MOGSPECTIVE: FINAL FANTASY V

Most of my thoughts are on the GBA version. Buttz will forever be the correct name of the main character and AdamnGolem is the best enemy name besides Y-Burn but the GBA localization cut through how bland the original writing was and gave FF5 the tone it needed: FF5's narrative is the video game equivalent of a popcorn movie or Saturday morning cartoon. It's an adventure across worlds where you team up with buddies and help your dragons and fight against an evil tree-wizard-man-thing that calls itself EXDEATH. Along the way there's character building, discovery, sacrifice, introspection, and a bit where your buddies show up and cheer against the evil TWMT. It isn't very deep nor engaging but it serves its purpose in guiding the narrative and it leaves a good feeling when its done.

FF5 understands the principles of storytelling and tone and it makes decent use of it when the story turns somber or when it's time for a bit of slapstick. It tries to maintain the tone too without radically shifting it too much. There's other improvements too using more visuals and animations to convey a scene than previous games which I like a lot. One of my favorites is when Galuf's memory returns. It isn't just a message box and a pretty fanfare but Galuf throwing away his old ?? balloon emote. The way FF5 does it definitely adds to the Saturday Morning Cartoon feel of it but you also get Galuf vs EXDEATH which is my favorite FF protagonist death scene. Galuf doesn't go super sand legend level five or anything, he still ultimately dies but he gave it his all that was conveyed perfectly with the way FF5 had been presenting itself. FF5 also has the courage to stick with withs big twists and turns. Galuf dies and doesn't come back (okay he is a ghost buddy in the final fight) and is replaced by Krile. It's better than somebody else who I am imagining myself staring at with the fury of a sun MR DONUTS MAN.

I know I'm singing the praises pretty hard for what isn't a great story but it's a solid good one. I'd prefer a feel-good popcorn filler than something trying to go deeper but failing miserably (hello ff4!). I can understand why people wouldn't like it and it's been a while since I've played FF5 (farther without fast forwarding through plot) so it could be worse than what I remember.


Graphics are alright, everything is generally clear and discernible with some life. The lively cutscenes work well to its advantage. The music is good for a SNES game but it has a Chrono Cross issue with that I hate the most common track in the game: The battle theme. Otherwise it has its highs and lows. Have a cool tune! Actually I think FF5 got the best conversion to the GBA soundchip, it's different but it still sounds in place. The FF4 and FF6 GBA conversions are closer to cats in a blender. I'd still take the SNES music over the GBA, it's what I have in my music library, but it isn't grating to listen to.


The gameplay in FF5 is good. It's a great step forward over FF3's mediocre (and FF3DS's disaster of a) job system. Being able to customize your characters with learned abilities was a great idea but it isn't without its flaws. Kentona touched on it briefly but one problem is that you can't plan out your ability progression. Without a strategy guide (or maybe it's laid out in the manual, but my point is founded on information the game tells you) you don't know what that next ability you learn in a job is. Each battle has an opportunity cost in the Ability Points you earn could've been allocated to a better job and it can be frustrating pumping a pile of AP into somebody to get a useless ability like HP+10%.

The one ability slot creates another problem already mentioned that how much you can customize is drastically limited and it makes a cutthroat fight to what gets that one slot. Ability moves are largely better than any passive and that's before the Freelancer gets all beneficial mastered passive. Passives become largely filler on the way to mastering a class, there's rarely a cool ability at the end that you can build brand new strategies with. Unless it's a challenge run nobody gives a shit about Equip Lances. The ability moves are a far cry from equal too, Blue Mage gets a free Libra for the same slot and 250 AP as the entire White Mage library.

The job system was great and innovative for its time but it has also grown very long in the tooth. The Four Job Fiesta helps mitigate a lot of its issues of everybody becoming a Dual Wielding !RapidFire murderhobo. It locks out Freelancer too so you might find a use for some of the passive abilities to shore up some class issues, late-game Monk weapons springs to mind. You just might get a setup that brings out how unbalanced the jobs are though, Monk/Red Mage/Geomancer/Dancer is a combo I wouldn't want to play at all. Bravely Default is an iteration on the FF5 job system that fixes some issues but not without adding some of its own.

I do enjoy playing the game but I wanted to give some of my criticisms of the FF5's job system. I think it can still be a ton of fun trying to make some combos work or finding new strategies. Rebalancing, seeing some ways up the AP tree, more ability slots, BD's cool unlockable high-tier abilities, and innate passives would be some ways that I'd personally try to improve on it.


One of the neat things I like about FF5's bosses is the variety of ways you can shut them down and beat them or bypass their gimmicks. Sometimes it is strategy guide / you did the right random thing and you won (Sleep on Atomos, you can lock him down with Sleep Blade else you're facing one of the harder bosses) which highlights the eternal issue with status effects RPGs have. There's a LP of FF5 where outside the starting goblin fights the runner doens't get a single drop of EXP and gets up to Neo-Exdeath without getting any AP that wasn't mandatory. The Four Job Fiesta can also bring up some interesting strategies. Somebody in this thread even brought up fighting a boss and having to come up with an unusual strat on the fly with the Healing Staff and Vampire.

I think FF5 is one of the best balanced FF games partly because of how kids and newbies can struggle but find a way to beat a boss. Most FF games can be beat by the dog chewing on the controller. There's still plenty of issues with missable stuff that's really good or needs far too much knowledge of how the game works to effectively use (Chemists and Beastmasters) or just plain don't know (element boosting gear or cracking rods are the biggest I can think of). It isn't well designed but I still loving hearing about the weird shit some people had to do to beat the game with their hand.

tl;dr I like ff5

e: I know it's scatterbrained but I wrote that over lunch and I don't care enough to edit and refine my train(wreck) of thoughts