It's all in the timing...

[Wolf Kanno]

Stolen from Del's thread in the FFIII forum Do you think FFV would have a larger fan base outside of Japan had the game been released earlier than the PSX generation. What if FF Extreme had been released in the U.S. on the SNES or in the PAL regions. I sometimes feel its due to the game being released so late that it gets so little love.

[VeloZer0]

In one way this seems quite true, but on the other hand I have to ask myself what percentage of FF fans started playing the game before the PSX. An ever declining percentage.

Though the lack of NA SNES release can't help I think it's influence is ever decreasing.

[spirit]

I played it on a snes emulator long before the PSX release. I loved it.

[Wolf Kanno]

I actually have a friend who doesn't care for V but did say that had he played it chronologically, he may have ended up liking the game more.

[Roogle]

I am still unsure why Squaresoft wanted to market it as Final Fantasy Extreme instead of Final Fantasy III or Final Fantasy IV in continuing with their localization blunders. I certainly think that the game would be more popular now if it had been released in a timely manner.

[Wolf Kanno]

They just felt it was too complicated for American Gamers. Tbh, I'm surprised VI made it over but I have a feeling that being one of the first easy entries helped it, whereas V has both factoring in Sub-Jobs and the last decent difficulty curb in the franchise.

[Roogle]

Where is the difficulty curb in Final Fantasy V? I thought Final Fantasy was harder than Final Fantasy V. Is that slope of difficulty that you describe the reasoning behind the Final Fantasy Extreme marketing concept, that it was going to be played up as a tough and difficult game to beat?

[Wolf Kanno]

V is probably one of the last tough games in the series, its not as bad as some of the early FF games but I've played most of them to the point where I've forgotten how difficult they are (I'm currently doing a playthrough of VI where I'm rushing through the game and I've been pleasantly surprised how hard the game can be) so I can understand why some might wonder about the validation of the excuse "it's too hard".

I'm sure most of it has to do with the fact they felt American gamers didn't understand RPGs and tried to lure us in withMystic Quest instead. Square was also technically a small company then so perhaps making FFVI in Japan cut into their time schedule to arrange for a Western release. I do know that FFV was suppose to be "FFIII" in the States cause I do actually have a Gamepro magazine from back in the day that did a sneak preview of the game and how they were expecting it to be released as FFIII here. They were also the publisher that brought Breath of Fire 1 to the states as well, so perhaps that could have also tied up their schedules, but this is all speculation at best.

[Elpizo]

I certainly think its late release didn't do its popularity any good. It's quite unfortunate, too, since V is such an excellent game. I also think the bad Anthology port further damaged V's chances. It's really astonishing that we had to wait until Final Fantasy V Advance (the best version of V) to get a well-working, well-translated version of V.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah... the Anthology translation was pretty awful, though it did bring back some cheesy memories of playing FFIV on the SNES but by that time I was expecting something a little more professional.

[Heath]

I think it would've undoubtedly been more popular. I know a lot of my friends when it was released for the PlayStation didn't feel enthused enough to go back and play a 2D game. It's a very fun game and one that I very much enjoyed, but I think the timing of it made it pass by the more mainstream gamer relatively unnoticed.

[Del Murder]

I definitely think it would have had better reception if it was released after FFIV (II) in the US. When I first played it myself I wasn't that into it because it was right around the time I was playing FFVII and IX. At that point the series had evolved and I couldn't go back to the old style, since FFV didn't have that nostalgic place in my heart FFIV and VI had. But when I played again a few years later I realized what an epic game this was and what a great adaptation of the job system it was for that time period. So if it came out earlier I'm sure I would have loved it any more.

[Jiro]

The Job System threw me off the first time I played it. It doesn't gel with me, I like to master one thing before I move onto the next and so I find myself pretty limited.

I also like cool . Rangers might sound cool, but they aren't that useful.