Juego muy hermoso, siendo sincero. Me recordó en cierta parte mi experiencia con Final Fantasy VI. Su ost es muy buena, la historia al igual que la del 4 son bastante buenas, obviamente no llegan al nivel del 6, pero veo un claro avance de lo que los desarrolladores querían llegar a hacer. Me encanta Final Fantasy, quiero jugarme ahora sí al 7. La mecánica de las profesiones, si sabes cómo utilizarlas y combinarlas puedes hacerte un monstruo de ataque o magia. Aprendiz y Mimetizador están bien pensadas, un poco rotas pero lo veo bien. Creo que lo de las profesiones inspiro a FFVI para la cantidad de personajes que hay ahí, cada uno teniendo diferentes habilidades. Supongo que lo quisieron hacer así para no repetirlas ni sentir que tiene menos contenido. Mi paso por la primera trilogía importante para la saga (IV, V, VI), ha sido prolongada de gran manera, pero he disfrutado muchísimo esos 3, solo me faltó el III, pero quiero jugarme mejor a los siguientes (7.8.9). Creo que al final se va a convertir esta saga algo como Castlevania, que ha sido importantísimo para mí los juegos de Castlevania, así que los FF no dudo en que también lleguen a ser importantes. Ninguno de los dos se le va a comparar a los Oddworld eso si JSHJDHJK

Diría que es el Final Fantasy más infravalorado.
Si bien no tiene un argumento tan trágico y los personajes tiran mucho del humor... El gameplay se me hizo divertidísimo, el cambio de trabajos, las combinaciones y los combates me engancharon de tal manera que lo completé entero, con todos los trabajos de todos los personajes a tope. También me gustó muchísimo el mundo tan colorido que tiene, aunque tiene sus escenas oscuras, los personajes no tienen mucha profundidad, pero son divertidos. (El pelo rosa de Lenna es mi cosa favorita del juego). Además también tiene una de las escenas con uno de los temas y personajes más emblemáticos de la saga: ¡Gilgamesh!

Definitely the weakest of the SNES Final Fantasies, but that's maybe the highest bar for quality in all of video games. I like it more every time I play it though, my latest run on the Pixel Remaster was a real delight. The characters don't feel like they have quite as much personality as 4 or 6, but they're still a fun hang. Grinding AP for jobs is still a bit of a chore, but when you get endgame Freelancers with an insane variety of abilities to mix and match it feels awesome. Great music as always for a SNES RPG, so glad Battle on the Big Bridge became the Gilgamesh theme for the series

And my adventure through the Final Fantasy games on Super Famicom comes to an end with one I've never actually beaten before! Popo gave me a guide to how the job system works, and I got right to work. And 34-ish hours later, I'm done! I didn't do anything absurd like maxing out every job, but I did do all the sidequests to get all the spells and super weapons and such. And also like FFIV, I played through this on my Wii U Virtual Console, so I played it in Japanese and with the benefit of a save state (so I needed to reset properly for deaths and such a lot less, basically).

On a presentation level, FFV falls right between FFIV and FFVI in basically every respect, as one might expect it to. The only slight exception is with music, which I have to put V at the bottom of that list for, as while Clash at Big Bridge is a GREAT song, basically every other song in the game is really forgettable. The environmental and monster graphics look beautiful though, as do the animations.

The combat is a really nice sister experience to FFVI (which is basically just FFIV but better) with its big ol' job system. I personally prefer FFVI more, if only because FFV does a fairly terrible job at actually informing the player about very large swaths of mechanics that the job system contains. Even things as basic as how many levels are in a certain job or what those levels unlock are entirely unmentioned until you just go and unlock them. If you don't have the patience for a LOT of experimentation and grinding, or you aren't willing to use a guide like I did, you are probably going to bounce off of FFV very hard, especially in its 3rd act (exactly like I did when I attempted to play through the PS1 version when I was younger). But I did use a guide for it, and had a lot of fun optimizing my team incrementally as I unlocked more jobs~. A lot of your enjoyment of the combat system in this game will be a lot on how you enjoy experiencing your RPG combat, but as long as you know what you're getting into, you'll probably have a good time. To reiterate, FFV's job system is not a bad system, it's just a very poorly explained one for the level of complexity it actually has.

The story is also a really nice advancement on IV's narrative. Because it can't rely on a character's combat job to do legwork for developing their character (as IV does a lot), V spends a lot more time developing the characters as people via their interactions between each other and with other NPCs, and it's done really well. It's use of overall themes isn't nearly as well done as VI does it (Exdeath is basically Kefka if Kefka had a story presence but no actual characterization), but its uses of comedy and levity break tone far less heavily than VI's do. Aside from some fairly serious issues I have with Faris' character (about whom I'm currently writing an entirely separate essay about), I really enjoyed the characterization methods used in V, and it's fairly easy to see how these translated to how VI would do its storytelling (right down to the final act of the game being far more non-linear with lots of optional side-goodies you're encouraged, but not required, to get).

Verdict: Recommended. This just barely doesn't make a "highly recommended" status because the caveat of being adequately prepared to deal with the job system is SUCH a big one. That withstanding, however, it's a fantastic game, and an excellent parallel experience to FFVI on the Super Famicom. What it does well it does nearly as well as VI, or does an entirely different way to VI such as to make V stand very well on its own as simply a game for a different kind of JRPG fan.

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.

From the 1-6 Remaster

First time playing V and yes, the job system is very cool, but the world for which you have to play around with this system just isn't that interesting, applied to characters that don't carry any emotional weight to them.

Exdeath is a tremendous shitweasel of a villian though.

I went into this one kinda expecting it to be a weird middle entry in between the acclaimed VI and IV, walked out pleasantly surprised and the game ended up being a personal favorite of mine. The characters and story aren’t the most fleshed out in the world but charming nonetheless. Gilgamesh is easily the highlight of this game, and would go on to be a recurring character in many Final Fantasy games. The main party is nice too, the smaller number of them compared to other RPG parties makes each of them memorable and they each have their little moments. Exdeath is also a cool villain, one of those antagonists from an iconic video game no one talks about but I’m weirdly fond of anyway and half of it is probably because of good theme music. The expansive job system of this game also makes your small party very customizable and the game pretty replayable, and is one of the main things everyone praises about the game. Overall, definitely don’t skip this Final Fantasy game, it’s a nice time.

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 safe 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

Fantastic job system, but ultimately the game failed to keep me entertain because of weird pacing and imo not so good dungeon design in comparison to IV.

Also, the story and characters is a huge step back from IV. Hell, I even got more entertained by the story of III.

A shame cause the job system is fun (even if grindy if you want to max a few for each characters)

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.

"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

FFV is a game that I have played many times before, a game that I was playing, and a game that I will play again in the future. I like the characters and their poignant little story moments and the world of FFV. That makes it more satisfying to play the endlessly fascinating game system - not just the jobs and skills, but also all the quirks of the equipment! It's as deep as you want it to be.

It goes without saying but the music is excellent and sounds great in its original form. The character design is good too, and especially all the outfits and the enemy sprites are cool too... The story is simple, yet enjoyable. The third act has a bit of a long stretch of dungeons that are kinda just there, though, but whatever, it's still one of my favorite games.