The *positive* FF5 thread (may contain spoilers)

I saw a thread like this in FFX forums, so I decided to make one here. So this thread is for discussing about what you liked about FF5.

I'd like to say that I really loved the battle system. It's one of the most addictive systems in the series, and it makes you think strategically. You get more classes than in any other FF (excluding FFT, I think), lots of fantasy elements in them (white/black mages, summoners, dragon knights, spoony bards etc) and you get to use 4 characters and do lots of different class and ability combinations with them.

The battles are also balanced. They aren't too hard, but they're challenging. You don't have an instant enemy destroyer. For example, FF7 has Knights of the Round and Omnislash, FF8 has limit breaks and FFX has the ability to do 99,999 damage with physical attacks or over 2 million damage with Anima's Oblivion. About all the moves are equally powerful and cost-effective in FF5. Physical attacks do some nice damage, spells and summons do a bit more but not too much and there's many good support abilities such as Haste 2, Protect, Shell, Float and Golem.

Now that I've talked about the battle system, it's time to move for other great features. This game has three worlds, so you can explore loads of things, and the world maps never seem to get old and boring, really. The world map songs are also beautiful, and that brings us to another great feature in FF5: music. Almost every song suits the game very well, and there's tons of great songs everywhere. The sound quality sounds a bit weird, but the songs still sound so great that you can't really make them much better (at least not with the techonology in 1992). Just listen to "A Presentiment" (the opening music), "Nostalgia" (death and sadness theme), "Reminiscence" (plays in various parts, like when (SPOILER)Galuf is sad about Zeza's death), "The Evil Lord Exdeath" (Exdeath's theme) and "Battle with Gilgamesh" (Gilgamesh's theme), and you should know what I'm talking about.

While the storyline and character development aren't as good as in FFs like 4 and 6, they're still good enough to keep you interested. Each world has a plenty of story events. The story also feels like it makes a lot more sense during the second time through the game, and on the 2nd time, it also feels better and deeper. Butz is quite a typical RPG hero, but Faris and Cara are great, IMHO. Gilgamesh is a great (and pretty funny) side villain, and I also liked many of the support characters such as Cid and Mid. While Exdeath is a stereotypical "I will destroy the world! Die! Fools! Fwahahaha!" style villain, his actions speak louder than his words. When he (SPOILER)slaughtered all Warriors of Dawn, killed Galuf and sucked towns into Voids among other horrible things, I felt both like "Man, this guy's gonna pay for this!" or "Uh huh, how am I going to beat a guy like this?".

Well, now that I've praised FF5 enough, it's your turn. What did you like about FF5?

The incredibly deep job/abilities system, for one thing. The storylines' many curves, for another. When you first start playing, all you know is that the elements are fading and the crystals are being corrupted somehow. Then you find out that an evil force is behind it. You realize that it's all caused by (SPOILER)X-death, and that Galuf is a king on a completly different world. Then you find out that [spolier]the worlds that Bartz and Galuf originated from was actually one planet at one time waaay back.[/spoiler] In short, the general storyline is pretty awesome. It's a shame that a dismal english translation pales it.

The gameplay is great, too. Mastering a Mage job class permenantly raises a characters magic power, mastering a fighter class permenantly raises your strength. The job class is perfect in almost every way. It's the first FF to feature Blue Magic, which comes in very handy in this game. One thing that bugs me is the way the battle system is structured. You can't switch turns in this game; one character has to complete his/her turn before another can act. It sucks when your party is in desperate need of Cure2, when only one character has the !White ability equipped, and his/her turn doesn't come up until alot 1/2 of a round. Meh. It may make this game more challenging, but it's still a big pain.

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Originally posted by Mr. Graves
In short, the general storyline is pretty awesome. It's a shame that a dismal english translation pales it.

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Which one did you play: the translated SNES ROM or the PSX version? I think the SNES version has a better translation, at least with names. (why would any translator name some character "Salsa"?)

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One thing that bugs me is the way the battle system is structured. You can't switch turns in this game; one character has to complete his/her turn before another can act. It sucks when your party is in desperate need of Cure2, when only one character has the !White ability equipped, and his/her turn doesn't come up until alot 1/2 of a round. Meh. It may make this game more challenging, but it's still a big pain.

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Yeah, it's a bit annoying, but it was also like this in FFs 1-4. In fact, it was even harder in FF1-3 because the turns were totally randomized so you'd never know when Cure would be cast. However, it does add challenge. It isn't that annoying in the long run, either. You just have to be more careful. Make more healers, make sure you have healing items, have your healer defend or just use Cure2 even when no-one is hurt yet. The enemy might hurt your guys before the healer can cast his/her Cure2 spell, so the spell will still be useful. I never found it that problematic.

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It's the first FF to feature Blue Magic, which comes in very handy in this game.

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Thanks for reminding me of that. :) I hadn't even thought about this until you mentioned it.

FF5 added many other things to the series as well. I think it's the first FF to have summons like Golem, Phoenix and Carbuncle. Unless you count WarMech, FF5's also the first FF which has some bosses that are even harder than the last boss. Miming was first introduced in FF5 (Gogo, Mimic class). FF5's also the first FF where you have infinite storage space (I didn't like it how you always ran out of storage space in previous FFs), the ability to use Optimum equipment without always manually equipping everything, and I think FF5 also let you saw in weapon/armor shops who can equip what equipment, and if the new stuff are better than the older stuff. Not totally sure, though.

I quite like stereotypical villains. Actually, Exdeath was my first Internet screen-name. :O
You know he's evil, he's a giant suit of armor who fights you looking like he's posing for a photograph or something. FFV lacked any other major villains besides Gilgamesh, so you had to make do (Exdeath's minions from the N-Zone hardly count. Possibly with exception to Necrophobe for what he did with Gilgamesh).
Though all the characters could've been more fleshed out, they did well to only give you four at a time. I hate trying to level up all my characters at once/only 3 or 4 and then finding a boss where I've got to switch to an underdeveloped character and get my butt kicked.

Job system... eh, it was okay. I really didn't adventure much with it though and stuck with all the mage classes (my final battle team is a giant combo of all the mage classes in Mimic class). Maybe on my next play through I'll try some insane job classes to make it interesting. I'm starting to think more highly of the job system already. :)

Music was okay in places, but I really couldn't get into the Boss Theme, which is something I've enjoyed with the other FF series. The Decisive Battle and Big Bridge are two great themes that make up for it, though.

Plot was okay, had a few really nice twists to it which have already been mentioned.