I’m feeling like a seasoned vet heading into Final Fantasy V. With only three main series games left after this, I’m getting close to fully popping my Final Fantasy cherry. But let not get ahead ourselves. I thought I knew what to expect with Final Fantasy V, yet it still surprised me. I did know it’s a spiritual successor of sorts to FFIII, greatly expanding on the job system, and I thought I knew it had a fluffy and unnotable story. I’m glad I was wrong about that last one—FFV is like a stage play, a comedy playing out as a JRPG. Characters emote to an absurd degree, but it works. With so few pixels to work with, it’s cool how Square used what they had to mostly comedic effect rather than trying to be too serious with it.
Anyway, story situations and scenarios play out quickly, and there’s tons of them — far more than in Final Fantasy IV. I disliked how that game rushed you along its story path and into the next set piece without much room to explore, but this time, the pacing feels flawless: there’s often plenty to see and do before triggering the next story scene, including optional content. Final Fantasy V feels like a proper adventure that, while not open world until deep in, is open enough to satisfy my exploratory curiosity and thirst for secrets. These come mostly as new summons, valuable treasure, or strong equipment, some of which can seemingly be reached earlier than intended, a nice touch that, though probably not an oversight, nonetheless stirs my imagination.
The main plot itself is as heavy as you might expect. The elemental crystals act up, prompting the slow yet worsening destruction of the world, eventually climaxing in a fight against some world-ending beast. Standard Final Fantasy stuff by this point in the series. You’ve got a princess, a rogue, and an old timer questing to save the world, but at the same time, most of the character interactions and even story scenes remain lighthearted throughout, with constant jokes that usually still land, and a general whimsical vibe that I haven’t quite seen before in a JRPG. It’s one of the funniest games I’ve played, which ain’t saying much as I’m not super into comedy games, but for that alone it’s worth Final Fantasy fans checking out. FFV just has that je ne sais quoi about it that drew me in.
I played the Super Famicom version with a GBA translation patch, which seems ideal. I always want to hear the original music; I prefer the classic visuals over any of the remakes or re-releases; and I was not let down. Having speedup available was crucial too, since I’m a busy fella who ALSO likes to min max in his RPGs — when it’s fun, anyway. And boy does Final Fantasy V make it fun. The proper job system is back, updated from its innovative yet meager debut in FF3 to a colossus of possibilities. No longer are there those useless classes you wanna skip. Damn near everything has its niche here, especially in the SNES version — I haven’t tried the new jobs from the remakes. There’s even a popular patch that that starts all characters the same randomly chosen job, then unlocks a single new job per Crystal. That sounds like a ton of fun to try if I ever do re-play FFV.
Battles work like in FF III or IV, with no notable changes. ATB is back, but I don’t mind it at as much here since there’s almost none of the unpredictability during hectic fights that IV loved to throw at you. My only complaint left with the system is that it makes battles longer, especially when grinding, since you have to wait for the gauges to fill. Switching to the highest setting mostly mitigates this for grinding, but I don’t like having to rush on my first playthrough, so I ended up sitting through a lot of lengthy random battles. In fact it seems like I spent most of the game in combat or the job screen, which, for an RPG doesn’t sound so bad to me, but it might not suit everyone’s taste.
Unlike in Final Fantasy III, characters can thankfully change jobs at any time without losing progress. While I didn’t mind how FFIII handled it, due to the insane amount of jobs in V, I can’t imagine playing it under its predecessor’s penalty for switching. V makes a few other tweaks, such as party members earning AP from battle whether they took action or not, which speeds up the already gargantuan task of mastering jobs, and changing how job ranks work. Instead of every job ranking up from 0 to 100, each now has a certain number of job levels that can be reached, usually 3 to 7. Each job level requires a specific number of AP, which does not get reset upon switching jobs, and provides a new skill or passive ability for the character. This led me to adopt a playstyle where I’d level one character as, say, a White Mage, for a few job levels until I unlocked the next tier of white magic, then I’d switch to something else. No need to unlock stronger tiers of white magic cuz those spells weren’t available to buy yet.
