Most underrated Final Fantasy game?

[Jumpin]

I'd like to say FF8 because it's my favourite and there are people who have this weird hate boner toward it... purposely criticizing the game after playing it in overtly stupid ways (like they were actively looking for reasons to hate it... Like deciding they had to grind 99 levels at the beginning of the game, because the option was there. Or drawing 100 of every spell because the option was there, and completely ignoring refine/crafting → which is not only a much easier, but superior way to get pretty much every spell in the game outside of certain boss battles; and, to be fair, if you're drawing rare spells from a boss, it's generally a gamble, not a grind, because you could get killed for it... but, I should point out that the game doesn't mandate getting those rare spells (and there are other ways to get them too). It's kind of like the early RPG haters who would complain because they didn't feel like equipping new gear...

However, at the same time, that's only paying attention to a small niche of social media hate-fan circle jerkers (and me being gross enough to actually pay attention to them 🤢). Looking at the wider picture, FF8 probably has one of the largest fanbases in the franchise, and it is one of the highest selling RPGs of all time (today is the third highest FF game of all time after FF7 and FFX/X2 combined with their re-releases). Add that nowadays, the FF7 remakes have taken the hate-thunder off FF8.

So FF8 isn't my answer...

At least in the first 12 games (the ones I'm primarily familiar with), I'd actually say FF2 on NES. It was an experimental game, that still had a lot of the primitive bits of FF1, but improved in most ways, and IMO was a fairly good evolution of the franchise from FF1. FF2 is the one on the pixel remasters I had the most fun with from the NES era. Prior to the Pixel Remasters, the game had most people hating it, out of the few people who even paid attention top it. But, I found it to be the most rewarding experience before FF4.