I feel this. In some ways it was a relief discovering that I didn’t need to keep up with gaming anymore. I would just play what I want want to play, when. But unfortunately I’ve missed (or even forgotten) about a lot of games I really wanted to play.
FF VII and FF VIII where the first two games I played in the series, but i was very young and didn’t really know what I was doing. I think we had rented one game, and borrowed another. I really don’t remember much about either game, but FF IX came out on ps1, and to this day it’s my image of what FF means.
The unique worlds, characters, incredible (at the time and not bad for today) cutscene cinematic. It was the first game I discovered you can outpace yourself and wind up in a battle with a level 60 dragon when you’re only level 13.
My brother really got into FF X and i remember watching him play. To this day, I hate Blitzball lol. We both sucked at it.
FF VII-2 for the psp was actually really cool. I don’t remember much anymore but the story, gameplay, and music were all great. I would like to try replaying it!
I played a little of XIII and quite a few hours of XV. The games have really changed. Especially XV, some things have improved for the better but there’s a lot of tropes and unfortunate stereotypes that could have been…removed.