this game gets really sold short just for not being as self serious as ff4 and not as grand as the series gets from 6 onward but it's a really spectacular game even outside of its stellar mechanics and practically outdoes ff4 in every way. definitely leans a bit more on comic relief than some people might like but there's some really great moments here and the cast is really strong, especially with galuf and bartz, and exdeath is undercut by fans for how interesting of an antagonist he is. neo exdeath is by far the coolest final boss design in this series to me other than safer sephiroth, and even if he's pretty stock standard on a surface level i think he deserves more credit as a villain. easily my favorite of the snes trilogy of final fantasy games and a game i can't recommend enough to fans of jrpgs

TL; DR - clears throat FINAL FANTASY V IS SO F-ING AWESOME THAT IT MAKES MY DICK ROCK HARD

I have to preface my musings by making the distinction between 'puzzle'-style gameplay and 'playground'-style gameplay in RPGs. FFVII is a typical playground-style RPG: the materia system is very flexible and customizable, so you can feel free to express yourself, build your characters in any way you like, and take any number of creative approaches to combat. FFIV, on the other hand, is a typical puzzle-style RPG: it often changes around your party composition and throws different challenges at you, often geared towards forcing you to make clever use of the resources and tools you have at that particular time with that particular party.

Time for my hot take: FFV is a better playground RPG than FFVII and a better puzzle RPG than FFIV. While FFVII does afford much more customization, it's also very easy which means you never really get incentivized to really explore the materia system and the varying combat options beyond spamming attacks/limits and healing when needed. FFV, on the other hand, is just tough enough to push you to explore the vast network of jobs and job skills to find combinations that work on that one boss.

The 'puzzle' aspect of the game comes from limited-job challenges like the Four Job Fiesta (let an RNG pick 4 of the 20 jobs which you have to limit yourself to over the course of a run). While this wasn't exactly what the devs had in mind, the fact that you can complete the game with any combination of four jobs (yes, even four Berserkers!) is a testament to how well balanced the game is. Playing the game with different job combinations each time forces you to come up with ever more creative solutions (no healer? Just equip flame rings and nuke yourself with Firaga!) to the puzzles the game presents, and unlike FFIV, the solution to the puzzle is different every single time you play. The sheer replayability and depth of the job system is what makes this my favorite game.

Run count: 51 and still not bored

This is it baby this is THE Final Fantasy! The good shit!!! Have I ever played this game like a normal person? Absolutely not! I'm sure on my ninth fiesta run though!

Even though limiting yourself to four random jobs cannot possibly have been on the minds of anyone developing the game, the fact that it works so well and makes for such a rad experience really shows the games' various strengths, which are all in the nitty-gritty of the boss and job design. Certainly not the story, which is great for what it is, has a lot of funny moments and works as a nice romp, but isn't particularly ambitious. Try to find a theme in the story: you can't. It kind of gestures at some environmentalism here and there but it doesn't actually care so there's nothing at all.

First: the jobs. Most of them have a pretty big variety of tools or some unique utility. Nobody is completely dead weight, even Geomancer. The overlap between different jobs is a big part of how the game remains playable with any team composition, I think. They also are not even close to balanced, which rules. Generally, you need a lot of experimentation or outside info to know, say, when you can just use an instant death attack to kill a boss instantly, or how mixes work with the chemist, but the decision to not worry much about flattening everything in terms of power level, or going the other way and just having a progression of jobs like in FF3, makes the random style of playthrough work. And this is not even getting into the synergies! A lot of the game can be decided by figuring out which combination of abilities will get you something truly cool and busted, and finding that stuff feels great! This is another place where the fiesta rules, because playing normally you would just not use a Berserker. If you have to, though, you can figure out that giving them Equip Bows makes them way faster and stronger.

Second: the boss/enemy design. I think this is really the key point. They're so good. There are so many different gimmicks, and only a few fights that are just straight-up brawls. Almost every single major encounter in the game has at least one dirty trick available to trivilize or mitigate it. It's often as simple as just letting status effects work on bosses. There are plenty of RPGs where you also have lots of tools but they suck because they only work in places you'd never care to use them. In FF5, even playing as intended, you can come up with creative solutions to problems, and you will because levelling is only marginally relevant to your overall power. It smooths some edges but won't fundamentally overhaul your approach.

Yall I recommend FFV. Use a guide and do some random job bullshit or play it normally. Either is neat.

Exdeath is #4 on the “ Final Fantasy in least to most order of how lame their major antagonists are” list

Exdeath pros and cons:

+He’s a tree
+Officially the last villain on my list to have the malevolent convictions that match his evil deeds
+He looks kinda cool, like if Golbez was also a tree
+His home fortress is made of the flesh and limbs of humans, in a neat ironic twist on how humans use the flesh of trees to build their own homes. You know, cause he’s a tree
+Holy hell, is that final form of his wilding the fcuk out or what. It’s like just as elaborate as Kefka’s final form, but also he’s a tree
+He says probably the most baddest-ass thing any FF villain has probably ever said: “Time for your viscera to see the light of day!”

-His name is Exdeath, which is maybe just a small notch above something like “Dark Emperor Badthing”
-He’s not really all that deep, is he, even if he isn’t being manipulated by Zeromus or whatever
-He’s a tree

I don't always beat games right away, and that was especially true in middle school, where I managed to hoard all the Final Fantasies on the Google Playstore on my phone, just to end up beating none of them on that platform. Hell, I didn't get close with any of them. However, with that in mind, FFV has been a top 3 Final Fantasy for me ever since I got into this series, and about seven and a half years later, that still tracks.

