I may just switch out the whole team to be honest. Partly to discuss the new classes, and partly because Ninja isn't a bad job to start grinding early, and Beastmaster is actually going to be useful in the next section. Firgure I shouldn't neglect Geomancer at that point since this class is a bit better than people give it credit for.
I'll likely post an overview tomorrow on the new classes and then get to doing the Library of Ancients and reaching Crescent. From there I believe I have the chance to finally find one of the leveling spots in this game and the means to do so. I should also be strong enough to deal with the Jackernapes in the Walse Castle Basement as well.
So let's do an overview of the four jobs I haven't used yet.
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Summoners are the bane of any black mages existence.
Stats
Strength: -10
Agility: -1
Stamina: -1
Magic: +33
Ability: Summon
Innate: N/A
Class Type: Take
Weapons: Knives and Rods
Armor: Hats, Robes, and Armlets
In terms of raw magic stats, Summoner is the strongest mage in the game with a whopping +33 bonus to magic and not even counting the extra damage afforded by using Rods/Air Knife to boost the overall damage. Suffice to say, they do exceptional with any magic sub job you give them. Another cool factor is the fact some of the summons have defensive purposes. Golem is a welcome addition that will help any player trying to run a squishy mage party, and Phoenix makes it's debut in this entry giving you a powerful offensive/revive attack. Carbuncle also debuts in this title and may actually be one of the few times the class is pretty useful outside of a gimme fight (Edea in VIII) or adding some weird secondary element to their function (FFIX).
The real drawback of the class is that you have to earn their abilities by hunting down and fighting all of the summoned beasts. Granted the game throws a few of them at you like Syldra and Phoenix but some of the nastier fights int this game can be the summons if you try to obtain them super early, and finding many of them without a guide can be a pain. Like most mage classes, their skills are mostly tiers of their magic ability. Their final skill is Call, but I find it to be a worthless ability considering how much grinding you need to get it. It randomly summons any summon in your possession for no MP cost which sounds nice until you remember you have worthless summons like Chocobo and Remora, or how many endgame monsters/bosses have specific elemental immunities that make Shiva, Ifrit, and Ramuh impractical. Still, this is a top tier class that can do most of your mage needs spectacularly.
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Beastmaster's are the class for taming monsters. FF5-Beastmaster.png
Stats
Strength: +13
Agility: +1
Stamina: +8
Magic: -3
Ability: Catch/Release
Innate: N/A
Class Type: Give
Weapons: Whips and Knives
Armor:Light Helmets, Cloth armor, and Armlets
Probably the strangest class in this title. Beastmaster's offer a lot of potential and sadly fall a bit short in some places, but I honestly feel this class falls into the same camp as Blue Mage and Chemist for being pretty powerful as long as you know what you're doing. The stat spread isn't bad thankfully and the character can sub just about any major magic/melee ability they want and get decent results. It does suck a bit that the class doesn't get a decent boost to agility considering Whips scale with it along with strength. On the brightside, whips not only do full damage from the back row, but most of them come with cool secondary effects or stat increases to them to compensate for some of their shortcomings.
Skill-wise, the class is a bit weird. Calm is suppose to inflict Stop on Magic Beast type enemies, but it's glitched and doesn't do this. Instead it casts Stop on anything that isn't a Magic Beast. Did I mention Most Whips innately have the ability to inflict Paralyze on Magic Beasts? Control is easily their most valuable skill as it allows the Tamer to take direct control of a monster in battle effectively removing one enemy on the field and giving you a fifth ally. Course it doesn't work if the enemy is berserked or gets hit with a physical attack. Still, this ability is invaluable in both making it easier to acquire Blue Mage skills and bypassing a few really nasty enemies in parts of the game like the Shield Dragons that roam about the Sealed Shrine. Catch and Release is their main skill and probably the most awkward. Basically, if you can knock an enemy to below 12.5% or their health (50% if equipped with the Korongo Goard) the tamer will capture the monster and have the ability to release it later in battle in which it will unleash a powerful attack. This is where some in-depth knowledge or a guide comes in handy as enemies don't always use the spell/ability you think they will. Some enemies will simply just do a normal physical attack, others just flee from the battle. Some have the ability to cast boss only sklills like Almagast, so you really need to know these things to get the best out of them.
