Vidya Thoughts

New and old

Final Fantasy IV had been a major success for SquareSoft in 1991. It marked the first entry of the franchise on the then-new Super Famicom as well as the second title to be released overseas. It seemed logical that Final Fantasy V would follow in its footsteps, but…well, that didn’t happen. North America received Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy V was placed exclusively on Japanese shelves for the time being. FFV would get released in Japan on December 6, 1992.

The title marks both the beginning and the end of an era in some ways. V is the end of series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s term at the helm as Director. He would go on to be credited for a while as a producer, but this is less of a hands on role. I love the way these games play but I would argue that Final Fantasy V is the final game in the mainline franchise that is ‘gameplay first, story second.’

Conversely, V marks the first entry of the franchise for Tetsuya Nomura, who was brought on by SquareSoft to be a monster designer. While he served as a debugger for Final Fantasy IV, his first creative work was here. His influence would grow tremendously as he would become one of the main character designers for SquareSoft during the company’s Playstation days. Nomura worked on both Final Fantasy VII and VIII as well as other SquareSoft titles of the era like Brave Fencer Musashi and Parasite Eve. He would go on to be Director of the Kingdom Hearts franchise and is currently listed as Creative Director for the Final Fantasy VII remake project.

But why was this game skipped over for American release? Let’s revisit a quote from SquareSoft lead localizer Ted Woolsey on why V was left out in the cold. This is from an interview with Super Play Magazine in 1994:

“The Final Fantasy series basically has two separate tracks: the odd series (FFI, FFIII and FFV) are controller command drive games, whereas the even series are more story line driven games. As for FFV though, well, although we’re sure it’s a great title it hasn’t been a hit with too many people in our focus groups, although experienced gamers loved the complex character building – it’s just not accessible enough to the average gamer. But we’re determined we want to release it so we’re going to wait and introduce it once there’s a larger audience for that particular style.”

He would go on to posit that it could eventually come over as a spin-off title with a name like “Final Fantasy Extreme” or something along those lines. You see because it’s harder than the others so it’s EXTREME. It’s interesting that there is an alternate version of history where a mainline Final Fantasy title got released in a territory as a spin-off game.

The Journey West

North America would not see an official release for Final Fantasy V until 1999. Specifically October of that year. You know what released in September of 1999? Final Fantasy VIII. The next 3D entry into the franchise and the follow-up to megahit Final Fantasy VII.

While hardcore fans in the states certainly would be into the first official release of Final Fantasy V, it’s pretty safe to say it went largely unnoticed when compared to its much more attractive competition. As a result, I feel like V often gets passed over when people talk about the franchise in the west. It’s the one between IV and VI. Or between II and III if you’re talking to an old fogey who doesn’t bother with number changes.

The hardcores weren’t totally out in the cold until 1999. A group of high school students came together, formed a translation group called RPGe and released a fan patch of Final Fantasy V translated into English. Fan translations still don’t happen for every game. For instance, I have been waiting for ages for someone to wrap up the translation of Segagaga for the Dreamcast. I just now am getting to try Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 for the Playstation 2. And yet, in 1998, there was an extremely serviceable fan translation of a Super Famicom title. This is a very truncated retelling of a fascinating story, heck out the article on this by Jason Schrier on Kotaku.

The work to do this involved more than just translating Japanese text into English, it also meant breaking apart the game and understanding what made Final Fantasy V tick. Something that might take a whole sentence to print out in English may only take a character or two in Japanese. This is why you would often see weird abbreviations of spells in older Final Fantasies because they just couldn’t fit all that stuff in there. No room for Fire-3, so it became FIR3 or something along those lines. A lot of fan translations of the era tried to skirt around this issue, but the FFV fan translation is one of the first to tackle this problem and try to make something of professional quality. From High School students! This version is widely considered superior to the one that North Americans received in 1999 as part of Final Fantasy Anthology.

My first experience with FFV was through this fan translation. I wasn’t sure about its quality because, well, my previous fan translation experiences weren’t quite up to snuff. I remember excitedly playing the broken jibberish that was the 90s fan translation of Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu and Dragon Ball Z: Hyper Dimension and knowing I was getting an inferior product. I didn’t care, I was happy to play them! But when I got around to playing the FFV fan translation, I was aware of the PS1 release and my underdeveloped brain simply thought “well that one must be better because it’s official and I can buy it so uh I can stop with this I think.” Whoops!

Manageable difficulty

It’s a shame that fans of the franchise had to slink off to the mysterious world of the Internet to play FFV for the first time because it’s probably the best one released yet. It is a hard game in the sense that Dark Souls is a hard game. If you approach and just play it without trying to understand what makes it tick, you probably aren’t going to have a good time. The Final Fantasy I-III tactic of jamming on the attack button will not fly, you need to understand and work with the systems they have. If you experiment with things and tinker just a little bit, it’s extremely manageable. I think even the poor folk who only had experience with Final Fantasy I and IV could manage!

In the above Woolsey quote, he makes an interesting point. “The Final Fantasy series basically has two separate tracks: the odd series (FFI, FFIII and FFV) are controller command drive games, whereas the even series are more story line driven games.” As I mentioned in my writeup for Final Fantasy IV, that game feels like a direct sequel to Final Fantasy II. It takes some of the ideas of II and supercharges them. Final Fantasy III felt like a direct sequel to Final Fantasy I and wouldn’t you know it, V feels like a direct sequel to III. This even and odd-numbered trend would end after VI because you can see a very clear path from VI-to VII-to-VIII but looking at the older Final Fantasy games with this in mind is pretty interesting.

What set Final Fantasy III apart from the original was the job system. If you need a refresher, the original Final Fantasy title offered six different classes (jobs) to choose from when you start the game. Final Fantasy III offered these original jobs and several more, letting you switch between them as you needed to. Sure, there were penalties for switching, but you were no longer tied to choices you made at the character select screen. Dragon Quest III did this too, in case you wanted to know where some inspiration might have came from. V expounds on this by letting you equip job abilities onto other unrelated jobs. This allows for customization!

In the game’s tutorial, they explain it fairly simply. Let’s say you’re making a knight but want him to heal a little bit on the side. Simply level up your character in the White Mage job until they learn the white magic ability. Then switch over to Knight and equip white magic to them and suddenly you have your own little makeshift Paladin! There are 21 – 22 if you count Freelancer – different jobs to choose from and a lot of them gain a different ability for every level you achieve so there’s a lot of customization to be had. In this way, the cast of characters the player controls feels unique to the player despite the player characters having canonical names and personalities (unlike I and III).

V doesn’t just borrow from III though. The ATB system makes a return from IV, so the faster paced action there combines with the pre-planning needed for combat in III to make something really compelling. You might recall in my NES recaps I said that I simply jammed on the attack button for 90% of the battles, including boss fights, but I cannot imagine playing Final Fantasy V in that way. Boss battles immediately expect you to start experimenting with the abilities you unlock and if you don’t find effective job combinations you might not make it very far.

Don’t be surprised if you have to retry a boss fight because you entered it with a party using jobs you’re currently trying to level up. There were several times I had to rethink my approach to fights in this game, which simply had not happened much to this point. Before the answer to getting my ass kicked in combat was grinding. Here I needed to think.

Employment opportunities

The utility of jobs is also done a lot differently than in III. In that game, you earned jobs at a fairly slow pace and the new jobs you earned typically replaced some old jobs. For instance, after you unlocked the Devout there was no reason to use a White Mage anymore. Why would you use the Warrior when the Dragoon is right there? Why would you use a Scholar once you had access to libra? The gameplay loop would involve unlocking new jobs and then using the new jobs to defeat whatever the next portion of the game was. It was fun, but there were only a few fights where you had to truly think about party composition. And by the end of the game, odds are you’d just stick with the ‘super’ jobs of Ninja and Sage.