It all has to do with the game's job system. I don't think Final Fantasy V implemented it the best (See Bravely Default and Bravely Second for my favorite implementation), but Final Fantasy V's job system is truly something special, as well as being extremely revolutionary for the time. The format is genius: letting you level up jobs separate from character level, switch jobs whenever with no drawbacks, and most importantly, get rewarded for leveling jobs by getting new abilities you can use on other jobs. It all clicks together so seamlessly.

However, I will say that there's a few things this edition of the job system does suboptimally. First is how lopsided some jobs feel. For example, the Knight is a very early tank sort of job that across 6 levels gives you some useful passives, a command, and some passives that allow you to equip certain equipment types on jobs you normally would not be able to, and this is on a decent ABP curve too. Berserker, on the other hand, is a job that is a bitch to use because all you can do is attack with no discretion, and it has 2 levels. The first gives you the Berserk passive which is an absolute liability (especially when you can temporarily inflict Berserk later on if you REALLY wanted to), and then the ability to equip axes, a widely absent weapon type, on any job. And these two shitty skills are even less worth your trouble given that they are on an extremely steep curve of 100 and 400 ABP respectively (for context, random encounters will rarely give you above 4 ABP a battle until the endgame). It feels like some jobs are well thought out progression-wise (like the mages having nominally quick progression so you can use your spells elsewhere pretty quickly), and others are very underbaked.

Also I have a pet peeve with how Freelancer/Mime work with other jobs. Each base stat is inherited from the highest one among jobs you have mastered, which is really cool and incentivizes using different jobs. The problem? There are four base stats, and three jobs give you the best results. Seriously! I get archetypally how this job works, but Monk should not have been able to double dip! It's not hard to spread 4 instances of a highest stat across 4 jobs, and they messed it up! It's not the end of the world, but it really bugs me.

Outside of my gripes and the job system, FFV is a lighthearted game with a story that pushes zero envelopes. It is true comfort food with a heart of gold, and I enjoy that. The spritework is absolutely amazing, being the first Square game imo to really look like a SFC/SNES game instead of a more colorful NES game. Also the music is good, not really my cup of tea and heavily carried by Battle on the Big Bridge (a song that I'm constantly conflicted on if I love it or if it's really overrated), but still good. The star of the show here really is the job system.

For all that, I'd give this game a solid 9/10

Also, whoever thinks Shinryu is a harder superboss than Omega is actually delusional.

I don't know if I have anything of substance to say about this. Like, it's fun. Everybody has already talked about how the job system is incredibly solid. And yeah. It is.

As with most job systems, it requires prior knowledge and/or to look up stuff to be fully engaged with, and that's like, ok; not my favourite thing; bites a bit into the sense of discovery; but like, it's still a fun time. I made a freelancer with !Sshot and 2-hands and it would just eat through monsters like a human lawnmower and it was really funny. So there's that.

It's fun to look at the early Final Fantasy games cause at its inception the series was still bearing many elements of freeform PC RPGs, but with each entry more and more of that structure was shed, with IV finally closing closely into that very "linear-narrative" structure the series (and in part, the genre) will settle into. Don't ask me how Dragon Quest fits into this. I assume it followed a similar journey, but I honestly have no idea cause I've only ever played VIII.

Anyhow V feels like the place where they really nailed the pacing for that kind of game. You kinda dart around the map from novel 30-minute dungeon to novel 30-minute dungeon, and it's all very pleasant and varied and snappy. It works very well, especially in combination with the lighthearted, almost Saturday-morning-cartoon-y, narrative it follows.

To an extent, I felt like maybe it lacked a bit of a sense of place. The various locations feel more like setpieces, than parts of a coherent world, which is fine, but makes the world map feel a bit vestigial (honestly, it will continue to feel vestigial until its ultimate removal in FFX)

As said, I don't really have many thoughts. Like, I had fun with this. I enjoyed it. It's a silly fun game.

EDIT: Oh fuck! I almost forgot to talk about the final dungeon. It's kind of a glitch "stuck in time" asset collage kind of thing, and it's SO cool. Like honestly years ahead of its times aesthetically. It's not really used for any interesting narrative purpose (I mean, the big bad of the game is basically a giant muppet, there's not much depth there), but like, regardless of that, I am impressive but how cool and purposefully weird it was. Great stuff.

É normal ter um estranhamento Final Fantasy V, muito pelo que se viu depois dele, mas também por ele ser mais parecido com os três primeiros do que com seu antecessor direto (IV).

O enredo é simples, lembrando os três primeiros FF, e é bem amarradinho, com personagens principais e secundários bem construídos (impossível não amar Gilgamesh aqui), com direito a várias cenas adicionais que ajudam na construção deles, com uma fixação pouco usual com cenas noturnas. A exceção fica com o antagonista, que é meio raso mesmo em comparação aos predecessores do NES.

Da parte técnica, gráficos, som e direção de arte são o padrão Square, então tudo vai estar nos conformes da beleza. A pixel art é bem bonita, e os personagens têm diversas roupinhas conforme a classe que está atribuída e que fazem referência à outros jogos da série. Acho eu que é um dos primeiros exemplos de fan service.

Ainda na parte técnica, fica o destaque para a mecânica do jogo, em que se retoma o sistema de Jobs. São várias ocupações que os personagens podem desempenhar, cada qual com atributos bem distintos, permitindo um alto grau de customização do grupo, propiciando uma gama imensa de experimentação. Quando uma habilidade é aprendida por um boneco, ela pode ser utilizada em outro Job, o que ajuda na já citada experimentação. No entanto, com o decorrer do jogo, algumas funções e habilidades ficam claramente obsoletas, limitando muito as escolhas possíveis e tirando o brilho do fundamento mecânico do jogo. Senti isso mais ou menos com uns 30% faltando para o fim.

