The best FF of the first 5 and it's not even all that close for me if I'm being entirely honest. While not necessarily as streamlined and tightly constructed as Final Fantasy IV was, most of its individual elements end up adding up to something that ends up feeling greater and more ambitious regardless. While a bit uneven comparatively, I do feel like that almost every individual element of this game feels at its best so far, with a lot of focus being put upon a ton of more unique moments and interactions especially providing this with a very unique tone in the series, as well as feeling like the point in which a lot of series staples became properly established.
The combat is easily the best part of the game, taking the job system from III and making it something far more interesting and nuanced this time around. Rather than III's approach, which rendered the idea of mixing and matching classes rather useless outside of specific times where the game practically forces you to pivot, along with having a bunch of them that basically served as strict upgrades that rendered others obsolete, the job system in V clearly focuses extremely strongly on providing an incredible amount of variety and versatility to your party composition. While having 25 different classes by the end of the game will obviously lead to some of them feeling a bit more useful than others, I felt that the game did an excellent job at providing a lot of unique utility to each of them, leading to a lot of versatility and viability. This was heavily appreciated since it essentially meant that as long as you didn't try building a team around blatantly bad ideas, you'd usually either have a way to deal with the situation, or it wouldn't take much to put yourself in such a position, which works wonderfully for letting the player still often go with the classes that seem cool to them, rather than only having a couple of options that will actually work.
This is taken further by the way you're able to mix and match different class abilities once you've levelled them up a bit, not only allowing for a much wider range of options, but providing a greater reason to bother actually using multiple classes as you proceed rather than just sticking with one or two, adding greater strategic depth to the experience. This naturally can lead to some insanely broken combos, but I don't see this as an especially bad thing as much as something that rewards experimentation and results in one of my favourite things to do in JRPGs anyway, figuring out clever ways to completely break the systems in play. What I like about this though is that until neat the very end of the game, the player likely will not have a team that is a catch-all solution to every situation, where sacrifices will basically always have to be made in one way or another, leaving holes in your strategy to play around. My favourite way this manifests is with some of the abilities you get working as enhancements rather than additional combat options, leading to situations where you'll be forced to choose between sacrificing some of your effectiveness in one area for a more varied moveset, or making the decision that those options won't be needed for what's up ahead. This balancing act continues throughout the game and results in a lot of time spent planning out new strategies to move forward.
The encounter design goes a long way in making all of this work as well, taking a more open ended approach where you'll often have enemies and bosses that hard-counter certain methods, but leave enough room for there to be a lot of effective ways to take them down regardless. It encourages you to play around with a few different ideas without ever truly feeling as if you've been railroaded into one or two very specific playstyles. I also love how there seems to have been an increase in purely strange and surprising encounters, with the Tonberry being my favourite of the bunch, with its insane hp pool combined with it having absolutely no attacks for most of the fight, just instead ominously walking closer to your party. It's a moment that feels carefully crafted to entirely throw inexperienced players off and to keep them on their toes, not to just take any random encounter so lightly, and there are a few others like this as well that basically continuously hammer home that a even a lot of these common enemies are perfectly capable of killing you without some kind of plan in mind, and it keeps things really engaging when you hit the point where everything seems threatening and like a small puzzle you need to solve so you can trivialise them.
While the narrative side of things definitely seems to be what ends up under fire most often with this, it does a perfectly fine job most of the time while still having some incredible highlights that stand tall amongst what the series had up to this point. While not having as strong a hook as IV in particular, I still feel like the lack of narrative emphasis here is a bit of an overstated complaint, as while it definitely falls more in line with typical tropes and story beats, it by no means just feels like something used as a vessel for more gameplay. The game sees the player travelling through a nicer set of locales than the past, with dungeons expanding far beyond castles and caves this time around, with setpieces such as the ship graveyard, the engine room of a ship, and the haunted library all being fantastic changes of pace to be sent through that makes the journey between each story beat feel more exciting than ever. I also appreciated the way that the more tragic elements of this game got a focus without being undercut by other decisions that were made in the same way that IV's story ended up feeling, as while things never quite get as dire as they seem to in IV, the stakes still feel far more real. Exdeath similarly fills a similar role, where he might not be especially intriguing as a character, but his presence is felt with every step of your journey while still letting some hope in with the heroes succeeding at something once in a while as well, and his role in the final stretch of the game is awesome. With that said, there is one thing this game has narratively that strongly elevates everything for me, and that's Gilgamesh, not just being easily the most fun character in the series so far, but also being the driving force for so many of the absolute greatest setpieces in the game, having this aura of imposing danger mixed with comedy that causes him to be an absolute treat every time he's onscreen.
Basically, while the game doesn't quite feel super polished and streamlined in certain areas, this is still peak Final Fantasy so far and it's not even close. The combat system is genuinely incredible, the narrative, while simple, is a great ride throughout with some mountainous high points, the music is insane as usual, and the way the encounters are designed makes for an engaging experience from start to finish where you very rarely feel like you can just cruise through thoughtlessly. The first game in the series where I just feel like it's an incredibly strong game in general without the caveat of it feeling like just the foundation of something greater further down the road.
