ok i feel like i need to add my opnion to this thread hate me or not im not all that bothered but possibly some of the "older" final fantasy fans will agree with me, where to start about it...
Final Fantasy for me is one of the very best RPG franchises out there, i am not going to say the best because i do not have any experience with dragon quest etc, when people ask me what an RPG is a say final fantasy, but onto the topic of old and new, i agree with some of the posts that old and new arent very well defined, you could say that up to the PSX is old (so the NES era) or you could say that up to the PS2 is old (that would include everything from the NES and PSX era) or even more likely which i seems to be the "trend" in this thread is that the modern console releases are classed as new.
But either way this will not influence my opinion, for me VIII was a very unique game for me, i can remember the storyline and the character backgrounds clear as day, where as with VII not so much, dont get me wrong i did enjoy it but it just didnt grip me so much like VIII did, now i have played every final fantasy to date, i have even tried the MMORPG form, which i dislike but people shouldnt hate on it if they have never played it.
I have also noticed alot of hate around XIII but it has been the most uniquly set final fantasy's of our time i would say, granted that they should of been a bit leaniant on the exploration as it was very lineiar but if you actually played attention to the story, that was the whole point, the game was story driven as a final fantasy should be
i know that people said it took away the orginality of final fantasy but if you actually think it about it and seriously think about it you will see that actually there was alot going on behind the scenes that people seem to neglect when criticising XIII, now i have just finished XIII-2 and my god i think i may possibly have a close favourite to VIII, VI and IX it is an extremely enjoyable game and i have racked up 60 hours worth of gameplay and im still only half way through collecting the extra endings and the fragments, the world is so diverse that now people are saying its too big...
TL ; DR haters gonna hate