Final Fantasy V - ProJared

in America we got Final Fantasy one two and three and the next one we got was Final Fantasy seven but as I already discussed these are actually Final Fantasy four and six we never got the actual NES Final Fantasy two and Final Fantasy three then Final Fantasy VII came out just a few weeks later we finally got Final Fantasy 5 when it was ported onto the PlayStation 1 inside Final Fantasy anthology are y'all paying attention to this [ __ ] there will be a test at the end even though it wasn't officially released in the West until 1999 seven years after the Super Famicom version Final Fantasy five was already getting a lot of attention here when the emulation scene was blowing up that's pretty much all it was for me I first played this thanks to emulation but this is one of those Final Fantasy games that I actually never finished and it's been so long that it might as well be an all new game for me now for the sake of this video I'm gonna be using a reproduction cartridge that I got from shop flashback games.com I wanted to try to play it in its original purest form as much as possible unfortunately that does mean this uses an outdated fan translation the same one that the emulation scene used in the 90s and it's filled with a whole lot of mistakes like krile being named Cara so on and so forth so just bear with me on that the very first time you boot up the cartridge you're greeted with an awesome sight a full-on intro bringing you into the game [Music] fancy inch row with great music and opening credits look for 1992 this was cinematic AF you don't even select a file you go straight into the start of the game it's minor but a great way to pull you into the world as soon as possible Final Fantasy 5 starts out as stereotypical as it gets introduced the main characters they're all chillin and then Jesus Christ God a meteor hits the planet alright they're actually fine nearby the crash site is our main hero of the game ok this is one of those translation things that I was talking about the original fan translation made his name but his official name these days is Bart so I'm gonna be changing it to that the main reason being I don't want this video riddled with a bunch of butt jokes it's boring it's unoriginal a lot of people have done that already so I don't I don't wanna cool got it alright just don't be an ass about it [ __ ] was that a but damn it I just said I wasn't naturally Bart's wants to see a meteorite because that sounds tight so he rides off on his trusty pet chocobo named Boko were also introduced to all of our other heroes Ferris a pirate leader Lenna a princess of the wind kingdom and wyvern rider and Galef a total dad with amnesia it doesn't take long for the heroes to come together with Lenna pointing out how the wind has stopped therefore Lenna is on her way to the temple of the wind crystal with Galef mentioning while he doesn't remember anything he knows he has to go there too thus they go to a nearby cave and try to steal a pirate ship - now available you when there's no wind you stupid idiots Jesus Christ what is wrong with you after recognizing lenez pendant Faris has the exact same one and agrees to take them to the wind shrine even though there's no wind Faris can pilot the ship to the shrine thanks to a longtime companion SIL drop ah he's cute and yeah they make their way to the shrine of the wind crystal G an epic RPG in which you collect the four treasures of the young oh [ __ ] you don't collect them in an incredible innovative first for the Final Fantasy series you don't get the four crystals of the elements people have been using the different crystals energy to power their cities and machines and whatnot overusing them to the point that they shatter so wow this is another installment about crystals it isn't about saving them it's too late however before they shatter the crystals and view the four heroes with one of the best things to ever grace all final fantasy jobs returning from Final Fantasy 3 is the job system I can't overstate how much I love this any character can be anything some of them may be slightly more inclined toward physical or magic classes but you have free rein on how to make them so at least one's gonna be a thief obviously however unlike Final Fantasy 3 the job system is greatly expanded beyond a single ability every class now has several passive abilities to go with battle actions this includes stuff like the thief being able to sprint or see secret passages or the geomancer being able to avoid pitfalls even better as the jobs level up you can learn additional actions to use in battle and on top of that every job comes with an ability plus an open slot to assign any other ability either one to use while fighting or a passive from another job I can't even begin to describe how much customization this provides there are so many options for mixing abilities for incredible power like the rune Knights ability to cast magic on a weapon combined with the fighters ability to wield a weapon with two hands or a White Mage that can also cast black magic or a bard that can get the [ __ ] out of my party literally dozens of possibilities it's fantastic this allows for you to play how you want practically any boss and dungeon - an exception or two can be defeated using any combination of jobs not having the rigidness like in Final Fantasy 3 removes that frustration of feeling punished for not playing holla game wants you to instead it's a feeling of freedom and this freedom creates one of the most replayable Final Fantasy entries in the franchise you can also practice the piano [Music] further expounding on the importance of the job system leveling up means almost nothing the only thing that changes at each level up is getting more maximum hit points and magic points that's it what makes playing RPGs fun are the constant rewards of leveling up new equipment and seeing tangible improvements but the level ups don't matter anymore so where's the reward now it's in the job system job level ups are far more exciting than gaining experience points since there are no stat increases from level ups or job level increases earning enough ability points and unlocking new job levels earns new abilities and passives for you to use it's exciting