Final Fantasy V is the second of three Super Nintendo games in the series. In this entry we see the continuation of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, the return of the job system first introduced in Final Fantasy III, and new ideas that the series hasn't seen yet. Coming off of Final Fantasy IV I wasn't sure what to expect going into this entry but I was left feeling (mostly) good about it.

The story this time around takes a few different turns and pleasantly shakes up the formula. You start off with a character named Bartz and you quickly meet two other party members named Lenna (the princess of the nearby Castle Tycoon) and Galuf (a mysterious old man who has amnesia). The crystals are weakening and you are tasked with investigating why. Upon reaching the Wind Crystal, it shatters (oh no!) and you are left with shards of the crystal that grant you your different jobs. You then set out to stop the other crystals from being shattered. Shortly after you embark on your journey you end up meeting your fourth party member, Faris, who is the leader of a pirate crew. It's a nice contrast of meeting characters over the first hour of the game and choosing whether to keep their assigned names or to name them something you'd prefer. I chose to stick with the provided names. The story's presentation this time around is my favorite thus far. Every character is full of life. We see the character sprites move around, emote, and interact with the world. It's not the rigid characters walking/running into each other and then yelling "take that!" Instead we get to see characters raise their hand and hit the other characters. We see them laugh, cry, and everything else in between. This provides for more bits of comedy but also works to convey the seriousness of a situation.

This is the first game, thus far, that has gotten me fully invested in the characters partially because of the display of emotion but also because we get to see a full range of personality from the characters. Bartz is a bit of an idiot who is very emotionally driven. He's sweet in his own way even when he doesn't understand what's going on. Lenna wears her heart on her sleeve and does everything she can to help and protect others even at the detriment of her own health. After her father dies she takes her role as princess seriously and intends to lead the kingdom that is left behind. But not until she has helped Bartz and company save the world. Galuf is a grumpy old man that you learn is from a different world. He was a hero both in his time and in the present. He loves puns, and yelling at Bartz for being stupid. Faris (who turns out to be Lenna's sister) spends most of her life pretending to be a man so that pirates will take her seriously as a captain of her own crew. She tries to do the royalty thing but always ends up going back to her pirate ways. I was devastated and emotional when Galuf died towards the end of the second act. I thought for sure it was going to be a fake out or they were going to somehow bring him back but they actually allowed for him to die. Sure we see him again at the end of the story but it's not like in Final Fantasy IV where damn near everybody "dies" and then miraculously comes back. Galuf is dead and nothing is going to bring him back. He's only able to help you in spirit when it matters the most and even then it was limited. We end up moving on with Galuf's Granddaughter Krile as his replacement after he bestows upon her all of his character progression (job levels and experience). We then get to see Krile mourn the loss of her grandfather and watch her grow as she comes to accept that.

The story's villain in this game gets to stay the main villain and it's done terrifically. In the first act of the game you learn that Exdeath was this great evil that couldn't be defeated by the world's old heroes. So they sealed him away with the power of the crystals. By the end of the first act, the crystals have all been destroyed and Exdeath has been released! He then goes back to Galuf's world to try and destroy their crystals. Galuf leaves you behind to try to stop him but Bartz and friends figure out a way to follow him there despite knowing there's no going back. While we are in this new world we get to meet Exdeath's second in command, Gilgamesh! This villain is pure comedy relief and has the greatest theme song. Battle on the Big Bridge quickly became my favorite tune in the game. But more on that later. Gilgamesh monologues during your multiple encounters and has some of the best lines in the game. By the end of the game your relationship has gone from being enemies to being friendly rivals. Even to the point where he sacrifices himself to help you (another sad moment). Back to Exdeath. This guy is a dick all the way through the game. He manages to always be one step ahead of you. Even when you think you're ahead he shows up and basically admits that he used you to get to the crystal. He continues to get his way all the way until the end. It's not a unique trope but it works well for this game. Exdeath's goal at the end is to harness the power of the void to further his own power. His motivations are entirely self-fulfilling. After dealing with secret behind the scenes villains during the last couple of games it's nice having a straightforward villain.

The dungeons in this game are good... until you reach the merged world. The layouts, themes, and overall designs of the dungeons are great. The problem is that the last three dungeons before going to the final dungeon have the most awful enemy encounters. Most of the enemies that you will encounter in these dungeons have a myriad of abilities that can spiral you into a gameover should you get unlucky. Either the enemies afflict status conditions that can cause your party members to hit each other or in some cases the enemies can straight up one hit kill any given party member because they happened to choose that ability. This would be manageable if they weren't often given the ability to strike first. Due to the ATB system there are many times where you do not get a chance to act before any number of these abilities can be used which leads to a frustrating experience. Each of these dungeons also includes an enemy that has more health than pretty much any boss we've seen until now. They also have particularly strong attacks. These enemies only appear alone and the encounters are pretty easy to flee from so they're not as bad to deal with. Every battle in these dungeons felt like they needed to be treated like a boss encounter in order for me to be able to safely get through. Either that or I had to give a party member the "scram" ability to instantly flee from battle. However this puts you at a disadvantage since you're then not accumulating any experience points. Fortunately the final dungeon (Interdimensional Rift) gave us more manageable fights. Having certain boss encounters drop a consecrated circle was very helpful in making my way through.

