I don't always beat games right away, and that was especially true in middle school, where I managed to hoard all the Final Fantasies on the Google Playstore on my phone, just to end up beating none of them on that platform. Hell, I didn't get close with any of them. However, with that in mind, FFV has been a top 3 Final Fantasy for me ever since I got into this series, and about seven and a half years later, that still tracks.

It all has to do with the game's job system. I don't think Final Fantasy V implemented it the best (See Bravely Default and Bravely Second for my favorite implementation), but Final Fantasy V's job system is truly something special, as well as being extremely revolutionary for the time. The format is genius: letting you level up jobs separate from character level, switch jobs whenever with no drawbacks, and most importantly, get rewarded for leveling jobs by getting new abilities you can use on other jobs. It all clicks together so seamlessly.

However, I will say that there's a few things this edition of the job system does suboptimally. First is how lopsided some jobs feel. For example, the Knight is a very early tank sort of job that across 6 levels gives you some useful passives, a command, and some passives that allow you to equip certain equipment types on jobs you normally would not be able to, and this is on a decent ABP curve too. Berserker, on the other hand, is a job that is a bitch to use because all you can do is attack with no discretion, and it has 2 levels. The first gives you the Berserk passive which is an absolute liability (especially when you can temporarily inflict Berserk later on if you REALLY wanted to), and then the ability to equip axes, a widely absent weapon type, on any job. And these two shitty skills are even less worth your trouble given that they are on an extremely steep curve of 100 and 400 ABP respectively (for context, random encounters will rarely give you above 4 ABP a battle until the endgame). It feels like some jobs are well thought out progression-wise (like the mages having nominally quick progression so you can use your spells elsewhere pretty quickly), and others are very underbaked.

Also I have a pet peeve with how Freelancer/Mime work with other jobs. Each base stat is inherited from the highest one among jobs you have mastered, which is really cool and incentivizes using different jobs. The problem? There are four base stats, and three jobs give you the best results. Seriously! I get archetypally how this job works, but Monk should not have been able to double dip! It's not hard to spread 4 instances of a highest stat across 4 jobs, and they messed it up! It's not the end of the world, but it really bugs me.

Outside of my gripes and the job system, FFV is a lighthearted game with a story that pushes zero envelopes. It is true comfort food with a heart of gold, and I enjoy that. The spritework is absolutely amazing, being the first Square game imo to really look like a SFC/SNES game instead of a more colorful NES game. Also the music is good, not really my cup of tea and heavily carried by Battle on the Big Bridge (a song that I'm constantly conflicted on if I love it or if it's really overrated), but still good. The star of the show here really is the job system.

For all that, I'd give this game a solid 9/10

Also, whoever thinks Shinryu is a harder superboss than Omega is actually delusional.