This is definitely one of the more challenging FF games if you don't know what you're doing—when I was a wee lad, emulating SNES games for the first time without knowing what guides were, I loved this game... up until I got utterly skill check'd by a certain mammoth that shall not be named. Ah, the days of not understanding how job systems work.
After playing a bunch of games with job systems since (shout out to Bravely Default), I kinda grew to appreciate and understand them, and eventually learnt that FF5 was a massive influence for like, every modern job system ever. So of course when I attempted this again as an adult a few weeks ago, I expected the experience to go a lot smoother. I didn't expect too much from the characters/story, as I'd heard this one was a lot more gameplay focused than say, FF4, so I kept my expectations in check there. But still, despite usually caring about story/characters over gameplay, a part of me was really excited to see this unfinished experience from my childhood through to the end.
So to start with, this is obviously a significant improvement on like, everything FFIII introduced. Jobs are generally more useful, and the game rewards you for switching between them with its new job mastery system. I was a huge fan of how creative the jobs were, each coming with their usages: bard buffing your party in crazy ways while being defensively vulnerable, samurai literally throwing money to do massive damage to enemies, ninjas being able to use two weapons at once, and so on.
Of course, the real fun comes once you've mastered a few jobs and can use their abilities on other jobs, and man there are some fun combos. Combining the ninja's dual weapons with the ranger's rapid shot leads to genuinely absurd damage numbers, and best of all this feels by design; the game encourages you to break it. So many bosses have hidden weaknesses that with enough knowledge of this games' systems, you can absolutely nuke them. There's even superbosses that basically require you to break the game to beat, it's wild. Unlike previous FF games, I never got bored of the gameplay here, there's always new job combos to try and tricks to learn; the depth of mastery is frankly quite staggering for a SNES RPG. Not to mention the fun times you can have with the freelancer and mime jobs by the end...
In terms of the story, it can be pretty campy, and generally goes for a much more light-hearted tone than FF4. I can see why people wouldn't be as much of a fan of this, coming off of the previous game. The cast are also more of a ragtag gang rather than individuals directly related to the plot conflicts, setting this apart from FF4 even further.
Ohoho, now this is where things get spicy though: I'm of the opinion that... 🥁... FF5 has a MUCH better story and cast than 4. Now I'm not going to go too into this as this isn't a FF4 review and I don't want to spoil that game wholesale, but what it really comes down to is that 5 feels so much more alive to me. While not on the level of 6 (which I'm playing at the time of writing), it has a lot more dialogue than 4, and this does wonders for establishing chemistry of the cast. I cared about them more in like, the first hour. I'm also going to contradict what I said earlier, and say they actually do relate heavily to the plot conflicts, just more in thematic ways. At the end of the day, FF5 is all about how different people handle loss from a more grounded perspective, and I thought the execution was absolutely fantastic. Not to mention the villain does a fantastic job at embodying this conflict, while also being weirdly lovable in its shameless malevolence and cheesy villain speeches.
Best of all, this game knows have to have fun. After enduring the rather dreary story of 4, this was a welcome change a pace, with some amazing comedy that rivals even like, Tales (a favourite of mine) and its hilarious skits. I was really impressed by how well it balanced light hearted moments with heavier ones (and boy does this game get surprisingly heavy), always walking the tightrope between both without falling one way or the other. Plus, Gilgamesh is hands down the best villain of the first five games, you can't tell me otherwise.
Now I'm not saying this game is perfect... there are parts that could have used more dialogue imo, and from what I've played of 6, the team had clearly improved at this and become much more ambitious in their storytelling. Faris and Lenna also have areas of the story (particularly in Act 2) where their individual traits aren't as emphasised as I'd like. But overall, I think V's story is a good exercise in why quality is often better than quantity, and sometimes a more straightforward tale of good and evil works well. Cause frankly, 4's story really becomes a mess later on with its ridiculous twists and lack of understanding of what made its early beats so strong.
