As my original post suggest, I prefer VII. Mostly cause I feel X is the worse in the FF series and to a certain degree, made unacceptable practices in JRPGs more common place cause hey, "Let's just follow FF's example".

Plot: While both games are not terribly original at least VII had a more interesting premise and world set up. X bored me, even with its intriguing "Spiral of Death" theme. I guess my problem is that VII felt like an FF spin on what was big in JRPGs and anime at the time(which is the reason why the plot didn't blow me away). FFX is just a collage of ideas from anime at the time without the FF spin. X's plot had been done before and generally better in most accounts.

Characters: X actually comes up the winner, I like Tidus and Auron; whereas in VII, I only like Cid. I generally find VII's cast boring, two dimensional, and overall bland. The whole party is pretty angsty and low key. I really felt nothing for this cast, I feel more attached to my FF1 (Hobo, Meow, Smurf, and Bob ) party than the cast of VII. Granted X's cast is basically a collection of cliches with only Tidus and Wakka being the well written ones. Course I hate Wakka cause I hate dealing with fundamentalist jackasses. I like Auron but he is a cliche, just one I happen to like.

Antagonist: VII, though I generally consider Sephiroth to be a mediocre villain, I do like Shin-Ra and the Turks. Even though Shin-Ra is portrayed like the cliche "Evil Empire" with empire replaced with corporation, it at least had a colorful cast of villainous personalities to go with it. I still consider them more evil and ruthless than Sephiroth and its sad when the main villain gets outshined by the supporting characters.

X has Seymour, who is basically the game's "chatty villain", he's more annoying than a real threat and the attempts at explaining his motive are so poor that it really doesn't justify his actions in my book. They might as well as said he was just crazy... oh wait. The Yevon faith is your atypical corrupt church and follows the JRPG rules to the letter. Basically nothing new here, and sadly outclassed by other earlier Square games like FFT and Xenogears. Hell even, BoFII did a better job.

Sin on the other hand is pretty cool but its hard for me to classify it as a villain or even an antagonist. Its basically presented as a force of nature and once again drawing on Japanese culture it bears a striking similarity to a Typhoon. So its hard to get angry at a force of nature. Yu-Yevon is basically a McGuffin to explain Sin and Jecht is pretty awesome, and basically the only other character I liked in X besides Tidus and Auron.

Gameplay: VII no contest, real customization, better difficulty, more imaginative spells and abilities. Its only drawbacks were it all goes to hell about halfway through the game. X starts off decent but once you get your party and discover combat is a game of memory (connect monster to character its weak to) not to mention 3/4 of the boss battles have cinematic options that cripple the bosses or unskippable in-game help guides to explain how to beat the bosses; and you have a recipe for making all combat in the game tedious and mostly irrelevant. The sphere grid is also just a interactive version of FFIV's system with your party going down a very linear skill tree until at the the end of the game when your party can easily beat the final boss, you get enough special sphere's to actually customize your party... That seems smart and innovative I guess... The only thing X did do somewhat well is the cool summoning system cause it finally made summoning more than just a glorified mage. Its a shame the Aeons are basically "I win" buttons.

Soundtrack and Graphics: Graphically, VII has not aged well, in fact its probably the fugliest game in the series by today's standards except in comparison to NES/Famicom FFs. Then again, X is also pretty fugly in comparison to XII and lets face it, every other SE game on the PS2. But ultimately, I don't care about graphics and I was not terribly impressed with either of them back in their respected days when they were both considered cutting edge. Graphics don't mean a whole lot to mean and though X is prettier, VII has held up better overall, which is sad when the game is 4 years older and on a technologically inferior system. :rolleyes2

Musically, VII also wins. X has a handful of very good and memorable soundtracks but the vast majority of it is bland and rather uninspiring. Its pretty obvious that Nobuo did the soundtrack half-hearted cause he had other things he wanted to do (like work on his band). VII, though terribly synthesized, just has a much more memorable soundtrack with a staggering amount of variety of musical genres at its disposal. VII has a soundtrack where you can instantly remember not only where you were when the track played but could even conjure up your feeling when you played it.

Conclusion: VII is better cause it at least has better gameplay and world design. X is basically labeled as WK's Guide to: What You Should Not Do in a JRPG.