Final Fantasy V (Tweaks v2.5)

[DF]

Finally. Not actually joking, but I've either attempted to finish this five times before, or this was attempt #5. Or if I'm off, it sure feels like five! Now the only Final Fantasy games to beat are XI, XIII, its sequels, XV, and a bunch of spin-offs or related titles. And everything else I'm forgetting...

Retroarch says I was done in 22h 45m.

What is Final Fantasy V?

It's the fifth game in the long-running JRPG series. Like the other games, you run into enemies in random encounters and beat the crap out of them to slowly grow stronger, but this game sees a return of the Job System from Final Fantasy III and refines it. Not only are there more classes to use, you can also learn active and passive Abilities from one class and bring them over to another!

Five golden heroes. Four shiny Crystals. Three vast worlds. Two Chocobos. And a demon-infested tree in a suit of armor. This Christmas...better sharpen your axe 'cause the one tree's out for blood!

What is the Tweaks hack?

Available here.[www.romhacking.net]

It's not only a translation of the Japanese version of the game, it's also a number of different hacks all merged together. Many of the hacks are bugfixes or quality of life in nature, so the game isn't much different from vanilla. It was designed to be a great experience for newcomers and veterans, and that's why I ultimately went with this hack and edition of the game despite getting kind of far in Final Fantasy V Advance in another hack. I figured I may as well actually try a game somewhat vanilla and the original version at that for a change.

For this run, I used v2.3 through v2.5 but didn't upgrade when another update was released.

Gameplay

The game fairly quickly introduces you to the four heroes you'll be using for the rest of the game with the fifth coming in near the middle. You initially have no access to Jobs, but every Crystal you visit awards you with an assortment to use. Each Job has its own restrictions on equipment plus they get their own specific command like !Guard or !Kick. You're left with one slot to fill with either another command to use in battle or a passive effect like Cover or Two-Handed.

Every Job has a number of Job Levels that increase as you earn ABP from defeating enemies. Every new threshold grants you either a new Ability to use in other classes or improves upon one you know already. A Knight might learn !Guard despite that being their class-specific Ability, but then you can !Guard as any other class, even a Black Mage. Sometimes you learn an Ability that the class doesn't innately have access to like Ninja learning !Image despite !Throw being their exclusive Ability. Magic classes are interesting too.

First, spells are shared between the party, so you'll only need to buy any specific spell once. Oh, and a majority of spells are bought instead of being learned by leveling up. Being in a class like Summoner or White Mage gives that character full access to the class' known spells. Leveling up these classes unlocks and improves the command for said spells for other classes, so !White Lv1 only allows access to Cure and the other spells in the first row while !White Lv2 unlocks the second row while retaining the first and so on. If your Knight needs Cure2 to keep up with healing, you're going to need to send them through more White Mage levels to use it!

When you finally finish the last level for a Job, you Master it. Now what? Start training something else, of course, but the first class Bare/Freelancer/Jobless and the 'final' class Mime gets all of that character's Mastered Job passives. So, let's say you take Bartz through Thief and Monk all the way. Bartz as a Mime or Freelancer immediately is able to move faster in dungeons by holding B, prevent back attacks, can deal serious damage barehanded, has a chance to counterattack when hit by a physical enemy attack, and gets the best of both Jobs' stats! You don't even need to slot in any Ability or the like. But you only get these benefits if you actually Master the class, so only getting partway won't give Freelancer/Mime anything for free. And there is one exception in Berserker not giving Auto-Berserk to these two classes, so you have nothing to lose by putting every Job to Master other than a serious time investment.

Having one slot (or two as Freelancer or three as Mime) opens the door to some customization. You're always stuck with !Fight and !Item as every class but Mime, but that one slot can open up some interesting options. What if you took your White Mage through a few Dragoon levels to let them use !Lance to steal some HP and MP from enemies to keep the heals coming? Or you gave your Knight the Dual Wield from Ninja to wreck foes with two knight swords? Or a Summoner !Time Lv6 so when they're not nuking the field, they can buff/debuff? The only limit is how much time you're willing to spend in another class to get the Ability you want to use elsewhere.

Apart from the Job System, this Final Fantasy plays mostly the same as many of the other entries in the series. Something I noticed was that you seemed to trade up on vehicles really fast at least in the first world. You don't get to keep the vehicles moving between worlds, so you'll go from having a surprisingly early airship to being stuck walking on land again.

Gameplay Modes, Minigames, and Character Classes

I don't think there was anything significant for modes or minigames.

