VII is easily my Final Fantasy of choice, followed closely by V and VI. XII gets some major, major points for rejuvenating my interest in the series (ironically, because it provided such a different experience than the more recent entries) and for generally being such a fantastic game - arguably, in a lot of ways, it's the best in the series. III (the original Famicom/NES) is quite good, too, although it's nowhere close to my favourite.

I do want to mention that I'm fairly surprised at the love that IX has been getting. I by no means consider IX to be a bad game, but I remember on its release how much flak it received in the FF message board community. On the flipside, VII seems to have becoming the series whipping boy (despite still being popular, it gets a lot of hate). Interesting how things change. I'm curious as to how many IX fans on this board played the game on release (2000 was it?) and how many caught up more recently.