Overall I'm not berating 4 for being pretty messy, as it was literally one of the first RPGs ever to be so story focused and kind of set the trend for that, so ofc it'd be rough around the edges. I just felt the need to expand on this, as I went into 5 expecting it to be a step down based on what a lot of people say, and subsequently found myself VERY surprised.
As for my favourite character? Obviously Gilgamesh, but if I have to pick a protagonist, I would say... Bartz? I'm very surprised at myself by this, as I usually find his archetype kinda boring, but he's oddly charming and has an unexpectedly engaging arc. I love all of them of course, including you-know-who, but at the end of the day, Bartz sticks out in my mind the most. I also like how he doesn't really hog the show with his role as main character, they feel more like an ensemble cast at the end of the day. Oh and my goodness, their restraint with not pairing him with any of the girls in the party was impressive, love my platonic gang.
Since I played the Pixel Remaster, I should comment on that: remixed soundtrack is amazing, and they did an incredible job with remixes like Battle on the Big Bridge (the trumpets are here!) and Home, Sweet Home. Usually when I hear someone like Uematsu is 'supervising' I'm a little sceptical, but it's kind of undeniable here with how faithful everything is. Boosts were very welcome for late game, which expects some level of grinding if you want to really push the job system to its limits, and with how stingy that final dungeon is with save points, I'm not sure if I wouldn't finished the game without quick/auto saves. Visually, it's simply gorgeous, a very faithful modern recreation unless I get insanely picky with comparing every single texture something something system limitations create art (this is unironically true, but there's something to be said for how much love they put into these pixel remasters). Aaaand as always, I can't get enough of these minimaps, having to bumble my way around these artificial labyrinths with my terrible sense of direction (not helped by random encounters!) has always made dungeons in older rpgs pretty unpleasant for me.
The lack of the GBA content is a shame, as from what I've read it seems really cool, but honestly I'd take these QoL improvements any day, I don't have the time and patience I used to. Not to say that we should really need to pick one or the other, but... ah well, no point getting too caught up in what could have been.
But yes, FFV is amazing, and imo it's a travesty that it's the least recommended of the SNES titles (from my experience anyway). Give this game a shot if you're insane enough to have read this entire review without doing that!
After playing a bunch of games with job systems since (shout out to Bravely Default), I kinda grew to appreciate and understand them, and eventually learnt that FF5 was a massive influence for like, every modern job system ever. So of course when I attempted this again as an adult a few weeks ago, I expected the experience to go a lot smoother. I didn't expect too much from the characters/story, as I'd heard this one was a lot more gameplay focused than say, FF4, so I kept my expectations in check there. But still, despite usually caring about story/characters over gameplay, a part of me was really excited to see this unfinished experience from my childhood through to the end.
So to start with, this is obviously a significant improvement on like, everything FFIII introduced. Jobs are generally more useful, and the game rewards you for switching between them with its new job mastery system. I was a huge fan of how creative the jobs were, each coming with their usages: bard buffing your party in crazy ways while being defensively vulnerable, samurai literally throwing money to do massive damage to enemies, ninjas being able to use two weapons at once, and so on.
Of course, the real fun comes once you've mastered a few jobs and can use their abilities on other jobs, and man there are some fun combos. Combining the ninja's dual weapons with the ranger's rapid shot leads to genuinely absurd damage numbers, and best of all this feels by design; the game encourages you to break it. So many bosses have hidden weaknesses that with enough knowledge of this games' systems, you can absolutely nuke them. There's even superbosses that basically require you to break the game to beat, it's wild. Unlike previous FF games, I never got bored of the gameplay here, there's always new job combos to try and tricks to learn; the depth of mastery is frankly quite staggering for a SNES RPG. Not to mention the fun times you can have with the freelancer and mime jobs by the end...
In terms of the story, it can be pretty campy, and generally goes for a much more light-hearted tone than FF4. I can see why people wouldn't be as much of a fan of this, coming off of the previous game. The cast are also more of a ragtag gang rather than individuals directly related to the plot conflicts, setting this apart from FF4 even further.