In V, you unlock all of your jobs incredibly rapidly. In this title, your new career paths are chosen for you by the shards of the shattered four elemental crystals. And before you have too much time to think on it, you have every job the game has to offer (save one). There aren’t any jobs that serve as replacements for other jobs, either. Each one has a different utility and can be useful at any point in the game.

For instance, while in the last dungeon of the game, I was still trying to level up one of my characters in time magic, which is in the second set of jobs you get this go around. The idea here is that you will constantly be unlocking new abilities to experiment with. You may not even find your ideal job set until the very end of the game. For me, I didn’t find a physical set I was truly happy with until right before the final boss. It was very engaging.

Your jobs also learn various support abilities too. Thieves can learn skills that let you see hidden pathways or move around the map quicker, Ninjas can unlock the ability for other jobs to dual wield, Geomancers can unlock the ability to avoid floor damage like lava and lots of jobs gain the ability to let you equip weapons to jobs that normally can’t equip said weapons. This allows for further customization and role playing. You’re not going to approach CRPG levels of freewheeling here but for an early Final Fantasy title there are a lot of new options to consider. It’s a bit of a culture shock going from IV where Cecil always fights like Cecil to V where my Bartz probably plays nothing like your Bartz.

Another bit of culture shock from IV involves the party makeup. IV introduced a party of five characters, which felt like a lot to manage. V rolls it back to the previously traditional four. IV also was the first in the series to have your characters learn new spells as they level up – V returns to having the player purchase their magic from shops. Luckily this time, when you buy cure at the store, everybody gets access to it. You don’t need to buy it four times so everyone has it.

A case of gigantism

To revisit the concept of supercharging for the Super Nintendo, think about Final Fantasy III. That game had two world maps for the player to explore. You had the floating island and the continent below. It felt quite expansive. Final Fantasy IV also had a second world, the underworld where the dwarves run the show. There’s also the moon, which is very small.

V takes this concept and really runs with it, with three whole world maps to discover. The third is sort of a combination of the first two, more on this in the character section, but this really makes the world feel massive. It’s sad that the multiple world map thing basically ends with Final Fantasy VI, because the feeling of starting fresh with a brand new uncharted world is pretty spectacular. It makes your journey feel grand. And up until now, the Final Fantasy games haven’t been particularly long.

I also like that V opens things up once your path towards the end of the game is clear. The game tells you that you can go tackle some dungeons to unlock a bunch of ultimate weapons, but the order you tackle them is up to you. Heck, you don’t even need to do this content, if you feel sure enough you can waltz on over to the final dungeon and just finish the game. Despite feeling open, the other games in the franchise are pretty linear. There’s a correct path to take. It’s nice to get some choice here and it really helps the game feel like a gigantic undertaking. VI’s World of Ruin is much like this, too.

V is the first title to take me over 20 hours on this series of playthroughs. I believe my final playtime was around 25. I’m sure that’s the highest it will get in this series! This is partially thanks to the massive dungeons this game houses. I would say they surpass II in length, but thankfully they are not nearly as annoying and don’t contain 95 million empty rooms. The final area felt like a true sequel to the gauntlet that was the final dungeon of III – luckily this one features multiple save points. And Super Bosses! But more on those later.

Comic relief

The story isn’t totally forgotten about, but it’s definitely not meant to be the star of the show like it was in IV. To me the tale V tells is like a souped up, more focused version of III. You have a clear villain who is calling the shots and your goal is simple: save the crystals and save the world. Much like III, where there are two sets of four warriors, a second set of four warriors aids the player in this game too. Your main villain isn’t interested in anything as complex as helping a society of moon people thrive, instead he just wants to merge realities together and kill basically everything. There was a sense of whimsy in my adventures in III and V felt much the same in that regard.

Aiding this is a weird sense of humor. Final Fantasy V makes jokes all the times. To the point that I would say it’s the most light hearted Final Fantasy of them all. Those of you who have played IX but not played this, that might sound kind of shocking. But it’s true! The world might be in danger of ending but it seems like everybody has the time for quips.

Some of these are bizarre references to things, to the point that I think the original must have made reference to 90s Japanese television that would have confused American audiences so the localization (the Pixel Remaster version lifts from the GBA translation as opposed to the busted PS1 translation) must have fished for equivalency. Enjoy some of the greatest hits.

The tone extends to the villain of the game, Exdeath. He’s portrayed as all powerful and a force to be feared, but he comes off as something of a Power Rangers villain. He doesn’t have a lot of trusted allies, his right-hand man for a majority of the game is a guy named Gilgamesh who is essentially a joke villain, and instead he just throws random monsters at you hoping that it will stop you in your tracks. One of my favorite scenes in the game involves the big sinister villain going toe-to-toe with a very old turtle sage. It’s something I adore, but it does take his intimidation down a notch. Despite having a name with the word ‘death’ in it, Exdeath just doesn’t feel very threatening.

It’s weird then that this is the first Final Fantasy title that really gets expressive with their sprite work. In the past, when a character would act surprised or sad, you could really only tell about it from the text on screen. Video games are a visual medium so being able to see emotions in the characters makes them feel more alive. Cecil is definitely a deeper character than Bartz, but he feels less alive because his sprite doesn’t change a whole lot.

What is here is often goofy and over-the-top, but it makes the characters feel more memorable. One of the more serious examples of this is a scene where the characters Faris and Lenna realize they are related. The two turn to each other and appear to hold hands. The work here feels like an expansion of what IV did when Rosa and Cecil would embrace.

So even though the story didn’t set the world on fire, the little touches to the presentation helps this narrative and these characters feel a lot more three dimensional than they could have been. The cast may not be as memorable as what you got in IV, but the four leads here make so much more of an impact than the leads of II did simply because of the little presentation tweaks.

Since this is a franchise that spans multiple console generations, you better get used to technological leaps and new ways of conveying the same ideas. Did you know we are just one game away from the 3D era? Because we are!

Notable characters

I struggled with whether to include sprite comparisons in this retrospective because when I would watch footage of Super Famicom gameplay, I wouldn’t see a lot of differences compared to my own footage. So then I threw together a picture of Bartz to try to challenge the reader to spot the difference and…the differences became immediately obvious to me. I won’t comment on the changes unless there’s something glaring, but my general thoughts are “The Pixel Remaster looks too clean, I prefer the original sprites. They have slightly more detail.”

For reference, in all of the player character comparisons, the sprite order goes “Battle (Pixel Remaster), Battle (Super Famicom), Overworld (Pixel Remaster), Overworld (Super Famicom).” There are no character portraits here.

Bartz Klauser

Since this fella has had a whole host of different translators working on his name, it’s been a lot of different things over the years. Butz. Batz. Bluno. We landed on Bartz as the OFFICIAL official North American name. In a franchise that has lots of bizarre lead character names, I always found Bartz to be one of the weirdest. Even moreso than something like Firion. I guess it helps that one of the first things I remember him being called is “Butz.”

Bartz enters our story as something of a man who loves adventure. He’s roaming the countryside near the city of Tycoon with his Chocobo (pet? friend?) Boko when a meteor strikes the world and puts him in contact with two other characters in Lenna and Galuf. Bartz is unusual for a JRPG protagonist in that he ISN’T eager to go running in the direction of the main plot.

