In my mind, FF really did stumble at FF7 - the story felt like a rehash of FF6 with less interesting characters, and a "bad guy" who spectacularly failed to actually come off as being bad, resulting in a rather annoying lack of urgency. By around the middle of the third disc, I was ready to just let him have the Planet because I didn't really see what difference it would make (and from vague descriptions of the ending I've seen, it sounds like fighting him really doesn't make any). To be honest, I was more interested in saving Sephiroth from himself than trying to kill him. Making Holy and Meteor into forces utterly beyond the player's control doesn't score it any points in my book either - those are supposed to sit squarely in the arsenal of a couple of seriously powerful wizards, from which I can casually toss them at groups of unsuspecting goblins 🙂
FF8 was even worse. I'm sure I've mentioned my distaste for the Materia system here before, and the GF system just makes it even worse - am I really supposed to think that Squall, master of the gunblade, can't manage to uncork a bottle and drink without the help of a GF? It also had the same lack of urgency that 7 had, which was a really nasty demotivator - I don't think I even got halfway through the second disc before I gave up trying to care about what the #### was going on. Given that it was worse than FF7 for me, I was starting to consider the possibility that FF would *keep* sucking, which isn't something I want to see happen. On the plus side, I did like the "spell stock" magic system. I might try it again, since (unlike FF7), I haven't played most of it.
I haven't played a whole lot of FF9 yet, but my initial impression is that it's much nicer - more character-driven and (as far as I've played) doesn't use the super-boring Materia/GF style of combat abilities. I really need to put some more hours into it...
As for FF10, well... I'll wait and see how it goes. Not owning a PS2 kind of puts me in a good position to do that...
And as for Chrono Cross... well, I won't close that book until I've tried it again. Maybe I haven't given it a fair chance. But suffice it to say that I completely failed to connect with it the first time around, and I get the feeling that I'm just going to uncover a bunch of contrived tie-ins to CT that barely manage to justify CC's status as a sequel. It just felt Wrong, kind of like FF8 did.
Thus ends yet another off-topic rant 🙂
