some people would like to buy them

Being made officially DRM-free would allow pushing back to the notion ownership though. Piracy however, is just more ammunition for companies to take away that notion.

Still requires people to go to shady websites with bad advertisement and maybe even virus infected sites. Then download games for free and have a bad feeling about it. But that is not even the worst part. They have to know which emulator to download (hopefully from a safe place), know how to install and configure it. Also no integrated features like achievements (I know about RetroAchivements..., but that is another thing) or Cloud saves. The versions on GOG offer some additional features and options like No encounter rates or battle assist in example.

All in all, I personally prefer playing the games on emulators and download Roms since early 2000s without feeling bad about it. In fact I feel good. But not everyone is me.

Man, I love random encounters. They feel like an intrinsic part of the genre for me. And I was mildly annoyed by the open-world encounter style in FFXV (latest one I played), partly because I felt consistently incentivized to avoid encounters but running around enemies. But maybe I'm just turning into an old man lol or I have too passive a playstyle

Every final fantasy game is different in terms of gameplay, story and characters, themes, music. If you like the genre, I think it's worth playing the newer games and rediscovering the older ones. Every entry is unique, and they tend to resonate differently with different people, so it's hard to point at one and say "play that one, it's the best", but IX is usually ranked pretty high among the fanbase. I don't think it's the best JRPG ever (that would be Xenogears), but I rank it pretty highly, too.

I also never played it, but X-2 is (as far as I know) considered pretty mid or even bad by some, so if you've been put off by that one, it could be worth playing at least its predecessor.