FF7 was the third title in the series I played, and I enjoyed it at the time but I have never understood the fanatics. I replayed it a couple more times, and each time it's mediocre story and easy game play made me wonder "Why does this game have such a hype?" I got it on Christmas day of 1997 and had beaten it before 1998. Waaay too easy for me to enjoy enough to hold it as high as some do on the scale of best Final Fantasy titles. I only like a few of the characters and the main two are smacked with the emo stick. The Turks are awesome though!

I did begin with SNES, but I'm not really fanatic crazy about FF9, or hate Kingdom Hearts/FFX. My top favorites of the series would probably be 4, 6, (FFTactics if it counts) and 12. But it's been about 10 years, so I may replay though a lot of the games to see if my opinion has changed any.