FF Hits and Misses

[Kenshin IV]

FFVI & FFVII*

Hit - Pushed the series into character driven stories and pushed the envelope of visual techniques to show story telling. Great dungeon designs, side-quests, and very open ended character customization. Easily the two most accessible entries in the franchise...

Miss - ...because said customization and an abundant amount of overpowered skills, abilities and gameplay mechanics make them some of the easiest entries in the series. You can defeat both of their final bosses in one round and the hardest enemies are actually optional fights for whom most of the games overpowered mechanics were really designed for.

Absolutely, 100% accurate. I've always found it really interesting to see what type of fans gravitate to what games. People who want story first and gameplay second always gravitate towards Six or Seven (or Eight or Ten), and people in the gameplay crowd usually gravitate towards Three or Five (and are more forgiving of Twelve).

Personally, I've always felt you can have both games that focus more on story and games that focus more on gameplay in the series, as long as that game does what it's focused on very well (Seven with story, Five with gameplay, for example).

P.S. Of course, there are games that balance it out (Four and Nine, for example) and those ones seem to be loved by both the story and the gameplay crowds.