AVAST, AN FFV NEWBIE APPEARS!

[Wolf Kanno]

Well it does have a bit of a environmental message to it with the amplifiers, yes a great evil is trying to break the crystals but Cid's machine's and people's greed are just making things easier for him. Also ExDeath's origins can be an interesting parallel to removing nuclear waste if you think about it.

Trainer is a class that can capture weakened monsters and then use them later for one time summons. When the job gets leveled up, it learns the Control/Manipulate ability which is excellent for teaching Blue Mages their skills.

Time Mage is probably one of the best new mage classes in this game and if you've played FFTactics, you know what to expect. Also don't underestimate the Return spell. It seems useless at first but it's highly invaluable against certain attacks.

Sorcerer is called Mystic Knight in the Advanced version and is one of the coolest warrior classes. They cast elemental spells on their weapons to make them more powerful and exploit weaknesses. They are more frail than Knights or Samurai but have excellent damage potential. Even better is that the spells they use is based on what White/Black magic you've bought up until now.

Ninja is pretty cool but isn't quite the dominating force it was in other installments. A huge upgrade from Edge in FFIV but nowhere near as bulltrout as Shadow, FFIII Ninja or anything from the Ivalice entries.

[Forsaken Lover]

There are 4 crystals so does that mean I'll be getting samurai and Dragoon and the rest next? The Earth Crystal would be the last set of new Jobs, unless the game is gonna pull an FFIV and have another set of crystals.

Hm...sounds like if you wanted maximum broken-ness you level up one job to a high level then switch to another. Like Spellblade get up to Level 5 or 6 or something and then switch to some other job. Dragoon maybe? I dunno, I obviously have no clue how to break the game. Point is, there are probably several different combinations that will break the game in half. I'm trying to avoid that and stick to one job as much as possible.

Well I changed things up a bit. As I said earlier, I want to keep everyone to a certain role. As such, I made Reina my Time Mage because this way she stays in a support role. Meanwhile, Galuf is a Geomancer because this fits his Elemental mage thing which is what he's been doing so far.

I tried out Trainer but it seems really impractical. Only one use out of captured monsters? Just a waste of time.

I have Sorcerer Faris rockin' 2-Handed and I can't wait to test her Sword abilities out against an enemy weak to a certain element. I have no idea if the two things stack though... For example, she does like 400 damage because of 2-Handed. Yet if she attacked an enemy weak to Fire with Fire 2 Sword, will she be doing like 800 damage? I guess I'll find out.

Well with Ice 2 Sword she did 1400 damage to Ifrit.. Very nice.

So yeah, this game is not the best at giving direction. I had no idea where to go after the castle blew up. I wandered a bit, ran into this QuadrHarpy enemy which annihilated me in short order and that was kinda lame. The main problem was I kept trying to steal from it because I figured, powerful enemy, has to have something good to steal. Only stealing failed every single time and it kept getting me killed when I wasted time trying. Eventually I gave up and just killed it for the nice 3 ABP.

Anyway, I eventually found myself at the Library of the Ancients which has been mentioned a couple times now. I had no idea what I was even doing here. I didn't know if this was the next place I was supposed to go or not. The fact people were running around screaming about monsters made me think i was in the right place. But after exploring it, I just got Ifrit. I'm not complaining mind you, it's just that I thought this was like a plot dungeon. Also apparently Mid is missing.

Or...nevermind. This was where I'm supposed to be. Huh. And Mid is related to Cid, makes sense. But now it's time to head back to town. Ifrit made short work of that boss, and you can spam him. I dunno if this one boss is any indicator or not but Summons seem overpowered.

I'm kind of waggling back and forth on what I want Reina and Galuf to do... Galuf is either a Geomancer witH Black Magic as I said before with Reina as a Time Mage with White Magic. But then also I make Galuf a Time Mage with Black Magic while Reina does what I said earlier with being a Summoner with White Magic. I just, after I got Ifrit, I felt like I had to use him even though Reina should stay in her support role. I dunno.

