The wind has become irregular; what's happening? The King of Tycoon decides to investigate the Wind Shrine, where a crystal regulates the wind. Soon after he rides the hiryuu (dragon), a meteor falls near Castle Tycoon. Princess Lenna, despite her father's advice to stay home, decides to investigate the celestial body. Right around the crashing site, Butz the adventurer and his chocobo Boco are both startled by the crashing of the meteor. They both decide to investigate the meteor too.

When Butz arrives, he discovers Lenna who was captured by goblins. After doing away with them, he rescues Lenna. The newly formed duo then discovers a strange old man named Galuf. The only thing he remembers is his name; he has forgotten everything else. But when Lenna mentions that she wants to investigate the Wind Shrine, he claims that he wanted to go there too! After much hesitation, Butz joins them in their investigation too.

But since the meteor has caused land slides, the trio has to try and steal a pirate ship in a nearby cave. It failed, has Faris, the chief pirate, captures them. Fortunately, Faris spares the team's life and decides to follow them to the Wind Shrine too. When the team arrives, then find the crystal shattered and no trace of King Tycoon... However, the crystal shards come to them and give them the essence of warriors of the past. Also, the essence of the remaining crystal comes to them so they can try and save the other crystals. After being blessed by the crystal essence, King Tycoon appears and tells them they are the Warriors of the Crystal, whose mission is to protect the remaining 3 crystals, Fire, Water and Earth.

Will they succeed? Will Galuf recover his memory? And why would a pirate like Faris have the same pendant as the Princess of Tycoon?

Graphics: 9/10
As always, the newest Final Fantasy opus is better drawn than its predecessor. In Final Fantasy V, it is finally possible to distinguish a character's head and body; faces also have distinguishable emotions and expressions. Mountains in the overworld are better defined and perspective is finally logical - hugging a wall behind a building makes you walk behind that same building, whereas Final Fantasy IV kept you from doing it. There are many kinds of environments in the game, each with its specific background. Finally, magic is much more fluid, and you can even learn spells from monsters with blue magic!


Sound: 10/10
This is literally what kept me from burying the game since feet under because of its insane difficulty. To this date, The Decisive Battle is still one of my most favorite tracks of all time (try to listen to it with maximum volume and bass when you're feeling angry ). Search the Light (the second part of the last dungeon) sounds strangely epic but is excellent too. Although not as memorable as Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V is still an excellent soundtrack, which has created one of the best video game orchestration of all times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3wBwdyRVE . It also started a 16-bits tradition of trying to mimic real-life sounds. Here, you can hear the dragon cry.

Addictiveness: 8/10
Being a Final Fantasy, FFV has a lot to offer. There many jobs to be tried, each with its innate characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. Once you reach a certain amount of ABP, your character will learn a new ability which can be used at any time. For example, once your white mage learns White Lvl1, that character can now cast level 1 white magics at any time when he equips the ability.
A new innovation comes in the form of blue magic. When a blue mage/someone with the learning ability is in your team, you can learn spells from your foes when they cast it on you. For example, if someone cast lvl 5 doom and your learner has a level that's a multiple of 5, he will die but will learn the spell if you resurrected him or her before the end of the fight. Afterwards, you can use the spell and kill foes with levels that can be divided by 5... including bosses! However, you will need to use control (from a Trainer/Mediator) to get some of those spells, as the enemies won't cast them on you
Finally, before you reach the final dungeon, there are TONS of things to do: get legendary weapons, ultimate summon monsters and white/black/time magics, walk around the world, test your bravery/cowardice, a secret job, etc.

Story: 5/10
For a Squaresoft game, Final Fantasy V has a rather weak story line. The main male character, Butz, is simply an adventurer that wanders around the world and just happens to be near Tycoon when the meteor crashes. Except for Galuf, you learn nothing about the characters during the regular story line.

Depth: 8/10
Despite a weak story line, the game does have a lot to offer. Also, when you travel to Butz's village of Castle Tycoon in the first part of the game, you can learn more about the characters.

Difficulty: 10/10
This is what made me put the game aside until I got to listen to the soundtrack on a disk. The game is incredibly difficult: not getting the proper jobs can severely handicap you, some monsters are so quick they can spam you with status-inducing magics that can't be avoided, some monsters are nearly impossible to defeat without a FAQ guide and some place are very hard to find without help.

So despite a weak story line and insane difficulty level, Final Fantasy V should still be tried by RPG freaks. The music is very enjoyable, the graphics are beautiful and characters are customizable to almost an infinite number of possibilities.

I liked your review a lot. I enjoyed this game but still have yet to finish it. It isn't has good has 6 and 4 but still a great game.

Beastmode64 : Thanks. According to your profile, you pretty much grew up in the PS2 era; what do you think of such an "old game"? What do you think are its weaknesses?