One of my favourite games of all time, an absolute gem and a huge highlight of the Final Fantasy series. This has the most mechanical depth of all the 2D Final Fantasies and introduces a huge amount of sidequesting and optional extras and powerups not present in IV. Beyond that it has a fantastic variety of dungeons, brought to life with excellent pixel art and music. The Ancient Library, the Ronka Ruins, Exdeath's fleshy castle, all great.

I won't wax lyrical about the Job system because it's already famous, but it's extremely good and the innovations this game offers over Final Fantasy III are huge. It's no surprise that the system is so enduring it pops in up X-2, or forms the foundation for the Bravely games.

This is also the only game where I've found Blue Magic to be super good, I don't think Square Enix captured it again on the Playstation os PS2.

One area where it falls down is the writing and characterisation, compared to IV and VI. The main characters feel thinly characterised, and while there are a couple of big revelations for them early on, they generally don't grow or change much or have strong individual relationships beyond direct familial ties. The supporting cast is small, and undermined by the fact that characters from the first act can't appear in the second act and vis-versa. Sympathetic characters like the Warriors of Dawn are introduced too late, while Cid & Mid are offscreen for too long. It feels much closer to III in terms of storytelling, and that's a big step back.

Still, I love the mechanics and presentation of this game so much I cannot give it less than a perfect score. An all timer, if you like old school JRPGs you've got to give this one a try.

A fun sometimes frustrating experience. So fat my favorite out of the sprite based FF games. Job system would interesting although I didn't quite go super in depth with it (mastered about 2 jobs on each character). I played the pixel remaster version and overall the game looked fine and sounded great. Some boss fights were a bit annoying and some normal enemies were just HP sponges which made some areas drag with how long some encounters would take. But overall a pretty good time. Between the two FF games that focus on the job system this game and 3 I think both still have their place especially nowadays with 3's pixel remaster. This game is good for those who really want to get down and dirty with the job system while 3 I think is a much easier pick up and play version of this game. So if you want a more casual time play 3 and if you want a more advanced game play this one. I would also reccomend 3 first if you're new to FF or just rpgs with job systems as this game might throw into the deep end with it.

Played a four job fiesta for the first time. This game's amazing on its own but it's pretty impressive how well the mechanics works if you just stick to 4 jobs.

Got Black Mage, White Mage, Summoner and Chemist. Kinda boring, magic heavy team- chemist was interesting though. Had a blast playing through the PlayStation version specifically (it was the first version I played and I enjoy the silly translation) but the slowness of it probably means I won't come back to it.

Couldn't beat Omega or Shinryu with this party, got destroyed way too quickly and grinding or even retrying to get the perfect rng felt way too tedious.

It's odd, Final Fantasy I had a really cool job system, which was then abandoned in Final Fantasy II for its incredibly poor EXP system, then in Final Fantasy III they brought back jobs and built upon them, great! Then in Final Fantasy IV, once again we abandon the job system for EXP, albeit this time done much better. And now again we return to the job system, with it finally being developed to near perfection, it really feels like the culmination of what FF1 and 3 were building up to. The job system allows so much customisation without it being insanely complicated/overwhelming and encourages replayability so much as it grants so much freedom from the very start. "Grinding" in this game is a piece of cake, as your actual EXP level is way less important, as its more based around your strategy of job/ability use, it builds upon the ideas of approaching encounters that started in FF3, with its "puzzle-like" encounters which had very specific requirements to complete, which was then expanded in FF4 having a few different options to solve said encounters, and now at FF5 each encounter has nigh endless possibilities of approaches due to the jobs and combinations. Having jobs by themselves is interesting enough, as seen in FF1, then theres lots of jobs, as seen in FF3 (but now with even more), and then on top of that you can now combine job attributes, then on top of THAT you can combine ALL of your mastered classes using the freelancer job, its amazing. And on top of that, the visuals for the jobs is improved upon too, no longer does your character just turn into somebody else per job ala FF1/FF3, instead every character has a variant for their job, and they all look really cool, graphically speaking this game looks really good, not a huge leap above FF4, but it looks good.

Outside of the jobs, the gameplay has a few minor alterations from FF4, for example you now have a bar to show when you can move in the active time battle system, which is appreciated! The row system (which allows you to place characters at the back for lower attack/higher defence) is now also applied to enemies, but this isnt really a good thing, as it simply encourages you to ALWAYS attack the enemy at the front, as they will always die fastest and do the most damage. Final Fantasy was already moving closer to the "Spam A through encounters" issue after removing the need for you to not select blank spots on the battle field (i.e dont attack an enemy twice if its going to die in 1 hit), but now every single time you wanna simply attack the same space no matter, not the end of the world, but not really a good addition.