Terminei a campanha regular em umas 70 e poucas horas, e joguei a versão de GBA, que tem uma tradução bacana (sem adição de um suposto sotaque de marujo para um personagem), um bestiário com informações bem úteis além de jobs e uma dungeon adicional após o final campanha normal, que garante mais jobs extra e lutas contra chefes ainda mais cretinos.

Final Fantasy V não tem a fama do seu antecessor e do sucessor imediatos, pois além de ser meio diferente a Square trouxe ele pro Ocidente de um jeito não muito habitual. De todo jeito recomendo com gosto, e acho a versão do GBA a mais aconselhável, por todo o conteúdo extra.

"Underrated" is a buzzword thrown around so often that its lost meaning, but Final Fantasy V is the only FF I'd truly say is underrated, at least in the western hemisphere. Released for the Super Famicom in 1992, North America wouldn't see FF5 until late 1999 with a really underwhelming Playstation 1 port ruined by painful loading times. Even then this 16-bit adventure was seen as a thing of the past, with the 3D full-motion video cutscenes of FF7 and FF8 stealing the show and selling boatloads leaving FF5 in the dust.

In Japan on the other hand, FF5 was/is beloved. In 2023, the main developers of Final Fantasy XVI were interviewed and asked their top 3 favorite FF games. Every one of them included Final Fantasy V. With opinions so spilt across the world, which side was actually right?

FF5's defining feature is the job system, returning from Final Fantasy III but superior in every conceivable way. The main upgrade here is each character can now use abilities from a job they've learned even while they're currently a different job. This opens the floodgates for what feels like infinite combination possibilities, mixing and matching freely at will as new abilities and new jobs are unlocked. The player has true freedom this time compared to FF3 which stubbornly funneled the player into specific party makeups. FF5's jobs feel more distinct from each other and job points actually mattering makes old jobs not feel redundant even as new ones are unlocked. These mechanics are so fun to use and try out that unlocking new jobs often serves as greater motivation to progress further in the game than the actual story does.

Often viewed as Final Fantasy V's weak point, this brings the plot into question. FF5's plot has been described as "a Saturday morning cartoon", a "parody of its own series", or "just plain awful." A rare hot take of mine is I consider FF5's story actually better than FF4's and therefore any previous Final Fantasy. While not particularly deep, and lacking the heavy-handed melodrama of its predecessor, the narrative gets main characters Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris to all meet and have their goals align quickly, without much in the way of expository banter. This party is notable for their sense of camaraderie, feeling like a real group of pals, a jovial far cry for a series that would become infamous for it's overly brooding and edgy protagonists. Galuf is afflicted by the dreaded amnesia trope, but its refreshing having a grandfather in the party for often-absent age diversity. The aforementioned PS1 localization has Faris speak in a stereotypical pirate accent which strays from the original Japanese script and ruins her character, but in proper localizations she's more compelling. Admittedly, some scenes of the men thirsting over her before realizing she's a woman did not age very well, but them's the breaks.

Whimsical and light-hearted themes allow for FF5 to lean into more of a comedy. Slapstick comedy might not land the same way when portrayed in a 16-bit art style, but some of Bartz' one-liners and practically everything said by meme antagonist Gilgamesh are genuinely pretty funny. There's even an NPC named Mid which is a devastating fate to have. Main villain Exdeath is central to some ridiculous scenes, including this exchange between him and Bartz upon first encounter:

Bartz: Exdeath! No way we'll let you get away with this!

Exdeath: Mwa-hahahaha... Have you any idea what I plan to get away with in the first place?

Bartz: Wha? No, but...

Exdeath is basically an evil tree given sentience, or rather the result of the heroes of old sealing evil spirits into a particular great tree that eventually became corrupt with evil. His status as a sorcerer made of wood isn't often mentioned except for in one infamous and truly absurd scene that I feel I must mention somewhere:

Krile: Ouch! Ooh, this splinter really hurts...
(Exdeath appears)

Bartz: Exdeath!?

Exdeath: Mwa-hahahaha... I turned myself into a tiny splinter, waiting for just this moment! Now you can understand my true goal: to take the sealed power of the Void for my own!

Bartz: What!?

I won't even try defending this, I don't know what the developers were on when writing this shit, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that FF5's story is filled with bizarre stuff. The true serious scenes stand out more when they do happen as a result, like any of Bartz' reminiscence of his parents, or Lenna and Faris learning they're actually sisters and not alone anymore. There's even a major character death that hits far harder than any of the cheap fake-out deaths in FF4. Composer Nobuo Uematsu also did an excellent job as usual, "Home Sweet Home" is one of my favorite Final Fantasy tracks still.

FF5 showcased such an early mastery of job system mechanics that it took a decade+ before Square would return to it in a traditional FF game, an unusual standout JRPG where story takes a backseat to gameplay. In the end I have to side with the Japanese on this one, I believe FF5 would be near the top of the Final Fantasy totem pole if it weren't for Sakaguchi and team going sicko-mode on the next two games.

