I rather liked 8, at least up to the Garden War bit, then it started spiraling downwards fast.
It was also kind of odd how basically one minute Squall and Rinoa are... Colleagues I guess you'd say... Then the next minute they are beating you over the head with the love story aspect. Maybe I missed something both times I've played it, but it just seems to come out of nowhere. One minute she's still upset about Seifer, the next it's "Oh Squall!"
Once you figured out the whole draw-cast-stock magic system, it was an interesting experiment. The GF boost thing was also an interesting idea, but the execution left a lot to be desired IMO. It also made you sit through those long animations. And the leveling system was also an interesting experiment that maybe failed a little in its execution to have the game difficulty remain fairly constant.
BTW, Shortylickens, you had at least two chances at every GF in FF8. However, if you missed the first one in some cases, like Atmos, you had to wait until you got to Ultimacea's castle for the second shot.
FF VIII had a lot of fresh gameplay ideas, most of which never seemed to catch on, but always good to see attempts at breaking up stale gameplay. I'm also still rather impressed with the Waltz cutscene in VIII. The amount of effort it must have taken to make that is probably considerable.
IX just seemed like it was alternating between trying too hard and then not taking itself seriously. It wasn't a bad game necessarily, but it took until at least the end of the first disc to get rolling.
I loved FFX. Sure there were some plot holes here and there, and both Tidus and Yuna could be a bit whiny, but the battle system was like the gold standard for RPG's IMO. Also, the story was really pretty good and emotionally moving. By the time you get to the end of the game, you actually care somewhat about the characters. And let's face it, sometimes reality needs to take a bit of a back seat for the sake of gameplay.
X-2 I hated with a passion.
FFXII was certainly interesting from a combat standpoint. You just set up decision trees for the characters, and they acted accordingly. Played the game 2-3X, and still can't figure out the plot beyond two superpowers are in something of a cold war, and one superpower invades a small country between the two, deposing the princess, who then joins with a ragtag group of misfits to... Do something. The game seems to kind of end in the middle of nowhere. She isn't returned to the throne or hasn't kicked out the invading superpower from her country, so almost seems like they intended another game to finish the story.
XIII was good too IMO. Vanille just annoyed the crap out of me, and I wasn't a big fan of Saszz (or however you spell it). However, none of them came even close to the whiny little crybaby Hope who made you wish you could reach into the TV and just throttle him.
I question the wisdom of handing off XIII-2 to a character that really only shows up in flash back scenes on XIII. Also, kind of like X-2, they take a fairly good story (if you don't obsessively pick over it), and pretty much toss the whole thing out the window for the sequel.