The plot is pretty good, definitely the best in the series so far. It has grand moments that actually impact the plot, unlike the annoying fakeouts in FF4. And for once it has a real villain that is actually present in the story rather than just appearing at the end. The characters are really likeable, although the loss of of one party member is then made less impactful as they are instantly replaced by a forgettable, underdeveloped character that never really forms into anything, they just exist as a replacement. It tries to be funny quite a lot, and atleast for me it usually lands, although I can see how for some it would be annoying, but I can appreciate the amount of personality this game has.

The music is, well, Nobuo Uematsu, so of course its amazing.

In conclusion, Final Fantasy V emerges as a standout entry in the series, seamlessly weaving together the strengths of its predecessors while introducing groundbreaking elements. The refined job system, building upon the foundation laid by FF1 and FF3, reaches its pinnacle, offering players unparalleled customization and strategic depth. Its worth playing for the job system alone, and I instantly want to play it again. Perhaps one day I'll try a four job fiesta run.

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.

Um dos melhores Final Fantasy de SNES que eu já joguei.
Ótimos personagens, a história é um pouco clichê, mas se desenrola de maneira divertida, a comédia do jogo é boa, a trilha sonora é um dos pontos mais fortes.
As batalhas são meio maçantes, por culpa de alguns monstros que são muito fortes.
Mas nada que estraga tanto a gameplay.
Um ótimo RPG.

Final Fantasy V is a game I’ve always somewhat struggled to appreciate. It has lots of old-school Final Fantasy trappings in its story and gameplay both, and while this is one of my favorite game series, the early entries were never to my taste. Having finished it, though, I’ve started to really appreciate some of the ways in which it playfully riffs on those classics, even if it still falls short in many key aspects.

I’ve always heard, and until recently believed myself, that Final Fantasy V was one of those “good gameplay, bad story” Final Fantasies, more at home with the likes of X-2 and XIII-2 than VI or VII or IX. From my current perspective, this now strikes me as odd; perhaps it was a result of my expectations going in, but I found myself disappointed with the gameplay and impressed with the story.

While the job system introduces some interesting ideas, and the game certainly has some great highlights in the encounter department, I thought Final Fantasy V’s battle system was mostly still very basic. The ATB system as usual adds a degree of pressure to strategize and menu efficiently, provided you play on Active, but ultimately the strategy in-battle is still very shallow. Like most of its ilk, this game is fairly easily completed by using the strongest attacks available and occasionally healing. Often, the excuse for this lack of depth in battle is that the real depth lies in how you prepare for battles. The prevailing opinion appears to be that FFV is especially strong due to the complexity and room for customization provided by its job system. As such, it is with that job system that I find myself most deeply disappointed.

The job system certainly has some interesting combinations that reward a degree of experimentation. It’s unfortunate, then, that a few especially strong combinations nigh-on invalidate nearly everything else. By equipping your strongest physical party members with dual wield or two-hand and giving them the rapid fire ability from Ranger, they can output enormously more damage than any other possible setup. Furthermore, by giving your magic users dualcast and white magic, they can easily keep the entire party alive while also being able to dish out heavy magic damage using Holy. If you equip a single party member with Blue Magic, they can use Mighty Guard to easily apply the most important buffs to the entire party. This leaves little reason to do anything else at endgame.

Of course, endgame is not the entire game, and those options will not be available from the start. As such, I found the job system entertaining for some time, but as the game rarely provided me a strong incentive to make full use of it, I still found it somewhat lacking. Later bosses eventually started to encourage more sophisticated setups, but in my experience it was too little, too late.

Ultimately, the problem with games that lean heavily on a job system without introducing deeper combat mechanics, and which require significant investment to level any individual job, is that it becomes difficult to test the player on their ability to come up with situation-specific setups without them knowing what they’re going to need in advance. If the player hits a wall where they’re unable to progress without one of a few specific jobs leveled, and they happen to not have any of those jobs leveled, they could potentially be required to spend hours farming AP just to clear one encounter. As such, Final Fantasy V and indeed most games which lean heavily on similar job systems never throw these kinds of obstacles at the player, and in turn they never explore the full potential of their systems.

