(This is the English translation of my Spanish review of this game)

AT THE VERGE OF TEARS is how this Final Fantasy entry left me. This has been the first in the series where I feel the cumulative effort of the previous works being manifested. It's a solid best of all worlds and it shows in every aspect. Whenever I play a game with a very high rating, it's really hard for me to say something meaningful about it. I feel such euphoria that it's tough to relay my train of thought coherently, but well, here goes:

For a game that took me 24 hours to finish, the amount of dialogue and super memorable characters is impressive. Finally (after playing I, II, and III), the characters are attributed with tremendous charisma, and this is where, in my opinion, Final Fantasy acquires that larger-than-life aspect that we all love fervently. Gone are the days when the story felt like a crooked labyrinth of clichéd dialogue. You remember the characters' names (which I find very difficult in movies and games alike), and I think what I like most is that you start as the bad guy haha.

Here comes Cecil, the main character. I don't want to give too many spoilers, but for the first time, we experience one of our most beloved storytelling devices - the revered character arc. I know it sounds weird (although I'm not sure if it was more common in those years (1991)), but being able to live the story of a character who actually changes and grows through the events of a game was a treat. Cecil starts as a simple pawn under the orders of a bloodthirsty king who forces him to carry out his nefarious deeds and, through many tragedies, character deaths, and literal trials and tribulations, he ends up working his way up to being a (sort of) warrior of light (like in the other games!). The game touches on many serious themes like the love of a couple and the imminent loss of it, sacrifice, and redemption. All the writing feels more mature and nourishing. You can feel the upgrade and the writers’ evolving skill in communicating many things with little dialogue.

This time the game breaks with the conventions of its predecessors and lets you use five (5!!!) characters in your party instead of the classic four characters. I feel this move greatly encourages the inner child power fantasies that lie dormant in all our our subconsciousness because it feels very gratifying - and well, despite theoretically having much more (wo)manpower, this is definitely one of the hardest entries I've played. Who would have thought that you can't use auto-battle to beat 98% of the game's bosses? In this case, not all battling strategies are valid - but part of the appeal is using the changing party members' specialties to beat the fights (a shoutout to my favorite foursome of evil Italian mages in the game: Barbariccia, Cagnazzo (lol), Rubicante, and Scarmiglione)

The game takes very crazy and interesting turns. You start on the classic generic planet with seas, deserts, mountains, etc., but eventually, you end up in unconventional places like hell or the moon. I feel they achieved a very cool balance between using monsters from old games (hello Malboro <3) and bringing o life original monsters (although it really annoyed me that there was a big number of monsters that made me want to tear my hair out).

In short, a GREAT step forward for the entire Final Fantasy franchise. A game that proudly bears the medal of undeservingly underachieving underdog that goes head to head with the best entries in the series. A big shoutout to the overworld theme (and the overall OST) of this game, which doesn't shy away from using a lot of modal interchange and odd time signatures to give us several epic bops to enjoy the game to its fullest.

tl;dr, 5 pale blue dots out of 5 🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎

I'm not a big fan of the ATB system. To me, it feels like a protracted version of simply having a turn order. But instead of simply letting the battle play out in order, I have to wait for bars to fill up for my party, and invisible ones to fill up for the enemies, resulting in a lot of dead air where you're watching your characters stand around doing nothing. Another consequence of ATB is that a lot of the strategy is lost when the game is designed around making quick decisions. Of course, this isn't to say that FF's spells and skills to this point have been particularly tactical, but when I have to decide what I want a character to do in the next few seconds or be forced to take unnecessary damage, it results in a lot of choosing the same options over and over again. I begin to prioritize the menu options i can recognize the fastest rather than giving any thought to what might be best for my current situation. Not to mention that you can't even pre-consider what you want a character to do since in the fraction of a second before your character acts, your enemy could get off a move that changes your entire decision.
And due to this game treating your ENTIRE party like the 4th party member in FF2, you're constantly going to be dealing with different party members that have their spells in different orders, or have special skills that you have to experiment with to find out how they'd even be useful.

With all that out of the way, the rest of the game.
There isn't much to say. Most of my criticisms come down to the ATB system, to the point where I turned the EXP boost up to 4x about 11 hours in just to be able to move on with my life in a reasonable time. This is the first FF game to have a really involved story, but that isn't necessarily for the better. Like I mentioned before, it fucks with your party a lot, and on top of that, it's not like the story is particularly good anyway. Not to say it's BAD of course, but I certainly won't be sitting with a furrowed brow at any of what occurs throughout the plot. The best I can say is that the setting for the end of the game is pretty cool.

I sincerely hope that between this game and FF2, this series won't be establishing a pattern of the even-numbered entries being awful.

i hate when i go to review a game and i feel like i don't really have my own unique opinion to share. i felt myself agreeing with other reviewers (most notably @DianeThePunk ) for the most part on this game. i'm not really the biggest fan of this game's story. it was so nonsensical most of the time it borderlined on parody, especially in the mid to late-game. i'm also not really a fan of the ATB battle system as a whole, although that can be chalked up to personal preference. i absolutely respect what this game for the series, but it's not a game i'll probably replay anytime soon