For me, 2 things come to mind; Berserk & the Long Walk
Berserk may sound controversial, but I just didn’t have a good time watching the 90’s anime. I felt angry while watching it. I just didn’t like the characters for how dickish they were (especially Guts & Casica) and the setting was too miserable for me. And some of you may go, “but the comic is 10x better” (I know it’s manga, I’m just calling a comic to piss of people) I also just don’t like dark fantasy in general, since they’re edgy, pretentious, and worst of all… they’re ugly. There’s a reason why I never played the Dark Souls games, outside of the difficulty
The Long Walk movie is really well made movie with amazing acting. But man was it a miserable movie to go through. Seeing all those kids getting shot by soldiers for being slower was painful to watch.
Side note: there’s a lot of critically acclaimed stuff I like (Cowboy Bebop & the Dark Knight). It’s just that entertainment is so subjective that it’s not mutually exclusive to writing.
They aren’t contiguous. If you actually want to try, preview their soundtracks and visual styles and pick based on what you like the most and just play that one.
1-5 are old af, 6 is old but the pinnacle of them, 7 8 and 9 were on newer hardware, 10 was on even newer hardware and is widely considered the last good one. 11 was an mmo, 12 was bland as fuck, 13 was less bland but the whole game was a hallway going one direction, 13 has a few spinoff/sequels, 14 is an mmo, 15 was 12 but newer and worse, and 16 is trying to be partially dark souls and is kinda boring.
Honestly, if you can put up with ps1 music and graphics, pick from 7, 8, and 9. Or just play 10 from the ps2.
And if you can’t decide and only can put up with playing one, just play 7. Apparently it was the very first AAA game ever. Which is weird to think about.
FF9 will always have a place in my heart. I played it on the PS1 as a kid, on an emulator for PC as a teenager and the Steam version + Moguri Mod as an adult