So what is the poitn of Red Mages in this game? You can already combine classes to enable use of multiple kinds of magic.

Galuf is an alien trying to stop another evil alien from reviving? He's FuSoYa, not Tellah. Or he's a weird combination of the two. And Krile...that name sounds familiar. I know I've read it once or twice on forums or something. Maybe that's the fifth party member.

This game feels like it's short. I mean, getting the sea ship usually takes, what, a 1/3 of the game? Am I that close to being over with this/

Anyway, everyone is Level 20, I have mountains of GP and things are going well. Is there like a difficulty spike in this game? Maybe once you have all the different jobs?

Oh and the Library of the Ancients theme was the best song I've heard all game.

[Wolf Kanno]

There are 4 crystals so does that mean I'll be getting samurai and Dragoon and the rest next? The Earth Crystal would be the last set of new Jobs, unless the game is gonna pull an FFIV and have another set of crystals.

The earth Crystal does give jobs but I'm pretty sure there are three jobs not acquired when you get to the crystals. I know one for sure can't be obtained until the end of the game.

Hm...sounds like if you wanted maximum broken-ness you level up one job to a high level then switch to another. Like Spellblade get up to Level 5 or 6 or something and then switch to some other job. Dragoon maybe? I dunno, I obviously have no clue how to break the game. Point is, there are probably several different combinations that will break the game in half. I'm trying to avoid that and stick to one job as much as possible.

That's one way of doing it but spell-blade works better with Knight. The skill doesn't work on spears or samurai swords.

I tried out Trainer but it seems really impractical. Only one use out of captured monsters? Just a waste of time.

It gains a few new abilities as you level it up, the best ability is Control, which is useful for building up your Blue Mage spell book and helps with one of the game's leveling spots.

I have Sorcerer Faris rockin' 2-Handed and I can't wait to test her Sword abilities out against an enemy weak to a certain element. I have no idea if the two things stack though... For example, she does like 400 damage because of 2-Handed. Yet if she attacked an enemy weak to Fire with Fire 2 Sword, will she be doing like 800 damage? I guess I'll find out.

Well with Ice 2 Sword she did 1400 damage to Ifrit.. Very nice.

Spellblade is pretty brutal in this game.

So yeah, this game is not the best at giving direction. I had no idea where to go after the castle blew up. I wandered a bit, ran into this QuadrHarpy enemy which annihilated me in short order and that was kinda lame. The main problem was I kept trying to steal from it because I figured, powerful enemy, has to have something good to steal. Only stealing failed every single time and it kept getting me killed when I wasted time trying. Eventually I gave up and just killed it for the nice 3 ABP.

Anyway, I eventually found myself at the Library of the Ancients which has been mentioned a couple times now. I had no idea what I was even doing here. I didn't know if this was the next place I was supposed to go or not. The fact people were running around screaming about monsters made me think i was in the right place. But after exploring it, I just got Ifrit. I'm not complaining mind you, it's just that I thought this was like a plot dungeon. Also apparently Mid is missing.

Or...nevermind. This was where I'm supposed to be. Huh. And Mid is related to Cid, makes sense. But now it's time to head back to town. Ifrit made short work of that boss, and you can spam him. I dunno if this one boss is any indicator or not but Summons seem overpowered.

Yeah, it's more about exploring than following a plot. It's probably not going to improve anytime soon either.

I'm kind of waggling back and forth on what I want Reina and Galuf to do... Galuf is either a Geomancer witH Black Magic as I said before with Reina as a Time Mage with White Magic. But then also I make Galuf a Time Mage with Black Magic while Reina does what I said earlier with being a Summoner with White Magic. I just, after I got Ifrit, I felt like I had to use him even though Reina should stay in her support role. I dunno.

I generally like comboing Time and Black magic together. The White Mage/Summoner build is also pretty solid.

So what is the point of Red Mages in this game? You can already combine classes to enable use of multiple kinds of magic.

