for me there's two picks pretty far ahead of the rest
i think 15 is the easiest vote for me, because aside from its merits and flaws as whatever else it is...it is, somehow, the only game i have ever played that speaks to a very specific time in my life as a teenager camping and roadtripping (and fishing!) in the southwestern us. and the fact that it's a messy, and trippy open-world game full of anachronisms in the setting bolted onto an angsty teenboy rollercoaster of a jrpg main quest (that nonetheless has a character enthusiastically declaring that "we aren't even in our prime!" when they're all in their late 20s about an hour before the end, which came off to me as a really special moment given the tone of everything else and i'm still thinking about it) really only heightens that for me. it's a really special game that i only know like two people i would ever actually recommend it to. but until i play something else with powerful Colorado Vibes, dusty night hikes far away from the city, and that certain dynamic of guys who are emotionally close but at a weird distance due to masculinity and everything...well, i'm not about to call much of it "good" without reservations, but it's one of a kind in my book, anyway
7 is the other gimme, certainly the one i find the easiest to just Enjoy Playing, and not despite but honestly partly because of its frequent and bizarre sideshows, only a couple of which i feel are particularly frustrating (the junon parade sequence, mostly). aside from that, it's also easily got my favorite "character building" mechanics (out of all of the ones that the player has any particular control over), with cool combinations and limitations that feel like just the right kind of "puzzle" to me, especially because everything is reversible enough that there's no reason to ever feel like you've made some kind of mistake that lasts longer than it takes to open the menu again. plus the joke value of massively reducing a character's health with the biggest summons you have, or-
and i similarly adore its world, characters, and story for the most part. it's definitely the game in the series that most has that sense of, like, "what it feels like to be alive right now" for me, and that's something i tend to be really into. and i think remake nails a ton of those same things, and is also really fun, but i will be just a little surprised if what it's reaching for ultimately makes me feel that i love it more than the original. not because i even think i know exactly what that is. i just love ff7 a ton
after that...hahaha, i dunno. i wouldn't say that ff is particularly one of my favorite rpg series on the whole, and many of the other games range from having worlds and stories that i really like but mechanics or design elements i find really unpleasant to interact with to "pretty fun but just have never captured my thoughts or imagination in the same way". and 13 is a game i rushed through when it was new and haven't played again, so while i had a really positive experience and my ratio of gripes to things i liked is relatively low, i also don't feel strongly enough about it in this moment to definitively say "yes, it's my third favorite" (although if someone arrived at my desk and told me i had to vote i'd probably go that way)
i could go on entire pointless and convoluted rants about my feelings on 14, a lot of which aren't really based on the game itself so much as the shifts in how i've personally come to interact with it over the past five years, but this is definitely a thread to leave that out of
8 is the true wild card, a game i have never gotten close to finishing, haven't tried playing in years, and have been wanting to give a full and stubborn shot at getting through for a little while (since last year, i guess). i have a feeling this is a game i am either going to love or hate in the end and it's really hard to tell, so i'm pretty excited