For character classes, you get an ever-growing number as you journey through the first world with Mime opening in the third if you know where to look.

Knight
They can wear heavy armor and use knight swords. They can !Guard to completely nullify physical attacks and Cover to take single-target physical hits for allies in critical health. Some weapons can be Two-Handed to deal more damage than normal with one of the Knight's skills.

Monk
They wear light armor and are deadly if left unarmed, hitting twice if both hands are empty. They can !Kick the entire screen of foes and learn how to !Focus and wait to deal more damage with their attacks. Foes who hit them may suffer a Counter!

Ranger
Adept with bows, they can use !Aim to guarantee perfect accuracy on normal attacks, summon !Animals to provide a variety of effects, and can even eventually use !X-Fight/!Rapid Fire to deal four hits at half damage across random targets.

Geomancer
They attack with bells and trigger localized natural destruction with !Gaia, but the effects are random depending on the battlefield location. They're able to Find Pits hidden in some dungeons to keep from being sent to the floor below, and Light Step allows them to walk on damaging floors safely.

There are just over 20 different classes to make use of with each teaching a large number of Abilities. What combinations will you find effective?

Microtransactions/Add-On Content

Nothing here.

How I Played

I really dragged my feet on this one. One of the last encounters in the first world really killed my momentum, and I didn't pick the pace back up after. At least I didn't get lost so much in the second world this time where my run in Advance petered out.

I tried not to escape from any battles, but the three-in-one Blue Dragon in Exdeath's Castle brought that streak to an end. I still fought almost every battle that came my way apart from the unknown monsters on the way to Mime and a few other 'too annoying to deal with' encounters. I forgot to pick up the Brave Blade or Chicken Knife, so the number of escapes didn't matter anyway!

I also didn't do any intentional grinding other than on Cur Nakks outside of Karnak for money. I ended with everyone at or near level 39.

As for how each character developed...

Bartz
I had him master White Mage, and he ended up getting Bard fully done in one late-game dungeon. I had him work on Thief at times and just finished that in the final dungeon. He ultimately served as healer and support, though having !Sing on a healer is problematic since some Songs lock down the character until they're physically hit, meaning no on-demand heals.

Lenna
I had her master Monk ASAP though it was still a good ways into the second world before that happened. Once done, I took her through Ranger. The reason for that was to not only get Barehanded as a Freelancer/Mime, but I could use !X-Fight to hit four times...or since having two empty hands technically is dual-wielding, this resulted in eight hits at half-strength. She was effectively a tactical physical nuke. Less effective against groups, sure, but if there was one target left and they weren't evasive, she'd chew through their health quickly.

Faris
Faris was the other physical powerhouse. I initially went for Mystic Knight to not only make use of armor and heavier weapons, but because I was keeping up on Black Magic spells, I could have Faris pull double-duty on physical and magical damage. Sadly, I didn't use !Enchant all that much afterwards. I later took Faris through Knight and Ninja, and I took two Dragon Spears to the final battle...and then just spammed !Gil Toss and !Mimic to take out the second form of the final boss.

Galuf
I had him work on Black Mage and then Time Mage to act as magical nuker. Geomancer was a quick Master, but it was a little annoying having to slot back in Light Step in some dungeons to avoid taking damage every step. By the endgame, I was using Meteo on just about everything that didn't counter magic. Four fairly strong hits randomized across all available targets made it a magical !X-Fight, but it still was pretty effective!

I didn't do every sidequest available, and doing the four tablets quest was kind of a bore (especially because I didn't use most of the rewards!), but I think I saw almost everything there was to see in the game. I didn't even try to take on Omega or Shinryu. Even though Omega barred the way in one dungeon, and I had to save state a few times just to safely get around him. I don't even remember if that was a mandatory part of the dungeon, come to think of it...

Controls

The Dpad moves you around in the field and moves the cursor for battle. Something neat I never realized the game could do was put the four basic battle commands in a diamond formation. Instead of scrolling down through a list, you'd just hit up/down/left/right to move to the relevant command. It's very slightly faster than just going one at a time through the list, but it's still kinda cool. When you have a Thief in the party or have Sprint enabled, you can move quite faster in the field by holding B. X brings up the camp menu in the field, and A confirms, B cancels.

I noticed that there isn't a way to swap between characters on the Equip/Magic/Stats menu like you can in later games/Final Fantasy V Advance, so that took some getting used to. It stands out as weird because the shoulder buttons don't see much use outside of battle. Or any use?

