Not being a fan of 8 is super, super valid - I love it, but I also love Triple Triad, and 8 is admittedly pretty challenging if you don't farm cards. And who the heck told you 10 was bad?!?! Sure, the voice acting hasn't aged that well, but that's true for a toooon of other early-2000s games as well. X-2 is campier than X but very touching, especially towards the end. Hope you enjoy it!

And I feel like I'm an anomaly in KH/FF fan spaces...I actually got into Final Fantasy first, in high school, and only picked up KH last spring after enough friends guilted me for ignoring 1.5 + 2.5. The first two hours of my KH experience are best summed up as "THAT'S NOT LEON, THAT'S SQUALL, WHAT THE HECK."