You can have a character whop can use black, white, and one other magic skill of your choice and have better guild to stay alive. Course the real usefulness of the class is that mastering it teaches your character Dualcast which is immensely useful for mage characters.

Galuf is an alien trying to stop another evil alien from reviving? He's FuSoYa, not Tellah. Or he's a weird combination of the two. And Krile...that name sounds familiar. I know I've read it once or twice on forums or something. Maybe that's the fifth party member.

Galuf is just... well Galuf.

This game feels like it's short. I mean, getting the sea ship usually takes, what, a 1/3 of the game? Am I that close to being over with this/

Just keep going...

Anyway, everyone is Level 20, I have mountains of GP and things are going well. Is there like a difficulty spike in this game? Maybe once you have all the different jobs?

All in good time.

Oh and the Library of the Ancients theme was the best song I've heard all game.

I honestly feel FFV is where Uematsu really came into his own as a a composer. The music in this game is gorgeous.

[Forsaken Lover]

You don't think Uematsu came into his own with FFIV which has the best FF OST of all time?

[Wolf Kanno]

FFIV certainly has some great tracks but I really feel that in terms of style, complexity, and emotional impact, FFV is where Uematsu really came into his own. Though I do say you get glimpses of it in IV with Theme of Love, Red Wings, Lunarians, and Inside the Giant.

[Galuf]

Galuf is god actually, he never did die. he became one with the planet.and maxed all jobs.
Also, how did you find Liquiflame? He is so strong.

[Forsaken Lover]

He was the hardest boss yet, that is true. He also seemed to counter everything. But his weakness to Ice meant he didn't last very long. It was a quick if somewhat tense fight.

[Forsaken Lover]

Decided to do a bit of exploring now I have my ship. I was trying to look for Walz Castle in order to get a summon as per a recommendation i received. Unfortunately this map kinda sucks in that it doesn't tell you what any of the little glowing places are. It's like "there's a town here. What town? I have no friggin' clue." So eventually I just wandered about, found my way to Jachol. Tried going into Jachol Cave and got wiped by the first enemy. Frickin' squirrel thing that eats SKULLS.

Oh smurf you game. I was exploring like I said and I found this new place out of the way called Crescent Town. And boom, there goes my ship. No more exploring for me I guess..... At least I found Jachot and got some nice new weapons.

Katanas - and I guess Samurai swords in general - are ridiculously expensive BTW. Like twice as much as any other type of weapon being sold there. I guess maybe because Samurai are supposed to be one of the most beastly jobs in the game.

Well hey, that wasn't so bad. I got a better mode of transportation out of it and two new Jobs! I was going to complain about this game's lack of direction but I guess it isn't so bad. If you don't know what to do, just talk to everY NPC in the town and they always drop a hint about where your next objective is. Earlier on it was "get Dragon Grass and Dragons from North Mountain" and this time it was "Black Chocobos are extinct...OR ARE THEY." Shame about Boko probably having starved to death forever ago.

Anyway, this really worked out perfect. Straight north from Crescent Town is Walz which was my goal all along.

So Bards can only learn abilities from people? I would not imagine you can buy a Song from a shop like you can a spell. I got the Strength Song from the one Minstrel in Crescent Town but unless there are minstrels in every town now, I'll have to do some hunting in order to make Bard as useful as I have heard it can be.

Well I looked it up and wasn't Walz Tower the one that sank? It was right next to the meteor? That's where people online say Shiva is but it's gone now as far as I can see....

Whoa, I found Bartz' hometown in my travels. From what I could discern in the flashback, and based on previous snippets, his dad was away a lot, protecting the crystals or killing evildoers or both. And then his mom, who was either chronically sick or came down with something, must have died right before Drogan set off to do whatever it is he does. And then he must have died at some point as well. Bummer. This game is supposed to be happy fun silly time. It has a villain named X DEATH. You can't be serious or sad when you have a villain named Evil Mc Cruelty.