That’s how I played most of the game, though I couldn’t resist a few sessions of all-out grinding to get certain skills on certain characters. See, once a character masters a job level, they can use whatever skill it unlocks on other classes. I’m a fan of mages, but I saw no need for both a white and black mage when I could instead combine them into one. Princess Lena my gremory — to borrow a term from Fire Emblem — quickly got all the white and black magic skills she needed, then was free to other pursuits, like Summoning. I always look forward to seeing each game’s summons roster, and FFV didn’t disappoint. While perhaps none can match the craziness of FFVII’s summons, V’s have a classic look, appropriate for what’s essentially a reimagining of the game summons debuted in.
Alright, I won’t cover all the jobs, but I’ll go through some other highlights. As far as I’m concerned, it’s criminal I haven’t already mentioned the Blue Mage. I wasn’t a fan of Quina in FFIX, and I only dabbled with Blue magic in some of the other games, but in V it’s a top-tier job perfect for an obsessive player like me who’ll do the research to make sure I get all the spells. That’s exactly what I did. Since I’d heard Blue Mage is OP and didn’t want to cheese the game too much, I chose Bartz, the sort of POV character you start with, as my sole Blue Mage. He stays relevant as a Blue Mage for the entire game, learning the high damage, 0 MP Goblin punch in the early game, a big boon for FFV’s frequent random encounters. He gets plenty of other high-damage spells, useful throughout the game, as well a ton of support options that range from worthless to situationally helpful. Bosses often have surprising weaknesses that Blue Mages can exploit, such as casting Magic Hammer to halve the MP of a strong mage boss, or halving the level of one with an unfortunate weakness to Dark Spark.
There’s also the famous White Wind, a party-wide heal, and the late-game Mighty Guard, which casts Float, Protect, and Shell on the entire party. Combine that with summoning Carbuncle to give everyone Reflect, and you’re ready to take on even the superbosses. Finally, there’s Level 5 Doom, an instakill to all enemies whose levels are multiples of 5. That one comes in handy at a particular mid-game grinding spot full of these weird statue things, always at level 30.
That’s a lot for one job to handle, but the craziest thing is, Blue Magic itself is a skill, equippable by other classes to give the ability to cast every Blue Magic spell. So it’s not as though I needed to keep Bartz on Blue Mage — in fact, there’s no benefit to that at all past a certain point. I instead made him a physical attacker, rotating through a bunch of jobs, all while keeping his strong spells and healing via blue magic. See, there’s a lot of super useful skills that most characters might want to use at various points, like Two-Handed, which doubles the strength of a one-handed weapon at the cost of your shield slot, or Unarmed, a fast-to-learn Monk skill that lets mages deal good physical damage, while saving MP, early in the adventure.
Discovering and then understanding all these possibilities is the best part of Final Fantasy V. It’s the reason to play the game, and it had me excited from the get-go. Like in III, with each new crystal you reach, more jobs are unlocked, and FFV rewards careful planning. The game falls on the tough side, for a JRPG anyway. Random encounters are brutally frequent and less braindead than in many other JRPGs, with difficulty spikes that could wreck a player unprepared. If you just try the jobs that look like fun, you’ll be in for a tense but rewarding journey, since strategy matters a ton as well. Eventually, though FFV forces you to experiment to get past certain bosses, or grind for job levels. Character levels barely matter, as they don’t raise stats — jobs do.