4.0/5.0

It seems like every long lasting RPG series has that one entry with a reputation for being one of the most meticulously crafted mechanical objects but also having some unique failing(s) in its storytelling, whether it's Fire Emblem Engage having maps that will be circlejerked for decades to come at the cost of some of the worst prose and cutscene presentation in an RPG or SMT IV: Apocalypse having a cast of party members so annoying that the option to kill them is a significant portion of its playerbase's unironic reason for loving it. Final Fantasy 5 serves this role for its respective series, as a game with a well crafted job/skill system (Random side note: I think it is extremely funny how the job system being seen as "too complex" is a major reason the game initially wasn't released overseas when in hindsight, it's incredibly tame in comparison to the level of systems bloat in the average 2020s AAA release) but also its goofier story that would seem out of place when put next to the other two SNES Final Fantasy narratives. However, this piece is not going to go over the game as a mechanical object, or really anything about it that's already near universally loved (Gilgamesh my beloved). When it comes to how I use this website, I operate by a rule that I only dedicate extended writing pieces to things that I haven't seen said and the positive qualities of FF5's gameplay have been said countless times by hardcore fans of the series. Rather, this is a piece dedicated to why the story resonated with me in a way that, while nowhere near the heights of what this legendary series has accomplished at its best, is still significantly more than what most would give it credit for.
To me, Final Fantasy V is a game about humanity's mistreatment of the environment. The game's inciting incident is the wind crystal shattering as a result of the inventor Cid creating a device to amplify the elemental crystals' power for the sake of increased productivity. This reason for the crystals' destruction is best exemplified by Karnak, a town whose use of the fire crystal for the sake of unnecessary opulence is visualized through the excess of flames within it, not serving any practical function beyond a flashy showing of the wealth its rulers live in. The destruction of all four of these crystals results in the return of main antagonist Exdeath, whose existence similarly ties into the general idea of the environment being mistreated both in terms of his origins as several evil spirits dumped within a tree as a failed solution to the problems caused by an evil sorcerer's quest for ultimate power and in terms of his sealing in Bartz's world 30 years ago by the Warriors of Dawn being a similar failed attempt at short term solution for a long term problem.
And around halfway through the game, the consequences of this collective disregard for the environment begin to show. Exdeath burns down the Forest of Moore in which he initially hailed from and obtains the crystals of the Warriors of Dawn's world, which are destroyed shortly after, resulting in the two worlds being merged together. This new merged world has a melancholy feel to it, conveyed through the lower energy overworld theme, visual imagery like the once active quicksand surrounding the pyramid dungeon becoming lifeless or the Forest of Moore's desperate attempt to cling to life, and the constant threat of whole stretches of land and their inhabitants being completely consumed by the void, which even causes you to go through the aforementioned pyramid dungeon with only three party members due to the presumed death of the fourth. In a stretch of a game that was no doubt the blueprint for the next entry in the series' biggest twist, it seems like humanity has doomed itself to destruction by its own hand.
However, by the endgame stretch, you should have mastered quite a few jobs on each of your four party members and been able to combine the best attributes of these mastered jobs to create a freelancer (or mime for the truly Gogopilled) that can't truly fit within the narrow roles of the old society. In my playthrough of the game, Bartz and Faris combined the stat boosts and counterattacking ability of a monk with the weapons and equipment of knights, Lenna transferred over the stat boosts from her brief stint as a berserker to her usual role as a support mage, and Crylle became a mime with both black and white magic as well as the HP +30% gained from her time as a monk. The ludonarrative purpose of the game's job class system is to be the radical transforming of societal roles necessary to prevent an environmental crisis and these new roles are what ultimately allow our four heroes to stop Exdeath once and for all.
Is Final Fantasy V making a truly radical political statement here? No, it's ultimately just another drop in the vast ocean of cheesy/defanged 90s environmentalist messages and its environmentalism especially comes off as milquetoast when you literally play as an ecoterrorist two games later. But with the various environmental crises our planet deals with only worsening three decades after game's release, it takes on a new meaning as representing both the impossible odds that humanity must overcome and a symbol of hope that we can pull through regardless. I long for the day where Bartz and friends can master the Marxist job class.

i don't know if it's still fair to call final fantasy v the most underrated title in the main franchise anymore, because it's sort of created a cult-classic echo chamber around the game that warrants a label closer to "fan favorite" more than "overlooked gem". and that's not to speak ill of the quality of the game itself - i'd actually argue it's the best of the super nintendo trilogy on some level - at least, far surpassing its more widely beloved predecessor.

on paper, it makes sense why final fantasy v hasn't quite crossed the bridge to worldwide universal acclaim - it's definitely the odd one out of the 16-bit trio on a few levels. for starters, it's the only one us westerners didn't get upon initial release, as square opted to release both final fantasies iv and vi over here (albeit in iv's case, heavily, HEAVILY neutered) and in place of v, the... rocky spin-off, final fantasy mystic quest. no, it wouldn't be until the playstation port bundled with its sequel as part of the 'final fantasy anthology' where v would see official release over here, with a good deal of load-time slowdown and an embarassingly poor translation (here's to you, y burn and karl boss!) and due to this and the fact it was pretty clearly overshadowed by... well, final fantasy vi, that it remained a pass for many people. the gba remake... er, port... er, remaster... er... expanded... re-release is arguably the definitive official release, with new jobs, dungeons and all - not to mention a pretty terrible iOS port and of course the spiffy new (glitch-laden upon release) pixel remaster - but if you're a child of the early-oughts internet as i was, THE definitive final fantasy v experience was how i replayed it this time around: RPGe's fan translation of the snes original, released in october of 1998.

