Some of us have favorites that arrived well after starting the series.

That said, I feel the need to tap the sign: if anyone thinks mainline Final Fantasy games are bad, they need to play some genuinely bad games for perspective. There are plenty available even within the genre: Beyond the Beyond, Ancient Roman, Lunar Dragon Song, etc.

The series is constantly reinventing itself, and that’s going to leave people behind. SQEX still manages to retain consistently high production quality despite that.