I, uh, agree about FFXII being good and all, but...

why would you recommend Ice & Fire to anybody? :)

God, I love the way it started, and it has some genuinely cool moments and characters... but the whole series has degenerated into a plodding travelogue (mainly Brienne's pointless wandering about the countryside), and I'd lay even money on Martin heart giving out before Daenerys comes home.

I've invested so many hundreds of pages that I'll feel compelled to read the next eleven volumes should they ever come out, but I couldn't recommend A Feast for Crows, say, to anyone new in good conscience.

Oh just to comment on the gibberish in the OP(), I do think the series has lost a bit of it's luster because of it's overuse. There used to be a time when a spinoff or remake was rare and you were actually holding your breath for something with the name Final Fantasy on it. Nowdays, there are five times as many games outside of the main cannon than within it. Usually, in the case of something like Mario it's easy to get away with it because Mario is a character. Final Fantasy is just one world of different characters after another, so it's a question on why this one if a real FF and not another one.

To help explain, Mario is originally a platformer. All main cannon Marios are platformers and all spinoffs are representations of his world in different genres(sports, fighting, RPGs, racing, etc.). FF is almost always an RPG, spinoff or not. Why was FF Tactics a spinoff and not called Final Fantasy VIII? Is it because of the vastly warped fighting style? Tell that to FF XI and FF XII.

Why do some of the games have sequels and prequels and not others? Why are these sequels and prequels always vastly different from their originals? Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus play nothing like eachother or FF VII. Why is the FF XII sequel so different in gameplay and tone from the original? Wouldn't it be weird if the God of War prequel was some tactical army building game featuring Kratos as nothing more than an inactive general? That would be weird and in most cases bitched about. Final Fantasy seems to get the free pass in this case.

Why is FF IV ported to the GBA, then remade for the DS, and it's sequel is a mobile game exclusive to Japan?

Why is Ivalice used as the setting for FF Tactics(a spinoff), then FF XII(main canon) and yet there's no connection between the two, the worlds don't even match up to eachother and the gameplay of both is night and day? What is the point in that?

There used to be a time when a game baring the Final Fantasy name was a special occasion. It was rarely put to bad use. Nowadays, it's only special sometimes when there's a number at the end...sometimes. Final Fantasy as a name has kinda been whored out maybe a bit too much. Case in point, even the Final Fantasy spinoffs have their own spinoffs now. Final Fantasy Tactics turning into Tactics Advance in case anyone was wondering.

This is definitely too off-topic to use as a discussion here. For now I will leave it at "I disagree with you" and "I hope George R. R. Martin's big fat old self lives forever"