ff tiers

IX/VIII/X/VI/VII:
These are what represent the peak of FF to me. All have great stories, characters, mechanics. If someone asked me what the peak of the JRPG genre looked like, I would point to any of these titles when it comes to FF.

IV/V:
These are great to me, however I don't think they are on the level of the tier above. For me, these are the games that truly started the progression into great stories/characters but hadn't fully gotten where they needed to be yet. Still great titles, though.

III:
My memory of this is vague but to clarify, I only played the DS remake of this and I remember liking it.

I/II:
Great for their time and what they were trying to do, but I couldn't recommend these over any of the others these days. In my mind, these are the games you go back to purely to see where FF came from and that's it.

XIII/XIII-2:
Convoluted story, bad characters, bad music, bad battle system. These games to me are where you finally realized FF was never going to be the same for a long time. XIII-2 tried to fix some of XIII's shortcomings, but by then it was already too late for me, because you were building on such a flawed foundation.

XII:
Can appreciate some really like this game, but for me it just didn't hit any notes. Hated the plot, hated the characters, despised the battle system and just overall found the game very boring. This game simply didn't feel like FF to me. And I remember feeling very disappointed after completing it.

And now we came to, the games that should've never existed:

XV: Worst JRPG ever made. No question. Everything is awful, there is nothing redeemable in this game. Delete this game from existence. In fact create a time machine purely to go back and delete this game simply so my memory of it doesn't have to exist. If I could have selective memory loss it would be this game.

X-2: Good battle system. And... that's where my praise for this game ends. Brought back Tidus. Fundamentally undermining X's story, ending, the weight of the ending and all the emotions you felt during it. This game is a great example of sometimes happy endings are not the best endings. Delete this game, no amount of "battle system is great" will make it good.

XIII LR: Just... why? Battle system is decent like X-2, once again, but a good battle system is not gonna save a game built on a flawed foundation with awful everything.