as much as the re-releases add and all that fun stuff, there's something to be said about the beauty and breadth of this 16-bit original. much of the artistic design and sprite composition is essentially shared with the january '92 released romancing saga, but those few months in between saw a massive splash of polish - in no small part thanks to the efforts of soon-legends of squaresoft tetsuya takahashi and tetsuya nomura - which leave final fantasy v feeling like the first time squaresoft's team had truly embraced and mastered the look of this wild new era of console gaming. nobuo uematsu delivers a timeless score - one also regularly overshadowed by final fantasies iv and vi - which perhaps more than any other score in the series harnesses that romantic flair for whimsy and exploration this title so encompasses. tracks such as "lenna", "ahead on our way", "home, sweet home", and "walking the snowy mountains" remain some of the best the series has to offer - and i'd be remiss not to mention THE iconic piece of the soundtrack, "battle on the big bridge".

many complain that final fantasy v's plot feels too light-hearted, or even substance-less in comparison to that of iv and vi, and i'm going to really disagree there. listen, i love my squaresoft melodrama just as much as anyone else; i was enamored with final fantasy vi's operatic scale from the moment we met, but i think final fantasy v's more comedic and straightforward tone actually serves the experience perfectly. i might ruffle some feathers here, but i think v's story was one squaresoft was FAR more suited to write at the time, considering what a messy, bloated disaster final fantasy iv's plot is in retrospect. there are moments that actually get to me in final fantasy v, far more than i anticipated on revisit. the characters are super charming, too. i distinctly remembered faris being my favorite as a kid, but it's actually krile and ESPECIALLY galuf that won me over this time, not to mention loveable flunkie gilgamesh and the BRILLIANTLY bombastic nutcase, exdeath.

let's be honest, though - final fantasy v's legacy rides mostly on its combat and job system, and i won't disagree with that - it's some of the best the genre of turn-based jrpg has to offer, and i'd say as far as job-building jrpgs go, nothing has ever quite lived up to what final fantasy v sets out and achieves in spades. it's FUN to build ridiculous combos of characters and skills, and the grind can be a little tedious, sure, but when your reward is a 8-hit-combo-slashing time-magic-spitting mystic knight? the proof is in the pudding, friends, and the journey is good.

if you're at all looking to get into early jrpgs that focus more on gameplay and team building and don't need to be totally blown over by a plot, this is the one. hell, i think it's aged better than any of the final fantasies prior by such a wide margin i'd almost argue this game sort of makes final fantasies i and especially iii irrelevant. if we look at those three games as a development of the same ideas over and over, this is where they struck gold. a true classic on all fronts - underrated in 2022 or not.

The story is some fantasy b-movie levels of shlock, however without spoiling them I do like a lot of the twists here FFV introduce to the Final Fantasy story formula before the later games would expand upon them.

But what makes FFV shine for me isn't the story, but rather it's amazing gameplay here. This is by far the best gameplay the mainline series has seen yet and that's all thanks to the job system and the bosses.

The job system is simple enough to understand while also being complex enough for unique customization. In a nutshell, All four characters get jobs as the story progresses and each jobs have certain skills you can unlock and equip. However what makes the job system unique is the fact that you can switch jobs at anytime for any situation, and any skills you unlocked for the jobs you've been using can be equipped to any other job as a sub-skill. Or you can go as a freelancer and use any skills you've collected. This not also makes your characters so much more customizable but makes it so if you wish to grind it's much more rewardable.

This is all backed by a fairly challenging game with some stellar boss fights that uses the active time battle system Square developed to it's fullest potential to create some unique fights here. There's not a lot of dungeons that drag on for too long, and because of that, FFV is for me the most fun Final Fantasy to play, and I find myself replaying this one more and more.

Also Gilgamesh is based.

My original plan was to play FF 1-6 this year in order, after falling in love with FFXVI and really realizing what a gap this was for me. I finished FF1 just a few weeks ago, and was surprised how much I enjoyed it and was ready to jump into FF2 but life threw me a little curve ball. I forgot that the final run of GDQ this year was FFV, and at the recommendation of a friend, that I would not want to be spoiled, I decided to jump to this one next so I could watch the run spoiler free (which was 100% the right decision)

This is a fantastic game, very different from what you'd expect from a FF game, so I can see why it's not talked about so much, but it's genuinely great. The Job system is maybe one of my favourite combat mechanics I've ever had in a JRPG period. It made the combat fun for me, trying new styles, and trying to max out whatever I could before my final battle with Exdeath at the end of the game. It's such a shame that this job system was really mostly abandoned from what I've been told and doesn't show up again (albiet it, I've heard 3 has a stripped down version of it).

The story is really good. It takes a while to get cooking, and in the first few hours of my 25 hour adventure, I was wondering if this game was really THAT much of an upgrade over FF1, but once the story gets flowing, the characters fully introduced, and the stakes set, it's clear that this is a decent upgrade.

I think the thing that holds this back from being even higher for me is Bartz. He's a solid character, but as far as FF protagonists go, he's one of the weaker ones for me (which isn't a giant insult, most of the ones I adore have some of the best protagnoists I've played in games). The rest of the cast is great though, with Galuf being a huge stand out, and Gilgamesh perhaps going from a character I couldn't stand, to one I couldn't get enough of by the end of it, totally goated.

Overall though, this was a wonderful game, and while not quite as dire, and dark as some other FF entries (though with plenty of heart break, and tough moments) it's a great game, and worthy of more praise than it gets.

I have a deep fondness for most games in the Final Fantasy series, but I love this one in particular because it has humongous "Dragon Ball Z" energy.