to know that each time a job level increases you'll get some useful reward it makes each job level up feel important in worthwhile there's always a payoff this is especially true as you start to realize that not all classes level up equally as some have varied speeds of advancement making longer ones seem that much more tantalizing to obtain what what are you serious once you hit its max level you master a job from there you can master other jobs and doing so is worthwhile because if you change any character back to their base freelancer job you really get the full customization spectrum that character takes the highest stat adjustment of all available jobs they've mastered automatically making them the best it can be they also have every passive ability of every master job and most importantly to open ability slots the possibilities towards the end of the game are staggering I can't stress this enough the job system is what makes Final Fantasy 5 so worth playing even my own playthrough there are so many options I didn't get to take and explore and so many combinations I've wanted to try and it was so fun I was very tempted to start a new file just to see how I could play the game differently something I hadn't felt since Final Fantasy 1 very few RPGs in general can match this level of customization and that feeling of playing how you want to play the different jobs weapons spells the mixing of abilities it's so good damn it for as fantastic as the job system is some choices were made to the battle system itself that are both good and bad the active Time battle system returns from Final Fantasy 4 only now we have these handy little bars letting you know when a character will be ready next it helps you plan upcoming actions and these bars stick around for as long as the ATB system itself does for the rest of the series however spells no longer have a casting time the moment you choose any level of spell it immediately pops off this feels less strategic as there's no downside for choosing your most powerful option even the strongest summons happen instantly it's generous sure but like not as fun I suppose I valued the risk/reward balance too much also the role system returns making characters in the back deal and receive half physical damage and in this game it's the same for the enemies monsters behind others also take half damage from physical attacks this seems like an attempt to add more strategy to fights and make you prioritize enemies in the front lines but instead it feels more restrictive instead of being able to focus on high-priority targets it's better to take them out in order it promotes that mash a to win mentality that can plague RPGs it's more restrictive than interesting that isn't to say a final fantasy fire doesn't have interesting battles because it has some of the coolest boss battles that really utilizes the ATB system and the physical space of the battle screen like one versus a sandworm we're right before you target it with an attack it'll move which hole it's sticking out of and swinging in an empty one punishes the party with a strong counter-attack or this void we're after knocking out at least one party member it'll start to suck the bodies in to remove them from the battle permanently it adds a sense of urgency as you try to defeat it before that happens I mean it could add some extra time by being in the back row also can I just point out how amazing some of the monster designs are they've been kind of samey for the first four games and in here they're metal like this guy whose tongue is protruding out so hard he's ripping off his own face this this entire dungeon has monsters that looked like they were powered from doom overall the combat is good the sheer number of different options you can do thanks to mixing job abilities helps it a lot even if it has a few tweaks that I'm not a fan of the boss battles are interesting enough to make up for it since a lot of them feel like you really need to strategize to overcome and it's possible instead of having to grind levels just for higher hit points the music in this game has a few standout excellent tracks nope not that the battle music is pretty good not my favorite or amazing but good I also like the renditions of the crystal prelude and the final fantasy overture I also like that theme of final fantasy 5 that plays in the great opening sequence in the credits and use for the overworld and the chocobo theme is one of the best [Music] the victory theme is as classic as ever but let's be real the most famous and best track is known to people who haven't even played the game [Music] battle on the big bridge it's a fantastic music track sounding very different than anything else in the game and different than most songs in the whole series it's so good that it gets reused again and again in future Final Fantasy games as fun throwbacks this song is probably more well known than the rest of the game itself it makes sense truthfully certain music is great the gameplay is very solid and that's what people remember since the story isn't good it's fine and serviceable but easily the weakest part of the whole game it isn't bad but noticeably unimpressive the main characters aren't all that exciting ultimately every story is about how does a character change from the beginning to the end and in this case they're all about the same the only real major character development is Ferris when it's revealed that the pirate leader is actually a woman the whole time this was probably pretty shocking and surprising at the time but by today's standards it isn't handled the most eloquently and ultimately changes very little in the story since its revealed early on Ferris still ended up being my favorite character because of her general competency and take no [ __ ] attitude she seemed like the least one note of them all fascinatingly the character who got the best character development is an enemy Gilgamesh starts out as a humorous enemy at the start and goes through a complete change and helps the party by the end this was new for the series an old drag here becomes very endearing even as I think about major story beats now there aren't a whole lot of them the biggest one would be involving Galef and spoiler alert I guess if you