Intro
I have the other version fron 2014 I believe with the wacky graphics and the ridiculous amount of achievements but will save that for another time. I'm kind of looking forward to playing those 2014 versions at some point.
FF5 is the jobs system game, while jobs/classes have been in plenty of them so far this is the definitive one and it was pretty damn good.
Main characters/cast
Bartz/Buttz is a bit slow, and that’s OK. That’s all I knw going into it and sure enough there are a bunch of dialogue scenes where he has to have stuff repeated to him. It actually suited me as I’m an idiot so having them explain the wacky plot twice was useful. I started him out as a Knight and gradually worked through all the physical classes with him.
Lenna is a princess and we’re introduced to her right away. She has an affinity with animals which is fun as she regularly makes allies with dragons and Moogles. Good thing to have! She was a white mage to start and would almost always have White Magic as her secondary ability no matter what job she had.
Galuf is the funny older guy and was a member of the Dawn Warriors so despite having amnesia initially he remembers everything eventually and is integral to the plot. I had him serve as a secondary fighter and he graduated into lighter fighter classes like Monk and Thief faster than Bartz.
Faris/Sarisa is a princess pirate captain who briefly imprisons the group but ultimately decides to align with them and help them restore the crystals. She is aided for a time first by her pirate crew and also the water beast Syldra who I loved. She was my first Blue Mage but would later serve mainly as Black Mage and so on but would usually have the Blue Mage ‘Learn’ ability equipped in case the right magic was cast at us.
Battle
Much the same, though more ATB than previous entries. I had the battle speed at very high and I say that probably worked against me a lot as enemies would get shots in while I was trying to figure out what option to select between Attack-Ability 1-Ability 2-Item usually. Once I had a nice set up I would just auto battle and they would repeat whatever I told them to do.
I did like how it required even more intervention on my part, there were many things to consider certain enemies would punish you for using magic or hitting them physically. Very very few enemies required me to Steal from them, Gilgamesh one of the handful.
Many battles in the midgame required me to Control the enemy with Beastmaster ability then have them use their special Blue Magic on the party to get the ability myself.
Minigames
None as usual! Maybe in 6?
Music/Graphics
Now 1,3 and 4 had decent soundtracks nothing particularly memorable but nice all the same; 2 I quite liked to listen to while prepping DND and stuff there were some good ones in there. 5 is the best soundtrack I’ve heard of the lot so far! The overworld themes were good to great, the dungeon themes were cool, the final two dungeon themes were awesome as well as the boss and battle themes. Not to mention the Big Bridge of course, which I think 12 did better but here is the original one, remastered. Also the Chocobo theme slapped.
The pixel sprites for all the jobs are ridiculously charming.
Plot/Villain/Allies/NPCs
This is the longest FF I’ve played in a while, certainly of the pixel remasters. About 50 hours and only the last 5 hours maybe were me grinding. So it’s hard to recall precisely but basically the 4 crystals we know and love are being harnessed for power and making life better for the citizens of this FF world (sound familiar). But then they start to break. The wind stops blowing, seas go calm etc. Your team are summoned by destiny to restore the crystals which are mysteriously shattering.
And then the villain is introduced! Well, not really. Exdeath is sort of hinted at and then eventually revealed but he is manipulating events and people to destroy the crystals. He wants to harness the power of the Void, which I presumed would be some sort of final boss space flea and I was right! Exdeath would appear a lot more in the second half of the game so he developed himself into a worthy foe. He also had an interesting background as being from the Forest of Moore, which would play into the final battles.
Your allies are more consistent, Bartz is from the tiny town of Lix which I believe is optional but they all like him there. Lenna as a princess is regularly hassled by the Chancellor of her kingdom to stay and stop adventuring and on numerous occasions you have to go back and spend a night in the castle to advance the plot. Galuf has his granddaughter who is vital to the plot later and his fellow Dawn Warriors to assist him. Faris is an outlier in that her pirate crew don’t really come up again. And just like FF4 the NPCs of the various towns and cities are interesting and their dialogue changes over time, a little bit but its appreciated.
The gooey
Here we go. Jobs. I did really like them in fairness. The hardest part about them was some didn't’ hold up on their own for me unless combined with other abilities learned from another job, and just grinding them to master level.
There are so many different possibilities but as I stated above I would have characters as a job say Lenna as a Chemist so she was locked into using Mix/Drink, but her secondary ability would be White Magic. Faris I might have been doing the same job but my secondary ability would be Learn/Blue -Black-Time Magic. The two fighter characters might have the passive ability Two Handed so when they attacked they would do more damage.
So while there were near infinite combos available I stuck to a fairly reliable set of moves. As I said above, Steal wasn’t vital but the passive abilities like Sprint, Vigilance and First Strike from various jobs were useful. Summon was very powerful as many bosses were vulnerable to particular types of summon. Dual Wield and Rapid Fire were very powerful and are and maybe when I play the original Steam version I will need them to beat the bonus dungeon, which is not in this remaster. For my playthrough they were a bit slow and underpowered at times to be using all the time so with only one or two slots free for abilities choices had to be made.
Most battles and situations had me attacking with the two warrior characters, Lenna casting White Magic and Faris using some sort of offensive magic. This could change depending on the situation. Also the auto battle was smart - if you made one character chuck a single Hi Potion or target a single ally with Cure for example they would throw it at the weakest party member HP-wise. So if an enemy attacked Bartz Lenna would heal him on her turn and so on. Usually I just targeted the group but this was handy in the late game when MP was short and enemies were tough.
The best classes were the Mimic and the Freelancer; Mimic allowed you to pick a whopping three abilities you had learned as well as having access to Mimic, which I learned from my FF7 playthrough is near god mode level good. Just don’t forget to give yourself ‘Attack’ or ‘Item’ if you need them, they are not defaults! The Freelancer was good as every job you mastered a bonus would carry over to it, so by mastering them all you powered up your Freelancer a load. The default sprite of each character is the Freelancer model too, while if you are currently a Black Mage the sprite is that of a Black Mage. The sprites were gorgeous in this one and some very cute/thoughtful models were used.
It was funny - there was a ‘see hidden passages’ ability in this game and there are only a fraction of the hidden passages as the previous entries. Could have used that in FF3!
Mix is like Rikku Mix in that there are a number of extremely potent combos that could decimate the strategies of high-level bosses but it's just not necessary. Maybe in the bonus dungeon (the other version of the game on Steam) but not here.
Blue Magic by contrast is very fun to collect in my opinion, some frustrating ones but rewarding when you get them all the same. Some of them are very powerful like Mighty Guard and White Wind (old faves of mine) but not essential. You’re often better just whipping the enemies to death the old fashioned way than using any of them for long.
Conclusion
Definitely the best of the bunch so far from 1 onwards. While the plot and characters are arguably weaker than 2 (I really liked 2) and certainly weaker than 7 onward, it had such a charming OST, world and job system that pushed it into the lead.
I got all the achievements 100% once again thanks to lylat and prius’ guide. I don't mind saying, life is short and mine is busy so I can’t and won’t spend it figuring out every little thing to get everything out of the game.
I got to level 50 after a few hours of grinding in the rift castle passage, then spent a few hours mastering the remaining jobs for my characters. 2 of them had most of the mage classes down while 2 had the warrior ones so I just had to switch it around. The Mover enemy in the rift at the second last screen before the final boss granted loads of money and ability points so it was a breeze when I got things sorted. I could just use Zeninage over and over and throw money at enemies to win.
In sum I'm definitely looking forward to playing 5 again via the 2014 Steam version after looking over these screenshots. I have also finished 6 recently so will upload a post about that in a few weeks.
