Final Fantasy VIII is my fav of the PS1-era and the one I've replayed the most. But IX is good, but I do agree with Ryuukishi that the overall story was a bit boring. Still, it was the substories, especially the character-specific ones, than really made the game for me. And I also agree with what Rei said about the final boss. It was very mediocre. I will say this tho, if Squeenix ever remakes VII, and keeps it very faithful to the original and just updates the graphics, controls, and cleans up the story dialog, that would easily become my favorite FF game. As it stands now, 7 just hasn't aged as well as the other PS1 FF games, in my opinion.
I just finished playing thru Xenogears Ep1 and really enjoyed it. The greatest thing about the cut-scenes is the ability to pause. Whenever they got too long, I'd just hit the pause, take a break for awhile, (surf some internet, post here on CAG, make a sammich, drop the Browns off at the Super Bowl....something) and then come back and finish watching them later.
I don't have much problem with random encounters, unless they're too hard to run away from. My only problem with non-random encounters where you can see the monsters (like in Xenosaga) is when you're trying to grind for XP, gold, or both. There's only so many of them that spawn, so once you clear them out, you gotta go off onto another screen, wait for it to load, then go back onto the previous screen, wait for it to load, etc. It's just easier to grind when you're running around in a circle in the same place.
I'm playing thru FF X-2 right now, and it just seems kinda easy. But then, I'm only at 20% completion. I was just wondering if it gets more difficult later.