On the downside though, Release is a one time deal, which is one major issue with the ability. If the Tamer had the ability to carry multiple monsters or could use their release ability more than once, they would be way more useful. Other issues stems from the monster ability being directly pulled from the monsters stats which again requires you to know which monsters have a good ability and stats to back it up. This and their unfocused stats and gear keep them from being much of anything more than a novelty class but one that is still fun to mess around with, especially if you plan on getting all of the Blue Mage spells. Also, I find it incredibly funny that the Shephard class in the DQVII remake re-used FFV's version of the Beastmaster outfit.
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Geomancers use Feng Shui to conquer their enemies. FF5-Geomancer.png
Stats
Strength: +4
Agility: +2
Stamina: +4
Magic: +24
Ability: Gaia
Innate: Find Pit and Light Step
Class Type: Give
Weapons: Knives and Bells
Armor: Hats, Robes, and Armlets
Before I played the Famicom version of FFIII, I would have said this might be the worst incarnation of the class in the series that I've played. With that said, they're better than you might think. The only other class besides Mystic Knight to only give positive stat upgrades, they have the added bonus of being one of the easiest classes to master in the game as well. Geomancers are designed around dungeon crawling. Find Pits and Light Step makes some of the more obnoxious dungeons in this game a breeze and when it's combined with Thief's Find Passage ability, you won't have to worry about some of the dirtier tricks the game has to offer. On the flipside though, these skills would have have been so much more useful in the previous two installments as FFV marks the franchise starting to move away from damage floors and pit traps. You'll be thankful to have these skills in the dungeons that have said obstacles but they are thankfully few in number making these skills not as useful as one may like.
Gaia is the real attraction here, and FFV debuts how the skill is largely remembered. Gaia will activate one of four abilities based on the terrain of the battle. Every terrain gives the Geomancer four different commands to use but unfortunately for the player it's partially random. I say it's random because which effect you get is based on an algorithm that takes your Geomancer's level into consideration. When Gaia is used the game generates a number between 0 and the character's level. This number is taken in blocks of tens so 0-10 gives one skill while 11-20 would activate a different skill. In the early game, this means you'll likely only see one of two abilities at most but as you level the class you'll eventually see some of the real powerful skills like Leaf Dance, Windslash, and Earthquake. The higher your level, the more likely you'll see the higher tier skills than the throw away lower tier ones. So there is a way to manipulate this ability. Gaia also doesn't cost any MP to use and the damage algorithm uses magic stat for damage making this a really powerful ability to give to mages if you want to conserve their MP. The classes high magic stat also makes them a nice choice for magic abilities as well.
The class also uses the unique Bells as weapons. The Diamond and Tinklebell do damage based on the users Magic and Agility, and the attack uses the enemies magic defense to determining damage. Oddly, if the Geomancer is silenced, the bell does no damage. The Rune and Gaia bells use the same formula as axes, though the Rune Bells is bugged and doesn't have the Ranged ability like the other bells so it will do less damage from the back row. On the brightside, the Rune and Gaia bells also boost elemental damage. The Gaia bell obviously increases earth damage, which is great cause the bell can randomly cast Quake for free. the Rune Chime boosts all elements except for Water which makes it super useful if you're subbing other magic for the class or can be used by your second Mime while the other uses the Magus Rod. Overall, the class isn't bad, but I wouldn't be surprised if many players used it early and found it underwhelming so they benched them for the rest of the game despite being more useful once leveled up.
Ninja's are the glass cannons of the melee classes. FF5-Ninja.png
Stats
Strength: +15
Agility: 14
Stamina: +3
Magic: -10
Ability: Throw
Innate: Duel-Wield and First Strike
Class Type: Give and Take
Weapons: Ninja Blades, Knives, and Throwing Weapons
Armor:Light Helmets, Cloth Armor, and Armlets
Of all the incarnations of this class in the series, this may be the most balanced version players ever got. The class has some good strengths that are tempered by a few glaring weaknesses. Ninja's were potent in FFI, broken as all hell in FFIII, nerfed hard with Edge in IV, and Shadow brought the class back to broken status and never really looked back afterwards except for the weird monk hybrid that is Amarant. Ninja's are designed to deal out high damage with their throw command and hoepfully dodge recieving damage with their agility and skills cause this class can't take a hit very well. Unlike other Melee focused classes Ninja's can't wear heavy armor and they have a puny Stamina bonus so they're practically working on the base character. This makes it difficult for the class to deal with battles where blows are going to be traded. Thankfully FFV fixes Edge's issue of never dodging by giving the class some optiosn with accessories like the Elven Mantle, Main Gauche, and Sasuke's Blade which all have secondary effects to allow for better dodging ability. Even better is the class has access to an improved Image ability. In addition to no longer consuming MP, the skill is bugged and allows for the player to stack three shadow clones instead of just two.
