Ranking The Final Fantasy Games: #6-4

5. Final Fantasy V

Preference between IV and V is what I struggle with most often when ranking the Final Fantasy games. What puts Final Fantasy V into the Top 5 category is the impressive job system. It expanded upon FFIII’s job system by developing more job classes and abilities per job by giving Ability Points (AP) as a reward after battle. Instead of a natural job progression, the game allowed more flexibility by removing a streamlined job path. You could take skills learned from multiple jobs in order to fully customize what your team can do, which made the game really fun to play.

This was the first soundtrack in the series, in my opinion, to have truly transcended the RPG genre. Uematsu had more time to learn the capabilities of the SNES than he did with Final Fantasy IV, and the difference is quite clear.

The story of Bartz, Lenna and others vanquishing evil ExDeath and protecting the elemental Crystals kept it simple, especially by keeping it down to five playable characters total (four in the active party). But that didn’t mean the game was simple itself, as the addition of a second world (the Void) added a certain mystique to the game’s landscape.

Even twenty years after its creation, Final Fantasy V still holds up to today’s gameplay and storytelling standards.