FFV – Part 61: Final Thoughts

Summary: Some last thoughts as we depart Final Fantasy V.




Protagonists

One of the strongest sets of man characters we’ve seen so far, mostly because of how realistic and likeable they felt.

The characters in FFI, II, and III were really just some basic personality traits. These characters were much more comparable to FFIV: fully-developed in their personal qualities, relationships, and arcs. They didn’t change as much over the course of the story nearly as much as those in FFIV, but I partially attribute that to the raw length of FFIV (base game plus “The After Years”) compared to FFV.

I actually was least interested by the main character, Bartz. He was fine, and brought a goofiness to things from the outset, but in comparison to some of the others he was a bit vanilla. Still, he had a blend of selfishness and helpfulness that I enjoyed.

Lenna – sweet, helpful, animal-loving – was fine, but didn’t really hook me as much as others.

The remaining three heroes interested me more. Poor Krile had to watch her grandfather get killed and push on anyway. Faris was a delight the whole way through. I loved watching her interaction with her crew, the pirate lingo, the tough core. Even at the end, as a co-queen and ruler of Tycoon, she was still a pirate at heart.

And then there’s Galuf. Goofy, noble, badass. An all-time great.

The one downside I can think of about these characters is that they all seemed a bit similar to one another. All were silly, fun, loyal, strong.

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Villains

No puppets here. No cat’s paws, no nothing. Basically, there was Exdeath, aaaaand…nobody else. The Legion of Doom were just blandly evil henchmen. (I’ll deal with Gilgamesh in the next section.)

So. Exdeath.

He was fine for what he was. Actually, he was GREAT for what he was. He was a ridiculous, over-the-top, cartoon villain. No character who says “Mwa-ha-ha!” that much is really intended to be taken seriously. Wonderfully cheesy.

Final Fantasy hasn’t been great on the villain front. The Cloud of Darkness was a natural phenomenon, the Creator was sort of interesting, but the rest (Chaos, the Emperor, Zeromus) have been somewhat bland villains. Exdeath was a more fun version of them, but essentially the same prototype.

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Side/Neutral Characters

Gilgamesh – He’s the best around. Nobody’s ever gonna keep him down. Funny, sad, bizarre as hell. Really unexpected progression arc that was also believable given what we learned of him. Still annoyed we didn’t get spectacular adventures with him.

Ghido – Relentless sassing of Bartz. Like, every other sentence ouf of his mouth.

Cid and Mid – I think we’d at least heard Mid’s name before, and while I imagine Cid will be in every other game, I wonder about Mid. Cool “boy genius” type, and really fits as Cid’s nephew. Cid had more of a tragic role here than I remember, given the role he thinks he had in the crystals’ destruction.

Dawn Warriors – Reminded me a lot of the Dark Warriors in FFIII. Heroes of Old who do what they can to help the Heroes of New. The difference here is that we got back story on them, and tied them deeply into our party’s lives, whether father-son (i.e. Dorgann) or just someone we met and grew to care about (i.e. Kelger).

Boko – Chocobo with a name and life and personality! Start of a trend? I hope so. I was a bit disappointed by how little we saw of him. The game early on set him up as Bartz’s best friend, and while this wasn’t a lie, I didn’t like that he was with us only briefly.

Moogles - MOOOOOOOOOOGLES

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Story

Sneaky strong story. The premise wasn’t anything too new – crystals are going out, the Big Bad’s making mischief, four (five) heroes save the world. This is just the template though. If I’m really isolating out different parts of the game, the story isn’t that great compared to the characters and the gameplay, but they still work together.

Early in this game I was expecting just a wacky romp. And it often was! But it also knew how to make things into more than a joke, how to turn this deadly serious.

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Gameplay

A clear highlight. The job system here is one of the best class systems I’ve ever seen. The system that it reminds me most of actually is “The Secret World” - http://www.drakkashi.com/secretworld/ - which let you level up different weapons and mix and match the skills. I’m sure it’s been used countless times before that, but just from the games I’ve personally played, that seems to match up closest. The flexibility and creativity this job system allowed… wow.

I like also that the minimum skill to use this system was pretty low. Like, I probably made terrible choices, but they seemed fun and I still won. Similar to FFII. I built my party terribly, but still was able to push through the game. Nice difficulty balance.

There’s actually a strange downside to this job system: it hurts FFIII’s replayability for me. The FFIII job system was awesome, but only compared to FFI, II, and IV. It feels like a flat-out worse and less-developed version of FFV. I’d be more likely to replay FFII than FFIII at this point, since if I want to play a game with the job system, FFV seems to be where it’s at.

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Music

The music in this game blew me away more than any prior Final Fantasy. It’s the first FF music I’ve listened to outside of the game. I won’t rank the songs or anything, since so much of it depends on my mood. Like, it seems a bit weird to me to compare “Clash on the Big Bridge” with “Home, Sweet Home” since they’re so different, but here are some of the songs that I know I’ll listen to long after I’m done playing:

-“Clash on the Big Bridge”
-“The Evil Lord Exdeath”
-“Home, Sweet Home”
-“Pirates Ahoy”
-“Harvest”
-“The Ancient Library”

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Art Design

I initially called this section “graphics,” but that doesn’t really seem useful. The art in this game was pretty cool. Lots of different and beautiful environments. My favorites were probably the Pyramid, the Ancient Library, and the last floor of the Rift.

Some great monsters too! Exdeath’s tree form will always stick with me, as well as some of those Legion of Doom monsters. Twintania was probably my favorite there.

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Length

A happy medium. Not too short, not too long. Finished it in 45:26, with my party levels in the mid 40s.

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Replayability

Are you kidding me? More replayable than any prior Final Fantasy. There are two immediate kinds of replays I’m interested in trying:

1)A spoiled replay, where I try to get my party as optimal as possible. Able to beat Omega and Shinryu, and whatever the bonus dungeon has to offer.
2)A “Four Job Fiesta.” I was Googling around for wacky FFV builds, and found this. It’s a charity event in the summer where people play through the FFV game with builds that are bizarre or randomized by @Gilgabot on Twitter in a variety of ways. Definitely going to try to participate in this next summer. For details: http://fourjobfiesta.com/

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So that’s it! Thank you all so much for reading. It means more to me than you can imagine, and I greatly appreciate it.

On we go. To FFVI.

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Next time: We start Final Fantasy VI.

EDIT: Not sure where to put this, but I have to add: I really, REALLY liked the ending. No forced romance. Not everything got wrapped up neatly. Krile's still dealing with the harrowing events of the game. Faris didn't get one of those garbage endings that Tolkien gave to Eowyn (where she randomly changes her personality). Bartz still felt unsettled continued to travel.

Felt very natural.