Final Fantasy V is an adventure where you get to hang with your pals, travel around the world, and fight bad guys while obtaining powers with style. This is Final Fantasy at its utmost campiest, and Exdeath, a literal alien tree monster, is an incredibly goofballs villain. You can genuinely feel the fun Square was having in the early 1990's, playing fast and loose with tropes in the genre they helped to codify. In my mind, there is no doubt that if this game was localized outside of Japan at the time of its release, JRPG fans would speak of FFV in the same fondness reserved for esteemed entries like FFVI and FFVII. I find this game immaculately charming.

(Also, this is the game that gave us Gilgamesh, and by extension, Battle on the Big Bridge, the most bodacious Final Fantasy tune. +5 stars for that specifically.)

I feel it’s a two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of entry, that is to say it’s mostly improvements but with some caveats. While the job system is excellent, it loses the ludonarrative advantage of fixed jobs that 4 capitalised on, and I never felt that anything in this game reached the holistically great moment that was Cecil’s arc from Dark Knight to Paladin in 4. I think it’s unsurprising that, in a series increasingly concerned with narrative, 4 ended up being the blueprint for most of the series in this regard. On the bright side, the return to free job-switching is much better than 3. With 3, it often felt quite gimmicky; you have a section where you get miniaturised and have your physical attacks rendered useless, which invariably must be solved by changing all 4 party members to magic users, and when it was over you just changed back to your regular team. In 5, however, encounters have a more flexible range of solutions, and progression is much more easily tracked. Not only does dabbling in a variety of jobs have a much better reward, thanks to the ingenious decision to allow job abilities to be freely transferred, the way that mastered jobs carry all of their stats and abilities over to the non-job/mimic allows for a long-term planning that makes this kind of system sing. I’ve long subscribed to the idea that the secret to successfully designing strategic gameplay lies in integrating and creating a tension between short and long-term decision-making, and with jobs, not only do you have to consider your composition with regards to the current boss or dungeon, you have to consider how the investments you make affect your final composition. The replayability this gives is excellent too. In terms of gameplay though, I’m still not a fan of how the late/endgame plays out in these early FFs, where it feels like in order to provide a challenge for the player who now has a very strong arsenal of abilities, they just start spamming insta-kill moves or status effects at you, which is by far the biggest source of frustration.

Narrative is definitely a step back for me. I can’t tell if this is solely explained by the aforementioned lack of characterisation that fixed jobs provides, but party members in 4 felt much more meaningfully implicated in the events of the plot; almost everyone in that game had some personal relation to Cecil, and the direction of the plot felt naturally directed by his goals and desires, whereas this feels like a return to the “four randos save the world” plots of 1-3 (Galuf being the weird exception). Exploration and tone have been changed accordingly. 4 had sparingly few moments where you could go out of your way to discover an optional area that you wouldn’t just go to later anyway, whereas here there’s an effort to open up the world much earlier and provide more significant avenues and rewards for exploration, it’s a great change and the added freedom thematically complements the freedom of the job system, but it’s a change that also accompanies a much more meandering tone. 4’s plot was ultimately goofy, I won’t deny that, but it was goofy in this innocent, melodramatic manner that resulted from earnestly trying to take itself seriously and deliver an emotional story. This is purely speculation, but 5 feels like an attempt to bashfully acknowledge how goofy 4 ended up being by playing up that goofiness instead of trying to really isolate and develop what made 4 great. The fact that 6 ultimately ended up doing that is why I think 5 has had (at least in my perception) so many positive reappraisals, it’s not only because it wasn’t localised, but because it feels like a potential style of Final Fantasy that was lost to history in favour of iterations on 4. The story has its moments, mostly comedic, that did make me laugh, and nothing misfired as hard as, for example, the fight against Edge’s parents in 4, but that potential for misfire is what I think is missing - that swinging for the fences of creative spirit set against the glaring hardware limitations and miniature sprite animations is what I think makes early Final Fantasy so captivating to this day. Don’t mistake this for me saying that 5 is “soulless” or some other nonsense - it’s full of soul, it just comes from a different, more whimsical/gameplay-driven place. The music did strike me too. As soon as I finished 4 and started up 5, the improvement in how well-rounded the bass felt instantly hit me, there was definitely a dramatic step-up in the team's handling of the sound chip (though if I’m being totally honest a lot of 4’s melodies still stick with me more strongly!)

I think, despite all that, I slightly prefer 5 overall - though I go back-and-forth on it. A lot of that is because - if you asked me whether I would rather replay 4 or 5, I would pick 5 in a heartbeat, thanks to that job system. I think the way ABP grinding works in tandem with random encounters actually changes things quite a bit. Both 4 and 5 have very high encounter rates, but whereas in 4 encounters are mostly just a drip feed of experience and a drain on your resources, in 5 they’re also progressing your job, which tips the psychological experience of getting into a random battle ever so slightly over into the positive side. It’s interesting how the subjective enjoyment of a game can rest on such a mental razor’s edge, but I think it’s a testament to how effective integrating different mechanics together really is.

For added context: This is mostly just charting my progress with the series. At the start of the year I had only played 14 (which I have way too many hours in) and 15 (which I played at launch and despised), so I was long overdue to make my way properly through all the games. Needless to say, I’m very excited to play 6 next…

To put it lightly, RPG's that want you to create your own build rather than handing you a pre-made one have been my kryptonite for the longest time. It's why in the past, I've remained the most casual, white bread type of RPG player. The length that this kind of game comes with, the ludicrous amount of possibilities, and the anxiety that the choice I'll end up going with is going to bite me long-term, leading to an outright reset of the entire run... these were all things that overwhelmed me. It's why I couldn't deal with FF7's Materia system, it's why the moment FF6 introduces magic customizability I almost immediately bounced off, and it's why FF4 was - of fucking course - the one I liked.