Lenna and Galuf want to go visit the wind shrine because wouldn’t you know it, the crystals are all messed up and the wind is dying and the meteorite that fell might be related to that, but Bartz has no interest in that. Not his problem! Boko guilts Bartz into making the journey (The word Kweh can mean many things, most of them mean) and from there our adventure truly begins because the wind crystal shatters in front of the adventurers and the group becomes imbued with their power. The warriors of light are born!

There’s really not a whole lot to Bartz as a character. He has a dad that we learn more about and it turns out his heritage is a little bit of a surprise, but that’s not exactly an exclusive thing to his character. I look at Bartz as sort of an early version of Vaan from Final Fantasy XII in that he exists to move the plot along. Nothing wrong with that! At least Bartz made me crack a smile every once in a while, can’t say the same for Vaan. We’ll learn more about that in, uh…seven entries…

Because he is the main character and I am a boring, boring individual, I made him excel in physical jobs. I will get into the job specifics later, but for reference I made sure he had mastery as a Ninja, a Knight, a Mystic Knight and a Ranger just so he could have a whole host of useful abilities to equip for big fights. Since I’m no Final Fantasy V expert, it took me some tinkering to find a good niche for Bartz, but when I did, he was absolutely the most valuable member of my crew. As is fitting for a main character!

I also want to give Square props for not giving Bartz a love story of any sort. Most Final Fantasy games have relationship drama even when it’s not totally necessary to do it, and while there are some slight scenes to suggest ol Bartz might have a sex drive, he’s never seen openly pining for other people. He’s just a man who loves adventure. Now please enjoy this picture showing off how our boy might have some feelings.

Lenna Charlotte Tycoon

Lenna is the first party character you see in the game. Her father, the King of Tycoon, goes off to investigate the crystals and forbids her to go along. Lenna obviously does not listen to her father and goes off to the shrines as well – which is where she runs into Bartz and Galuf.

She is portrayed as very selfless and brave. This comes across when her father’s wind drake, which just so happens to be the last one in existence, gets sick and the only path to the cure is surrounded by poison. This is called dragon grass and it is beneficial to wind drakes but harmful to humans. She willingly succumbs to poison here and then later does so again when in the second world of the game she eats dragon grass in order to convince the wind drake of that world to eat some too. Or she just really, really wants to be poisoned.

The relationship with her father’s wind drake is one of the more interesting aspects of her character. As a child, her mother was very sick and the only cure was the tongue of a wind drake. When she hears of this she rushes off with a knife to confront the beast but is stopped by one of her care takers who explains that once this creature is gone, that’s it. No more of those fellas. Her father had also struggled with this and came to the same conclusion child Lenna did. She stows her knife and forms quite a bond with the creature, who we come to know as Hiryu. He would eventually get fatally injured but in one last bit of bonding with Lenna, he becomes the Phoenix summon. It’s very sweet.

The other interesting relationship we see develop is between her and her sister Faris, which we will talk more on later. While these characters don’t have much of an arc, they do form interesting relationships and get you to care about them in that way. I think Lenna very easily could have been as shallow as Maria from Final Fantasy II, but she comes across as a very likable princess and definitely carries her weight as a warrior of light.

I am a man who likes tradition in his JRPGs and for whatever reason that means making my primary healer a woman. Since this is a game that lets you customize your party however you want, I fell into that trap here too and made sure Lenna excelled in white magic as well as summon magic. Eventually she expanded into other forms of magic like time and black Magic since it’s a good idea to have a wide mastery of the arts, but she spent the majority of the game as my primary healer. Definitely the most effective one yet. Take that, Rosa!

Faris Scherwiz AKA Sarisa Scherwil Tycoon

Faris is the fourth party member you get. When Bartz, Lenna and Galuf start their journey to the wind crystal, it turns out the meteorite that kicks everything off is blocking the way to the crystal’s shrine. The party goes on a detour and encounters a group of pirates, led by Faris, who takes them to the wind crystal. They are in possession of a boat that doesn’t need wind to sail – instead they are powered by a giant reptile creature called Syldra. The crystal breaks and yadda yadda yadda, you have your four warriors of light.

Much like with Lenna and Hiryu, Faris has a very tight relationship with her animal companion and it becomes one of the more interesting things about her. There is a point where Syldra gets separated from the party because it gets sucked up in a giant whirlpool and while Bartz is kinda cool with just moseying on, Faris is devastated that her friend appears to be lost. Just like with Hiryu, Syldra would go on to serve Faris in the afterlife as a powerful summon. Hmm…Faris and Lenna have some things in common, eh?

The game is very tight lipped about Faris at first, to the extent that they avoid using gendered language to discuss her for a while. It becomes excessively obvious that Faris is supposed to be a woman who is pretending to be a man so people would not take her less seriously as a pirate. In a game with voice acting, this is exceptionally hard to pull off – I think of Fire Emblem: Awakening English dub where the game introduces a character named Marth with a very feminine voice – but in a game with no voice acting and pixel art it’s a little bit easier. Of course, the writing here gave it away, but hey.

The TRUE secret that Faris hides isn’t related to her gender but is instead related to her heritage. As you could tell by her true name up there, she has the same last name as Lenna and that is because they are sisters who got split from each other at some point. The people of Tycoon mention how much they miss princess Sarisa and Faris tries to play coy about her relation to Lenna but eventually Lenna fishes the truth out and the two of them start to bond.

Their scenes together are probably some of my favorites in the game, particularly the flashbacks to before Faris left home. It portrays her as a sweet and caring person who dotes after her loved ones, a bit of a departure from the pirate captain we have gotten to know to this point.

But they also never abandon Faris being more rugged than her sister, which is pretty nice. There’s a part of the game where Faris and Lenna sit back on the throne in Tycoon while Bartz wanders off to do his own thing. Faris almost immediately rejoins with the crew and scolds you for leaving her behind since she doesn’t feel fit for the cushy life of a royal.

In my party, Faris started out as a Black Mage and progressed primarily in offensive job types. She spent large portions of the game as a Dragoon and a Samurai, too. I found magic far, far, FAR more useful in this game than I have in any of the first four mainline titles so she eventually injected that sweet black tar time and black magic into her veins. In FFV, buffing your party is more useful than ever, so having a character casting hastega (grants a buff to speed for the entire party) during big battles is insanely helpful. Faris provided that support for the majority of my playthrough.

Galuf Halm Baldesion

There was an old list that used to make the rounds on the 90s Internet, typically in email chains, something like ‘100 things every JRPG has.’ Granted, this list isn’t true and was probably made by some kid who had only played Final Fantasy VII and maybe Secret of Mana or something, but that’s how we entertained ourselves back then. Anyway, one of the entries was ‘there must be one character with amnesia’ and Galuf is our man in this game.

When he meets up with Bartz and Lenna at the beginning of the adventure he has no idea who he is or where he’s from and decides to stick with Lenna because…I dunno. He felt compelled to do so. Look, the game has to get started somehow.

His identity remains a mystery for a while, though occasionally characters will recognize him and be surprised that Galuf has no idea who they are. Ol gramps here eventually remembers his true identity: he is from another world, in fact he is the king of a place called Bal, and came to Bartz’s world in order to prevent the return of Exdeath, an evil sorcerer who had been sealed away with the crystals of Bartz’s world. If the crystals get destroyed, it means big trouble for both worlds.

So naturally the crystals get destroyed and the party has to journey back to Galuf’s world in order to end this threat to humanity.

For convenience I am going to refer to his world as Galuf’s world and the default world of the game as Bartz’s world. There is a third world in the game that you land in after the events in Galuf’s world, which will be referred to as the merged world. You see, because it takes aspects of both worlds.

