4/5 ★ – TheWolvesDen's review of FINAL FANTASY V.

Let start here: Exdeath and Gilgamesh are endless charismatic and memorable villains. Gilgamesh utterly silly writing and his squirming when losing is endlessly entertaining . It’s great that for the second half of the game that when you deal with the main villains , you are just getting great amusement. What makes Exdeath great is his interactions with the world in World 2 & 3. These two are part of what’s mostly a silly lighthearted romp. Like an actual scene has Exdeath pop out of a twig and fight a sentient turtle. This game does not have much seriousness in its body. There is one boss fight that require the team to like Wiley Coyote create a rope across a cliff as part of the boss introduction . There’s a search in a library, and Barts looks up asses . This game is goofy. In general what this tone does is that it makes it hard to connect to the characters , but Faris , Galuf and Krile standout in great story flourishing moments . The levity is paired with a job system that has barely aged. This job system has a legacy in some of my fave games and it’s impressive how it opens up strategies and fights. You raise job classes to learn skills which you can add to other jobs and switch around. It feels limiting at first especially because you can only carry one skill. The combos and synergy doesn’t feel wide ranging but man later on it just becomes impressive. Other games allow you to stack more skills so on face value , it feels weak but specifically how the freelancer class works in combination with this systems is where my eyes opened. The freelances gain both the passive skills of the class you mastered and the stats, which allows so much freedom in who your characters are at the endgame! It’s so dizzying . I wish there was a bit more class variety but I think the next time I play, I will challenge myself to seek more utility in the ones I avoided. This is the first time I really pushed my blue mage , and I was thoroughly impressed, speaks to the systems if I felt that learning the skills was truly worth it. I do wish that some bosses didn’t seem easier with magic too or that more physical attacks hit all enemies, battles with statues that can only be beaten by defeating simultaneously becomes a pain without magic. What’s really holding this back though? Locations. Phantom Village is incredible, it’s lore driven and used brilliantly twice. The dungeons ? The other towns? They are nice and the game has different world visits to try to make them memorable through different versions. But I would say it didn’t accomplish making them memorable . Although, shout outs to the Library of the Ancients though! Musically it’s great, but I’m only pulling two tracks from here into my personal pantheon of JRPG music (EXDEATH THEME IS BANGING). Also as an aside, if you love pets, this might be the best third best JRPG to really capture that feeling (DQV and the Pokémon franchise got it still). I was hyped to play this game as the ancestor to my fave games and I even see it in the non Bravely games, like FF 9 def has a lot from here, and while I am not confident in saying it has the chutzpah to dethrone my personal faves, I am enthusiastic about this experience. It’s great to see the fore-bearer hold up to its legacy games.