But, hey, it's good to expand your horizons, and there's a reason why people like these games. What it comes down to is that I have to completely turn off my inner demons, and treat Final Fantasy V as what it is: A game that's meant to last. Once I do that, and once I understand the systems at play, I figure I can head into the later games with a much greater appreciation for what they want out of me, in opposite to what I want out of it.

So, I've beaten Final Fantasy V. And, I must confess, if someone was watching me play it, they would probably want to strangle me by the neck. The thing that harmed my enjoyment the most was my own fault. I somehow managed to find myself in a situation where alongside FF5, I was also in the middle of playing Megami Tensei II, an absolute hellscape of NES RPG difficulty which I couldn't have imagined playing without save states and rewind involved. And as I reached its credits, I realized I still had 15 hours of FF5 left, and despite being in no mood for more turn-based shenanigans, I pushed onward anyway. The thing is, I save stated through Megami Tensei so hard, that mentality rubbed off on how I played FF5 as well, load stating and rewinding before, during, and after every single instance of danger and non-efficient gameplay there was.

In the end, I beat the game, and wrote a 3.5/5 review for it, praising the party customizability options, its wonderful soundtrack, charming sense of humor, but heavily criticizing what I described as "trial 'n error boss fights," under the opinion that a good chunk of bosses rely on "gotchas", requiring specific Job builds that you cannot possibly be aware of on your 1st try, leading either to an inefficient boss fight, or in rarer cases, an instant death. I concluded by saying that FF5 is a bit of a messy game on your 1st run, but in all likelihood, a much better experience on a 2nd run once you know what you're doing. And during my 1st run, I didn't know what I was doing all that often. That review stayed up on Backloggd for about 2 days, give or take.

But... I am here now, rewriting my review of FF5, and changing my score to a 4/5 for two reasons. One being, I felt unfulfilled. That review rubbed me the wrong way from the very start, and I knew exactly why. I became so terminally reliant on save stating my way through games, that I convinced myself that failure was an unacceptable condition. That reflected on my take on the "trial 'n error bosses," essentially saying that if I don't win a boss fight on my 1st try, that boss fight is bad. This couldn't be any stupider of an opinion. Developers don't add failure states into their products because you shouldn't ever see them, nor is the right way to play games "Effortlessly conquer every part of them." It's like solving a crossword, what the fuck is the point if they just give you all the answers? The entire point of a puzzle is to stump you, in the same way the entire point of a challenge is to put you at risk of losing.

The 2nd reason for rewriting my review, is because I have done the unthinkable. Frankly, I don't know if this was the wise thing to do, and it has most definitely contributed to a period of RPG burnout that I'm currently about to head into. But if I didn't do this, this feeling of unsatisfaction would've tortured me for weeks, as it has done so for the several days I allowed it to. Immediately after finishing FF5 and writing out my previous review... I deleted the review, and then began a 2nd run of the game. This time, rewind was disabled, and save states were only utilized just before the start of a boss fight, and nowhere else.

While I haven't yet beaten the 2nd run as of this writing (though i am at the final dungeon by this point), I'm not here because I got bored, or weary, or frustrated. For once in my life, I have wrote a review before finishing my run of a game because I was satisfied with what I've experienced. I think I can now write this review with the full understanding of what makes Final Fantasy 5 a great game.

Suikoden taught me a valuable lesson in RPG's, that the reason why they're called "roleplaying" games is because it's about choosing what type of build you want, rather than succumbing to OCD and thinking the game wants you to try all of them. This lesson, in regards to some RPG's, is a valid one to keep in mind. FF5 taught me a different lesson, a different way to adapt to these sorts of RPG's: You don't have to try every build there is, but that doesn't mean you should be limiting yourself to just one either. With the tools at disposal that FF5 provides, the point isn't to force you out of your favorite build. The real purpose is to get you to find one you like even more.

When you die to a boss fight here, what may be perceived as a "punishment", is actually the game confidently pushing you forward into experimentation. To enforce this, switching Jobs is an instant process, and though you can grind Jobs up to obtain fun abilities, what FF5 cares more about is each Job's starter skillset being unconventionally used to generate surprising and exciting results. There were more than a couple moments where I smiled, or dare I say, pogged out due to strategies that go beyond just mashing the fight button.

FF3's attempt at a Job system was servicable, but ultimately underwhelming, I could never seem to get use out of the more unconventional Jobs, and grinding them up to be of use took too long. What makes FF5 way better is that as you change Jobs, your default stats gained through regular level ups are automatically redistributed to be optimal for the specific Job you're using, thus, they're ready for battle fresh out of the box. This made switching between them a more comfortable process, one that allowed me to enjoy over 19 of the 22 available classes, a sharp increase over FF3, where I only preferred Jobs that were blatant upgrades over the standard knights and mages. Here, nearly everyone is equal in their own unique strengths, and my willingness to step out of my boundaries allowed me to find not just one build that really works, but several. So, you see, FF5 can get away with wanting me to try out lots of different builds. Because it makes it very accessible to do so.

Though I must admit, once you find those few really special abilities, during my 2nd run, it was impossible to resist immediately pursuing them and using them wherever I could. While I still made strides to vary up my build depending on the situation, I frequently came back to X-Fight, the Call ability, Double Wield, and 2-Handed. There's still a part of me that really likes to prioritize high damage numbers over slow and steady progress, which in turn makes me feel like I'm still limiting myself in the ways I'm playing the game. On the other hand, I always have to remember that RPG's are about what works for you, and if I had fun playing it this way (which i did), while keeping in mind other options under other circumstances, then FF5 was still just... really, really fun from a gameplay perspective.

