I've been playing the first few Dragon Quests and the first few FFs, and it's interesting to see how they both evolved in tandem -- like they were trying to 1-up (RIP) each other with each release. None of them hold up particularly well, but as pieces of history, they're absolutely fascinating.
My theory of their success is that they accomplished exactly what they set out to do, which was to make pen and paper RPGs accesible to everyone.