Another selling point for the gameplay of lots of RPGs of this type is their resource management systems. The philosophy of trying to conserve as much MP and as many consumable items as possible while traversing the overworld and dungeons is in theory a sound one, but FFV, like many of its contemporaries, fails to fully capitalize on this. By awarding plenty of gil and regular opportunities to purchase powerful healing items, it ensured I never felt heavily stressed for resources throughout my playthrough. My MP got somewhat tight during a couple of the dungeons, but unfortunately, those have some problems as well.

Easily the biggest issue with the gameplay of Final Fantasy V is its encounter rate. The random encounters simply are not interesting enough for this many of them to be an engaging challenge, and I found myself equipping the Thief’s “scram” ability and running from encounters very frequently towards the end of the game. A number of the dungeons felt incredibly tedious, drawn-out, and boring, in part as a result of this, and the gameplay experience really started to suffer in the last third of the game as the dungeons became longer and the encounter rate became higher.

All this is to say that I don’t think the job system saves Final Fantasy V from mechanical mediocrity. In a vacuum, its gameplay is scarcely better than that of its “golden-era” cousins on the PS1 or its immediate successor in FFVI. Instead, the saving grace of FFV is its overlooked and underappreciated story, which has some genuinely solid beats that I did not expect to enjoy so much going in.

All of the main cast members are fairly well characterized and have distinctive personalities without being overly one-note, and that in itself is an impressive achievement for an SNES game. FFV does a surprisingly good job of utilizing its mechanics to sell story beats - one dungeon is filled with flowers which poison the entire party when stepped on, and the story beat which caps it off shows one of the party members deliberately stepping over several of them to obtain an herb that will save the life of an innocent creature. It’s a moment that is only as powerful as it is because of the integration of mechanics and storytelling, and there are even more effective examples throughout the game which would constitute heavy spoilers if described in detail.

There is an important moment that occurs roughly two thirds of the way through the game which surprised me in how effectively it was able to deliver its emotional punch. Veterans of the series likely know what I’m referring to, but I recommend playing this game as blind as possible because I think this moment would hit harder if it came as a complete surprise. Even though it was spoiled for me, it instantly skyrocketed my investment in the story, and its ramifications were felt throughout the rest of the game.

Something that really surprised me about FFV’s story was just how funny it was. It’s clearly written in part as a parody of the bare-bones stories of the early games, but it manages not to be self-deprecating, and instead leans into the absurdity of some of its plot elements while providing ample levity through its character interactions. The villains aren’t the most compelling antagonists the series has ever produced, but I found them entertaining enough to hold my interest whenever they were on screen. In particular, a certain recurring secondary antagonist who was introduced in this game quickly became a favorite of mine, and I thoroughly enjoyed all of his appearances.

What really turned me around on the game, though, was the ending sequence - the final dungeon and the final series of bosses. They really impressed me - the encounter rate felt less oppressive, the areas more atmospheric and distinctive, and the bosses more engaging and tense. By the time the credits rolled, I was enjoying myself to a degree that I had only reached while playing some of my favorite Final Fantasy games.

Part of this was thanks to Nobuo Uematsu’s legendary soundtrack, which really kicks into high gear the further you get into the game. Uematsu is easily among my favorite composers, and the Final Fantasy series has consistently my favorite music in any media, which is high praise considering my extensive personal musical background. Final Fantasy V in particular, while not at the top of my personal list, easily rivals some of Uematsu’s most iconic work, and it really cannot be overstated just how much this contributed to my enjoyment of the game.

To address a few stray thoughts, I really enjoyed the overworld of FFV, and the way your ability to explore it progresses over the course of the game. I was initially somewhat bored by the aesthetic, but eventually it started to introduce more distinctive elements that felt a bit less generic. Some of the sidequests in this game are needlessly cryptic or easily missable, and collecting all of the blue magic spells, while satisfying, could occasionally be very frustrating during occasions where a Beastmaster is necessary to force the enemy to cast the relevant spell. I didn’t attempt either of the game’s superbosses, mostly because by the time I was approaching the end of the game, I wasn’t really in a mood to grind out the levels necessary to make them reasonably doable.

In the end, Final Fantasy V was never going to be one of my favorite Final Fantasy games. It’s just not the right aesthetic, and its story and gameplay both ultimately lack the depth required to really make me fall in love with a game. In spite of that, I can finally say that I do enjoy FFV, even if there are a number of entries I enjoy more. For a game that I have historically struggled to love, I think I can settle for liking it.