With my plan for Lena the gremory and Blue Bartz complete, I set to carve out distinct roles for the rest of my party. I wanted to try as many of the jobs as I could, and the way skill sharing works across jobs makes that a cinch. I decided Faris, the rough-and-tumble pirate who joins early on, would make a good Thief, eventually becoming a Ninja, then Ranger, with all the benefits of each. See, Ninjas get a sweet Dual-Wield skill that a Ranger can use along with their own X-Attack skill to get eight attacks on a single turn. They’re half as strong as normal attacks yet ignore defense, so if my math is right, it’s like getting two regular critical attacks per turn, and man was this my bread-and-butter for damn near every battle once I unlocked this combo. It’s a “last third of the game” sort of thing, but it chews through most random encounters, hitting multiple enemies, and against bosses it’s by one of the strongest options in the entire game. That one character can do this all on their own without any setup or support is pretty insane. But then, so are mages, and Lena’s summons along with certain Black and Blue Magic spells often rivaled Faris.
Other physical attackers are also insane. In fact, most strats are insane. FFV’s got nothing but systems lying on their backs, waiting for nerds to utterly violate them, and I applaud the devs for that. I had a hell of a lot of fun constantly unlocking new and more powerful options, while also occasional struggling during what’s easily the most difficult Final Fantasy game yet. This feels like a game designed for enthusiast JRPG fans who want to spend hours planning and grinding, so it’s right up my alley but might disappoint someone looking for an in-depth story like in later Final Fantasies. I found it the most interesting in the series yet, though. Every main character has something they want or something they’re trying to hide, and due to the small party size, no one gets forgotten after they’re introduced, like in so many other JRPGs.
Anyway, I made Galuf, a mysterious older gentleman who tags along with the party, another physical attacker, this time a Knight with some white magic for support. That transitioned well into later becoming a Mystic Knight, who uses spells to give his physical attacks a magic damage component. He could do some bruising, but I mainly used him for support and item spam in the late-game — funny how things work out sometimes.
And my Bartz eventually settled on Samurai with Blue magic. Oh boy, the Samurai’s unique skill, Coin Toss has gotta be a joke on the part of the developers. It’s possibly the strongest single attack in the game, but it costs gold to cast. Well, by the endgame I had tons of gold from all that grinding, so this was my key strat against the final boss. By that point, I had Mimics and Freelancers, special jobs whose stats depend on the stats of all your other maxed-out jobs, and give you more slots for job skills. They’re the ultimate late-game choices, in other words. The Mimic automatically repeats the action taken by the previous character — what a bad-ass idea for a JRPG in 1991. It means Coin Tosses galore, yet even using that, I died on the final boss a few times. I know, in a Final Fantasy game? I couldn’t believe it either. I actually found the final boss harder than the superbosses, but I suspect that had to do with my specific team setup. Along with most of the other bosses, the superbosses require a precise strategy in order to beat without getting wiped off the board in five turns.
Man, I haven’t even touched on Time magic or many other jobs and skills, but I want to emphasize they’re almost all worth trying out. Another player could easily have a whole different approach to the game, using completely different jobs than the ones I mained. No job is essential, not even white mage when you know what you’re doing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if upon release V was the JRPG with the most freedom in configuration and party setup yet.
Final Fantasy V also feels very … Final Fantasy. In addition to working on airships, Cid’s a central character this time around, almost like your quest giver who points you in the right direction. This is the first game where Moogles play a large role, saving you during a key moment; even chocobos are given characterization — one you ride early on later runs off and elopes with a lady chocobo — how sweet. It’s interesting seeing how these series staples got their footing.
The traditional Japanese concept of “void” as the fifth element, touched on in the first Final Fantasy, returns as the big bad’s ultimate goal — attaining the power of the Void for himself by splitting the world apart. The big bad himself? Well, uh, he’s a tree. That’s right, in a weird reveal that probably works better for a Japanese audience, Exdeath, an intimidating presence who often haunts you throughout your journey, turns out to be a tree which can somehow manifest itself into different forms ... or something. I don’t really get that part — it’s probably some mythological reference — but I appreciate the zaniness. This is why I play JRPGs, yall.
There’s plenty of action set pieces and great cutscenes, including one where an NPC turns into a giant turtle to take on Exdeath himself, but I won’t spoil much else. If you’re a fan of how FFIV does this stuff and wouldn’t mind more gameplay between it all, FFV’s the game for you.