Galuf spends half the game being portrayed as a comedic and perhaps slightly sleazy older man and then when he regains his memories, he becomes an almost entirely different character. He still jokes around, but he is portrayed far more heroically. I’ll get more into this during a different profile. It seems like every other Final Fantasy title features a playable character that dies and Galuf gets to be the fall guy here. The party falls into a trap and our favorite amnesiac king sacrifices himself to save the day.

His recharacterization here goes a long way into making you really care about his downfall. The old fella is probably the most important character to this game’s story and by the time he leaves the party, you’re really sad to see him go.

Also, you know how there were legions and legions of shitposts asking why Cloud never used a phoenix down on Aerith? Well…

In my party, Galuf was sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I immediately made him a Thief because the game tells you that thieves learn the ability to find hidden passages and dammit I love scrounging around for treasure. After that, I can’t say there was a huge plan. I made him good at a little bit of everything. His replacement got to spec in something in particular, but if I wanted to try a job out, Galuf was my trial guy. Blue mage, bard, Berserker…he tried all the jobs I wasn’t for sure I wanted to use! Lucky guy.

Krile Mayer Baldesion

The person who helped Galuf regain his memories was his granddaughter Krile, who crossed over into Bartz’s world to snap her grampy out of it. She is shown to be able to communicate with animals, particularly her world’s wind drake, a bunch of moogles and Bartz’s chocobo Boko, but initially doesn’t seem to be much more than a concerned grandchild. When the party falls into the trap that ultimately kills Galuf, the kid sensed something was off and rushed in an attempt to save the day. She gets trapped in a ring of fire instead, which is what gives Grandpa the push needed to commit the ultimate sacrifice.

Since we are down one warrior of light and we need four of them, Krile ends up taking up the cause for her fallen grandfather. This is going to sound incredibly corny, but bare with me. The scene reminded me of when a super hero or something would ‘die’ in a comic or if like a Power Ranger had to go off to a world peace conference or something like that. Krile suddenly just absorbs all of the power of her grandfather and everything continues as it had been. The cheesy feeling fits with this game’s tone, so it’s not like I really minded it.

I don’t feel like there’s much to her character beyond being related to Galuf. She feels like she’s just there to fill out the ranks once the old guy is gone. She’s not offensive or anything, I actually find her far more tolerable than I typically find children characters, but I don’t think she really adds anything to the total package. She has a friendship with a wind drake, but Lenna’s relationship with her wind drake is far more interesting. She has some family drama, but so do Lenna and Faris and those characters are far more entertaining. I guess she is mean to Bartz sometime, so that’s kinda cool.

Since her role and stats take over from where Galuf left off, she started out in the jack-of-all trades position. As I was getting closer and closer to the end of things, I found myself relying on magic more and more and made her yet another offensively minded mage. Though I also gave her some White Magic in order to give Lenna a break every now and then. Just like with her role in the story, I feel like I used Krile to fill a gap. She wasn’t the most useful but she also wasn’t useless. Just there.

Boko

That’s right! A chocobo gets a character entry! Boko basically just exists to prod Bartz in the right direction to start the story. He gets hurt trying to chase after the party and spends the vast majority of the game’s running time in a cave recovering with Faris’s crew. When you run into him again way later, when the worlds have merged, you find out that your little chocobo buddy has been quite busy.

In what surely led to the inspiration behind the mass chocobo inbreeding minigame of Final Fantasy VII, Boko finds a mate (named Koko, which to me sort of implies he named his girlfriend. Maybe the pirates did?) and has kiddos!

I just like that all four of the main characters have their own little animal companions. It might seem unfair that Boko gets an entry while Syldra and Hiryu have to share with Faris and Lenna respectively, but at least they don’t share the same fate as Krile’s wind drake. I don’t even remember that thing’s name!

Cid and Mid Previa

Final Fantasy V’s take on Cid is, you guessed it, an engineer. He designed the technology that the kingdoms use to siphon power from the crystals and spends a fair bit of the game sulking over the inevitable doom he walked the planet towards. He quite literally tries to drink his sorrows away.

It’s not so bad though, the group encounters his grandson Mid who snaps him out of his funk. The two of them work together and eventually deliver unto your crew an airship. For those of you who haven’t played this game, yes, apparently it is canon that Cid’s relatives have the name Mid and it wasn’t something that Final Fantasy XVI made up.

As an aside, I hate the name Mid. Cid is an actual name people might actually have in the real world, just spelled kinda funny. Mid isn’t! Why would Cid do that?

My favorite thing about these two is a neat little bit of sprite work the game does to show them working hard and time progression. Whenever I think of time progression in the Final Fantasy franchise, my mind wanders over to the Nibelheim flashback in Final Fantasy VII where they just flash to Sephiroth in various scenes pacing around the Shinra mansion. I like the 16-bit take on that because it’s creative and makes use of the limited tech of the time. Just clone the characters!

Ghido

Your eyes do not deceive you. Ghido is a turtle. He is an elder sage that mostly exists to spout plot at you. He reveals that Galuf’s world and Bartz’s world were actually one at some point and they split in the first place because the crystals split. This was done because of a force of destruction called “the void” that was used to level entire continents well before the events of Final Fantasy V take place.

Splitting the crystals up created two different worlds, with the void being sealed in the interdimensional rift between them. They altered reality to prevent an apocalypse! Simple, right? This was just a rumor at first, but the revival of the merged world confirmed this as well as Exdeath’s true goal. He wants the world in its original state so he can have access to the void!

The game gets a lot of mileage out of Ghido being a turtle. He is first introduced because Bartz prods at him thinking he is just some dumb animal, he gets knocked on his back at some point, the localization makes a not-so-subtle reference to the ninja turtles with him saying he wasn’t simply ‘hiding away and eating pizza’ or something like that and there is also that ridiculous fight with Exdeath I mentioned above. Exdeath killed Galuf and is portrayed as a world ending threat and yet a turtle proved to be an equal match for him! I love it.

The Dawn Warriors

Top: Xezat Right: Kelger Bottom: Galuf Left: Dorgann. The Dawn Warriors are the group of heroes from Galuf’s world who sealed Exdeath away before the start of the game. While the void was sealed in between the two worlds, Exdeath himself had been sealed in Bartz’s world. Dorgann did not feel comfortable just leaving the villain there to his own devices, so he volunteered to stay behind and watch over world in case something happened that required his attention.

Much like with KluYa from Final Fantasy IV, Dorgann would go on to be the father of the main character of this title. So like how Cecil has always had ties to the moon, the wandering Bartz has always had a connection to Galuf’s world, the crystals and Exdeath. Children following in the steps of their parents is a recurring theme of the franchise and this will absolutely not be the final time you hear about it.

The Dawn Warriors all die one-by-one, so they help the crew out at the very end of the game in spirit form. Just like in Final Fantasy II when the souls of the millions who were lost along the way aid the heroes in the final section of the game. Sakaguchi once joked that the through line for the franchise was the blue background text, but the games all share a lot of common themes and I think the Dawn Warriors highlight that pretty well.

My favorite of these, outside of Galuf, is Kelger. He’s a wolf man. I think it’s funny that a wolf man just shows up in Bartz’s world towards the beginning of the game and everyone freaks out about it. Werewolves are pretty scary to be fair. It also rules that the secondary world in FFV also has a unique race like how the underworld in FFIV had the dwarves. Dwarves show up here too, but it’s almost a glorified cameo.

I always like when Final Fantasy titles have their own little races that don’t see much use in other games. That’s right boys, we are on a count down for the Moombas!