Ohoho, now this is where things get spicy though: I'm of the opinion that... 🥁... FF5 has a MUCH better story and cast than 4. Now I'm not going to go too into this as this isn't a FF4 review and I don't want to spoil that game wholesale, but what it really comes down to is that 5 feels so much more alive to me. While not on the level of 6 (which I'm playing at the time of writing), it has a lot more dialogue than 4, and this does wonders for establishing chemistry of the cast. I cared about them more in like, the first hour. I'm also going to contradict what I said earlier, and say they actually do relate heavily to the plot conflicts, just more in thematic ways. At the end of the day, FF5 is all about how different people handle loss from a more grounded perspective, and I thought the execution was absolutely fantastic. Not to mention the villain does a fantastic job at embodying this conflict, while also being weirdly lovable in its shameless malevolence and cheesy villain speeches.
Best of all, this game knows have to have fun. After enduring the rather dreary story of 4, this was a welcome change a pace, with some amazing comedy that rivals even like, Tales (a favourite of mine) and its hilarious skits. I was really impressed by how well it balanced light hearted moments with heavier ones (and boy does this game get surprisingly heavy), always walking the tightrope between both without falling one way or the other. Plus, Gilgamesh is hands down the best villain of the first five games, you can't tell me otherwise.
Now I'm not saying this game is perfect... there are parts that could have used more dialogue imo, and from what I've played of 6, the team had clearly improved at this and become much more ambitious in their storytelling. Faris and Lenna also have areas of the story (particularly in Act 2) where their individual traits aren't as emphasised as I'd like. But overall, I think V's story is a good exercise in why quality is often better than quantity, and sometimes a more straightforward tale of good and evil works well. Cause frankly, 4's story really becomes a mess later on with its ridiculous twists and lack of understanding of what made its early beats so strong.
Overall I'm not berating 4 for being pretty messy, as it was literally one of the first RPGs ever to be so story focused and kind of set the trend for that, so ofc it'd be rough around the edges. I just felt the need to expand on this, as I went into 5 expecting it to be a step down based on what a lot of people say, and subsequently found myself VERY surprised.
As for my favourite character? Obviously Gilgamesh, but if I have to pick a protagonist, I would say... Bartz? I'm very surprised at myself by this, as I usually find his archetype kinda boring, but he's oddly charming and has an unexpectedly engaging arc. I love all of them of course, including you-know-who, but at the end of the day, Bartz sticks out in my mind the most. I also like how he doesn't really hog the show with his role as main character, they feel more like an ensemble cast at the end of the day. Oh and my goodness, their restraint with not pairing him with any of the girls in the party was impressive, love my platonic gang.
Since I played the Pixel Remaster, I should comment on that: remixed soundtrack is amazing, and they did an incredible job with remixes like Battle on the Big Bridge (the trumpets are here!) and Home, Sweet Home. Usually when I hear someone like Uematsu is 'supervising' I'm a little sceptical, but it's kind of undeniable here with how faithful everything is. Boosts were very welcome for late game, which expects some level of grinding if you want to really push the job system to its limits, and with how stingy that final dungeon is with save points, I'm not sure if I wouldn't finished the game without quick/auto saves. Visually, it's simply gorgeous, a very faithful modern recreation unless I get insanely picky with comparing every single texture something something system limitations create art (this is unironically true, but there's something to be said for how much love they put into these pixel remasters). Aaaand as always, I can't get enough of these minimaps, having to bumble my way around these artificial labyrinths with my terrible sense of direction (not helped by random encounters!) has always made dungeons in older rpgs pretty unpleasant for me.
The lack of the GBA content is a shame, as from what I've read it seems really cool, but honestly I'd take these QoL improvements any day, I don't have the time and patience I used to. Not to say that we should really need to pick one or the other, but... ah well, no point getting too caught up in what could have been.
But yes, FFV is amazing, and imo it's a travesty that it's the least recommended of the SNES titles (from my experience anyway). Give this game a shot if you're insane enough to have read this entire review without doing that!