I've liked both the futuristic and the medieval style in the Final Fantasies I've played. They're both a good style, but in a different way of course :P

Personally I didn't like FF9 as the best of the series, but it's definitely not the worse. I hated Zidane as the lead character (I think it's because of the tail... and his behaviour with women in the beginning -_-;) and Quina I think is the most meaningless character in the whole series (besides Gau of FFVI), but the other characters were good. Freya and Garnet as my favorites, not only as personalities, but in the battle as well.

And no, I don't think that FF9 has too much fantasy in it, with the exception of Zidane and his monkeytail :(