So I started FFV last night and the LP can begin. Due to the limitations of how many pictures I can upload, I'm going to have to be selective of the images I see, thus the story side of things will be a bit disjointed.
When the game starts proper, Lenna watches as her father leaves Tycoon Castle to investigate a disturbance he felt concerning the Wind Crystal. Lenna senses something is wrong and leaves, Faris watches as the wind dies down on her ship, Galuf is rushing to stop something, and Butz is just chilling with his life partner Boko. The crystal breaks and the story eventually let's the player control Butz.
You don't have many options at first, you must simply head east to investigate the meteor. What's interesting to see so far is how much FFV utilized old assets from previous games. The world map tile set is pretty much directly taken from FFIV, whereas dungeon and battle graphics are all new. The opening sequence with the illusion of the sun rising is quite effective and while the field sprites are still the squashed sprites similar (and some taken directly) from IV, they are far more animated than the previous title.
I've changed the setting to Active Time battle and raised the battle speed to its fastest. Contrary to what you may think, battle speed doesn't actually affect your party's ATB gauge, it actually just affects how quickly the enemy can act. By setting it to it's fastest setting, most of these low runt goblins get their turn before Butz, so this is really more for increasing the game difficulty for the player than trying to make the game run faster. In fact, it's not until FFVII that the Battle Speed affects the overall time it takes to fill the ATB Bar so anyone replaying the 16-Bit entries should remember this.
Much like how FFIV was tightly scripted in the beginning, FFV is also pretty scripted in the early sections. Butz comes across Lenna being dragged off by Goblins and a fight ensues. Fun fact: the goblins in these early scripted fights are different from the regular goblins found on the world map. They are four levels weaker than their Random encounter variation, have no access to Goblin Punch, don't drop any items and have exactly 1HP. None of this is important, but it's still interesting nonetheless.
After rescuing Lenna, Butz and her introduce themselves with the player being able to finally name Butz. While Butz is the official romanization of the name, his name is actually pronounced as Battsu with the Ba part sounding like Bah in Bah Humbug, as opposed to the English version of Ba as in Baby or Bu as in but. So saying his name sound like Butts is actually incorrect and in fact, Bartz is closer to how his name would be correctly pronounced in Japanese. To further add to this, it's very likely that Bartz is a poorly translated shortening of the German name Bartolomäus, which as you can tell by just saying that name out loud is the German version of Bartholomew. This makes it a similar situation as Sabin's Japanese name of Mash, which is actually a strange romanization of the Japanese sounding equivalent of the name Matthew. So in essence, Butz/Bartz is really just Bart, while Sabin/Mash is actually suppose to be Matt. That will likely be the last linguistic l;esson we'll have for this game until ExDeath and Krile show up as their names are also a bit funky between translations.
That aside, the team meets Galuf and we're introduced to the second character in the franchise history to have the amnesia trope surprisingly enough. Granted the amnesia plot point will continue in some shape or form for the next five games in the series after this, so the idea Square uses this trope too much is still pretty sound despite it being more common in the Golden Popular Age than in their early years. Lenna needs to go to the Wind Shrine and Galuf tags along cause he needs to as well from what little he remembers. Butz decides he's been a Good Samaritan enough for the day and parts way with the team. Before leaving, head to the bottom right corner of the map to find an easily missed chest containing a Phoenix Down.
Head left and up, to eventually enter a canyon area and have an absolutely hilarious scene where Boko bucks Butz off of him and they share a Rocket/Groot exchange about how Butz should have stuck around to help the ineffectual Lenna and the amnesiac Galuf. As though fate itself is guiding him, Butz has to rescue them from both an earthquake and Goblins. These are those same unique Goblins as before since they only appear in the fights in these scripted scenes. I don't have to worry about healing cause Butz's health is restored after each scenario. In fact, FFV is deceptively user-friendly in the early game, before it suddenly takes the kiddy gloves off.
