I honestly like VIII and IX are better than VII, X is where I felt the series began to falter, and XII was a decent reprieve that fell short of it's potential. I honestly feel most people will mark XIII as one of the weakest entries in the series and while XV will never join games like IV, VI, and VII as the most beloved entries, I feel people will eventually come around to it, much like what I've seen with FFXII which got a pretty good resurgence in popularity and vindication after the Zodiac Age was released.

Yet the Zelda cycle does kind of stand because I feel the hatred against VIII was at it's strongest shortly after it's release and now more players have mellowed out and it's floated somewhere into the middle for most players. Same deal with IX. I was actually surprised FFX didn't do better with it's HD release to be honest. A quick glance at charts shows that it may have sold slightly better than XII's HD but only by a few thousand and only when you take in account Vita sales. Yet, for a game considered to be the "second best" in the franchise by Japan and some people overseas, I was expecting higher numbers and better reviews.