Thanks for the spoilers at the end there!! It's only been 30 years! lol

yeah Ok you do raise a point that the very nature of the plots' focuses are different, which can certainly appeal to different people. IX's kind of intrapersonal philosophising was just something that appealed to me before I even knew what philosophy was. They make such a point of it they even marketed each character with their own philosophical slogans 'To be forgotten is worse than death' and such.

But each character does explore these themes really well, and I felt so much for Kuja towards the end.

As an aside, the music can also determine the rank of a game for me perhaps more than most people, and I'd wager the majority of people would likely rank IX's soundtrack as number 1 - although to be fair, VIII's is borderline on par, I reckon! 7-9 really was the golden era