I LOVE FF 1-9. When they took away "free flying" in the FF world it started to go downhill imo...
I really like FF X and FF XII though but I felt they were lacking because you couldnt just pick up your airship and fly ANYWHERE you wanted.
I have yet to finish FF XIII

It wasnt TERRIBLE but it wasnt that great either.
On a side note though....Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross > all.
E - Oh yea on topic, Im going to put faith in SE ONE last time with versus XIII....if they fuck it up I'll lose all faith.
There's a good point. After 9 I missed the Open World Map travelling. 10 "streamlined" it by making every area part of the world map, lame. FF9 had just as many if not more non-world map locations to explore on top of the open world map.