Oh man, this is one of my favorite Final Fantasy games ever! Coming fresh off the tail of FF4 comes a game with better music, story, characters, and more! I'm listing the Pixel Remaster version here despite routinely playing the GBA version more, but most of that is cause of patience issues and being able to use emulator speedup through cutscenes I've seen plenty of times before. This version loses a bit of content as does any Pixel Remaster compared to other ports, but in this case I never really play with the GBA content anyways so it doesn't factor into my mind.
Story as a whole takes a step back from the more serious tone of FF4 while still knowing when to be serious and make it count. For every scene of the cast ribbing around there's an equal amount filled with a fair bit of sadness or despair and eventual triumph that really makes them feel like a group of friends on an adventure that blows up to be larger than they could have ever expected. In particular the scene that precedes getting the 5th party member is one I think about almost all the time when I think of this game, and maybe even Final Fantasy as a whole. And the main antagonist of Exdeath is so simple but works so well within the context of the game that he's a real favorite of mine.
The main draw of this game for me however is the gameplay. Expanding on the Job system from 3 we get a more refined version with a bunch of distinct and iconic jobs that all play differently and learn a variety of abilities you can now choose to equip one of to add that extra level of depth to your teambuilding process. Red Mage might be underpowered in exchange for being a jack of all trades, but now if you max that job then the character gets access to the Dualcast ability to now throw on your favorite mage to make them even more of a force to be reckoned with. There's such a variety of party compositions that there's an annual charity event called Final Fantasy 5: Four Job Fiesta that I always take part of every year where you can be randomly assigned 4 jobs depending on the rules you choose and try to beat the game using only those jobs and it really tests your knowledge on encounters and how to handle the endgame where you can choose to go to the final dungeon at any time but miss out on optional rewards.
As a small note to anyone reading this unfamiliar with FF outside of XIV (if anyone even reads these) this is the game where Blue Mage originated from, so if you like that job you should definitely play this game cause I love playing blue mage in this game a lot.
Overall this game is leaps and bounds ahead of FF4 for me, but there are still a few downsides. The biggest one for me is despite really liking the design and character of Faris, they're treated rather poorly at times with scenes like the inn at the beginning of the game where they find out that they've got titties and the men do some awooga faces after seeing them. Also as someone who is transgender I can't say it feels great to see how much they refer to someone that started with "he" in the beginning as a woman. Yes, I understand it was just to be a pirate leader that they would present masculine and I'm not delusional enough to expect an actual trans character in an old game, but also it's my review so why do you care so much.
In the end though, I'm able to say that because of the awesome job system and fun cast this is easily a top 5, maybe even top 3 final fantasy game for me, and if you like job system games at all (Bravely series for a good example) then this game is worth checking out as well!
Story as a whole takes a step back from the more serious tone of FF4 while still knowing when to be serious and make it count. For every scene of the cast ribbing around there's an equal amount filled with a fair bit of sadness or despair and eventual triumph that really makes them feel like a group of friends on an adventure that blows up to be larger than they could have ever expected. In particular the scene that precedes getting the 5th party member is one I think about almost all the time when I think of this game, and maybe even Final Fantasy as a whole. And the main antagonist of Exdeath is so simple but works so well within the context of the game that he's a real favorite of mine.
The main draw of this game for me however is the gameplay. Expanding on the Job system from 3 we get a more refined version with a bunch of distinct and iconic jobs that all play differently and learn a variety of abilities you can now choose to equip one of to add that extra level of depth to your teambuilding process. Red Mage might be underpowered in exchange for being a jack of all trades, but now if you max that job then the character gets access to the Dualcast ability to now throw on your favorite mage to make them even more of a force to be reckoned with. There's such a variety of party compositions that there's an annual charity event called Final Fantasy 5: Four Job Fiesta that I always take part of every year where you can be randomly assigned 4 jobs depending on the rules you choose and try to beat the game using only those jobs and it really tests your knowledge on encounters and how to handle the endgame where you can choose to go to the final dungeon at any time but miss out on optional rewards.
As a small note to anyone reading this unfamiliar with FF outside of XIV (if anyone even reads these) this is the game where Blue Mage originated from, so if you like that job you should definitely play this game cause I love playing blue mage in this game a lot.
Overall this game is leaps and bounds ahead of FF4 for me, but there are still a few downsides. The biggest one for me is despite really liking the design and character of Faris, they're treated rather poorly at times with scenes like the inn at the beginning of the game where they find out that they've got titties and the men do some awooga faces after seeing them. Also as someone who is transgender I can't say it feels great to see how much they refer to someone that started with "he" in the beginning as a woman. Yes, I understand it was just to be a pirate leader that they would present masculine and I'm not delusional enough to expect an actual trans character in an old game, but also it's my review so why do you care so much.
In the end though, I'm able to say that because of the awesome job system and fun cast this is easily a top 5, maybe even top 3 final fantasy game for me, and if you like job system games at all (Bravely series for a good example) then this game is worth checking out as well!
1 Comment
This comment was deleted
hey wow just letting everyone know that faris is trans thanks for listening <3
kccrawlingchaos
1 year ago