[James]

Well, it only took 5-6 months, but I finally beat Final Fantasy 5. Unless you're a diehard FF fan, skip this one.

The story is thin, relying on the same theme of crystals as all the ones before it. The villain is forgetable, used simply to push the story along at certain points. He never really comes off as being worth your time. The only distinguishing feature is the Job System, but that just leads to FAR too much random battles for my taste. Character building and game/story progression should have a balance between them.

With FFV, let's say you need all your characters to have a certain skill in order to beat an upcoming boss. Let's say that skill is obtained by leveling up your Ninja class a level, and to do that takes 400AP. Now, if the most you can get per battle is 4AP, if you're lucky, that's a lot of time fighting battle after battle. I eventually dreaded the thought of playing this game, because I wasn't getting anywhere. It was just hours upon hours of walking across the same piece of map, leveling up my classes so that my characters would be prepared for the next one or two parts that progress the actual game.

Now, I'm moving on to Dark Cloud 2. If you've never looked into the Dark Cloud games, do yourself a favor and get the first game while you still can. It's only $20. Then get Dark Cloud 2.