 5
Score 34/35
FFVIII-
Story: 8
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5
Score 32/35
FFIX-
Story: 6
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5
Score 31/35
FFX-
Story: 9
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5
Score 34/35
FFX-2
Story: 2
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 5
Music: 2
Longevity: 2
Score 19/35
FFXII-
Story: 3
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 5
Music: 3
Longevity: 1
Score 17/35
FFXIII-
Story: 5
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 5
Music: 3
Longevity: 1
Score 16/35
Mario Bros 3
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5
Score 24/25
Mario 64-
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5
Score 24/25
A lot of that is of course relative.