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.
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.