The combat is easily the best part of the game, taking the job system from III and making it something far more interesting and nuanced this time around. Rather than III's approach, which rendered the idea of mixing and matching classes rather useless outside of specific times where the game practically forces you to pivot, along with having a bunch of them that basically served as strict upgrades that rendered others obsolete, the job system in V clearly focuses extremely strongly on providing an incredible amount of variety and versatility to your party composition. While having 25 different classes by the end of the game will obviously lead to some of them feeling a bit more useful than others, I felt that the game did an excellent job at providing a lot of unique utility to each of them, leading to a lot of versatility and viability. This was heavily appreciated since it essentially meant that as long as you didn't try building a team around blatantly bad ideas, you'd usually either have a way to deal with the situation, or it wouldn't take much to put yourself in such a position, which works wonderfully for letting the player still often go with the classes that seem cool to them, rather than only having a couple of options that will actually work.
This is taken further by the way you're able to mix and match different class abilities once you've levelled them up a bit, not only allowing for a much wider range of options, but providing a greater reason to bother actually using multiple classes as you proceed rather than just sticking with one or two, adding greater strategic depth to the experience. This naturally can lead to some insanely broken combos, but I don't see this as an especially bad thing as much as something that rewards experimentation and results in one of my favourite things to do in JRPGs anyway, figuring out clever ways to completely break the systems in play. What I like about this though is that until neat the very end of the game, the player likely will not have a team that is a catch-all solution to every situation, where sacrifices will basically always have to be made in one way or another, leaving holes in your strategy to play around. My favourite way this manifests is with some of the abilities you get working as enhancements rather than additional combat options, leading to situations where you'll be forced to choose between sacrificing some of your effectiveness in one area for a more varied moveset, or making the decision that those options won't be needed for what's up ahead. This balancing act continues throughout the game and results in a lot of time spent planning out new strategies to move forward.
The encounter design goes a long way in making all of this work as well, taking a more open ended approach where you'll often have enemies and bosses that hard-counter certain methods, but leave enough room for there to be a lot of effective ways to take them down regardless. It encourages you to play around with a few different ideas without ever truly feeling as if you've been railroaded into one or two very specific playstyles. I also love how there seems to have been an increase in purely strange and surprising encounters, with the Tonberry being my favourite of the bunch, with its insane hp pool combined with it having absolutely no attacks for most of the fight, just instead ominously walking closer to your party. It's a moment that feels carefully crafted to entirely throw inexperienced players off and to keep them on their toes, not to just take any random encounter so lightly, and there are a few others like this as well that basically continuously hammer home that a even a lot of these common enemies are perfectly capable of killing you without some kind of plan in mind, and it keeps things really engaging when you hit the point where everything seems threatening and like a small puzzle you need to solve so you can trivialise them.
While the narrative side of things definitely seems to be what ends up under fire most often with this, it does a perfectly fine job most of the time while still having some incredible highlights that stand tall amongst what the series had up to this point. While not having as strong a hook as IV in particular, I still feel like the lack of narrative emphasis here is a bit of an overstated complaint, as while it definitely falls more in line with typical tropes and story beats, it by no means just feels like something used as a vessel for more gameplay. The game sees the player travelling through a nicer set of locales than the past, with dungeons expanding far beyond castles and caves this time around, with setpieces such as the ship graveyard, the engine room of a ship, and the haunted library all being fantastic changes of pace to be sent through that makes the journey between each story beat feel more exciting than ever. I also appreciated the way that the more tragic elements of this game got a focus without being undercut by other decisions that were made in the same way that IV's story ended up feeling, as while things never quite get as dire as they seem to in IV, the stakes still feel far more real. Exdeath similarly fills a similar role, where he might not be especially intriguing as a character, but his presence is felt with every step of your journey while still letting some hope in with the heroes succeeding at something once in a while as well, and his role in the final stretch of the game is awesome. With that said, there is one thing this game has narratively that strongly elevates everything for me, and that's Gilgamesh, not just being easily the most fun character in the series so far, but also being the driving force for so many of the absolute greatest setpieces in the game, having this aura of imposing danger mixed with comedy that causes him to be an absolute treat every time he's onscreen.
Basically, while the game doesn't quite feel super polished and streamlined in certain areas, this is still peak Final Fantasy so far and it's not even close. The combat system is genuinely incredible, the narrative, while simple, is a great ride throughout with some mountainous high points, the music is insane as usual, and the way the encounters are designed makes for an engaging experience from start to finish where you very rarely feel like you can just cruise through thoughtlessly. The first game in the series where I just feel like it's an incredibly strong game in general without the caveat of it feeling like just the foundation of something greater further down the road.