Over the past year I've been playing through the whole #FinalFantasy series, starting from 1. Before this I'd only ever finished FF Tactics Advance (which I love), and FF15 (which was a bit of a mess, but fun).
@void I'm up to VI so far, roughly half way through it I think. There's definitely a lot more tech involved than the earlier games!
The toot you first replied to is the start of a thread if you want some more of my thoughts up to now.
@Ghosty Awesome, just read back through. It sounds like you're making lots of progress.
You're 100% right about FF7R. I would recommend playing FFVII first like you were leaning towards and then playing FF7R after all the other mainline games. It builds on FFVII but it would feel out of place if you're playing them in order.