In truth the class is built around making is to the enemy never has a first turn. The innate skill of First Strike raises the classes chance of going first in battle in addition to the classes naturally high agility. While the class is restricted to middling based damage weapons, they can equip two of them, allowing the class to often do justr as much damage if not more than their doublehanded knightsword weilding brethren. Throw has a more consistent damage algortithm than it did in previous isntallments and scales with the Ninja's Strength and Agility which are both pretty good. Throw in the high based damage of the unique Throw items and Ninaj's can easily do 2k damage before even reaching Galuf's world. Course this game balances this out by making Ninja throwing weapons incredibly expensive. Interestingly enough, Ninja Blades are a unique weapon exclusive to Ninja and Freelancer as Ninaj's never teach a skill that would allow another class to use them. Course there are only four of them in the game but it's a real shame cause they scale like Knives do and they all give at least +1 in speed.
Course the real reason to bother with this class is to gain the holy ability that is Duel-Wield which is easily the best support skill for any melee class that isn't Monk. In the hands of a Ninja, ir keeps them comeptively useful, in the hands of other melee classes like Knight or Berseker, it makes them a gamebreaker. Thankfully Ninja's are still a pretty class on it's own as well.
Hate to do this to everyone, but I may have to put this on hiatus for awhile. I've had another project come up that is taking precedence at the moment, so I don't think I'll have the time to work on this let alone play FFV to get the screenshots needed for updates. So it's on hold until further notice. I'm sorry and wish to thank everyone who followed along.
Butz drew the short straw and became the Tamer/Beastmaster/Trainer or whatever the hell you want to call it. For my own personal sake, I gave him Bare-handed as his sub job to make him useful in battle. If you're wondering why I chose Butz for this role, it's because he's the only teammate who never leaves the party, meaning I'll always have access to Control once it is learned.
With her higher magic ability, I opted to let Lenna be the Geomancer, whom I must say ended up being the MVP of this session for various reasons. I gave her steal as a sub command, though in hindsight I should have made her a black/time mage instead.
Galuf is continuing his trend to be a mage despite his stats placing him more in the physical department, but as usual, playing the long game with Galuf's development is usually the right way. He got to be a Summoner with an Ice Rod and Learning as his sub skill.
Faris by default, won the lottery this time and got to be Ninja with Buildup/Focus as her sub ability due to not having the best weapon selection for such a class at this point.
With Karnak castle blown to smithereens, the party returns to the Fire Ship to talk with Cid, who is so shell shocked by witnessing the destruction of the Fire Crystal y his own invention, that he proceeds to leave, head to town, and find a bottle to wallow in at the local pub. Consequently, if you visit the inn, you'll find the queen survived as well but is completely mad and delirious from being possessed by ExDeath and gives us another foreshadowing of what's really going on here.
Cid proves to be inconsolable, so the team leaves and discovers the wall separating Karnak from those dirty free-loading scholars at the Library of Ancients was destroyed with the castle, so we take a journey south but not before saving and taking a quick detour into the desert. There is only one real enemy in this place, the Dhorme Chimera. I would highly advise saving before attempting this fight, as this guy can make short work of an underleveled or poorly built team setup. The boss usually gets a preemptive attack and will usually open with the Blue Mage spell Aqua Rake. This is one of the strongest damage spells the Blue Mage can get, so I advise trying to get it early but this enemy can be a handful. You can also attempt to steal a Trident from them as well but be warned that the success rate is low, and this is an enemy you want to kill quickly. Galuf gets killed in the fight, but thankfully, the Blue Mage/Learning character doesn't actually have to survive the battle to get it as long as the party wins the fight.
