The fifth entry in the series is easily my favorite so far and honestly a bit underrated, I think. I don't really see people talk much about 1-5 and mostly I feel it's because more recent games tend to do the stuff they do better (it helps to have 20 or so years of games to build off of). But while I'm not the most seasoned JRPG player I feel like V deserves a little more credit. I think Bravely Default does a lot more with the job system to really turn it into something special but the simplicity of its implementation here is also fantastic.

While playing through III I felt restricted by the system, mainly due to the way it would handicap characters for a few battles after switching jobs. While it did achieve the presumably intended result of making me think more carefully about what job I was switching to, I also felt unmotivated to experiment as much as I would have wanted me to. It also made overcoming obstacles that required certain jobs a drag because I needed to temporarily put myself at a disadvantage to engage with them. This restriction is gone here, which left me free to experiment to my heart's desire.

I love the silliness present throughout this game. While the previous games had some silly moments to keep from getting too dark, this one really takes those moments and goes wild, dropping hilarious one liners and NPC interactions everywhere. The big standout for me was Gilgamesh, whose dialogue is pretty much pure gold every time he's shows up. I appreciated the end to his little arc near the end of the game as well. It was fitting. The game put a smile on my face much of the time and laughing out loud occasionally as well.

The story was kind of average for the series, though they clearly tried to switch things up a bit here and there. Exdeath might just be one of the most over the top edgy names for a villain I've ever seen, but he was assuredly more memorable than most of the big baddies in previous entries, if only for the name and badass armor.

Speaking of villains... god damn the final boss messed me the hell up. I may have been a little underleveled by the time I reached him, at around level 35 with around 3-4 jobs mastered on each character, but he goes hard. I ended up taking around 10 tries with a couple different party configurations I think before I finally took him down. Definitely one of the coolest sprites I've ever seen in a game as well. I just know I've learned to fear the attack Grand Cross from now on.

And lastly, I gotta talk about the music. It's sooooo good! Many of the tracks, like Big Battle on the Bridge take me back to the best of the Pokemon OSTs, which are gold standard JRPG music imo. Really good stuff. I've been playing through the FFV course in Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line now that I finished the game and I'm impressed how many of these I can clearly recall and enjoy all over again whereas many tracks in past games were very quickly forgotten. From what I've heard the music only gets better from here on out with Final Fantasy so I'm excited to see (hear?) what's to come.