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.
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.