Anyway, I got the Temptation Song for my troubles... Kind of weird that this is the song inspired by Bartz's memories but fair enough. Always good to get new songs.

Huh...the Sandworm boss was pathetic. Mid said not to use magic on it but it didn't counterattack and destroy me when I had Galuf attack it. Hasting everyone and Slow on the worm made its stupid Whack-a-mole gimmick useless as well.


Also Str Song does not increase physical damage which is what I thought it would do. But Bartz was doing exactly the same amount of damage even afte I used the song twice. Maybe it increased defense? I dunno, I got Faris as my Bard right now because I felt like I was brute forcing everything with her as a Sorcerer. But I need more Songs if I want her to be a more valuable asset.

Also switched Reina back to White Mage. She has access to up to level 4 Time spells and I'm pretty sure that will be enough for a long time to come.

It's gonna take forever but when Bartz learns whatever it is he's trying to learn in Ninja, I'm switching him back to Thief. I'm so smurfing tired of failing to steal from enemies. I need the added bonus from Thief Gloves.

Anyway, stopping right after that annoying sand place. I guess maybe Reina's dad isn't actually dead? Or maybe he's a ghost. Or maybe it's X-Death manipulating all of us. Either way, I am sad at the fact Faris has kind of fallen out of focus. Galuf is the one at center stage right now. Even Bartz's stuff was completely optional, which is weird. Oh well, there's still plenty of game left, plenty of time for everyone to shine and get their due. We just need to get passed this annoying "Look For Crystal, Fail To Save Crystal" phase. Once our heroes have sucked completely and the world is doomed, things should pick up.

[Mirage]

Exdeath could have been a mistranslation of "exodus" that they just stuck with because tradition or something

it's too bad you lost shiva. didn't you have an earlier save to go back to?

[Karifean]

IIRC Shiva should still be available, she's in the Castle not the Tower.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I don't care about summons anyway.

More backstory out of nowhere. Faris and Reina finally discovered their relation to one another and then we got an airship which I promptly took all over the planet trying to find pianos to play. i accidentally found Tycoon and got a nice little flashback for my trouble. I gotta admit, Faris is a better name than Salsa. Between that and the fact he took his daughter riding on a dragon King Tycoon is not a very good dad.

I also got Love Song from a minstrel in Easterly Village. Which is on the West of the map.....

I've played pianos in Tule, Kerwin, Karnak, Crescent and maybe one other place?Still no new Song. Maybe it takes every piano in the game or something. I can be patient.

But yeah, with that done, I guess it's time to resume the quest! ....now I just gotta figure out what the hell to do.

Again, it bears repeating, this game is awful about telling you what you need to do. I see a city take off into the air and am like "well...I should probably go after it." How do I do that? I had no idea. Had to look it up. Went back to Cid and Mid and got the upgrades for the airship.

The boss guarding the floating ruins destroyed me. My only damage dealers were Galuf and Bartz and they weren't doing enough apparently. That might not have been a huge problem if Bard Faris wasn't completely worthless. Oh sure, her songs work great against normal enemies. Confuse them or put them to sleep (is that what Love Song does?) is great tactics against a horde of nobodies. But against a boss, all she has is her crappy regen song. So it was basically Galuf and Bartz w/Reina trying to support them vs. Boss Cannon while Faris just kinda stood there being pretty.

Maybe Bards are better later on but, for right now, I switched her back to Sorcerer because I need someone who is actually useful in this fight. This guy has way more HP than any boss to date.

Also he kept hitting me with a status effect that lowered my attack power? I noticed because on my several failed attempts, Faris with Bolt 2 Sword went from hitting for 1900 damage to just 800-900 damage after getting hit by one of those beam things you can destroy. I guess it's no coincidence that on my successful run, Faris never got afflicted by whatever status that was and kept wailing on the boss for 2K damage.

I don't feel so bad about "brute forcing" this boss because he had a crapload of health and, as I said, Bard was useless here.

I'm beginning to think having only a single dedicated healer might be a mistake...

