Pure Magic. Colorful as candy, touching characters, subtle mood, and some of the best Uemastu music ever.
Nonetheless, it gets everything right and is a pure gem, sublte, touching, FFV is a concentrate of all old school Dragon Quests and FF's, it's like saying goodbye before the groundreaking FFVI started to look in a new direction.
The plot and charatcers are good but pretty generic, reminding of the first FF withe the 4 warriors and the crystal. But there's a really good twist with the two xworlds and all. The characters really grow on you. The way they managed to convey emotions with such limited small pixellated charatcers and the help of occasional question marks on their head is just mind blowing.
What i'm trying to say is that what vintage game designers lacked in graphical capability they made up for by using these limits in a creative way, and that's exaclty where FFV shines, because the game looks limited but the gameplay and characters movements are soo deep it's just impressing.
The graphics always feel right, colourful and setting the right mood. The jobs and characters are colourful and look like candy ! The chocobo in FFV is just THE cutest thing i've ever seen from Japan, i could just watch his ass move from lft to right for hours ! Also he's a real character, not just generic in this game.
The music. If there is ONE game that deserves more recogntion it's this one. Yeah yah FFVI is great and all, but come one. Rena's theme ? Gilgamesh ? The overworld / Main theme ? PIrates Ahoy ? My god this game's OST is a frickin masterpiece. It has an Irish / Celtic mood to it and if you manage to get the Albm "Dear Friends",i swear to god it's going to make you cry.
Just like the rest of the game, all is subtle and suggested; Nothing is too epic, too romantic, it leaves many things to your imagination and that's the part i really love about it and really hate about FFX with its voice acting and too detailed characters. In FFV, they hired the best voice actor you can think of : you !
Well i've said enough. Dn't try to compare this game to FF6 or 7, because they're better, (if anything it can be compared to Dragon quest 3). But it's unfair because FFV need to be considered on his own and feels so nostalgic. Not just now, it always did.
Oh and one more thing. This review might be biased by the fact that FF5 is the first real RPG i've played. But stil, i think everything i said is true.