My number one JRPG of all time and by a significant margin. The base game was already amazing, but the release of Royal put it yet another tier higher.

The point most people are familiar with is the art. It's just chock full of unique, colorful, and energetic effects and UIs and animations. 3 and 4 were the same, but 5 made everything so much snappier and tactile. JRPGs are infamously glorified menu scrollers, but these are some of the most fun menus in gaming.

I wholly adore the story and characters. A story this long is inevitably going to have some pacing issues, but the emotions and themes are so compelling to me. Then every time I've replayed it, I'll pick up on another great detail I overlooked before. And then the new story added to the end with Royal is just incredible. It feels both complete as its own episode and yet fitting as an epilogue to the original plot. It turns the themes of prior events around but does so to strengthen the conclusion rather than invalidate it.

A lot of quality of life improvements were made to what was already the pinaccle of the classic line-up turn based system. It's as snappy as ever, but some moves were lifted into relevancy and several boss fights were made more complex and engaging.

Everything this series does drips with style and heart, and this is the drippiest, heartiest entry in it.