FF8 is best, not only because it has real sized people (as opposed to tiny cartoon stumpy armed gimps, or strange characters with tails) or because it lacks whiny American voice acting, but because I say so.
:edit: 10 had no world map and save points refilled all your bars, which was stupid. Goodbye risky levelling, hello hours running around a save point waiting for random encounters. Or was that just me?
In FF9 you could pretty much save whenever you wanted on the world map, while leveling up, with that you could also easy transport to other areas. Same type of risk free leveling.
. Since finally getting a replacement TV I didn't bother picking it up again until last week (with a restart). Lots of people have heavily criticised it particularly for it's linearity, and I'm not going to argue with that point. The tunnel-like environments are honestly quite dull for the majority of the game, and it doesn't really become 'interesting' until after you've despatched the final boss... (which I haven't yet, it's a real yawn fest 
). The combat has also come under heavy fire for it's 'bash X until everyone is dead' form factor. Whilst this is true to an extent, the combat system is deeply strategic if you're prepared to invest the time into learning it properly, and not just sticking with the default paradigms.
