Final Fantasy VIII
There's a lot I want to say about this game, but I'll keep it short. It was tough to decide whether I should put this higher up on the list, I decided against it because while it's a great game it many ways, it's deeply flawed for an FF game imo. I'll start with the positives of the game first, most notably the story. The story in this game is simply fantastic, no denying that. It's well paced, there's a ton of character development, it grips you in from start to finish, and the game has arguably one of the best endings in the series to date.
The graphics are also amazing, it was a huge leap from FFVII in terms of graphics, the character models looked realistic, and the world was massive.
So everything that was expected from an FF game in story and graphics were there. However, what really brought the game down was the battle system. It was a traditional turn-based battle system with random encounters that you'd come to expect from FF in those days, but the new GF system, which basically had you tediously junctioning you're GF's (summons) to your characters, was hugely annoying and unneeded. Everything that could be used in battle (except for standard attacking) could only be done once you had GF's junctioned to your characters. The other thing wrong with the battle system was the draw system, which was awful. You could only use magic by drawing different spells out of enemies and draw points (found throughout the game), thus greatly limiting your use of magic. What made things worse was that you could junction magic to any of your stats, allowing you to become greatly overpowered early in the game.
The flaws were not enough to stop it from being an awesome, gripping game though, it was just disappointing knowing that it could've been a lot better.