So is Bard useless for boss battles? I mean, you all know way more about this game than I do. I don't want to be "cheap" - I want this game to have some challenge. It's just, I saw no way for Bard to be effective in this battle, or any future boss battle. Until she gets better Songs.

And I thinkI'mgonna stop there for tonight. I'm tired and I know a lot of big stuff is going to be going down soon. I already had it spoiled for me while consulting FAQs that there are multiple worlds. I mean, it's not a huge spoiler, kinda obvious really. But after this part, onto the next world. And I want to be fully awake to appreciate the story and atmosphere and all the rest of it. Also want to see what exactly is going on with Faris' and Reina's dad. Maybe he's got some good reason to be doing what he's doing, maybe it's not him at all but X Death like I said before, I'll find out later.

[Vermachtnis]

I also got Love Song from a minstrel in Easterly Village. Which is on the West of the map.....

[Wolf Kanno]

Bard is mostly useful for the song Requiem, which does insane damage to undead and is really useful for two dungeons and a few select boss battles. Love Song actually casts Stop on the enemies and surprisingly works on one of the game's superbosses. Many of the songs need to keep going to be useful. Lv. Song and the Power/MP song need to be used for a few rounds to really see them in action.

Samurai are interesting in this game. In terms of direct damage the Sorcerer Class is probably still better in terms of reliability but Samurai have higher evasion against direct physical attacks and have high critical hit rates due to Katanas having the only critical hit bonuses of all the weapons. What's odd about them is that Samurai have two different critical hit attacks, the basic one all classes can use and a special one that does 4x damage instead of 2x like normal ones. They also get Gil Toss which is actually one of the better moves in this game.

FFV is pretty much a game that hails back to older style RPGs where the player is kind of left on their own to figure out where to go next.

[Mirage]

Well I don't care about summons anyway.

More backstory out of nowhere. Faris and Reina finally discovered their relation to one another and then we got an airship which I promptly took all over the planet trying to find pianos to play. i accidentally found Tycoon and got a nice little flashback for my trouble. I gotta admit, Faris is a better name than Salsa. Between that and the fact he took his daughter riding on a dragon King Tycoon is not a very good dad.

I also got Love Song from a minstrel in Easterly Village. Which is on the West of the map.....

I've played pianos in Tule, Kerwin, Karnak, Crescent and maybe one other place?Still no new Song. Maybe it takes every piano in the game or something. I can be patient.

But yeah, with that done, I guess it's time to resume the quest! ....now I just gotta figure out what the hell to do.

Again, it bears repeating, this game is awful about telling you what you need to do. I see a city take off into the air and am like "well...I should probably go after it." How do I do that? I had no idea. Had to look it up. Went back to Cid and Mid and got the upgrades for the airship.

The boss guarding the floating ruins destroyed me. My only damage dealers were Galuf and Bartz and they weren't doing enough apparently. That might not have been a huge problem if Bard Faris wasn't completely worthless. Oh sure, her songs work great against normal enemies. Confuse them or put them to sleep (is that what Love Song does?) is great tactics against a horde of nobodies. But against a boss, all she has is her crappy regen song. So it was basically Galuf and Bartz w/Reina trying to support them vs. Boss Cannon while Faris just kinda stood there being pretty.

Maybe Bards are better later on but, for right now, I switched her back to Sorcerer because I need someone who is actually useful in this fight. This guy has way more HP than any boss to date.

Also he kept hitting me with a status effect that lowered my attack power? I noticed because on my several failed attempts, Faris with Bolt 2 Sword went from hitting for 1900 damage to just 800-900 damage after getting hit by one of those beam things you can destroy. I guess it's no coincidence that on my successful run, Faris never got afflicted by whatever status that was and kept wailing on the boss for 2K damage.

I don't feel so bad about "brute forcing" this boss because he had a crapload of health and, as I said, Bard was useless here.

I'm beginning to think having only a single dedicated healer might be a mistake...

