This is the first FF that I have been excited about in a very long time.
VII was OK, but certainly not as amazing as the internet seems to believe
VIII was pretty good. Certainly better than many recent releases.
IX was fantastic! Would love to have another cartooney but epic story like this some time!
X is probably my favorite of all time! Sure, some shortcomings of the game being 'on rails', but outside of that it was a near-perfect FF story and game play experience. Just finished the HD PC release and it holds up really well!
X-2 was fun... but not great. I did enjoy all the mini-games though!
XII (because nobody was really interested in an MMO) was OK, but suffered from so many gameplay, graphical, and sound issues. Should have been delayed and released for PS3. Also, while the gambit system was neat, once you had a good set of gambits (which only takes 1/3rd of the game) then the rest of the combat is just walking around and letting your characters do their thing. Would love to see a remake that looks and sounds as good as it was meant to, and has a little more player involvement in the late game play.
XIII-1 was OK. Not as bad as reviews gave it (no more on rails than X was), but story and character development wasnt great.
XIII-2 was AWESOME! Not as endearing as X in the way of story, but it was just fun to play with great combat. I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed this, though like the rest of the series, the story was weak. But at least there was an attempt at character development.
XIII-3/Lightning returns kinda stunk... I think. I mean, the game 'worked', but I never got past the 3rd or 4th day. The story was so ridiculous and convoluted, and the characters so shallow that I just didn't care. And then the whole day/night cycle constantly had me frustrated and running in circles trying to be in the right place at the right time. Combat was OK... but I always felt like I was far out matched no matter how hard I ground to level up. I could progress with effort, but it was too much effort with far too little reward to continue. It is the only FF game I didn't complete, and don't care to complete... so that is saying something.
So now we come to XV; The visuals look great. The audio sounds amazing. What story was leaked/alluded to back in the FFXIII days looked promising. The 2 episodes that are up of the Anime look great. I love the Kingdom Hearts style gameplay and am interested to see how that works in a FF game. This has all of the makings for a great game. Still, this is not the only review that says the battle system needs work, so that is a little scary.
Regardless, FFX was the last game that looked good ahead of time and actually was good. XIII-2 was a surprise hit in my house, but it may have only been good because we had low expectations. It has been 15 years since the last highly anticipated FF game. That is a lot to live up to! Hope they do it good!