The Final Fantasy series is one of those series that's more than the sum of its parts. Sure, not every game lands for me. Sure, the gameplay is often pretty unremarkable and even basic compared to some of its contemporaries. But its willingness to experiment, great sense of iconography, often compelling stories, and fantastic music makes for a series that I can't help but love regardless. However, even though I love VI and VII for their stories, the Ivalice games for their world-building, or the Crystal Chronicles subseries for... well... we'll get there, my favorite mainline Final Fantasy game is actually the most overlooked of them all: Final Fantasy V.
Final Fantasy V was dealt a bad hand from the very start. Not only was it a more lighthearted adventure sandwiched between the far more operatic IV and VI, but it didn't even come out in the West for around a decade. Of course this means that a number of quality of life improvements it made particularly in regards to the ATB battle system that its predecessor introduced were attributed to Final Fantasy 6 instead, but it also means that FFV ended up being regarded as the awkward underwhelming middle child because people just didn't have the nostalgic for it that they had for its SNES counterparts. And that's a real shame because Final Fantasy V is one of the best-crafted RPGs I've every played, both on a gameplay level and on a story level. It may not be as dark or ambitious as its sequels, but the game design on display here is masterful and I want to go over why.
Let's start with the overworld design. I feel like a lot of early Final Fantasy games tended to just drop you into a massive world without much guidance, even VI had that issue at times, but Final Fantasy V does a flawless job of slowly loosening the training wheels. You start the game in a pretty small linear area enclosed by mountains so there's only really one way you can go. Then, you get a boat and can explore a much larger area which contains a few more towns and caves to visit if you want even if the main path is still pretty clear. Eventually, you get a dragon that lets you fly over everything but mountains which gives you an even bigger world to explore, but at this point you know where many of the major towns are so you don't get lost. Then you get the usual flying ship, and then you unlock an entire second map to explore. FFV carefully increases the amount of map you have access to at any given moment, silently making sure that you don't get lost before trusting you with a more open world to explore. And the average player isn't going to notice this silent design because they'll keep being more and more impressed with how big FFV continues to get. Every time you think you've seen it all, the world expands even further. It's brilliant tutorialization and masterful design, and it's not the only instance of this.
Final Fantasy V's greatest strength is easily its battle system, which is hands down my favorite battle system in the entire franchise. At face value, it looks just like all the other turn-based Final Fantasy battle systems. You can attack, defend, use magic, use items, and flee, and everyone's turn is determined by a bar that fills in real-time. What makes Final Fantasy V's battle system special, however, is the addition of a job system. This is by no means the first game to have job systems, but I think it's the game that did this the best, improving on what games like Final Fantasy 1 and Final Fantasy 3 have established. Early on in the game, you can get a bunch of jobs that you can assign to your party members. Each job has its own unique attacks, perks, weaknesses. You can train and level them up just like you would a character, you can swap them out whenever you want (looking at you FF12), and you can even get abilities out of jobs and transfer them to other jobs for even more player expression potential. This system gives Final Fantasy V so much depth and customization because there's now so many ways you can go about approaching battles in this game. You can try constantly swapping between jobs to figure out the best combinations for each area and encounter, or you could experiment with all the jobs individually, grind out all the best abilities, and assemble a build that will decimate every battle you come across. It's an incredibly well-balanced system too, pretty much every job is viable for one reason or another and none of the earlier jobs feel like they get replaced with later jobs. In general, I think Final Fantasy's greatest strength as far as gameplay is when it leans into customization. Even games without job systems like FF7's materia and FF9's weapon abilities promote tinkering around with different builds, but FFVs job system is simply more fun, complex, and streamlined than anything else in the series.
And this is where that tutorialization I mentioned comes in. Because this game definitely had the potential to overwhelm the player with how the job system works, but I think it manages to dodge this problem entirely. FFV has a single tutorial teaching you how to use jobs, charmingly delivered by a Chocobo walking around on your menu screen. It's a short tutorial, only at around 30-60 seconds, but it tells you everything you need to know about how jobs work and how to use them. Final Fantasy VIII would infamously have a big issue where the game would repeatedly stop you to try and explain its gambit system while also never actually explaining the gambit system all that well, and yet FFV manages to efficiently and effectively tutorialize its similarly complex job system seven years before it. I really can't heap enough praise onto FFV's job system. It gives the game so much depth, makes combat super engaging, and adds in a ton of replayability due to just how many potential builds there are. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that there's a self-imposed challenge called the Four Jobs Fiesta, where players pick four jobs randomly and stick with them for the entire game.
