I'm a large fan of the series, and I agree, VII is insanely hard, i'm at the VERY LAST dungeon and having a horrible rough time. I quit and restart and have almost 100 hours of gameplay and only have 1 advanced class.

I'd say IV is my favorite. I thought it was rather realistic that you could only control certain characters and the others fought for themselves and had decent AI for the NES.

I is just Nostalgia

II and III i haven't played much.

V haven't played much

VI I dunno if I like this one.

I'm waiting for VIII to be released