The character progression in this game returns to the Final Fantasy III format where characters have individual levels and job levels. You can change a character's job at any time outside of combat and mastering jobs benefits your starting job (Freelancer) and another job you can obtain in the late game (Mimic). Leveling the jobs requires your character to gain job experience points by being alive at the end of the battle. Improvements to note is that characters are not required to take actions to gain job xp and also the job levels vary on the xp requirements in order to level up or achieve mastery. The other cool new feature is that when you level up jobs and master them, you gain access to those job's related abilities. So by leveling up Black Mage you could gain access to black magic spells even while playing a different class like Dancer or Ranger. This is a great tool that allows you to maintain character roles while also allowing the character to level up jobs that can't cast spells. I effectively had two spellcasters and two martial fighters. The balancing aspect is that in most jobs you have their innate ability and you can slot in a single learned ability. The exceptions are Freelancer and Mime as they have no innate abilities (other than Mime's "mimic" ability. The real goal of the job system is to master the jobs that pertain to the role your character wants to fill. I had my spellcasters master all types of magic and obtain the "Dualcast" ability from Red Mage. Meanwhile I had my martial characters master Ninja for the "Dual Wield" ability. The main idea though is that when your characters are in the Freelancer job they get stat boosts based on what jobs have been mastered. Freelancers that have Monk mastery are going to have high health and strength. Freelancers with Summoner mastery are going to have a high magic stat. They also obtain every innate ability that is unique to the mastered jobs (like being able to run faster in the overworld as a Thief). This system is a great idea but it could see refinement. While every job is viable, there's really only a few that you really need to master before just making your character a Freelancer or Mime. Mastering Thief, Monk, and Summoner gives you the highest stat benefits for Freelancer and Mime and then it's a matter of mastering jobs for flavor. Strategies often recommend mastering Summoner and Red Mage so you can dualcast your summons and do the highest damage possible which becomes incredibly useful but does make the game easier as a result. Overall it is still my favorite system as I enjoy the puzzle aspects of bosses that can be completely wrecked if you exploit their weaknesses. One boss is even weak to the Level 5 Death spell which is hilarious.

Magic in this game sees the introduction to "Time Magic." Some of the spells aren't new but are reclassified as time magic. Meteor being one of them. Having five types of magic (Black, White, Time, Blue, and Summon) makes for a different balance in the game. I found myself often running my spellcasters as the same mage and having white magic as their extra ability or having them as a white mage with any of the other four. It gets the most interesting when you get dualcast and can cast two spells at a time. You can implement neat strategies where you can cast two healing spells to greatly restore your party or you can double down on damage. You can also heal and deal damage in the same turn. This is the best implementation of magic thus far. Blue Magic makes its debut and is exhilarating. The fun thing about Blue Magic is that you have to learn the spells from enemies before you can cast them. In order to learn the spell your character must be hit by the ability. What's nice is that the character doesn't have to survive the attack or even be conscious at the end of battle to learn the spell. This made learning spells like Level 5 Death or Level 3 Flare much easier to learn. The drawback is that Blue Magic cannot be used with dualcast. It also cannot be silenced which is a great positive. Blue Magic is the most overpowered throughout the game as you likely won't have dualcast until late in the game and as mentioned before some of the bosses die instantly from certain Blue Mage spells.

Let's talk about bosses. The bosses as mentioned are more like puzzles than real challenges. If you can solve the puzzle then the boss drops almost immediately. Or if you want a harder challenge you can usually face them head on. It makes for a fresh experience when the game allows you to decide how you want to approach the hurdles set before you. The bosses are more fun and engaging that way. The bosses also have more character. They taunt you while you are in battle (especially Gilgamesh) and they feel like they are actually a part of the story rather than just another big baddie in your way. I want to specifically mention that Exdeath is in fact your final boss encounter. This is a nice experience. It's nice knowing the bad guy from the first act and finally being strong enough to stop him. After all of the chaos he has caused, it feels good to beat him. It's also cool that the battle is played straight. You get to come at him with whatever strategy you think is most appropriate. There are no gimmick strategies like a key weapon that was useless until that moment. There are no hidden items that drop him down in health or stats and you cannot kill him with Odin's Zantetsuken ability either. This is the final battle and you are going to either beat Exdeath or he is going to beat you.

The ending once you defeat Exdeath is pleasant. You can't undo everything that Exdeath has done but at least you were able to save what was left in his wake. You restore the crystals and your heroes become the stewards of those crystals. I came out of this narrative feeling good with how the story played out.

The score of this game takes a prominent role as the tracks are well integrated into the environments. The highs sing and the lows wallow. You could listen to the game's soundtrack and feel like you've been on an adventure by the end of it. Some of the best tracks are "Ahead on Our Way" which is the title screen theme, "Presentiment" which plays during the introductory sequence, of course "Battle on the Big Bridge" plays when you're fighting Gilgamesh, and "The Decisive Battle" which plays while you are fighting Exdeath. There are many other great tracks that do well to accompany the game but those were some of my favorites.

Overall I do feel like this is objectively the best entry out of the pixel remasters thus far. I'll of course have a final opinion once I have completed Final Fantasy VI. Final Fantasy V is the most enjoyable and engaging experience that I've had. While I still adore FFIII, FFV exceeds it in every aspect. This series really hits its stride at about Final Fantasy III and it continues to improve with every entry. Looking forward to Final Fantasy VI.