Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

It's a less conventional FF game, it's not nearly as RPG-generic, it's a cute gamenwhich you control a chocobo (these giant yellow chickens that appear in nearly every FF) who tries to rescue his friends.

If you want that standard RPG fare, I'd pick up Final Fantasy 1&2: Dawn of Souls for GBA. Come with remkaes of the first two FF games for the NES both in one cartridge (or download it it you pirate). The walking animations are really retarded and probably will get on your nerves eventually.

If you want the super complex stories and character development, get Final Fantasy IV, already released on GBA a long time ago, and just released on DS. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (and A2) are pretty easy.

Final Fantasy VI I'd say is the best all around game, I haven't played any of VII-XII so i can't help you with those.

 

Adding on to the other posts, if you are interested in some of the ones that were for the PSX or PS2, then I'd go with FFVII (if you really wanna follow that insanely fan based path, I didn't like this one) or FFVIII (not as popular as FFVII, but I consider this one the best of them all.). Or, if you want to go with PS2...there aren't many that were good for it. X was okay, it had a nice story to it, but gameplay was way to easy. And XII, you could basically get the game to play itself using a system called "Gambits". Still a neat story to it and some eye candy though.

 

Play IV, VI, VII, and VIII

Thank me later.

 

I am trying IV as we speak!

 

I'm also myself quite new to FF, although I loved the Tactics Advanced games. I've played a few, but just couldn't get into them. With the release of IV, I hope that'll all change... I only really played the one released previously for the DS and one of the GBA ones, so nothing major like VII.

Also, good to see another Melbournite.

 

NO NO NO AVOID AVOID AVOID.

It isn't terrible game, but it is not an RPG. At all. It's a set of minigames with no real plot, a pretty bad card game tacked on, and some generic Final Fantasy art, enemies, and music from various FF games cut-and-pasted into it. I cannot comprehend why anyone would recommend it to someone who isn't already a huge Final Fantasy fan -- pretty much its sole attraction is having all the popular enemies, music, etc. Beyond that it's just generic minigames.

 

The fan translation of Final Fantasy VI by SkyRender/ChrisRPG is one of my favourite games ever, and I would strongly recommend you play this.
Play it on your Wii with Snes9X and a classic controller... PERFECT!

 

FF7 I would say is the best game to start with, I'm not a fan of FF8 the story never seemed that interesting and the tutorial at the beginning never ends and can't be skipped (I didn't have a memory card when I first got the game so I had to replay the tutorial a lot, I was just trying the game out I knew I needed one). FF9 is my second favourite FF game I haven't really played any after that, I tried FF10 but it was rubbish, FF12 might be ok but I haven't played it. Some people say FF6 is the best FF game not sure I agree but it is good.

FF7 was one of the games I really wanted when I was thinking which console wanted to buy (My first console), but in the end I got an N64 not completely sure why, I think either for Mario Kart or/and WcW vs nWo.

 

I think ix is best to me , but i never played IV and its pretty cool.

 

Yeah actually why does it matter about fanboys? FF7 is a great game, I didn't play the game for any other reason than I saw it on TV and loved it's look and now I love it for it's look and it's story, which I don't think has really been copied.

I also love the game Silver on the Dreamcast which I don't think was ever really noticed.

"FF7 can lead to fanboyism"

I'm not really sure what this means, are you saying that FF7 is a good game and will lead you to become a fan, so don't play it?