My favorite enemy sprite

The version of this enemy I grabbed is called the flying killer, though there is an earlier one in the game that’s a green color called Gaelcat. Look at it! It’s a cat with bat wings strapped to its legs! It strikes terror in the hearts of men!

My favorite summon

Aesthetically speaking, Catoblepas just calls out to me. Look at this poor malnourished beast! Functionally, I didn’t find much use for him. The most useful summon is probably Bahamut yet again, but something about seeing this poor starved guy really hit home.

While I’m here, I should mention FFV has the largest roster of summonable monsters yet. 15 are there for you to grab, some of which are hidden away in boss battles, dungeons or random encounters. It seems feedback on the summons was pretty positive because they play a bigger role in each game since their debut.

They may not have the same narrative pull here that they did in IV, but you run into them all over the place and they are more useful than ever in combat. This trend does not stop because summons go on to feature extremely heavily in the main narratives of VI, VIII, IX, X, XII, XIII, XV and XVI.

Gilgamesh

If you’ve played the recently released Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth you might be a little bit familiar with this guy. Gilgamesh gets his start here as something of a comic relief villain. He’s very silly and constantly jokes with the cast when he’s on screen. He’s also Exdeath’s right-hand man for the majority of the game, so it makes the main forces of evil really feel like total dweebs. Not to invoke Power Rangers again, but I could not stop thinking of this guy as Goldar.

Gilgamesh is something of a recurring character and often times it is implied that this fiend from Final Fantasy V is in fact the same one you see in other games. He makes a cameo appearance in VIII, IX, XII and XIV. He also shows up in a few spinoff titles. His defining characteristics are his sense of humor, his multiple arms and his love of weapons. Enjoy this ridiculous exchange.

Oh…maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop the Power Rangers associations.

Exdeath

A long time ago, there was a giant tree in a place called the Great Forest of Moore. Evil spirits were sealed inside of this tree and merged with each other to form the evil sorcerer Exdeath. That’s right, the main villain is some sort of weird tree man who can shape shift. The entity was sealed away by Ghido for some time but he broke out, which led the Dawn Warriors to seal him away, which started the basic events of the story. Exdeath was behind it all!

The villain spends the first portion of the game mind controlling others to do his bidding (another IV similarity), with the end goal being his release. When he finally does get out, he acts like…I dunno, a Bond villain?

He constantly sends monsters after you, that’s the extent of his planning it feels like. It’s just one bad guy, his wacky sidekick and his horde of evil monsters that exists only to swarm on Bartz and crew. It gives off a sort of monster of the week vibe, like you’d see in Sailor Moon or, yes, Power Rangers. I think with the overall corniness of V’s plot, this works totally fine.

Exdeath is cartoonishly evil. There’s no trying to understand what makes him tick or figuring out how to convert him to the good side, he’s just an asshole. This is going to sound strange, but I feel like Exdeath is sort of a prototype for Kefka from VI. I’ll get more into that next time.

My favorite Exdeath moment in the game involves him taking advantage of his status as a weird tree man. The party thinks they have killed him and Krile, out of nowhere, complains about how a splinter had pricked her. It felt like a total non sequitur. But when the party meets with Ghido in the merged world, well…

Yeah, I burst out laughing. This rules. And it set up the Exdeath v Ghido five star classic. I don’t know how people don’t get invested in the story of this wacky game.

The final battle with Exdeath in this game wasn’t so bad, but maybe because by that point I had discovered a pretty good combination of jobs. As I said earlier, V’s difficulty varies depending on how good you get at mixing and matching abilities. Bartz at this point had mastered the Ranger, Knight, Mystic Knight and Ninja professions, so I had him use a combination of abilities from those to hit Exdeath (and his final form NeoExdeath) for maybe 20,000 or so damage each attack. Combined with my other three who had different magic jobs for this portion of the game, I made quick work of both phases of this encounter.

That said, in our very first showdown, he used an ability on me three times in a row that killed and stoned a party member and getting those people healed back up drained my MP and sent me to an early defeat. So even if you’re extremely confident about your party and tactics, the game can send an unexpected surprise your way.

So now that you know our main party and their costars…

Job breakdown

Just like in the previous section, I will be including Super Famicom sprites for reference. The order for each party member is Pixel Remaster on the left and Super Famicom on the right. I won’t talk about the differences in appearance for the most part, but just know that I generally prefer the look of the Super Famicom sprites because they look slightly more detailed. I think the PR sprites are a little too clean looking.

I also will be talking a bit about aesthetics because I think someone playing this game ‘blind’ would probably choose a job based on the character sprite more than anything else. If you don’t know what to look for, you’d go for what looks coolest right?

One thing you should know going in about jobs is that each of them gains an ability as they level – job levels and character levels are separate – and you can equip these abilities to other jobs. No job is truly useless because a skilled player can tinker their way to success, but I am not some sort of expert player so there are some jobs I definitely messed with less than others.

I am not including Freelancer. That outfit is the default character outfit and it learns no new special abilities. Its stats scale based on what jobs you master.

Knight

We are starting with the jobs you get from the wind crystal and why not start with a classic, right? The Knight is a pretty basic class that comes with the ability to cover party members who are low in health. In Final Fantasy III, I felt the Knight profession was very quickly outclassed and almost never used it but in this game, I think the abilities given with the role are quite handy.

At level 3, the Knight learns the ability to two-hand any one-handed weapon which can let your characters hit extremely hard relatively early. I actually found two-hand more useful than the ninja’s dual wield for a large portion of the game. Equip sword, which the Knight learns at level 6, was crucial for my end-game strategy because the job I had assigned Bartz to couldn’t equip my most powerful weapons.

Best dressed: Gotta go with Lenna for this one. I think the red looks a little gaudy and distracting on the boys and Krile’s pink armor is too cutesy for what this job is. As a whole, I don’t think this is a very exciting looking class but it’s a classic profession that most people will probably assign to one of their characters early on because they need a physical fighter.
Group grade: C

Monk

Another one of the classic jobs and I gotta be honest, I didn’t get much use out of it. Apparently for min/maxing the Monk is a pretty vital class to master but considering I don’t really pay much attention to raw stats unless I absolutely have to, I didn’t see a lot of utility.

They attack bare handed and have low defense. Their ability to kick is handy early on when you don’t have a lot of moves that can attack every enemy, but other than that I found them boring. Their abilities they unlock at the end of their leveling up are HP modifiers and I just don’t use abilities like that very often. I just had characters get to level 4, learn counter and hop off. I’m sure someone out there is thinking I’m a casual, but that’s okay. I know my limits.

Best dressed: Lenna gets the nod two times in a row! I like her Chinese dress looking attire and her buns. I think Faris is a close second because her outfit sort of plays into the early androgynous portion of her characterization. As for the boys? Galuf looks like Yang from IV and Bartz looks like Aladdin.
Group grade: B

Thief

I like how the Thief design has just warped entirely from Final Fantasy I. I guess I can understand the GBA version of I altering the appearance to more closely resemble the others because consistency is a good thing. Probably!

Early on in my playthrough I leveled Galuf up as a Thief because I really wanted find hidden passages. An issue I had with III and IV is that I really suck at finding secret routes, so the thief gaining an ability to see them at level 1 is a pretty big blessing to me. I found the abilities you get for leveling the thief pretty handy, with steal seeing more usage from me than ever before. You get a skill for mastering this job that lets other classes dodge as effectively as the Thief can, which is nice. I never used it, mind you, but I can definitely see the utility.

