TTD: Final Fantasy Lightning Round (no, not that one)

sathari asked for my thoughts on the Final Fantasy series, including a few specific titles.

I came to the Final Fantasy series, through my husband, T. He had started playing with FFVII, before I met him. Not long after we got together, he bought FFVIII, and he would sometimes play it when I was around, and I was interested to realize that there were video games in which story and character had so much importance (before that most of my experiences were with arcade and arcade-type games, and Civilization/Sim City/other world-building type games). FFIX came out after we moved in together, and I watched the entire time he played, like watching an 80 hour movie, and I got pretty invested in it. Finally, with FFX, for the first time he handed me the controller, and I was hooked: on FFX (which to this day remains my favorite game, not just in the series but of all time), on the Final Fantasy series, and on RPGs in general.

I love the same things about the series that most of its fans love: the characters, the settings, the stories they tell. As a newbie gamer, I appreciated being able to ease into combat via turn-based systems, and that my hand-eye coordination was not often tested (I'm better at that now, though still not great). I've played most of the numbered installments, although I'm still missing some earlier games and haven't ventured into the MMOs -- my biggest gap is FFVI, which I've started several times but never finished. Someday.

( Thoughts on specific games behind the cut. )