With nowhere else to go we head into the cave where we're greeted with a healing spring. I always love how in 16-bit era RPGs, healing springs are always rare and only found in early dungeons. This does make this area an ideal leveling spot, but I'm going to tell you now that physical levels don't matter as much as job levels. In fact, the early game when Job classes are not available is about the only time I would ever suggest power leveling in FFV. Unlike the Tactics series, the party's stats are static and linear in growth. The Job mechanics alter stats but only as long as you have the character in that job, so there is no meta game like in the FFT series where you'll want a character to sit in a class to get stat bonuses. Levels only really matter for Monks and Blue Mages, but I'll get to that later. The only real reason you might want to gain some levels here is to get money and hope that the Goblins (now the actual ones) drop the Leather Cap helmet accessory since the party is woefully under-equipped.
This does bring me up to one thing I do wish to address which are weapons. Mechanically speaking, weapons work differently in FFV than any non-MMO/Ivalice FF game within the main series and due to all three of my party members having different weapons to start with, now would be a good time explain this. In a nutshell, the damage algorithms of weapons scale with multiple stats instead of just strength, this means that certain weapons are more ideal for certain jobs and characters.
Butz begins with a basic broadsword. There are two types of swords in the game, basic swords and Knightswords. Knightswords are way better than actual swords seeing how the weakest knightsword (Flametongue) is stronger than the second best regular sword (Great Sword). On the other hand, basic swords can be used by a variety of classes whereas knightswords are restricted to Knights and Freelancers. All the sword weapons in the game, including katana's but not ninja blades scale with the strength stat in their damage algorithm, making this an ideal weapon for Butz due to having the highest natural strength stat.
Lenna is equipped with a knife, and Faris has a Dagger once she joins. Knife weapons scale with strength and agility, but have a lower basic attack than swords. This makes this a better weapon for Lenna than Butz due to her strength stat being the worst of the five but having the second highest agility compensates for this. Knives, Ninja Blades, Bows, whips and Boomerangs all use this algortithm as well.
Galuf doesn't have a weapon and instead fights barehanded. Barehanded is a bit tricky cause its base damage is 3, but it actually hits twice to compensate for its low attack power and inability to really scale with anything. This makes it pretty weak, and you'll want to get Galuf a weapon ASAP. Barehanded does get some interesting improvements once you acquire the Monk class but I'll get to that when we have the class.
So starting off, the party isn't in the most ideal shape, especially considering Cecil and Kain were fully armed in IV. Luckily, everything is pretty weak in the early game. Farm some Gil in the cave, and hopefully you might get a leather helmet. We'll likely come back here later for the pirate treasure, a side story, and to acquire two Blue Magics from the enemies. Pick up the treasure and discover the secret passage to the pirate hideout. Here, the party will see that Faris ship can move without wind power and Galuf suggests they steal the ship. You can explore the hiedout but sleeping pirates prevent entry anywhere.You can overhear a sleeping pirate talk in his sleep inside the ship to get your first hint about the ship's true locomotive power. Unable to get the ship to move, the party is caught by Faris and the rest of the crew. Lenna reveals she's a princess and in the midst of figuring out how high the ransom should be, Faris spots Lenna's pendant and has the group tied up instead. After some deep reflection by all parties invoilved overnight, Faris decides to help Lenna instead and reveals that Syldra is the ship's true source of power. With that, the team heads towards the Wind Shrine!... or not, we're going to have ourselves a little detour instead.
Heading northwest, the team finds the town of Tule. We'll have to come back later for story reasons but it's important to come here now to pick up a few things before heading to the Wind Shrine. First, talk to the man in green who asks if you've been to the Beginner's Hall. You can answer no and he'll walk you over to it, or you can ignore him and head to the building southwest of town. While there is no real information to be gleamed from the teachers here unless this is your first time playing an RPG, the place is filled with free items. You can obtain some Leather shoes, a tent, and an ether for bothering to explore and talk to everyone here. Explore around town to find more gil, potions, and another pair of Leather shoes to equip.
