I swear there's a FF cycle just as much as there is a Sonic/Zelda cycle. Literally this game was getting so much love like a few years ago and suddenly I've seen XII get a bunch of love with people trashing X. I'm 100% positive that in five years XIII will be getting a huge amount of praise.
And to answer your question, OP, most of the FF games are more or less equal. They're mostly poorly written during the PS1 era, not as bad as Legend of Dragoon with bad writing, but up they're. They're mostly grindy before X, and the stories are normally trite. But they're mostly on par with one another. Also Xenoblade. Such a delightful game, definitely competes with anything FF has to offer. And no, I don't hate FF, quite the opposite; I just think it's incredibly overrated as a franchise.
You should check out my YouTube channel, The Golden Bolt! I review all types of video games, both classic and modern, and I also give short flyover reviews of the free games each month on PlayStation Plus to tell you if they're worth downloading. After all, the games may be free, but your time is valuable!
