Kasz said that he things all the FF pre PS1 days had better writing......seriously?  The same way my views could possibly be skewed by the fact I approached them out of order, his can be skewed by the fact he grew up seeing FF as a certain way(like he said 2D play scripts as opposed to FFVII+'s "movies"). This is the epitome of the "Back in my day..." mind set. 

My argument is that generally speaking FFVII is seen as the best of the series, Sales say so(10million strong), The developers say so (http://andriasang.com/con1ny/wada_on_ffvii_remake/) , almost every reader poll says so(listed earlier), most fans you run into will say so (me). Now everyone is not going to have the same opinion, this can be expected of anything. It just has become much more apparent to FFVII fans of the tirelessly "Its not as good as you all think it is" crap. You get a million and one articles that utilize FFVII as the "eye catching" game  it is....then totally rob it of any merit or power, litterally they start explaining why they did not give it a top spot or another. Why would you have to explain this if you aren't taking a jab at it's fans just for kicks? The reason why journalist do this is because everyone knows pissing off fans gets their attention more than making them happy. Sensationalism. This is the birth place of the Non Conformist Conformist mindset which feeds this inner need to make yourself stand out by being different rather than the social norm which in itself makes that the new social norm(because everyone wants to stand out but if everyone stands out than nobody stands out).

I explained how I did not form a serious opinion on any of them untill playing more than half of them.Yes, I started with VII, yes it was the first to catch my eye.Yet FFVII catching my eye is a point in it's appeal, not a mark against my objectiveness. The fact earlier entries couldn't grasp a person from just looking at it shows how little appeal they have(I understand the graphical limitations of the time but doesn't make this untrue). If a game can't hook someone from watching it or playing it a bit, isn't that failing Good game making 101? Its not like I had never seen a 2D game before, I owned an Atari and Sega Genesis,neither of which had yet defined me as a gamer. Every game I ever loved had the power to hook me within a small amount of time watching it Any game that didn't yet I forced myself to play, usually felt indifferent about it.

@Kasz

You said earlier that those who have played the entire series in order from start to finish are a definite minority. You believe if everyone played the earlier ones that they would think more like you do. Gamers like you are under the harsh impression that it is all on the merit of it's hyped release, that it doesn't deserve it. You seemingly rebuke the idea that just people like it best period. Basically it feels to me that you and those like you are trying to tell FFVII fans our opinion is warped because we didn't play the 2D ones first, buy yours isn't although you could be suffering from rose tinted "back in my day.." syndrome. Yet a few people even in this thread played other entries before VII and still find its their fave, and then there are some who played FFVII first and still like another best.

So sales now equal quality huh? Glad that you think Wii Sports is the best game ever, or that you've admitted Pokemon is better than any Final Fantasy. 

Didn't say that sales are the end all be all determining factor of quality, but they are a good byproduct. Wii Sports IS a great game, and no amount of sarcasm will change that. I am not even a fan of the Wii and I liked it. Pokemon is also a phenomenal RPG(its just the SAME RPG over and over). Great sales is a sure sign that a game has some sentiments of quality to it, maybe not the best but its doing something right at least. And for a single entry in a long running series to show massive spike in them has to be a sign as well. Your point is moot.

People hear what they want to hear. Since I started Final Fantasy much earlier, I was surrounded my friends who have similar opinions to mine (some even find Final Fantasy 7 an insult to the series, but I don't go that far). Of course, reader polls are going to say that. FF7 was most likely the first Final Fantasy they ever played, and yes, that does become a point of bias. People WILL see the first one they played as better for the fact that they have memories of the first time they come across something that is common to all games. It's not always the case, but you cannot argue that it's of absolute total irrelevance.

Once again, assuming that everyone who loves FFVII simply because it was their first(even after some people in this thread prove this not to be true) yet completely ignoring the possibility(by the very same rules you portray) that those who say VI is better than VII can be due to the fact it was the last game before FF's departure from NIN or the fact they became accustomed to a certain style seeing as that is what they grew up with OR they are just Hipsters jumping on the bandwagon.

Games that "catch your eye" can only do so from a graphical perspective. If you're playing RPGs for the graphics, you're playing RPGs for all the wrong reasons. Let me ask you, if you have "watched" Final Fantasies before 7 and not taken a liking to them (just by looking at them, right?) would you consider yourself a Final Fantasy fan? Many of the FF fans that I know enjoyed the series from the very first one that they saw or played, it sounds like you're more of a visual allurance and not focusing on gameplay or story.

The first task any game must prove is to catch a gamer's attention enough to buy it. When I say "Eye Catching" it doesn't just mean graphical fidelity. I sat and watched the game be played, started taking note of the mechanics and was peaked by what was going on in FFVII. Did not happen when initially watching the earlier ones, and that is their fault. You don't have to play every game in the world to know you won't necessarily like it. Its fairly simple to study something like a videogame from the back seat and formulate interest from there.

I still enjoy 7 myself, I'd rate it in about the top 3 or 4 of the series at least. At the point of designing the game, Square still had their Nintendo mentality of quality (after all, it WAS meant for the N64, until the time of publish when they realise that it would be impossible to fit it on a cartridge). I often wonder, would FF7 still be the biggest seller (and the point of entry for so many) had it been released on the N64as intended? Would it have still "caught your eye"? It's interesting though, that a lot of FF7 fans agree the quality started to drp after 7, which is common to FF6 fans. The difference is, the earlier fans notice a drop in quality with FF7 upon release, a drop where those new to the genre at the time had nothing to guage against.

If FFVII had of been on SNES it might not have been anywhere near as popular.Remember, the main reason they put it on PS1 is because there was no way to fit all that they wanted to on Cartridge(and it was semi 3D). The game would have been a husk version of itself, probably missing a lot of it's original charm(and I don't mean graphically). Yet this holds no bearing on this argument. From where I stand the quality of the series did not dip after FFVII(well....sort of did with FFVIII). The series has always been rocky as far as appeal goes. FFI was ok by the very early standard, FFIII was barely acknowledged, FFIV well liked, FFV totally forgotten, FFVI highly praised, FFVII was the climax of the series, took a nose dive with FFVIII, did pretty well with IX, Started to peak again with X, Took a plunge forth with FFXIII.

sales numbers and general fan poles, both of which scream FFVII is the best.

sales numbers and general fan poles, both of which scream FFVII is the best.

Would the soundtrack have fit on a 64mb cartridge?

Would the soundtrack have fit on a 64mb cartridge?