In the armor shop, pick up three Leather shields as Faris starts with one, if you need to, pick up two extra leather helmets if the RNG hasn't been in your favor for enemy drops. In the weapon shop pick up a Broadsword for Galuf. It has a rod and staff, but there are easier and free ways to obtain them, so save your money. The magic shop is the real reason why we're here and I suggest blowing through all your cash to obtain all six available spells. This way, once the classes are unlocked, they won't be useless until you get to a town to buy them some magic.
Before we leave, we have two more things to do. Go to the Pub and talk to the pirates who mention Faris is asleep upstairs. Here you can witness a pretty hilarious optional scene where Butz and Galuf question there sexuality. Downstairs, you'll see a stage with dancers. They will trell you to stand on the stool closest to the stage and look at them, this activates a fun dancce sequence that would make horndog Cecil proud. The real reason to to do this though is to get the dancers off the stage so you can access the piano. Have Butz play the piano to begin the long quest to obtain the Hero's Song/Rhyme for the Bard class.
With the party fully equipped, head back towards Tycoon castle and try to make land fall somewhere south of the Pirate Hideout entrance where you left Boko. This will activate a side story where Butz learns that Boko tried to follow him into the cave and got injured. Thankfully the pirates discovered him and are taking care of him until he recovers. With the pirates feeling groovy about the party, you can finally explore the hideout and pick up some treasures connected to the inospicuous switch near the entrance to their hideout. Nothing terribly useful, but better to get it now while its relevant than coming back later when most of the items won't be as useful.
With all the done, you can finally head northeast to the Wind Shrine. It's pretty cool seeing how many things you can get done so early in the game. FFV is surprisingly content rich for people who don't follow every story beat and actually sxplore a little.
When you enter the shrine, you'll see some people to the left who all once worked in the shrine or for King Tycoon. Lenna learns her father is at the top of the tower but hasn't returned since the monsters attacked the shrine. Talking to the man on the left of the healing pot will reward you with some free potions and hey, there is a healing pot. Told you this game was really noob friendly in the beginning.
This is a pretty short dungeon but it has a few branching paths leading to another broadsword and some other minor treasures. Give the broadsword to Faris and give her Dagger to Lenna to maximize your offensive potential.
Surprisingly, the enemies in this dungeon drop some decent items for this point in the game and there is another Blue Mage skill to obtain as well for future reference, and a damn good one at that. The main enemies to be on the lookout for are the Black Goblins (drops Leather Shoes and knows Goblin Punch), the Moldwynd (drops Elixers and knows Aero), and the Mani Wizards (drops Rods). I lucked out and got an elixer. Surprisingly enough, a lot of enemies in Butz's world actually have a low chance of dropping Elixers, which is important to acquire now cause we're going to need quite the stockpile later.
Wing Raptor continues on a tradition started in FFIV, the opening boss that teaches you how ATB is different from standard Turn Based combat. Like the Mist Dragon, or Whelk and Guard Scorpion for later fans, Wild Raptor has a tendency to fold its wings around its body in a defensive posture at which point any attack on it will result in the beast countering with Claw, a powerful phsycal attrack that ignores defense. If you've been keeping your levels low, this an be quite dangerous. So it's important not to be slamming commands as quickly as you can cause unlike the next two games, you're not going to get an in-game exlanantion about this mechanic before he accidentally pulls it off. I of course, ifnor this advice and Butz takes a serious hit hat requires me to use a potion on him. The attack to really watch out for though is Breath Wing, a powerful group hitting Wind attack which does low damage but can quickly stakc up if you play too recklessly. Thankfully, this bird is pretty weak and goes down after they jump out of their guard mode.
On the next floor, there is a well hidden treasure in the far southeast corner of the room that contains a staff.
See, told you to save your money in Tule. With that, you can jump into the crystal room where the party discovers that the Wind Crystal has shattered and you witness a sequence where the four are blessed by the crystals and Lenna's father beckons the party telepathically to seek out and protect the reamining crystals. We also get some damn job classes finally and a hilarious side event where Boko explains how the job system works.
With that, I now have four party members, and six jobs at my disposal: Knight, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Blue Mage, and Thief. So now it's time to hear your suggestions for the starting classes of my team. I'll go over the pros and cons of the classes chosen in the next update.
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