Oh boy. this game is hard to rate as it has many ups and downs. I wouldn't say that this game is better than 4 or even 3 but it's a unique experience i still consider worth playing. Many of the games problems stem from its gameplay rather than its story. This game took me over 10 more hours to finish than the other ff games and not for a good reason either. The game has a multi hour long segment in the end that feels like padding. You have to collect the 4 mcguffin tablets to unlock the 12 sacredly awesome weapons. I can't help but feel that this is a step back from ff3 where the awesome weapons were in an optional dungeon you could choose to skip. Its not even like theres a lot of story going on during the mcguffin collection its just filler. The games difficulty curve is all over the place. you will destroy enemies in previous areas only to go to the next one and suddenly get destroyed for no apparent reason. The biggest issue with the gameplay I feel is the ability points system. It's cool in theory and in practice but the thing that makes it a slog is just how slowly you get given the stuff. I mean for the majority of the game battles will give you at max 4 and often times 1 and when the games enjoyment hinges on getting cool abilities it can be a massive slog. The big problem as well is that later on in the game you start fighting enemies with extremely specific ways to kill them. If you didnt invest in the right class before these moments you have to GRIND to get the right ability to kill that enemy easier. This problem could've been solved by 1. making ABP easier to obtain overall and 2. Designing the enemies so they have many equally valid ways to defeat them without brute forcing them via grinding. overall i think this game is exactly middle of the road in my rating of these games so far. It's better than ff1 and especially ff2 but it has at times severe gameplay issues that hold it back which I believe makes it worse than ff3 and ff4.