Entries that grew on you.

What it says on the tin. Has there been a particular entry in the series that you perhaps didn't love when you first played it, but over time, you've grown to appreciate it more?

Definitely XIII. I didn't actually hate the corridor-ness of it at first, but I think that gaming sites circa 2010 probably had an impact and bled into the opinions that I was forming. I've actually come to remember the XIII series much more fondly.

III and V were ones I played much later and they didn't have the immediate hook that VI/VII did for me, but I grew to like them when I replayed them on PC

Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy IX, and Final Fantasy XII.

Honestly the only one I can think of is FFXII, and that was more because I played the game in Japanese the first time. :p

I still liked it, but that language barrier (this was in 2006, before I had at least some decent understanding of Japanese) did interfere, obviously.

I didn't play it again until The Zodiac Age, which I liked even more, both because I could actually understand everything and because of some changes/additions compared to the initial release.

FFIV. Not that I disliked it initially, but I actually like it more and more with every playthrough. This became especially noticeable once the DS remake came along, as I feel that version really elevated the game to a whole new level

Another one is FFIII, which was a slog the first time, but once I found Wolf Kanno’s job guide and discovered the awesomeness that is the Geomancer, I liked it a lot more.

Final Fantasy X. There's probably posts I made 16-17 years ago where I bashed it and VIII for being the worst two. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

FFVII. When I first played it, so many people was comparing it to FFVI that I was really disappointed because FFVI is the best FF game for me. However, I eventually gave FFVII another chance and I came to appreciate it for what it is. Now, it's definitively in my top 5.

I think the two big ones for me are FFII and VII.

I initially liked FFII when I first played it. I didn't mind the quirky leveling system and ultimately felt the game got a lot of undo hate. Later when I replayed it to get some info for the site FAQ, I came to really appreciate the mechanics and how far ahead of their time they really were. I feel those feelings fed a lot into my recent embrace of the SaGa franchise which is really FFII's spiritual successor.

VII is a game I've gone back and forth with, but I feel I've largely come around to it. I still have some knee jerk reactions to fan nonsense concerning it, but when you throw out the hype and the e-dickery, I feel the game is a much stronger entry than I would care to admit.

My next choice would probably be FFV which was a game I enjoyed, but really grew into one of my fave entries in the last decade or so. Same with FFIII where I liked the DS version but ended up walking away from a playthrough of the original Famicom version with a deep respect for it.

I can't think of any. It tends to go more in the opposite direction for me, though not dramatically so. I might change my ranking of a game, but once I've completed a game the first time my opinion is generally fairly close to where it will settle ultimately.

XII. I finally enjoyed playing it for the first time recently. There are still huge problems I have with it, but I really enjoyed my latest play-through nonetheless.

For me it was Final Fantasy Tactics. I hated that game when it first came out because it was such a breakaway from what I was used too, and also a genre I wasn't familiar with. But as I got older I really grew to appreciate that game.