The team arrives to the Library of Ancients who are in a bit of an uproar. Apparently the scholars have been spending so much time learning they haven't been doing much upkeep with the place. Several books are possessed by evil demons, and the resident demon exterminator Ifrit has disappeared. Even worse, the prize scholar of the place, Mid has wandered off into the deepest parts of the library and hasn't been heard from for awhile. So it looks like the team has their work cut out for them. You can either go up, or down, going up lets you take to the scholars and get a hint concerning Ifrit while going down will lead you to the next plot point.
The enemies in this area are obnoxious cause there is technically four of them but they're technically one enemy as well. The haunted books simply flip through their pages and have you battle one of the demons possessing it, the issue is that it's random and some are worth more than others. As it stands, you don't really want to fight Blue head demon or the giant green tick enemies as they give you crap for rewards. The Tiki Mask enemy is the one you really want to tussle with but tends to be the most shy of the bunch. The gargoyle enemies have Aera, the second tier Areo spell to teach Blue Mage, while the Blue Demon head has Lv. 5 Death, and the Tiki Monster has Moon Flute. Sadly, I still have not learned Control yet, so with the exception of some luck with Aera, I'll have to come back for the other two Blue Mage spells. The gargoyle pages also have Green Berets to steal, which are a nice head piece at this point in the game, while the Tiki Enemy has Ninja Suits but both are rare steals, so come back when you have Control. If you want to Capture any enemies at this point with Tamer, my suggestion is either the Zuu enemies outside the library, or the Gargoyle enemies. Zuu uses a really powerful Wind Slash move while the Gargoyle uses Banish, which is pretty potent this early in the game.
Besides all the Blue Magic, there are only two things to acquire here: A Ninja Suit for Faris, and the Ifrit summon. Ifrit is located in a poorly hidden secret path. He'll be grateful that you freed him from the book he was trapped in but still wants to fight before joining you. Ideally, a team of Mystic Knights and Summoners using Shiva and Ice 2 will make short work of him, but my team isn't ideal. Thankfully he's actually a push over compared to Shiva so even with my less optimal team, he goes down pretty easily. From here, I switch out Galuf's Ice Rod for a Fire one, as just about everything in this area is weak to fire and Ifrit can do over a thousand point of damage with the elemental boost from the rod.
Overall, the dungeon is smaller than the last two and while it has some switch puzzles here and there, it's surprisingly straight forward. When the team reached Mid, they're attacked by everyone's favorite "Wait, is he actually helping me?!" surprise teammate in FFTactics, Byblos! Byblos is a surprisingly obnoxious boss fight if he gets lucky or you get cocky. He loves to hit the team with status magic like Confuse, Toad, and Dischord (halves levels) while also weakening your team with the Blue Mage spell Magic Hammer which destroys MP. At low health, he'll start hitting the team with a powerful Drain spell to restore his health and easily send the target into critical condition. There are two ways to deal with him:
1. He's weak to fire, like extremely weak to fire. If you have four Fire Rods, you can take him down in a single round with a team of Summoners casting Ifirt.
2. Remember how I made it a point to learn Death Claw in the last dungeon? Yeah, he's weak to it and it makes this fight even more trivial as this move reduced him to single digit HP and paralyzes him making him susceptible to a sneeze.
So yeah, this fight goes really easy. I wish I had learned Magic Hammer cause now I'll have to wait until Galuf's World to acquire it, but Byblos is an annoying fight, and Magic Hammer isn't exactly an MVP skill for Blue Mages until FFVII. With the battle over, we get to finally meet Mid, Cid's bookworm and even more oblivious grandson. Confession time: My first exposure to this character was actually in the best forgotten sequel to FFV, the anime OAV, Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals, where his obnoxious snobbishness was cranked up to 11, and he was inexplicably de-aged from fifteenish judging by his official character art to like nine or ten for the anime. Anyway, Mid talks about how awesome his grandpa is due to his indomitable spirit which leads the party to sheepishly mention that the old man is currently drowning his sorrows in a local bar. Mid takes a book he was looking for an rushes off to Karnak.
You know what I always find amusing in RPGs? When a character rushes off to meet someone ahead of you and while you can leave and take the next fifteen hours grinding or doing sidequests, no matter what, you'll somehow manage to arrive before they do. Mid snaps Cid out of his pity party and shows him a book that will allow the Fireship to move without the aid of the Fire Crystal or wind. So, in essence the ancients had cold fusion technology. Cid and Mid rush to the ship to get to work and tell the party to rest up. Here Galuf has a heart to heart with the team as the physical and verbal abuse he witnessed Mid giving his grandpa Cid triggered Galuf's own PTSD concerning raising his granddaughter Cara (Krile) after his deadbeat child and spouse took an indefinite second honeymoon after her birth leaving him to raise her himself. He also remembered beating down an evil Warlock named ExDeath with some cronies and that he's an alien.
