Wow, Wolf. That was a pretty intense post. I gotta give you some props for that one. Because that's what you want, isn't it? A little attention and praise for what a smart gamer you are? There's only one problem:

You're wrong in almost every feasible way a human being could possibly be wrong.

First, I don't think the measuring stick for whether art drew somebody into a work is if they wrote about it in a magazine or talked about it at length.

And your whole New Game+ argument, again, is a red herring. No one contested that CT has multiple endings. The issue is that CT can be completed, with all of the side content for that playthrough exhausted, in around 30-35 hours. About the same or less the time it takes just to complete the main story alone in PlayStation RPGs.

And Xenogears... ah, yes, sweet Xenogears. Is it overrated? Of course. And it's lacking elements can be demonstrably proven to the extent that only reaching arguments can be raised in its defense. It's not the "far and away" best game out of the PlayStation, Platinum Age of RPGs (I'm coining it). But it's still in that same circle of classics. I can't dispute that. The game missed a lot of basics for me, but it also nailed a lot of the more ambitious stuff so well

I also don't think FFVII shares CT's rationale for hype, that people played it when they were 8. The PlayStation console at the time was marketed for the aging gaming population, teens and young adults, and went a long way towards bringing game consoles out of the closet with the action figures and board games and into the entertainment system, connected to the surround sound.

Fallacy. Whether BoB likes FFXIII or not has no bearing on the capacity to look at FFVI in a reasonable way.

And I don't think my expectations have much to do with my capacity, neither. I read people on this board say DQV was the best in the series before I played it. I may agree with them. I can't say the same about FFVI.

The whole fact that "this is an American list" is also off-topic. I'm not saying we should care what the Japanese think. I'm just accounting for how a community, who could not have played half of VI's predecessors, could come out and say "WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS GAME CAME OUT OF NOWHERE AND DID SO MANY AMAZING THINGS!!!!1"

Anyway, the list is weird. I disagree with it. And I'm not sure why I care about it anymore...