In my scrapped review, something else I complained about was the ATB system, which seemed a little more gimmicky here than in FF4. FF5 is inherently a more strategical game than its predecessor, which had me require more time to think over my options during battle. So the pressure the ATB system adds feels anti-thetical to the whole idea of "think your options through." Additionally, because I changed classes frequently, my menus and the order in which the party attacked kept changing, meaning I kept accidentally tripping up, selecting the wrong things because I was in a rush to outrace the timer before the enemy got their turn in. In this review, I'm still gonna leverage this as a valid critique, alongside the confusion of what the ATB system actually adds to the experience rather than detracts. However, I've found a way to circumvent this issue, and it's as simple as "press start to pause the game, dumbass." From there on, the ATB system becomes significantly more managable.

As for the story, I'm not exactly sure if I've made up my mind on it yet, but despite its seeming shallowness in the standards of today's age, I think I've warmed up to it well enough, that, this... may be the best Final Fantasy story so far? FF1 & FF3 were blank slates, while FF2 & FF4 tried a touch too hard to make me feel emotions for characters I knew for all but minutes. By comparison, FF5 still has a little bit of that "the characters are having bad things happen to them in every step of their journey" thing, but there's a strange certain sincerity to the tone of this game, that makes me feel all warm and cozy just adventuring in it. Maybe it's the characters being more expressive and animated this time around? The fun chocobo dances? Or Bartz's infectious optimism and belief that the solution to every problem is "ah fuck it, let's just do it." Or maybe it's all of those things, and then some. While I'm not sure I buy the idea that the entire game was a deliberate parody of RPG tropes, I can't deny that there's a subtle feeling of fun being had here. Not enough for a deep story, but enough to make you root for these little 16x24 guys. As sometimes, it feels like they're rooting for you.

As for the soundtrack, I'm starting to think that this is where Uematsu really started honing in his craft. FF4 was melodically strong, but had a lot of trumpets. Mind you, FF5 has plenty of them too, but my wish was that the series would start relying less on just this one instrument for every melody it doots out. FF5 is starting to get there, it's starting to lean into other instruments taking priority. "Battle on the Big Bridge" is the biggest example of this, as Uematsu has just discovered an instrument of the gods, the prog rock organ. And within the next games, it becomes very clear that prog rock is what Uematsu is all about. FF5's soundtrack was just a taste of what's to come.

Alright, it's about time to sum this up. Is FF5 a good game? YES!!!!!!!!!! Yes, it is. I needed some time to warm up to it, both for self-inflicted reasons and FF5's specific expectations of how to play it, but once you're in there, it's just really fun. When most people think of RPG's, they tend to think of the story being the main pull, but FF5 was created in an age where gameplay took precedence. And this Job system was the logical endpoint on how to create the most engaging type of RPG gameplay, by removing most manner of restrictions to let you play it in hundreds of different possible ways. The only condition, is that you have to get out of that comfort zone of yours, and let experimentation take course. My instincts fought back at first, anxious over the idea that not all of my time playing the game is being spent on making progress. But there's nothing wrong with that. After all, the nicest thing about RPG's often comes from that feeling of relaxation when you take in and absorb just how much these games give you to do. That, in itself, is progress to understanding the genre. I now feel more than ready to head into the later Final Fantasies, and be able to enjoy them. Thanks for reading this stupid shit.

Diehard D&D boomers will tell you to start the series at Final Fantasy 1, 90s kids will tell you to start at 7, and we all know that weird guy addicted to FF14 that shills it 50 times a day.

I'd say 5 is a good starting point if you wanna get into the series, it's retro enough at this point to be considered oldschool and lets you get used to the rudimentary mechanics that will only get better in 6 and 7, while also not being as poorly aged as the first entries to which I can only reccomend to somebody who has a high tolerance for retro games or hate themselves but have rose tinted glasses to the games they grew up with

It's good and simple in the way only early 16 bit era games managed to be, and that's all I could really ask for

I gotta be better about not accidentally destroying my saves on my SNES classic.

Anyways, I did not finish FFV (I lost hours due to a save issue) but it’s really great so far. Typically it’s not mentioned in the same breath as IV or VI and I can understand why, but it’s still excellent. The 16-bit Final Fantasy formula with these three titles is immaculate.

The soundtrack is a bit of a step down so far but there’s lots of really interesting ideas. I love the Job system. I love how there’s dragons instead of airships. You spend a lot more time on a ship in this one as opposed to IV. The story is engaging enough so far, again a bit of a step down but by no means bad. Character designs I find aren’t as creative as other entries but the enemy design is still top tier.

My hope is that they’ll port the Pixel remasters to console and I can start fresh from there (and they fix the font, but I’ll take anything.)

Final Fantasy V might feel very "standard" in its aesthetics, presentation and storytelling so far as 2D Final Fantasy is concerned, yet it still manages to be such a captivating RPG for its time due to the sheer complexity of its excellent gameplay mechanics. The amount of customization and strategy allowed by the game's take on the job system makes it a joy to play, and eventually replay, while trying different combinations of classes and gameplay styles that rewards both careful planning and liberal experimentation depending on the mood of the player. Had Final Fantasy V had a more challenging difficulty or well-considered job balance, it would be close to perfect. But with Nobuo Uematsu's beautiful score and the aesthetics of Kazuko Shibuya, it is certainly hard not to love Final Fantasy V regardless of its few flaws.