I've always been curious about the nature of Galuf's World in relation to Butz's world. Like do you think it has it's own orbit and is farther/closer to their solar system's star, or do you think it's trapped in the same orbit and simply on the opposite end of Butz's world's orbit making it impossible for the people of his world to see it? This is one of the weird things about V's world that is almost unique to it. I think VIII is the only other game that shares thios trait of having a really cosmologically messed up world that begs further investigation despite how irrelevant it is to the narrative.
Anyway, the next morning the Fireship is ready to go and I get my first real taste of exploration in this game. Up until now most of my modes of transportations had been locked away in isolated areas, giving me only a few places to explore, but the Fireship opens up a larger part of the map, though I'm still a ways off from true exploration. I head south and once you spot a cave entrance inside a mountain area sismilar to the one by the Pirate's Hideout, it's time to park it and move out. There is a cave entrance not far from this map oddity, and we're going to save before going in. I should be heading to Crescent village, but I took a detour here cause this cave is one of the better leveling spots in Butz's World. The cave is home to only two enemies. Nut Eaters and the rare Skull Eater. The Nut Eaters are pathetically weak and always come in groups of three. This also means they always give you 2 ABP. The Skull Eater is the creature to watch out for, it can easly pull off 1500-2k damage on your party by this point and it's extremely fast and nearly indestructible despite only having one or two HP, but you want to fight him cause he rewards 5 ABP. there are two methods to deal with this guy by this point in the game.
1. If you have Control and actually have it land, use the monsters special skill Incisor to OHKO itself.
2. Use Geomancer's Gaia, if Will o' Wisp is used, it ma confuse it and cause it to kill itself, if it uses Stalactite, it can pierce it's defenses and easily kill it.
There is another easy was as well, but involves doing the Crescent part of the story. For now, I plan on grinding a few job levels. One fun thing about the Skull Eater is that this enemy will flee from battle, sometimes on his first turn, and if he does, you still get rewarded the 5 ABP he gives. What I really like about this level spot is that the XP/Gil gain is actually low, so you don't really have to worry about overpowering your party by leveling up a few jobs here within reason of course. I'm thinking I'll get most of the team up to Lv. 2 minimum with their respective job builds, meaning Butz and Faris will focus on Melee while Lenna and Galuf focus on Magic, with a few side skills like Blue Mage's Learning, and Tamer's Control for good measure.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 08-03-2018 at 10:12 AM.
I love this part of the game for some reason. People give V crap for being goofy but i feel that the parts around the ancient library and the Earth crystal are awesome mysteries and they sent chills down my spine
I know it's been a few months, but I might be starting this up again soonish. Perhaps not this month, but maybe in the new year. I've finally got around to doing that grinding in my last post and since I'm sort of between games at the moment, I figured it would be a nice time to jump back into this, especially since I've been in an FF mood again gaming wise.
So when I last left off, I went to the cave near Jachol to do a little leveling with the Skull Eater enemies. I probably stayed there a bit longer than I should have but I have most of the cast up to Lv. 2 on most available jobs so now I have some wiggle room with builds. As mentioned before, I like this cave because the enemy types give out low XP and Gil so even with the long grind fest, my party got maybe two levels max from the whole ordeal. Other nice things about this place is that you can steal Tents from the Skull Eater and they drop Elixirs occasionally. The regular Nutkins drop Potions, so I don't need to shop too much.
So I went exploring with my new ship and headed towards Crescent Island which simply has one town and chocobo forest on it. Entering the town triggers a cutscene where the ship gets swallowed up in a whirlpool. The townspeople simply take it in stride but I just lost my fancy new ship. Much like FFIII, it seems like transportation devices have a short lifespan in this game. The town sells some gear for Hunters and Bards so I pick up a few things.
If you go to the pub a man there has two NPC enraptured with his lecture. You need to talk to each of them to trigger a different piece of info from him. The whole town hints to a connection with the missing Earth Crystal while the old man mentions Black Chocobos. There is also a Bard living in town and he has a piano in his place. Talking to the Bard gives you the Life Song. We need to remember this place because this Bard also teaches another Song but we need to get better at the piano first.
