[quote=@Dynamo Frokane]

A lot of final fantasy fans seem to gravitate to roughly the same number of games in the series, with being lukewarm or extremely critical to the rest[/quote]

Yeah, that number sitting somewhere along the lines of 10. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14. That's over half the games in the franchise and if we include non mainline games that number increases. Over half the games in the franchise are regarded well by the fanbase and even the diehards will defend shit like 2 and its actually broken systems. The fanbase is critical, yes, but being critical doesn't mean negative and the series is highly regarded outside of the fanbase - as in critically and commercially. Even Final Fantasy 13, the one most (wrong) people call the worst in the franchise got rave reviews. 



[quote]RPG fans in general seem to only like a couple of the games I've never heard a non-final fantasy RPG fan give any significat level of praise to  1,2,3,5,8,12,13,or any of the god awful spin offs. 

[/quote]

Then you should spend some more time on some RPG forums and communities because boy. There's a subset of RPG fans that hate FF just because it's popular so the numbers are wonky all the same. 

Point is, the series was and pretty much still is the top of the ladder in terms of the genre and appeal. It's one of the landmark franchises in gaming because it's got far, far, far more decent entries in its history than bad ones.