I don’t really care for them anymore. I think they’re still very well crafted games from a passionate team, but I haven’t really felt great about a FF game since 10. Ignoring the MMOs:

12 was decent but the story was pretty dry in the first hall and Vaan was just not a compelling protagonist at all.

13 was reasonably fun to play after finding the “rhythm” I think they intended from the combat, but I never loved the story or any of the characters aside from Sazh.

15 had a lot of potential in the story, I actually liked the “dudes on a road trip” concept, but that awful sword hanging mechanic was always so unreliable that it eventually killed my progress in its tracks.

After that, I skipped 16 entirely.

The 7 sequel was actually really good, but everything I liked about it came directly from the original or built on top of it in a transparent way. The spooky ghosts and action combat were changes I strongly disliked and endured just to see the extended original story, but I thought they were huge steps back. It was a very good game that constantly had me wishing they just stuck to expanding the original story which is plenty convoluted on its own.

I still haven’t played the 7 sequel part 2, but I expect I’ll feel pretty much the same - in awe of the world and expanded story but constantly annoyed by spooky ghosts and mediocre action combat.

I really think the 7 sequels show that the Final Fantasy franchise has a place in the modern JRPG scene, but they would benefit from a return to form. I’d love to see the next FF game sporting a fast paced Persona-style turn based combat system combined with maybe a dystopian techno-futuristic setting. All the parts are in there somewhere, they just need to put them together in the right order.