We obviously have to go to the Chocobo Forest but there is one thing we need to do before hand. On the island are a few enemies we need to deal with. The Black Flame enemies can teach the Blue Mage spell Dark Shock/Dischord. This spell will half and enemies level which is useful for making enemies levels divisible for the other Lv. _ spells the Blue Mage can learn. The other thing is the enemy with two sickles in their hands called Harvester. These guys drop an item called the Death Scythe. This is the best Axe in the First World with high attack power and 33% chance of inflicting Instant Death. Two-Handed, a Berserker can actually OHKO a few of the bosses in this part of the game. This is also the weapon I've been waiting for to deal with the Jackanapes in the Walse basement.
We that out of the way we enter the Chocobo Forest where the mythical Black Chocobo turns out not to be extinct like people thought they were. Butz has to catch the old bird. After a bit of a struggle with cornering it, Butz catches the bird and decides to test her out. She barely clears the forest before they both come crashing down. Faris examines the bird and discovers she's having issues because she has to Fire Crystal Shards stuck in her throat, giving the party access to the last two jobs from this crystal: Hunter and Bard. I'll give my overview of them in the next update.
The Black Chocobo functions like a better Wind Drake, able to clear most mountain ranges and such. The only stipulation is that the little chickadee can only land in forests, so she can't get us to every location. I should head back to the Library of Ancients to discuss my missing ship to Cid and Mid, but first off, let's take a detour to an isolated town in the mountains.
Lix is Butz's hometown, and considering this is the premier place to obtain Ninja weapons and gear and the fact it's an isolated mountain village; my fanon is that Butz comes from a secret hidden ninja village and he's secretly a ninja. This is alos the only place in the game you can listen to one of my favorite tracks in the game, Home Sweet Home. Chatting with various people will trigger a few cutscenes here such as Butz gaining his fear of heights. His old home is now occupied by a Bard.
If you listen to the music box, you'll trigger a flashback concerning Butz's mother and the Bard will give you a new song if you speak with them afterwards.
If you stay in the inn, you get to stay for free and trigger a cutscene where Faris finds Butz missing. She finds him outside his old house near a grave of his parents and we get another cutscene concerning his past and his father Dorgann. Afterwards, the two discuss their parents for a bit with Faris still questioning her connection to Lenna.
Once I buy up a few items, we head back to the Library of Ancients where Cid and Mid casually deflect the news of the Fire Ship being sunk and say they'll just make a new one. Instead they drop a bombshell on the party when they mention that the King of Tycoon has been spotted near the ruins of Gohn. The party needs to investigate but the Black Chocobo can't reach the place and instead they'll have to cross the Desert of Shifting Sands. I'm going to make a few more stops to two optional towns first. I also need some Gil for the gear there as well. Before leaving the library, I battle one of the books to finally gain Lv. 5 Death Blue spell. I also want the Moonflute spell but I'll have to wait until my party is no longer divisible to 5. So two towns to visit, and will head into the desert to fight an obnoxious sandworm.
So I have two new classes, what should I make my party be for the next round?
Job Class Overview!
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Rangers use bows to strike down foes from the back row! FF5-Ranger.png
Stats
Strength: +16
Agility: +12
Stamina: +1
Magic: -5
Ability: Aim
Innate: None
Class Type: Give*
Weapons: Bows and Knives
Armor:Light Helmets, Clothes, and Armlets
Okay, so awhile back I mentioned there were two classes I didn't care for in this game, well here we are, Rangers are my other least favorite class. They are a mixed bag much like Red Mage, where most of their strengths can be countered by a different job. To make matters worse, only one of their skills is worth getting and much like Red Mage, I'm probably more irked I have to put up with these two classes every time I play FFV just so I can have an optimal team.