Best dressed: This is sort of a boring looking job, unfortunately. Part of me likes Galuf’s attire because it seems like he’s eating his little bandana, but in my heart I know he isn’t. I’m gonna have to go with Faris because she breaks away from the greens that everyone else is using. Early on in this thing, the princesses of Tycoon are cleaning up!
Group grade: D-

Black Mage

In Final Fantasy III, the Black Mage was probably the most disappointing class to me. It had low magic charges and I didn’t find black magic that useful in the first place. In V, I found myself relying on black magic quite a bit. Having the ability to hit all enemies with a relatively low MP costing -aga level spell is absolutely crucial. When you combine this with a ninja’s ability to throw spells, your party can waltz through a lot of battles very quickly if you want to grind.

As the Black Mage levels, it lets you use higher levels of black magic (except the last one, which is an MP booster) when you equip the black magic ability to other jobs. I made sure all four of my party members had knowledge in the dark arts and I almost always had someone with the ability equipped.

Best dressed: How can I not go with Galuf here? He is a Black Mage with a giant goofy moustache. The Super Famicom version in particular makes him look nice and goofy. Krile comes in a close second because I like the star thing on her hat.
Group grade: B+

White Mage

The most consistently useful job is once again exceptionally useful here. Do you like to heal? Do you not like wasting potions and money to accomplish that? Then have I got a job for you! I think every party, particularly when fighting bosses, probably needs a white magic user.

Much like the Black Mage, as the White Mage levels it gives the party the ability to use higher levels of white magic on other jobs. I made sure everybody had some form of competency in white magic, especially considering late game I was having my healer spam curaga on the party a fair amount.

Best dressed: Don’t the Super Famicom sprites look like their robes need to be washed? It’s that lovely shade of yellow that the Super Nintendo turns into after a while. The clear winner here is Krile because she has the cute little cat ears but I also like Galuf because he looks sort of like Moses. Super 3D Noah’s Arc bros, we finally arrived.
Group grade: B+

Blue Mage

This is the debut of blue magic! It’s a class that learns the magic that enemies use on the party. Not every enemy skill is learnable and there’s no clear indication on what is actually acquirable, so if you want to utilize blue magic it’s a good idea to expose your party to as many enemy attacks as possible.

This job learns an ability early on that lets you learn new blue magics as other classes, which is handy since the blue mage can’t do much of anything when you get the profession. I spent wide swaths of the game having Galuf and Lenna equipped with this. I eventually gave up with this though because acquiring a lot of abilities involves you taking control of enemies and using their magic against the party and honestly, my other forms of magic were so useful that it really overshadowed the blue magics. When the hell am I gonna use level 3 flare? I have regular flare!

Best dressed: They all kinda look the same to me, I don’t know if there’s a true winner here. I guess I like Krile’s little red beret so I’ll default to that.
Group grade: F

Red Mage

We get our next set of jobs from the water crystal and we start off with the Red Mage. Red magic is back! For those that don’t know, Red Mages can use low level black and white magics, which is very handy early on when you’re getting used to the job system. There are six levels of white and black magic, but Red Mages can only use the first three levels. This means equipping red magic is useless after a certain point.

The Red Mage’s true usefulness comes with its mastered ability dualcast. Dualcast allows you to cast any spell from your available spell book two times in a single turn which is an absolute must have for any magic user. So if you equip a black mage with dualcast, they will be able to cast two level 6 black magic spells if they so chose. Or even a low level white spell and a high level black spell! The key to success in Final Fantasy V is experimentation.

Best dressed: I don’t know why, but I feel like Bartz has the look of one of those “while you were talking to girls, I was mastering the blade” guys so my heart goes with him.
Group grade: C-

Time Mage

Time magic in FFV is top tier. Buffs have never been more important and I think in every single important battle, I cast hastega at the very least. On top of this, Time Mages also get access to the most consistently powerful spell in Final Fantasy’s arsenal to this point, meteor. Like with the other disciplines of magic, as the Time Mage levels, so too does their ability to use time magic as other classes. Since being speedy isn’t tied to your magic stat, I would often slap time magic onto Faris while she was learning physical jobs.

Best dressed: It seems like the characters put some starch on their hats in preparation for the Pixel Remaster. I don’t know why they decided to ditch the more tilted look, but whatever. This is another case where the characters all look pretty similar so it’s hard to choose a real winner. I think I’ll go with Faris because her color scheme is the most unique. That’s twice she’s won on that technicality! Runner up is Krile because her outfit looks too big for her.
Group grade: C

Summoner

Summoner returns from III and thank god it doesn’t have to split its duties with a lesser version of the class like it did in that game. From the jump, the Summoner can use level 5 summon magic and just like with the other magic classes, leveling up the summoner lets you use better summon magic as other jobs.

I found a weird usefulness for this role extremely early on where I would use the low level spell sylph as a sort of impromptu healer. It only restores like 100 HP to every party member, but when your HP tops out at like 200, that’s not a bad group heal.

The only issue I have with Summoners is that a lot of the lower level spells aren’t terribly useful later on. I mean, that’s fine for black magic because most people wouldn’t bother with fire when they have firaga, but if you have a summoner and you want to cast fire magic, your one option is Ifrit. You get him fairly early on so by the time you get to the end of the game, he’s pretty useless. If I had the summon ability on somebody late game, it’s because they were casting Bahamut and only Bahamut.

Best dressed: These darn magic classes make this hard! That said, when editing this image, Faris’s Super Famicom sprite reminded me of the Nu Mou race from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Well and Ivalice games in general. And you know what? I love Nu Mous.
Group grade: C

Berserker

Berserker is kind of what it says on the tin. This is a physical specialty class that acts like it has been inflicted with the berserk status effect. What that means is that they hit hard but they can ONLY attack physically and you can’t control who they attack.

As a result, I basically never used this job. Mastering it is good for stat tinkering and their best ability lets you equip axes on any profession, but…I don’t know, I like the ability to target who I want to target and control my characters. Not a fan.

Best dressed: I love Krile’s little outfit. Everyone else looks like cavemen/women but she looks like some sort of tiger tried to eat her and all you can see are her little eyes popping out. It’s adorable.
Group grade: Puts the A in Unga Bunga.

Mystic Knight

The calling card of the Mystic Knight is the ability to take a sword and imbue an element onto it. Spellblade. This works with all types of black magic, think of it as a more permanent version of the Steiner and Vivi team up spells from Final Fantasy IX.

You can also apply status effect magic to your blades. One of the strategies people use against the super boss Omega is using a mystic knight and having them cast stop on their blade and attacking him. The boss is weak to stop, which can make the fight much easier!

Leveling up the Mystic Knight lets you use higher level magic on your swords, but there is a catch. The spell blade ability only works on blades. You can’t use staves or axes or bells or spears with it, so if you’re going to use spell blade, you need to marry yourself to a job that can use blades.

Best dressed: I dig the Arabian theme, though I want to say this is also partially a reference to Minwu from FFII. Bartz basically looks just like him, so that’s where my pick goes. If you notice the Pixel Remaster (and maybe the GBA version, I failed to find sprites specifically for it) drastically alters Faris’s appearance. Why? The original suits her more I think, it doesn’t look particularly feminine. Apparently the change was made because this version is closer to the official character art, but this is too close to what her Dancer attire looks like. Not a fan.
Group grade: C+

Beastmaster

We are onto the jobs the Fire Crystal grants us! First up is the Beastmaster. This is something of a gimmick job in my opinion because it relies on capturing enemies and then releasing them to cause big damage.

