I look at it this way. No FF would have meant Square going bankrupt. Square going bankrupt means not only no FF, but we wouldn't have seen games like Chrono Trigger/Cross, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, and a lot of others (Einhander baby ). Not only that, but I think it would be safe to say Japanese style RPG's might not have cracked the North American market at all, since it was really all the FF titles leading up to and most especially FFVII (overrated or not) that really made RPG's popular over here. Regardless of whether you think FF is the greatest thing since sliced bread or not, the impact the series has had on gaming is a little difficult to ignore.

We certainly wouldn't miss it had there never been FF. We just wouldn't know better obviously, but many of us might not be RPG fans, or at the very least would have missed out on a lot of other great titles that came as a result of Square's continued existence. I'm also not sure we'd have ever seen a game that would have the effect that FFVII did on gamers in general. Very likely, RPG's would still be an oft overlooked genre.

Plus we wouldn't have had Uematsu's amazing soundtracks for our ears to enjoy, and that would be one of the most unfortunate things of all.