Difficulty

Most of the game was manageable, but some of the bosses and some later encounters were especially hard. I mentioned the Blue Dragon in Exdeath's Castle earlier, and that was a challenge I eventually ran from because of how that fight worked. The game says there were three enemies, but only one was visible, and only one took damage even from full-party magic. But all three sure could hit my team just fine!

There were a couple of others I don't really remember too well now. Behemoths in the final area counter physical hits with strong physicals of their own or magic with Meteo of their own, so I should've run from them.

Some dungeons were difficult more for puzzle/layout reasons than the fights present. Some areas felt like they had high encounter rates, but this thankfully wasn't the norm across the board.

A lot of the difficulty you'll face depends on what classes your team uses plus how much grinding you've done up to that point. Taking an hour or two off to beat up statues in Castle Bal's basement can defang the next few hours of the game. And not to mention the more classes Mastered, the stronger you'll be going into the grand finale. You won't need to worry about ABP for the final fight, so why not go Freelancer/Mime?

I had a good 20 Elixirs or so from regular play/Stealing, and I ended up actually using at least four or five of them just for the MP restore while regular adventuring. Ethers only restore a paltry 40MP per use, so I felt like even with Elixirs being extremely pricey and rare, I wasn't losing much in the exchange.

Saving

You can save freely on the world map and at designated save points in dungeons. You get four save slots to play with, too.

Graphics

Being the 'middle child' of the SNES trilogy, V's 16-bit graphics are still great for the time. Enemy sprites are static, only flashing for regular attacks or spell effects going off for magic. Every character has their own unique appearance for each and every Job. It goes beyond just palette changes, but it's a really nice touch to see that level of detail. It's too bad this doesn't show up in the overworld or in cutscenes. Almost every character and Job combination has their hair visible so you can see when someone's been hit with Old status, turning their hair white.

Some of the battle backgrounds have animated elements to them. It's been forever and a day since I've gone through Final Fantasy VI and I've been putting off IV, but it's kind of neat to see, too.

I noticed that shops were pretty sparse on information. When you select a piece of equipment, the only thing the shop tells you is if the character can equip it or not. There's no indication if it's stronger or weaker than what's already on, and the only way to compare the stats between two items is to have both in your inventory, equip one, and go to equip the other. And that still doesn't tell you about special traits like [Shield]Ice absorbing ice-element damage. These aren't even shown in the Item menu, though at least the game is kind enough to tell you which classes can equip the item in question or if it can be Two Handed or is compatible with !Enchant.

While I had no problems with the graphics overall, the credits sequence had a couple of palette errors in it. I'll chalk it up to something the hack did, but every other part of the game looked what I expected it to.

Audio

No voicework?! How sad.

I liked a good number of songs here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkzvOlMT5Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG6aNa-gOyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O84Kmpm8pkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1POq8j-AdM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON8HHBX50DU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSBeViuBKQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmCgduEyNk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df7wWItAJdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykiHjuhNcGM

Stability

I didn't have any problems with crashes or bugs or the like. I imagine the bugfix hacks were to thank for that.

Replay Value

If you're not the type to grind, then there can be a lot to do here. Going through the game with differing configurations of Jobs, trying to make use of different roles than the last time, or even single-class challenges if you're completely nuts.

There's a charity challenge event, the Four Job Fiesta[www.fourjobfiesta.com], where players are randomly assigned one Job per Crystal and can only use those four Jobs for the entirety of their run. I've never done it and probably won't, but it's an interesting challenge and can really test how flexible and resourceful you can be. God help you if you roll a combination that has no way to heal and/or draws Berseker, though! Items are useful, yes, but they only go so far.

What Worked For Me

Blue Magic / Free Learning
Blue Magic is probably one of my favorite skillsets in the entirety of Final Fantasy. Not only is it versatile, it's kind of amusing to turn enemy attacks against them! The ways to learn spells in each game it shows up in is different, but here, anyone who gets hit by a learnable Blue Magic spell needs to be either a Blue Mage, have Learning equipped, or have Blue Mage at Mastered and be a Freelancer/Mime and survive to keep the spell.

The Tweaks hack gives everyone Learning for free, so anyone who gets hit by valid Blue Magic will learn it regardless of Job or what Ability you set. This is a huge help due to only getting one slot for flexibility and 'needing' to keep Learning on as many people as possible so you have more chances of the enemy hitting the right target. Of course, if you have no interest in Blue Magic at all, then this isn't as nice a feature. You still need to make use of a Trainer/Beastmaster to learn some of the other Blue Magic spells, but free Learning takes out a lot of the pain.

