Lamonda & I are currently playing through VII and enjoying it. A while ago we set out to play through the entire series in order but stopped in the final chapter of IV because we got so frustrated by the AI-controlled party members. In total, I've only actually played I, II, III, IV, VII, and VIII at this point. It's very difficult to rank them because I actually really enjoyed all of them. I'm sure Lamonda would say her favorite is the original, because of its perfect simplicity (and because we got to draw dungeon maps on graph paper), which is a tempting choice for me as well, but there is just so much to be said about the others. VIII was the first that I ever played in full, and it really impressed me. The innovations of III basically blew my mind after playing the first two. I absolutely adored IV until the aforementioned problems with AI-control. I guess the only one that I was kind of so-so on was II, but I still enjoyed it overall.