The ability control is learned by them at level 2 and truthfully that is when most people can jump off the class. Control does as it says. You can take control of a beast. I primarily used this to try to help me learn blue magic but at some point I gave up on blue magic and after that I had no further use for the Beastmaster. I bet you could make some fun challenge runs with this guy though!

Best dressed: This is a pretty tight contest for me, but I really like Lenna’s attire here. It feels like something a very fashionable person would wear in the winter. It sticks out compared to the three people wearing sheep helmets and Faris’s ear muffs.
Group grade: B+

Geomancer

Geomancers are another bit of a gimmick class in my opinion. They do have some practical utility in the sense that they can innately avoid floor damage (lava, spikes) and can learn the ability to detect pits, but in combat their main skill involves using a free magic spell called ‘gaia’ which pulls some magic to use based on where you are fighting. The problem here is that the spell cast appears to be random, so you never can plan what you’re going to hit your enemies with.

I have heard online that geomancers are pretty popular, but maybe I’m just really boring and don’t like quirky classes like this. Sorry folks. They use a bell to attack though. Isn’t that zany?

Best dressed: I don’t particularly like any of these. You can’t even tell who Lenna or Bartz are without seeing the other sprites for comparison. I guess my favorite one is Galuf because his pixel remaster sprite looks the closest to pajamas for me. This is the worst looking class in the game. They sort of remind me of Poppy Bros from Kirby.
Group grade: F

Ninja

The hands down best class from III makes a return but it is no longer one of the ‘ultimate’ jobs so it is merely ‘really good’ in V. The Ninja has two calling cards – it can dual wield weapons and it can throw things. Dual wielding is always extra handy and mastering the Ninja lets you take that ability and use it on other jobs. I found it less useful than in III, but when I got to the end of the game I combined it with the Ranger’s rapid fire ability and it was just a brutally efficient combination.

Throwing is very handy too. You get access to relatively affordable elemental scrolls, which lets you target all enemies on the field for zero MP. It’s a very quick way to deal with weaker enemies. As you progress deeper into the game it becomes far less useful but there are stretches where throwing stuff can save you a whole lot of time. You can also still throw shuriken to target single enemies. Normal shuriken hit for around 2,000 damage while Fuma Shuriken hit much harder. Those are crazy expensive and remind me of the crazy expensive shuriken FF III offered.

Best dressed: I dig the way Galuf looks here. He has something of a shogunate air about him. I also dig the kunoichi attire that Lenna and Krile adopt. Poor Bartz can’t win many of these things because his job often just looks like what I’d assume the default is.
Group grade: A

Ranger

The Ranger specializes in using bows, which means it can doll out the same damage in the back row as it can from the front row. They also have the ability to summon animals into battle to help them. The critters you summon have strength determined by your level and seem to be random, functioning much like Gaia does for Geomancers, so you can’t really plan around using them too much. That’s okay though because the true strength of the Ranger comes when you master the job.

At max level, Rangers learn the ability rapid fire. Rapid fire lets you physically attack four times in the same turn at a slightly reduced damage output. So if you combine this with the ninja’s dual wield, you can attack eight times in a single turn. And if you combine THAT with spell blade, you can slam enemies for tens of thousands of damage in a single turn.

Through exploiting this combination, Bartz was able to cause tens of thousands of damage in a single turn if I needed him to. Combined with a buff from bards, I was able to defeat the super boss Omega in a single turn using this. Much like with the Red Mage, this one ability completely makes this job one worth mastering.

Best dressed: Gotta go with Lenna here. I like the headband and feather combination they’re going with. I kinda like Krile’s little hat too, it reminds of something a flight attendant would wear.
Group grade: C

Bard

The Bard is primarily used to support other classes. Its main ability is sing and using it can provide a variety of effects to your teammates. They also have a nice nod to Edward from Final Fantasy IV by giving the job access to the ability to hide.

One of the interesting things about this profession is that a fair number of the songs you can learn are hidden. Most other jobs feature spells you can just go purchase, but you gotta talk to NPCs to learn your songs here. These songs can do things like buff your characters, give you a temporary increase in level or simply just cast regen on everybody. Using the song ‘hero’s rime’ with two bards, I was able to give Bartz the needed boost in strength to fell Omega with one hit. Yeah, I know I’ve mentioned that a time or two.

Best dressed: I don’t particularly like any of these attires. I’m going with Galuf here because for some reason it just gives me Willie Nelson vibes.
Group grade: D-

Dragoon

We have arrived at the Earth Crystal jobs and first up is the fan favorite! Unfortunately I did not find it nearly as useful as I did in Final Fantasy III. I came into this title a little biased because of that experience and leveled up both Bartz and Faris in this and went on to use absolutely none of the abilities you gain from it. Bummer.

The calling card for the Dragoon is still jump, but it’s pointless to attach jump to a non spear-wielding class because you do way less damage. And jump makes your attacks take two turns instead of one like a normal attack would, so taking a hit to your damage output is unacceptable.

The other major ability you learn is lance, which restores some HP and MP to the user. Black mages get access to the far more useful (and borderline broken) osmose which takes care of MP regen. Dragoons don’t really use MP so it ends up being kind of useless I feel. Lance is a staple of the dragoon character type – Kimahri from FFX’s signature ability is a variation of this move called Lancet. I still love dragoons, but this game is not their best showing.

Best dressed: I really like the blood red palette that Faris is rocking with. It looks intimidating. That’s my pick! I also like the generic looking dragoon attire that Bartz goes with, it’s like I get to use Kain again!
Group grade: B+

Dancer

This is another one that feels a bit like a gimmick to me. The Dancer job involves using a random command to attack. One of those commands, sword dance, hits four times as hard as the standard attack option but…I don’t know, not being able to use it when I want to use it makes it less appealing. The only other physical damage attack the dancer has just absorbs HP, and not much of it at that. You can also absorb MP but once again, there are more effective ways to accomplish that.

This class can learn flirt, which lets you charm an enemy. I don’t think I ever did that even once this playthrough. When you master the profession, you can equip dancer exclusive equipment on other characters. This may not sound like a big deal, but dancers are the job that can equip ribbon and if you didn’t know, ribbon is almost always one of the best accesories or pieces of armor you can find. It negates all status effects! Unfortunately I barely used dancer, so during big fights I did not have access to this very useful piece of gear. Shame.

Best dressed: Do you even have to ask? It’s Bartz. Easy. Look at that popped collar, especially on the Super Famicom version. He looks like he’s tried to hit on every single woman at the bar and it’s 2 a.m. and he’s getting absolutely desperate. I love it.
Group grade: A+

Samurai

Samurai are an interesting physical specialty class. Their primary gimmick when you equip the job is their ability to throw gil. While this may not seem useful, who wants to just toss out their money, it actually hits really hard. As you get stronger, your character will toss out more gil and thus cause more damage. At first I was baffled by this ability. Why would you ever want to toss out your money? Stuff is expensive in this game! But in the final dungeon, I was exceptionally rich and the damage caused very easily made up for the gil lost. It was a very quick way to deal with enemies.

When you power a Samurai all the way up, you get the ability Iainuki, which acts as sort of a ghetto Zanketsuken. That is to say, it has a high chance of causing instant death on opponents. It takes time to charge and isn’t effective against every enemy type so I basically never used it, but I’m always down for more abilities that let me mow through random battles.