So on the plus side of things, Rangers have a really nice stat spread, even their hit to magic isn't hard enough to make a player shy away from giving them magic as a secondary skill, especially Time or Blue magic which don't factor in the Magic stat much into their abilities. Bows also allow them to fight from the back row letting them do damage on par with other melee builds at reduced risk of taking damage themselves. This is also the class that gives us the creme of the crop in terms of melee skills which is Rapid Fire/X-Fight. This is an interesting skill which halves the damage of each successive attack getting weaker with each blow. The skill is unfocused so if you're fighting multiple enemies or one with innate multiple targets like Neo-Exdeath, this skill will choose the targets randomly. It also disables the secondary abilities of weapons like the Gaia Hammer's random Quake casting. On the flip side, the four attacks will ignore the enemies defense and evasion giving them 100% accuracy and higher damage than expected. It does not ignore spellblade magic allowing you to soup up the damage if needed and the skill will not trigger counter moves. Next to dual-wield, this is debatably the best melee ability in the game.
With that out of the way, let's go into the problems with this class. Next to Ninja and Dancer, this class has the worst armor selection in terms of defensive ability for a melee focused class. You pretty much need them to be in the back row so they don't get killed and unlike the Ninja class, they are not built for dodging unless you build them for it. The other issue here is that Bows are not great weapons compared to some of the games heavier hitters, or more correctly, I should say that bows have too many drawbacks that by the time some really great ones come your way, a player should already have invested enough resources into a dual-wielding warrior. Bows have some issues, they have the lowest accuracy of any weapon in the games except for Rods. Most weapons have 80-99% accuracy except for Bows which mostly have 70%. This means that you pretty much have to use the classes Aim skill instead of Fight command to guarantee the attack will land. Not bad for Hunters who have innate Aim skill, but kind of bad idea for any other class. To make matters even more annoying, Bows are dual stat scaling, needing high strength and agility to be most effective which means the weapon has a lower base damage and is not a good fit for any class that isn't the Ranger itself or a Ninja and Thief. Granted, Bows have awesome secondary abilities like the elemental bows in the early game, the Elven Bow's high crit rate, or the Hayate Bow's innate Rapid Fire ability. The issue is that the bows that have the best secondary skills and higher hit rates are mostly on the back half of the game where a player will likely be using more specific builds and have access to the equally awesome weapons from other classes. The other issue with Bows is that they are Two-Handed innately, meaning they don't get a strength bonus with the Two-handed skills and they can't be dual wielded either. This severely limits their build options.
This brings me to the overall issue of the class which is that it doesn't have many good build options, in fact most of the classes best secondary skills come from itself. Rapid Fire is a great skill for the class but is honestly better with other builds. There are not many secondary skills to help this class as a melee fighter which is what it's built for, the few I can think of are either more optimal for other classes or are high end skills that are not worth the effort like the Thief Agility skill. This leaves the class to work more like a mage where the options are to either cover their weaknesses or build them for versatility. As mentioned before, magic sub jobs are not a bad idea, and the Ninja class has several abilities that can keep this class alive as well.
* Another issue I have with the class is their poor choice of abilities to teach. Rapid Fire is basically the only skill worth taking from them. Animals works like the Geomancer Gaia/Terrain ability where the animal they summon is based on the users level. While there are some fantastic summons among the list, the randomization factor and the more meager field of choices makes this a risky gamble. By end game with a real high level party, this skill can be pretty awesome since Wild Boar and Unicorn are both pretty snazzy, but by those levels you have better options overall. Aim is an okay ability that only the Ranger really gets any use out of it. While the game has a few enemies with ridiculously high evasion to deal with, there are not enough of them and usually better options for dealing with them making this skill not that useful. I've already mentioned the issues with Bows so the Equip skill isn't great anyway, especially since you need Aim to make it worthwhile to begin with. Rapid Fire is about the only reason to bother with the class.
Now, I know I've just spent the last few paragraphs beating this class up, but it's not actually a bad class, it's just not a great class much like the Red Mage. For every strength it has, there is a drawback or another class that can do it better. It has a great melee stat spread but Bows limit the class to very few options and knives force you to give up their back row advantage and deal with their bad defensive options, at which point you might as well settle for using a Thief or Dancer. They can make good back up mages, but why bother using the class if the player can just make them into mages with better stats to do the job? It's kind of the issue here. They're a pretty strong class in the early game to mid game, but their weaknesses start to appear as you approach the second half of the game. My advice is to master them quickly for Rapid Fire and then never look back.