don't want to hear this three-two-one the dude dies he does go out like a total badass fighting main villain exdeath beyond his limit and sacrificing himself to save his friends more importantly unlike Final Fantasy 4 Galef actually dies Noah off-screen returned to life or hand-wavy revival [Music] they make this clear with a simple yet effective text box he's gone sir everyone final fantasy seven was not the first one to make a major party death permanent sort of gallops death ends up being inconsequential as soon as Galef dies you meet his granddaughter krile and she immediately receives all the abilities job points and progression that galloped it so you don't really end up losing anything major it also makes the story weaker in my opinion since Crowell doesn't get developed at all especially since she appears so late in this story I do like the theming of the plot though it's about environmentalism all those crystals we normally save they shatter because people harness their energy too much to lift comfy lives and ruin everything and the main villain exdeath is the physical embodiment of an ancient tree who gets pissed oh my god this tree is trying to kill me [ __ ] you nature he seeks revenge on the world and by getting the crystal shattered he's able to access a power known as the void to truly punish the world he's nature itself fighting back one of my favorite moments is when you enter X deaths Tower and after using magic to dissolve the illusion you see that the entire tower is made of flesh it's great symbolism people make all their homes out of trees so he makes his out of skin like I said he medal that said the story overall is very humorous a lot of silly things happen including a lot of physical comedy that doesn't really land in the limitations of small sprites on the Super Nintendo the attempts at humor gets tiring pretty quickly and this becomes more obvious as you hear there one funny song way too many times [Music] yeah this one it gets tiring an example would be here after falling into a pit and having rope problems krile gets a splinter then a short while later while meeting with the great turtle sage the Splinter flies out of her finger and then exdeath whoa hahaha i disguised myself as a splinter and then he fights the turtle I will say that this game has one of the better endgame options of the series there are numerous additional dungeons which you can use to unlock up to twelve relic weapons each one used by different classes there are plenty of extra summons to obtain extra jobs and the ultimate white and black magic spells none of it is necessary but worthwhile to do and gets you more of those delicious job points as you do it these extra things to do easily adds on another six to eight hours of gameplay which is awesome for an otherwise shorter RPG I finished the whole thing in about 28 hours after doing everything I loved the imagery at the final boss battle exdeath is literally a screaming tree it's visually cool with the tree spiraling up and out of the void of course he has a second form as Neill acts death and it uh it's got a lot going on here like I think this part is actually him even though he looks more like the Emperor from Final Fantasy 2 but there's also this toothy goat thing a demon face dude down here a pissed-off unicorn couple of demon bros chillin and just a surprising amount of titties look there's another face it's impressive looking but don't seem like it the matically fits everything else going on in the game after defeating neo exdeath the week into party readies themselves to leave the void wait what not the whole party oh no I got a bad ending yeah it turns out that if any of your party members are knocked out when exdeath is killed they get left behind this slightly alters the end sequence providing additional epilogue moments or not it isn't too big of a change but forget that noise I beat exdeath again just to make sure I got the best possible ending it's minor changes but I like that there are slight alterations depending on how your final battle goes it's neat and works itself into the ending organically I liked it Final Fantasy 5 is commonly referred to as the most underrated Final Fantasy game I disagree it isn't underrated everyone I've spoken to has played it speaks really highly of it I'll add my voice to that chorus the job system is excellent and the whole game is really replayable links to it the story isn't fantastic but the gameplay is so good on its own it's worth playing through it isn't underrated it is the most overlooked not enough people have played final fantasy 5 sadly there aren't enough platforms to play it on I played the Super Nintendo original but that isn't the best version to play even though it was the first official port that we got do not play the ps1 port load times are bad and the translation is awful like making fares be a stereotypical yarr pirate throughout this is the same version that's available for download on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 avoid it the Game Boy Advance version has the best translation and adds an even more jobs and dungeons the sound chip doesn't make the music sound as good but I'm not gonna pretend like emulation doesn't exist use a GBA version ROM and look for a sound restoration patch for the best possible experience and sweet lord avoid the mobile and steam ports just yeah I'm glad I finally got around to finishing it because man I just I love the job system and this is one of the best implementations of it if you don't count Final Fantasy Tactics I can really recommend Final Fantasy 5 for any final fantasy player in general or anyone who plays RPGs and I play the piano enough that I finally mastered it look [Music] thank you so much for watching truly I mean that be sure to subscribe and like the video and if you haven't yet check out my other Final Fantasy videos and be sure to follow me over on Twitch [Music]

Channel: ProJared

Views: 1,155,294

Keywords: projared, final fantasy, review, final fantasy 5, final fantasy V, final fantasy 5 review, final fantasy V review, gameplay, SNES, squaresoft, square enix, bartz, lenna, faris, galuf, butz, gilgamesh, battle on the big bridge

Id: X4IwL5bN_7g

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019