It’s not all crystals and ribbons, though. The game’s biggest flaw is the sheer amount of battles. I’m not talking about excessive grinding, which IS optional; I’m talking about the dungeons and overworld. FFV is huge, far longer than the four previous games, and there’s a lot of trekking all over the place, with a high encounter rate and no way to mitigate it, at least on the SNES version. My playthrough took 40 hours total, which does include eight hours of grinding and all the optional stuff, but still outpaces its predecessors by a great deal. I wouldn’t mind this if rewards came more often, such as if it cost half the AP to level jobs, but the balance feels too monotonous.
Grinding to raise job levels also gets old quick. Or maybe I should say sloooowly. While not technically required to finish the story, most players’ll do at least some grinding for the skills they want, especially since most battles only give 1 AP even in the late game. There’s just no way around the time this all takes … unless you use an emulator with speedup, of course. Speedup solves the few problems I have with FFV, although I have a bad habit of over-using it — whoops. Still, it’s the way I’d recommend playing, to keep the job system feeling fun.
It helps that there’s plenty of rare and useful weapons and equipment to find, including some stolen from or dropped by bosses. But I appreciate that the steal system never gets too complicated or OP, letting me focus on dealing damage in creative ways. Sometimes, though, the game manages to make me feel pity for my foes. Gilgamesh is a reoccurring boss who’s usually a push-over and always comes ready to taunt the party unconvincingly, or later on, lament about his life. Working for Exdeath only results in humiliation for the poor, eight-armed warrior, it seems, yet he’s consistently the funniest character in the game. He and the party grow a strange bond over your many encounters, as he struggles to escape his situation. From what I understand, the devs liked him so much that they put him in several other FF games as a sort of Easter egg. Of those I’ve played VIII, IX, XII but can only remember him from VIII, where he’s equally hilarious and retains his dubious weapon from this game, Excalipoor.
Quirky humor like that abounds in FFV, and it mostly works, especially as more of the darker themes and elements creep in later on. It’s still Final Fantasy, not a Saturday morning cartoon, so there’s plenty of grotesque villains, loss, and sorrow. It does, however, have the strongest anime vibes for the series so far, reminding me of a shonen adventure due to its emotes, humor, and gutsy, breezy plots.
The legend himself, Nobuo Uematsu, returns with another banger of a soundtrack to suit. While it doesn’t top FFIV’s music overall, it’s got an appropriately epic and heroic feel, with enough tracks to avoid getting repetitive. That by itself’s enough to lift any soundtrack higher in my mind, but many individual tracks stand out, like the title and overworld themes, various slap-bass-heavy set piece backers, and the battle theme, which blows IV’s out of the water, creeping cooly into my top five, at least. I don’t recall a single song I disliked or which felt out of place, aside from a weird, banjo-sounding instrument used a couple times. It almost gives me Celtic vibes — it might be a mandolin, in fact, but I don’t love how it sounds on the SNES. Regardless, it does stir something in me, so I’ll give Uematsu that. Plus, I don’t flat-out dislike it, I’d just call it … interesting.
That’s a good word to describe the game in full — interesting. Not in the mocking way, but as a positive. Final Fantasy V tries a lot of new stuff and gets most of it right in a way that most games still haven’t matched over 30 years later, with a fantastically underrated soundtrack in tow. It stumbles with a few pacing issues, though due the addictive and innovative job system, those and other flaws are hardly noticeable.
And with that, we reach the conclusion of 2022’s JRPG Journey. I know, I know, I’m writing his halfway into January, but that won’t stop me from continuing the series for a fourth year straight in 2023. Expect my next post in early February, where I’ll cover the first game of the year, and it’s a biggun: Chrono Trigger. That’s right, I’m finally tackling one of the most beloved games ever, and it’s my 100th JRPG to boot. See you then!