But I think most people can agree that FFV's gameplay is great. What people often dislike about it is actually the story, so why do I love it so much? Simply, it's because it is simple. I always had a soft-spot for whenever Final Fantasy leans into its D&D inspirations, and Final Fantasy V feels like the most like a D&D campaign out of any other game in the series. It's about a group of four (eventually five) people from entirely different backgrounds going on a silly adventure together and forming a found family, while also saving the world in the process. They make a lot of mistakes and screw up a lot (despite their initial task being to save the four crystals, they all end up shattering under their watch), but they manage to pull through in the end. It's not a super serious or operatic story but it's not trying to be. It's wholesome and comfy and charming, and focuses more on endearing you to its cast, and it truly is a great cast. While FFV only has a small five characters, I felt more attached to them because you spend so much of your time with just them, and their chemistry and banter is top-notch throughout. I love how Bartz is pretty much just an average dude who got thrust on an adventure, Lenna is the heart of the group and a charming fish-out-of-water princess who has no idea how this adventuring thing works, Galuf is a lovable team dad who gets some of the most impactful moments of the game, and Faris is just straight-up a Top 3 Final Fantasy character, no contest.
I also think people tend to exaggerated how lighthearted Final Fantasy V is. Sure, it's fun and games a lot of the time and almost feels like a parody of the series itself at points, but FFV is also incredibly sincere meaning that when things do get dark, it's taken incredibly seriously. Not to spoil the game for those who haven't played, but there are several character sacrifices throughout the game that will make your heart sink (it helps that unlike in the previous game, they stay dead). High stakes doesn't always mean a world-ending threat, personal stakes can be just as if not even more impactful, and FFV has a ton of that. On top of all that, Final Fantasy V's story is also perfectly paced from start to finish. It lacks the slow start that many RPGs can have, efficiently introducing you to the cast while getting you into the action super quickly. The stakes slowly rise as the game goes on, and you learn increasingly more about the characters over time. There's also a fair amount of slower moments to let you grind so that when you do get to a more high-stakes part of the story, you don't get interrupted for not being a high-enough level. Now, that being said, do I think Final Fantasy V has the best story in the series? No, and I'd be silly to think it does. However, it is one of my favorite Final Fantasy stories and combined with the peak gameplay makes for a perfect RPG conconction.
As far as the presentation looks... I mean, do you even need me to say anything at this point? It's an SNES RPG made by Squaresoft, of course it looks good. Final Fantasy V is a great step-up visually from the somewhat simplistic-looking IV, with detailed spritework and a painterly color palette. The simple but effective character animation is as charming as always, and I love how the characters have unique sprites for every single job so it looks like they're dressing up in costumes rather than being completely replaced like in III. Extra props go to the top-tier monster designs which can look downright eldtrich as you approach the end of the game. This was the first game Tetsuya Nomura (yes, that Nomura) worked on as enemy designer and he knocked it out of the park in his first go. Of course, there's also the recent Pixel Remaster release and, I don't know, I think it looks pretty great too. Both versions have their own appeals and look equally pretty in my eyes. And, once again, I shouldn't even need to say this, Final Fantasy V's soundtrack is really good. Not the best soundtrack in the series, but it's up there and I would definitely call it the first truly amazing Final Fantasy soundtrack. It's Uematsu pretty much doing what he does best, with top-notch leitmotif works, diverse overworld themes, and banging battle themes. As a quick run-down of highlights, there's the Main Theme, Battle 1, Cursed Lands, To The North Mountain, Beyond The Deep Blue Sea, The Decisive Battle, and of course, my favorite Final Fantasy track of all time, Battle At The Big Bridge.
More than with any other game on my Top 100 list, I hope I was able to articulate why I think Final Fantasy V is such an incredibly designed game that holds up to this day. Even if it's not as ambitious as the later Final Fantasy games, FFV nails all the pillars that I believe make for a great RPG: It has masterful overworld design and pacing, it has an incredible and customizable battle system that's easy to get into but packs a ton of depth, it has a charming narrative with lovable characters, and it has a stellar presentation, as you'd expect from SNES-era Squaresoft. For me, it's as good as the genre gets.
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