Why would you recommend a game so badly designed they had to warn you about it in the instructions, with a plotline that was as confusing as it was ridiculous? Sure, it had it's upsides, but it was a pretender. Nothing more. A little mouse scurrying along in the shadow of an enormous King Slime.Zeithri said:
From that list, I'd recommend 7, 9 and possibly 12, though you can't convince me that no. 6 is anything but the gold-standard. Seven because you can get into the character customisation pretty much from the get-go, even if the story abandons all introspective depth and meaning before you even get to the overworld to run off and fight someone only tangentially related to the by-then-established plot. The PC version tends to go for around £40-60 GBP on Ebay, I don't know what that is in your country.
Nine because it has pretty much everything you could want from the light RPG, if a little rough around the edges. They really went to town with the plot and characters this time round, pretty much all of them are genuinely motivated(well, maybe not Quinna and Amarant) and the dialogue manages to pull off both wit and emotion where you'd normally only expect one or the other. Trying to navigate the menus can be a bit awkward at times, which can sometimes simplify your attack strategy a bit too much, but the ability assigning is really something you can get deep into. There wasn't a PC port, so you'll have to emulate this one, otherwise get a PSP and buy it from the store.
I can't really comment on twelve because I never owned a PS2 (and, of course, there wasn't a PC port), but from what I can gather, the plot and characters are really good for the most part, but the jury's out on the battle system. But a word of advice, STAY AWAY FROM 8 AND 13. They are tedious, drawn-out, horribly-written disgraces to the medium. 10 and 10-2 are supposed to have really good battle-systems and really bad everything else.
But seriously, Rufus was much better villain material than Jenova could ever hope for her kid to be.