Sharing is caring
Instead of individual characters having their own spellbook, everyone shares everything here. You only need to buy a spell in town once, though you'll pay out the nose for some of the higher-level stuff. But it beats buying said spell four times so everyone can use it. This applies to stuff like Blue Magic too, so whoever gets hit with the correct spell adds it to the party bank.

This also opens up a neat trick. Let's say that my Bartz the support/healer gets murdered and I'm out of Phoenix Downs. Bartz can't cast Life on himself in this state, so now what? I can trudge back to town or find a save point to use a Tent...or I can change someone else to White Mage. Because magic classes get full access to that school of magic, I can have Lenna or Faris or Galuf use Life to get Bartz back on his feet even if all three have never gotten any ABP in White Mage before. Then switch whoever back to their usual Job and carry on. This is also a nice way to make use of another character's MP to heal between battles if they're not using it otherwise.

A credible threat
I'll have to sit and really think about it later, but once Exdeath shows up, it's like he's constantly trying to murder the party when he's not trying to attain whatever power it is he's after. Compared to some other series antagonists, he's not content to just sit on this throne and let his underlings go after you (though he still sends them regardless). He actually personally appears quite a few times on your journey!

It's a little refreshing to have the big bad dirty his hands with you instead of so much screentime being devoted to their Number One instead.

What I Didn't Like

Restrictions on customization
One whole slot isn't really that exciting when it comes to customizing classes. Sure, it's better than how Final Fantasy III handled it with zero Abilities to transfer and whatnot, but you don't really get more flexibility until the end of the game when you're using Freelancer/Mime. You could always use whichever one you have access to early, but then you're not gaining ABP towards classes with neat Abilities you want to learn, so you're kind of left trying to fit an ever-increasing number of cool things into your one free slot.

I originally was going to do a run through the Custom Classes hack of Final Fantasy V Advance because its rules flew in the face of this limitation, but I lost interest part of the way like so many attempts before.

Gimmicky fights
Puroblos in the first world is where I stopped playing the game for at least a week. When you kill one, it uses Life2 to fully revive every other monster present, so you have to kill them all at once...or keep killing them until they run out of MP, or even use Mute on all six to keep them from casting. Well, even with running a White Mage, I didn't think to try Mute since I'm used to status effects being fairly useless against the enemy in these games. Then you had the four separate fights against the Gargoyles where if they didn't die within a few seconds of each other, the one that died would come back with full health. And then there's Wendigo! Four foes, one is the correct target, and the target silently/invisibly changes every few turns. You can't just use hit-all magic because then the other three wrong targets will counter with party-wide moves, so you have to tediously check each of the four and then blast away before they swap positions and repeat.

While that only covers a few of the fights, the kicker is that Gargoyle and Wendigo are all optional fights. You don't need to bother with the tablets if you don't want to. But running into the "kill them at the same time!" gimmick so many times really left a sour taste behind. I didn't have a great party composition to really zero-effort these fights, but that was down to my insistence on not changing Jobs constantly to deal with specific fights. So, I made things more difficult for myself.

"Optimize"
Every time you change Jobs or Abilities on a character, their equipment changes. There's no way to stop the game from using the Optimize feature to equip the 'best' gear other than the option that completely empties every slot. This gets annoying pretty quickly. Let's say you're using the Elf Cape on someone for the evasion bonus, but the game insists on you using a heavy glove for more Defense. You'd have to change it back every time you change Abilities like slotting in Light Step to deal with damage floors and taking it off when you're done. There are also cursed items that have strong stats but come with harsh penalties like the Cursed Ring putting a 45 second Death Sentence on the wearer, and these items will always be equipped with Optimize! You could just sell them, but... Why not just have the system leave items where they are when applicable? That would've been so much less of a hassle.

Verdict - 3/5

Maybe it's fatigue from doing so many Final Fantasy games in a relatively short period. Well...even with Final Fantasy IX, there was a good long gap between starting it and actually sitting down to go through it. Maybe there's just something about the game that doesn't work for me, and that's why I had so many failed attempts over the years. I don't know. I like games that have the Job System, and this isn't really all that bad...just I didn't get into it. And yeah, I said I dragged my feet, but at least I stuck with it long enough to get it done, finally. When I wasn't distracted by another game I did get into. But that was really the only driving force for me, to not have this be yet another half-finished attempt.

I think if I do decide to give this another go, it'll be Custom Classes[jeffludwig.com] for sure. Even if I did have at least one run that went nowhere with it already. Maybe next time.