(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 🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