My thoughts: (long XD)

I love both FFVI and FFVII dearly. When asked to pick a favorite Final Fantasy game I usually sit and waffle between these two and then finally declare it a tie (FFIV comes in third place, by the way). If really pressed I'll usually pick FFVI over FFVII, if only because I prefer the charm of sprite-based games over the more technical excellence (or, in the case of FFVII, sharp pointy angles ) of polygon based ones.

Kefka is clearly the better villain to me (I'd go so far as to say the best villain in video games, period, which is saying a lot) and the music in FFVI is also better. FFVII has some great tunes as well but FFVI has the opera. Insti-pwned. I'll also say FFVI has the better story but I'm basing this off of my own personal experience: FFVI I couldn't put down, whereas FFVII I played at a much slower pace because it seemed to lag at times.

But, FFVI was not as perfect as a lot of people say it was. There were a lot of things about it that irritated me. One of them was the frequency of random battles. That might sound petty or something but man. I almost quit playing the game because of freaking Zozo. Sitting there trying to solve a puzzle and figure things out but you can't get in the right mindset to do so because you're being attacked every three seconds... not my idea of a fun time at all. I guess you could say "That's RPGs for you", maybe it's why I'm not a huge fan of RPGs to begin with, I dunno.

It's been mentioned that the characters are all rather similar stat-wise and there's not a whole lot of customization, which I agree with, but to be honest the only RPGs I've played where there's really a lot of tangible differences between the characters are the Pokemon games, so... =P

As far as character development and story are concerned, I dunno, I really liked it overall. I agree that stuff kind of got awkward once you hit the World of Ruin bit, but not enough to deter my interest in it at all. I enjoyed going around from town to town, gathering my party back together. It all seemed to fit together fairly nicely to me, even if it could have been improved.

I loved the characters in this game a lot, but if given the choice between the characters here and the characters in FFVII, again, I'd be torn. They both had great characters in my opinion. And Cloud/Aerith will always be my OTP but Locke/Celes comes really close

Anyways now that I've turned this post into a book, I guess what I'm trying to say is: Yes, if it comes down to it, FFVI is indeed my favorite. Is it the best Final Fantasy? Maybe. But to be honest everybody is going to have a different answer, so meh, not a big deal.