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Bards are Final Fantasy's traditional Lethal Joke class... FF5-Bard.png
Stats
Strength: -8
Agility: +8
Stamina: -9
Magic: +11
Ability: Sing
Innate: None
Class Type: Give
Weapons: Knives and Harps
Armor: Hats Robes, and Armlets
Oiy, Bards. Man where to begin with this class? This class has a lot in common with the Ranger class. The exception being that the stat spread is not ideal. They're better mages than Red Mages but not by much, they have the second worst stamina penalty behind Dancer, awful equipment options that don't compensate for such low Stamina, and Harps are honestly the worst weapon in this game. With that said, I would argue that Sing is next to Time Magic as one of the best support skills you can give a class.
Build wise, you'll want to make use of that magic stat. They make decent secondary mages but as stated before, their magic bonus isn't stellar among the mage classes and unlike the rest of those classes including Red Mage themselves, they can't equip Rods or Staves to boost their magic potential leaving them potentially worse off than the other classes. Their mage equipment options and ridiculously low stamina rating makes them also fragile as all hell so you'll likely either need to compensate with a sub ability, have a tanky class guard them, or simply pray the enemy doesn't attack them and if you're using a party of them against anything that isn't undead, well don't be stingy with your Phoenix Downs and Life spells.
Harps as I've mentioned are pretty much the worst weapons in this game with one exception. Harps have the advantage of being able to always do full damage despite the row the character is in or enemy. The issue is that most harps don't scale with anything, instead they do a percentile based damage based on the target's current health. The Silver Harp does 1/16th damage, Dream Harp does 2/16ths and inflicts Sleep, while the Lamia Harp does 3/16ths and inflicts confusion. Did I mention that if the enemy is a Heavy type, like most bosses and large enemies, then the attack fails? Yeah, you're seeing the picture here on how worthless this weapon is. The lone exception is the Sealed Weapon Apollo Harp which is actually pretty fantastic as it scales with the users magic and calculates the enemies Magic Defense for damage, in addition to it's other secondary abilities but I'll get to that later on in the Let's Play.
To be quite frank, as traditional of the series, the class is pretty awful as a packaged deal and only a really eccentric party build would bother using one outside of situational advantages. There's the rub though, the class has some moments where it truly shines in this game, or more correctly, their signature ability Sing is an underrated and pretty awesome skill. Granted Equip Harp and Hide are both worthless but Sing actually makes up for a lot of these issues.
Sing has a wide variety of uses and it's actually worth hunting down most of the songs. The best part about Sing is that the ability has no mp cost, which is one major advantage they have over their mage brethren. There are three types of Songs: Support, Offensive Support, and Offense. Offensive Support songs mainly deal with inflicting status spells on the enemy such as Confusion and Stop. You would be surprised how many enemies are affected by these versions of the status affliction so don't be afraid to experiment.
The defensive support magic makes up the bulk of the spell list. The Mighty March spell casts Regen on the party which can be useful for a team of beefy melee fighters since Regen works off the Stamina stat. The others are a bit different. They raise a particular stat for every round the Bard continues to sing up to a maximum of 99, though the increase is over once the battle is over. These songs can raise Strength, Speed, Magic, or even the party levels if you finish the piano side quest. The singer will continue to sing until they are damaged or silenced so keep the proper gear on them and give them beefy class to take point. Now granted, most battles wouldn't require you to leave a bard to stat boost the party that far, but even a few stat increases can make a difference especially with weapon scaling. Likewise, there is a bug in the game that makes it so that if the singer is turned into a Zombie, they will actually continue to sing even when struck so there are some fun ways around the issues.
The final spell is their lone offensive spell and frankly this spell kind of makes up for a lot of the short comings of the class. Requiem is a free ability that does ridiculous amounts of damage to the undead. I mean stupidly high damage to them. There are entire dungeons filled with nothing but undead and a team of Bards can own the place with this skill in hand. Hell there are bosses that are undead as well this ability is super effective against. Starting in Galuf's world, it's not a bad idea to do a few dungeon runs with a Bard team if you're only dealing with undead. Considering the classes low ABP cost to master, you can likely master the class in no time flat and then throw Sing onto a sturdier class. It might not be worth using the class at all outside of the very few situations where they are viable and have low risk, but thankfully mastering them is pretty easy.
Overall, Bard is kind of crappy but their main skill Sing is easily one of the best support abilities in the game, and Requiem owns the undead.
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With these two out of the way all we have left for Class Overviews are the Earth Crystal and the Mime and Freelancer classes. While I am playing the Super Famicom version, if there is an interest, I can also do an overview of the Advance editions four new classes as well.
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