I personally do. I've played all three NES games and I enjoyed FFII the most overall.

First off, if you have problems with the combat, get a newer version. Only the NES version is broken. Origins fixes the bugs of the original, Dawn of Souls took out a ton of frustrating elements, and the 20th Anniversary edition is actually super polished and even has a "skip turn" type of command if you need certain characters to level up more. I personally enjoy the PSP version if only for the bonus dungeon, and the biggest problem I had was how many times Ricard and Leon fainted (MARIA ISN'T MADE OF MP BOYS!)

As for the story, I keep hearing about how simple it is, and I can agree with that. However, a good portion of the rest of the series has elements inspired by FFII. "Rebels fighting an empire" is something both FFVI and FFXII did, FFIV's cast copies from it several times, and all three villains created long lasting stereotypes in the franchise (as did Garland and CoD). Sure, the story is short and somewhat dry, but it was big for its time, and plenty of staples in the franchise came from it.

My thoughts on I are that it was decent. The game was just easy and fun. However, what knocks it down a slot is how confusing the story got toward the end. I get what it is and why, but it feels weird for Garland to disappear only to show up at the end with the hand wave explanation of "the Fiends did it".

Overall, III is probably one of my least favorite FF's. The job class system was great, don't get me wrong. However, the story was too bland for me, the villains were too cliched and made no sense, and the exploration frustrated me. You wanna talk getting lost in FFII? I had to restart twice due to getting lost in FFIII!

So yeah, my controversial opinions are out. I know someone might be angry, so before you call me elitist or bad at games, I've played all console games but XIII-2 and LR:XIII, I'm also into Tactics, Kingdom Hearts, and Bravely Default, and FFX is my favorite. *flame shield up*