Seems like 50 is the magic number for me with Final Fantasy V via Final Fantasy Anthology. I beat the game with about 50 hours on the clock, my characters were around level 50, and they had learned an average of 50 skills a piece. I wanted to beat the game days ago, but beating the optional bosses Omega and Shinryu was a real bitch. I ended up spending some time grinding both for EXP and ABP. It was easy to level up jobs in the very last area, and when I was done, I had every job mastered with at least one character (most jobs two times over, some even more). I don't get why the max level would be 99, though, because even with the best enemies in the game for EXP, it still takes a stupidly long amount of time to level up once you get around the high 40's. I only grinded a couple levels before I said to hell with that. Like usual for Final Fantasy games, the optional bosses are designed really badly and make for an annoying, unsatisfying experience. Basically, you either take advantage of one or two weaknesses, following the same strategy as virtually every other player, or you get utterly destroyed. Well, you could also grind forever and possibly get by with a different strategy, but that's no fun either. I didn't like the traditional strategies I was reading online, so I went with the less-used status afflictions approach. I used Stop on Omega, by having three bards constantly singing Love Song, and for Shinryu, I used Berserk on him and had a Summoner cast Golem over and over. Anyway, once I had them licked, I had absolutely no problems with Exdeath. Beat him on my very first try, so it was a little anticlimactic. One thing that's kind of a bummer is that I thought I was doing well about finding all the hidden treasures in the game, but after getting to the last save point and then returning to the old psychic man in the underwater cave, I found out I was still at 98%. Oh well.

Overall, I'd say the game is better than any other numbered Final Fantasy I've beaten (1-4 and 7), but I still wasn't particularly impressed. I don't care about story that much in games, even RPGs, but if the story and characters are going to be as paper thin and generic as they are here, then I expect really engaging gameplay to make up for that. While the job system definitely makes the gameplay more interesting than in any other Final Fantasy I've beaten (and the game isn't piss-easy like 7 and the US version of 4), it still doesn't offer quite enough depth and variety for me. I'm still looking for a "whole package" Final Fantasy for me to enjoy. One that has charming characters, a unique identity in terms of story and setting, and gameplay that's interesting and fun. FF7 at least had balance between story and gameplay, but both areas were lacking in my eyes (gameplay was too slow and easy, and the setting and characters weren't appealing to me). But I have high hopes for FF6. From what I've seen of my fiance playing it, the story and characters do strike me as interesting, and I like how each character has his or her own unique gameplay identity. The music also seems quite a bit better in that one. But I need to take a break from Final Fantasy for a while before I consider digging into the next one.