How can FFX not be at least one of the top choices? Seriously, FFX is widely considered one of the best in nearly every list I've seen and for good reason. It's such a masterpiece and also a very fresh take. A very neat and fun combat system that was unlike any other before it, a great cast of mostly very likeable characters, Blitzball as a surprisingly fun minigame, and a really interesting story that keeps you engrossed for the entire plot.
The angling between 6 and 7 is interesting. I suspect the entire conversation is going to see a lot of sliding between the two.
7 was a breakthrough in its time- I recall getting the demo for it on the PC Gamer CD; the Windows demo required a 3DFx card of some sort, no better way to say "Yeah, everything is going to be triangles and 3-D from here on out." But, being very much a product of the PS1/Pentium II era, it didn't quite have the technical chops to deliver what it promised graphically.
Conversely, 6 is the fully matured "this is as good as we're going to see from pixel art and a four-megahertz 65C816" It aged well even if it was only a little better aesthetically than other peak-SNES-JRPG era title. Even today, it's the obvious benchmark for any new pixel-art JRPG-inspired game.
We can sort of linearly assume what FF7 would look like with more hardware-- as if Square didn't actually start selling it to us recently. But where would FF6 have gone if it arrived 5 or 10 years later, with PS1 or PS2 hardware to play with? Would it be like Neo-Geo fighter games where more hardware just turned into more/bigger sprites but sticking with pixel art, or would they try to go 3D?
The only reason I have VII lower than most is because I really like how VI and X utilized the summons into the story. VIII has a special place in my mind because of the dire situations you are put in during the story. I also love how subtle the character development is and the lore is regarding certain things in the past.
VI has the best of everything FF related to me: Secret areas, secret bosses, secret characters, secret items, the evilest villain of all time, a mountain of different playable characters with uniqueness and just the overall flow of the story. It's #1 by a wide margin, which is why it's my favorite single player game ever.
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