This and 7 are really neck and neck for me, and could easily switch places at any moment. Basically tied for #1

I kind of like the spell charges???? I kind of like fighter being super good but absurdly expensive to keep properly equipped?????? Also, really good story, Final Fantasy has always been weird and ambitious even from the very first moment! I understand how much of this game is like, kind of not fun or openly broken but I still think it sucks how much of the uniqueness of it gets sanded off in its remakes.

EDIT 3/12/23 THIS IS WHAT A FOOL WRITES TIME COMES FOR US ALL THIS USED TO BE SECOND FROM THE BOTTOM BUT I MOVED ITI'm not one of those dedicated Kawazu-hating red letter media-style "i read a meme review once when i was 14 and never had a critical reevaluation of anything ever since" people about this game, which is where i think a lot of the criticism comes from. i think a lot of the criticism of it is overblown. but i do think it's a mostly pretty bland entry in a series that is almost exclusively very daring either in presentation or gameplay innovation or both. you get a little bit of that mechanically but mostly what you end up with is a game that's unerringly tedious if you cheese the mechanics (which you shouldn't imo) or one that's unevenly difficult if you don't, and, either way, is needlessly obtusely designed a lot of the time. kind of a bummer but it's nice that they were trying. interesting failures count for something. oh damn i think i just talked myself into putting this above 6 lol

Do video games get better than Final Fantasy 4? I don't think so.

I don't particularly care for the story here which isn't an uncommon opinion but there's something to be said for the poppy saturday morning cartoon vibe to it and it's the most mechanically interesting FF until 8 at LEAST, and those mechanics hold up really well. You don't see people holding annual gimmick events for Final Fantasy 3 or 6. Just a fun one to run through which is not really what I personally come to these for and so I think it's remarkable for that.

A cool proof of concept that FEELS very impressive on the NES and has a fun narrative hook even if none of the cool story stuff in the premise really gets borne out in the actual game. This one's really underrated and I think it's mostly because of the lack of availability. interested to see if the pixel remasters lead to a reevaluation for FF3, and even more interested to play the wildly hated DS version sometime, which I suspect may actually be sick.

The first game on this list that I don't really like!

Very good presentation and art and music in service of a pretty limp plot, too many characters, most of whom are pretty bland imo, and after The Thing that happens I think this whole thing just falls apart completely. I appreciate what they're going for but I don't think they pull it off. Mechanically it's maybe the least compelling Final Fantasy of the era where they all had traditional ATB with some additional gimmick (maybe 5 - 9?) but unlike, say, 7, which is also an extremely bland game to actually play, 6 doesn't leave me with a whole lot else to hold on to.