Abilities are Torture

I beat this game a long time ago, and although the fun character developments of Galuf and Gilgamesh may make for some potential replay value, as well as a mission to become a better blue mage or something, I have never managed to get very far in a second playthrough.

I mean, I know all about the skills and everything now. I know what each thing does, what the value is and all that, and so I try and overskill to get what I need, and then I end up with all these characters with an absurd amount of skills. Then, I can't figure out which skills I want to use. And it doesn't matter, since I could get on through the game without any of them, but I just can't stand it. I can't decide whether I want my white mage to brawl or have time magic etc. And since there are all these choices, I get stumped every time I feel like switching classes and eventually, my brain fries and I just quit and play something with fewer options.

I try to take it slow or something, but eventually, I just get excited and blow up my skills because I want one thing or another. I have no self control. And then once I have everything (Everything reasonable. You know. Skills that require, like, 50-70 ABP or less, unless I just really want to learn beserk or something), then I'm kinda screwed because I have too much and there's no proper distribution (I'm getting redundant).
Do I want to use dash so I can walk quick or keep my learning skill or blue magic on? Maybe I should just use a thief, but even with crescent moon, it isn't as useful as maintaining a monk in the party. He also knows some white magic, and if I teach him that, Lenna can focus on black and time. Does Faris really need Bothhand? all the time? It is kind of silly for her to have the dash, but maybe...
I just can't take it.

In other games, the classes are more set in stone, and so it's easier to just neglect the classes I don't need in FFVI, never have the opportunity to use them, as in 1, maintain all my abilities at the same time, like in 2, or else not have to worry about earlier classes because the newer ones are all upgrades, like in 3.

5 is absolute class and class ability Hell.

Does anybody else go crazy like this?

I am sort of like that. if an ability (in any game) presents itself I MUST LEARN IT!!! If however, I don't have the means (such as Excalibur II) I don't care if i learn it or not. I arrange myself a chart. Generally it goes: character ---> Job/class ---> ability ---> time line for learning it.
This way I can learn the skills and still manage to actually go on with the game.

This is why I like how IX limits me in my skill learning. It's like, ok, here are the weapons/equipment/abilities available to me at this time. I learn them all, then proceed in the game until i happen upon more weapons/equipment/abilitie.

Not really, partly cause I actually don't mind building weird set-ups and just waste an hour playing around with them. The other end of the spectrum is that I like playing with balance in my parties. I generally prefer having one melee, one mage, and the two are up to me and my needs. Its actually because FFV has so many useful options that I tend to rank it as the best FF in terms of gameplay, cause I've never had two games alike. Mostly cause I don't stick to a pattern, even if it is advantageous.

I think you're just over-thinking this. Its best sometimes to just sit back and tinker around with set-ups instead of worrying about what is the best set-up or who should be what.

I actually dislike FF5 in this way because I find it just so limiting. With only one ability slot I usually find I rely on a very static and predictable pattern to accomplish what I want. Every time I try and play and spice it up after a little bit I just go back to thinking "man, doing it 'x' way is so much better". I mean, I can give my mages some awesome abilities, but in reality just having them equipped with boring old brawl as I make my way through the whole game is really the over all best solution. Which I can't say makes an interesting game experience.

Contrast this to FFT which gave you the ability to set an active ability slot (White Magic, Punch Arts, etc...) a Counter ability slot, a character ability slot (Gained Exp Up, Equip Swords, etc...) and a move ability slot. So it allows me to take abilities away that I am comfortable with and make up the slack with other complimentary abilities in the other slots.

Except most support skills will be JP Up, and Magic is pretty useless until you learn the math skills so your stuck using half of the classes cause the other two thirds requires more work than a simple Monk/Squire set can't remedy. Not to mention that most of the movement skills are just fluff, and the best counter moves are Auto-Potion (using Hi-potions or X-potions of course) and the monks Counter skill cause its the most flexible counter skill. Ninja's have such an unbalanced stat growth that there really is no reason not to just make a party of them. Hell all you really need is the Chemist, Knight, Monk, and Ninja class and your set. Magic isn't practical and even though the Calculator makes it less tedious, you still have to go about the task of unlocking the class and then learning most of the top spells in the game to make any use of it and that's way more time consuming than just unlocking ninja, giving him Excalibur and just let them loose on the battle field.

I'm not even going to bring up the Special classes for the story characters, of which most of them are overpowered and makes using the basic classes look like a silly diversion for the player until the "real" party members show up. :p I don't mean to knock Tactics, I'm just stating that getting into a rut about character set-up is not unique to FFV and Tactics can easily fall into this trapping as well.

My point is that the systems are only limited by the imagination and will power of the player. If you think one set-up is too perfect, then of course you'll never be able to see the other set-ups cause you've already convinced yourself this is the right way. I genuinely feel that about a third of the way into the game, your mages have enough MP to be able to safely use MP as they wish in regular dungeons, so having the Barehanded ability is kind of a moot point cause my mages can destroy whole groups with a Level 2 Elemental spell rather than take the time to have each character attack. Its not like FFV dungeons are the long crawl that FFIV had, nor ethers are the rare item they use to be.

Magic is soooo much better than physical for the first half of the game. But we can talk about that another time.

My point was not about balance, but that FF5's system was quite a bit simplistic for my tastes. There was only a small amount of actual party set up tweaking in the game, whereas I like more options for customization. Not everyone wants to spend 10+ minutes out of every hour on party set up.

Objective: The actual programming of the game allowing you to build characters.
Subjective: Your preferred set-up over other people/computers/ect/

I try to follow the game's path. The most optimal build for the characters. Items and abilities geared universally. I do and find whatever I can to make them most effective.