Best dressed: I really like the simplicity of Lenna’s sprite here. It looks elegant. Sometimes I feel like they just didn’t know what to do with Faris. Here she has what looks like a palette swap of Bartz’s attire but missing the cool moon thing that he (and Krile and Galuf) has.
Group grade: B

Chemist

This is a job you master to give the abilities it has to other jobs. Chemists can drink concoctions to boost their stats, which would help more if they could hit at all. But equip the drink ability on a knight or something and suddenly you can deal hefty damage. The chemist also learns the valuable skill mix, which is probably most well known as Rikku’s overdrive skill in Final Fantasy X. You take two items and mix them together and do an attack based on the combination. If you know the recipes, this can be quite helpful. If you don’t, hey, sometimes you might get lucky!

Since it’s 2024, I can look up recipes and in doing so I found an easy way to defeat Shinryu (another of the game’s super bosses) by using the mix ability. You simply freeze time as a time mage – I told you time magic is useful, it’s an ability that lets you act twice while everybody else is paused – and mix together stuff to blind and berserk the baddie. And boom, your fight is already half over! I wouldn’t have stumbled on the tactic myself but the fact a strategy that exists for the game’s hardest boss involves the usage of a job many people would probably glance over is pretty cool.

Best dressed: I cannot explain this. I have tried to formulate a sentence for it in my head for what feels like hours, but I can’t. Krile’s outfit reminds me of Broomhilde from Robin Hood: Men in Tights and it makes me smile.
Group grade: C+

Yeah, I don’t know either.

Mime

When you get the fire crystal jobs, the shrine the fire crystal is held in is going down. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice one job crystal got left behind. As the area falls into the ocean, you might think it’s gone forever but at some point your party gets access to a submarine. If you were paying attention during that scene and you decide to go snoop around underwater, you can find the final job crystal in that very same place you left it. You only have seven minutes to get there though (no random encounters at least!) so you better get to stepping.

This secret job has stats based on what jobs you’ve mastered and allows the user to equip three different abilities. Tossed in with those abilities are basic things like “attack” and “item.” I made everybody a mime at the very end of the game so I could use whatever abilities I wanted to against the final boss and it went pretty well. Bartz had my much talked about physical set up, Krile had the Red Mage dual cast ability along with white and summon magics, Lenna also had the dual cast ability with white and black magics and Faris used time, white and items. I think in a game that rewards you for experimenting and using all of the different jobs, it’s fitting that the ultimate job gives you the most bang-for-your-buck if you elect to use several job types.

The Mime’s unique ability is mimic, which does exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to copy the previous character’s action. If it’s a spell, it means you cast it at zero MP cost. In this way you can chain cast double black magic if you so choose to really rain on somebody’s parade. If you were to mimic the rapid fire ability, you also attack eight (since mimes can dual wield without the ability equipped) times. I always think of how I used the mime materia to chain cast Knights of the Round to fell Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII. It’s just like that here. An overall excellent job. As expected for the hidden one.

Best dressed: You might notice the lack of Galuf here and that is because you can only acquire this job after he dies. Very sad. It’s the one job he can’t get! I do not know why the mime job involves capes and looking vaguely super hero-esque, but sure. I think I like the classic look Bartz is rocking most of all.
Group grade: C

FINAL DRESS SCORE:

Lenna: 5
Krile: 4
Galuf: 4
Bartz: 4
Faris: 4
WINNER and OFFICIALLY the best dressed person in the world of Final Fantasy V: Lenna. Wow, everybody scored pretty close with each other. I truthfully wasn’t expecting that going in, I had assumed Lenna would run away with it. Even though some jobs didn’t have a particularly strong winner, it’s still nice that the ‘best looking’ outfit got spread around and one character didn’t just dominate everything.
Overall Group grade: B. Not bad!

It started here

Super bosses, for real this time

The first Final Fantasy had a random encounter that was super difficult known as Warmech. Some people would classify it as a superboss due to being a little bit obscure and far harder than anything around it. However, the more traditional definition of super boss is an encounter that is more difficult than the game’s final boss. Think the Ruby and Emerald weapons in Final Fantasy VII or the Dark Aeons in Final Fantasy X International/HD. These usually require a lot of preparation and grinding to take down and typically demand the player has a very solid understanding of the game’s mechanics. These encounters are optional. FFV has two encounters that fall into this category: Omega and Shinryu.

Omega is a creature you can spot just out and about in the final dungeon. It is impossible to miss him or run into him by accident.

Well…I guess maybe the player could think Omega is a creature you could talk to. Okay! For 99% of players it would be difficult to accidentally encounter Omega. Shinryu on the other hand is placed in a pretty dickish position. It’s a monster-in-a-chest encounter that occurs in the very last dungeon towards where Exdeath waits for you. It’s at the bottom of a staircase and anybody who grabs every single treasure chest will probably just accidentally run into it.

Luckily this final dungeon isn’t like III’s in the sense that there are save points in this gigantic thing, but I would bet most players probably lost some progress to this beast.

What I like about Omega and Shinryu is that I did not have to grind to beat them. I was able to apply knowledge I picked up through interacting with the game’s systems to be able to come out on top. I got walloped in my first go at these bad boys, but when you study how the fights go you can equip yourself to avoid instant death.

For Omega, equip yourself with something that can absorb fire. For Shinryu, he opens the battle with an attack that causes around 8,000 damage to the party. The attack is water based and can be absorbed. If you survive the initial shock and awe, you can actually start thinking about how to approach the fight. I love Final Fantasy X, but you need to put in a ton of grinding in order to tackle Penance in the International version of the game. If you’re not rocking close to max stats, don’t bother, I don’t care how well you understand the combat. Here? I think a player could potentially come up with their own tactics and find a way to topple these fiends on their own.

I won’t pretend I came up with my tactics to win these fights on my own. The only thing I came up with was using Bards to buff up Bartz during the Omega conflict because I found out if I didn’t kill him in one hit, he would almost assuredly wipe my party in a counter attack since he counters for every hit I landed on him. Since my Bartz tactic involved the usage of dual wielding and rapid fire, this meant I was being hit eight times in counters. Against a super boss, unless you’re crazy lucky, this is probably a game over. Shinryu involved just learning mix recipes and taking advantage of a move time mages can use. I didn’t come up with it, but I bet someone could come up with the tactic without outside help if they tried hard enough. Excellent and satisfying battles.

Familiar face

So I forgot to capture my encounter with the Tonberry because I am a gigantic moron so here, enjoy the Super Famicom sprite of Tonberry. Fun fact, in the original localization for FFV this iconic villain was referred to as the Dinglberry. That hardly seems like an appropriate name for such a beloved creature!

Here it behaves as it always does. It slowly walks towards your combatants and if he gets close enough he will stab you with his knife and most likely kill you in one hit. Tonberries are probably the number three mascot in the franchise behind chocobos and moogles, so it’s nice to see where they got their start!

In conclusion

Final Fantasy V plays like an absolute dream. If you’re a gameplay first type of person, there is no doubt in my mind that this game will be for you. The combat system is simple to approach, yet surprisingly deep, and it offers up a whole lot of customization so the player can feel like they are creating a totally unique battling party. I would say this is probably my favorite feeling Final Fantasy – the combat is just extremely satisfying and I find the default difficulty to be the right kind of challenging. It doesn’t feel overly cheap, it just expects you to learn its mechanics and use them properly. I love it.

Storywise, this isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite game. It’s very cute and cheesy but the overall storytelling is very simplistic and I don’t think most people will feel the same connection with characters that they felt with IV. The peripherals around the story are all fantastic though, with my favorite soundtrack of the franchise to date and increasingly creative uses of sprites to convey character emotions.

This game is a classic and an absolute must play for anyone with a passing interest in old school JRPGs.

My score: 5/5

The first of several perfect scores, I’m sure.

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Final Fantasy VI: Opera is cool again

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