So is Bard useless for boss battles? I mean, you all know way more about this game than I do. I don't want to be "cheap" - I want this game to have some challenge. It's just, I saw no way for Bard to be effective in this battle, or any future boss battle. Until she gets better Songs.

And I thinkI'mgonna stop there for tonight. I'm tired and I know a lot of big stuff is going to be going down soon. I already had it spoiled for me while consulting FAQs that there are multiple worlds. I mean, it's not a huge spoiler, kinda obvious really. But after this part, onto the next world. And I want to be fully awake to appreciate the story and atmosphere and all the rest of it. Also want to see what exactly is going on with Faris' and Reina's dad. Maybe he's got some good reason to be doing what he's doing, maybe it's not him at all but X Death like I said before, I'll find out later.

Faris' real name is Sarisa in the GBA translation.
As for the diminishing attack power, you might have been hit by the "aging" status effect, which lowers all your stats for every turn you take. It could also have been a "dark spark" like effect, which halves your level with each use.
I found bard to be mostly useless.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I sure lucked out. I think. Galuf's Geomancer Find Hole ability thing saved me a lot of problems when raiding this treasure room in the Floating Ruins or Ruins of Ronka or whatever. I would have been very irritated had I found that room full of goodies and promptly been dropped down a hole.

Are you serious? I did all that for smurfing Throw? I have never used Throw in any FF game, ever. And let me guess, Dual Wielding is the ability that will take 450 ABP. Holy smurfing trout, I'll be trying to get that for the rest of the game!

Ugh...beginning to think wasting time on Ninja wasn't worth it...

Anyway...Galuf mastered Geomancer and I wasn't sure what to switch him to. He's a Red Mage now. Now say what you want about Red Mage - about them being the Master of None and all that - but they are by far the most stylish of mages. I love the look.

So I am super lost in these ruins place. It has to be the first dungeon in the history of ever where finding the treasure is easier than finding the way out. I've been all over this place around the save point about a half dozen times, which is great for EXP and ABP and GP but not so great when all I want to do is advance in the game. I'm looking up a FAQ for this bulltrout. I don't know what I'm missing but I'm obviously missing something and I'm tired of random encounter.

Well it smurfing figures. No problems with the stupid invisible bridges, I was just missing a plain old door. Oh well.

Wow, this one random enemy was crazy strong. Also appeared to have Auto-Reflect on it. Gave good EXP and ABP though so no worries.

Boss wasn't anything to worry about. He said about changing its weakness? I dunno, I just kept attacking it and eventually its physical defense dropped and Bartz could hurt it a lot. Between him and Galuf it went down pretty quick.

THE KING IS EVIL???? Well, I'm shocked! Who could have ever predicted this development???

Gonna point out a fact I realized some time ago - the FFX Party is the only party in the series that isn't directly responsible for dooming the world. Good job, Tidus and friends.

And the Earth Crystal shattered, also something no one could have ever foreseen. Poor King Tycoon though, reunited with his one daughter only long enough to die.

X-Death's Theme is pretty badass. It made that whole scene quite memorable. That and Krile crashlanding in a meteor and then blasting the king with a bolt spell. Contrived and useless but awesome.

Oooh these new classes sound awesome though... Dragoons are Lancers in this translation? Meh, makes sense. I wanna try out that and Dancer.

And after I eat and take a break, it's off to a new world full of new towns and monsters and maybe our heroes will actually succeed at something this time.

For more serious Plot Talk, I guess Cid's machine weakened the crystals so X Death was able to revive in the first place? So there's a vague environmental message. Although it's Galuf's and the other's fault for leaving their planet's supervillain on Earth. Very selfish of them.

Observation: in everything ever, the old Ultimate Evil can only be sealed away. Invariably, during the course of the story, the Ultimate Evil is awakened. Yet this generation of heroes can actually destroy it permanently instead of just sealing it. Is this a trope? Because it should be. It's in a ton of different fantasy works. The old heroes were terrible at their jobs and only locked the evil up until a better group of heroes actually put an end to the threat forever.