easy: stop bitching, there's actually more to this game then aerith (not aeries) dying.
I just realized that I was "corrected" here...Well, for one, I called her Aeris, which I believe is her name in the NA release. I mean, that's like saying to someone, "No,
Mash, not Sabin!" We should all know what we all are saying if the most commonly used English (what we're communicating in on these forums) name is used, so no correction is necessary.
As for the order of the FFs...I think that playing them in order isn't a bad idea. There will be plenty of little Easter eggs & the like throughout the games if you do it that way that you may not understand otherwise...Oh, and you should play Tactics because it's easily one of the best. I mean, how can you call it a side game in a series where the games have no solid correlation to one another besides their name?