The Final Fantasy V Retrospective

with the release of Final Fantasy 4 Square had set a new standard for RPGs in Japan while it didn't sell that much better than its predecessor ff4 had the advantage of being the first RPG for the super famicom that hadn't been ported from another platform and its innovative gameplay moving story and high quality presentation won over a significant number of players who owned Nintendo's 16-bit console and while in the west it didn't sell nearly as well as the first game it still cultivated strong adoration from players despite this success however series Creator Hiro Nobu sakaguchi wouldn't rest on his and his team's Laurels shortly after Final Fantasy 4's release they would Dive Right into working on number five but before development could begin Square had begun to experience significant changes and so too would the state of the Japanese economy with the worlds both within and Beyond Square's walls changing and the super famicom beginning to experience an RPG boom would Final Fantasy V be able to continue to Stand Out Among the crowd or would it become a casualty of a national economic crisis [Music] thank you foreign the early 1990s saw many high points for square akatoshi kawazu's Game Boy RPG makaitoshi Saga which had released in December of 1989 had become the company's first game to sell over 1 million units and would see two follow-ups in as many years the following spring Final Fantasy 3 would be the company's second million seller and would top the Japanese sales chart for the first week of its release shortly after Nintendo would bring the original Final Fantasy to the west where it would sell more copies than it had in Japan and become a staple of Nintendo powers list of top NES games for 52 straight months the Western success of Final Fantasy led to square localizing both The Saga series and second densetsu Final Fantasy Gaiden under the Final Fantasy moniker re-christening them as the Final Fantasy legend and Final Fantasy Adventure respectively however recognizing that the Gulf of differences between these three series may have led to player confusion Square in their Redmond based U.S branch squaresoft eased up on this tactic in any case the success that square was seeing in Japan was hardly reflected in the West after Final Fantasy 1 which was localized by Nintendo in 1990 that their games would begin struggling in North America the first Saga game would ultimately sell 220 000 copies second densetsu 200 000 and Final Fantasy 4 retooled and renumbered as the second game in the series would only sell 340 000 units a poultry figure compared to its whopping 1.43 million in Japan the only Silver Lining is that Final Fantasy 4 would be adored by players and would be a Mainstay on Nintendo powers list of top SNES games for three years straight but during the latter stages of Final Fantasy 4's development Square began to undergo some major changes in April 1991 they merged with a dormant company of the same name inheriting the business activities of the defunct company while retaining their own company history this was done to change the par value of the company's stocks and thus increase squares value and just before the public stock offering Square's founder and president masafumi Miyamoto would step down allegedly having planned to start a new business venture before he was 35 years old and would go on to establish a chain of women's clothing stores despite leaving the company however Miyamoto would remain Square's top shareholder in his place tetsuo Mizuno would become Square's new president and Hiro Nobu sakaguchi who had been a figurehead at the company since its earliest days would be promoted to Executive Vice President thus began a new era for square with public stock offerings bringing in much more capital and a new Direction Guided by the massive success of the final fantasy series especially after the fourth game's Juggernaut success during the nascent months of the super famicom after the release of saga 3 that December Square would cease development for the Game Boy and go all in on the super famicom developing RPGs almost exclusively and the pitiful pay afforded to employees who weren't programmers was increased significant secondly in some cases almost doubled allowing them a more comfortable living it was under these conditions that Final Fantasy V would begin development with company morale strengthened across the board from both the better pay and strong sales and reception of the previous game and despite having been promoted to the executive level sakaguchi was still firmly committed to working side by side with his team to bring the next game to life whether it be by helping others program scenes or programming entire sequences himself but before development could begin there was still the matter of what the game's core ethos would be as successful as Final Fantasy 4 was it did catch some Flack for railroading the player and limiting how they play the game in favor of telling its story while ff4's story and characters were its strongest aspects sakaguchi not wanting to retread old ground decided that Final Fantasy V Should instead see a refinement of mechanics and systems he wanted to give players more room to experiment and play the game their own way and so the decision was made to return to the job system from Final Fantasy 3 to facilitate this unfortunately Takashi takita the scenario writer and sakaguchi's creative partner on Final Fantasy 4 would not stay on for the fifth game or at least did not be involved in a notable or specific capacity while he would be included in the special thanks section of the game's end credits his time would otherwise be occupied by his duties as the scenario director for the second title in the hanjuku hero series of strategy RPGs while other key members of the team would remain such as battle planners hiroyuki Ito and akihikomatsui composer nobuo ematsu concept artist yoshitaka Amano and even graphics artist kazuko Shibuya following her work on nakitoshi kawazu's Romancing Saga sakaguchi still needed a collaborator someone he could bounce ideas off of whose Creative Drive could fuel his own and vice versa and just like with tokida he already knew the right person for the job yoshinori kitase foreign on September 23rd in 1966 and growing up in the as yet unurbanized fusa City yoshinori katase had an interest in the Fantastical from a young age when he wasn't outside catching bugs and playing baseball katase would draw comics and read about magic in the Paranormal his father loved movies and passed this appreciation onto his young son who would regularly watch foreign films on television late at night this appreciation would crystallize into Obsession after seeing Star Wars kitase was entranced by how real it felt especially when compared to the cheap models on wires he would see on television he would seek out books and videotapes which explored the creation of the film and it was during this period that he realized that he wanted a career in the film industry kitase would enroll in nihan University's College of Art to study film regularly filming and editing short films with other students as part of the curriculum for him the best part of the filmmaking experience was editing it was like a puzzle to him splicing together disparate footage to create a sense of Rhythm and meaning that resonates with viewers after graduating katase would find work at a small Animation Studio where he would learn every step of the animation process first hand while making short commercials it was during his time there that he would encounter Dragon Quest which would be the impetus for a new obsession with role-playing games and the first two final fantasies would further expand on what he thought could be done with the medium kitase would quit his job at the animation studio after only one year but instead of looking for a new job he would spend his days playing video games whenever he got stuck on one of them he would take a quick trip to a local bookstore to produce their gaming magazines to figure out what he needed to do and it was in the classified section of one such magazine that he found an ad from Square who were looking for new developers unfortunately katase lacked any programming experience and he didn't know the first thing about game design so for his application he sent in a music video he had animated while at the University of dancing stop-motion robot pigs which had been inspired by the iconic video for Michael Jackson's Thriller while then president masafumi Miyamoto wasn't impressed sakaguchi was intrigued and lobbied to bring katase into the fold despite the lingering stigma which still hung over video games in Japan katase's family were very supportive of his career change having accepted early on that he was naturally drawn to Niche subcultures he was first assigned to work on second densetsu along with a small group of other new hires and would ultimately be the scenario writer for the game it was during this early period that he would learn the ins and outs of game development while practically living at the studio he took to the job quite well and he would play a significant part in applying the super famicom's mode 7 capabilities to Final Fantasy 4 and after working on Romancing Saga as a field designer kitase would be tapped by hironobu sakaguchi himself to be his collaborative partner on Final Fantasy V but this would also be the start of a mentorship as katase was still fairly new to the realm of game development and sakaguchi may have suspected that his new responsibilities as an executive could pull him away from the day-to-day work of game development at any moment it would only make sense then to have someone ready to fill in for him if necessary luckily this aspect of their relationship didn't impede their ability to collaborate in fact they were able to bounce off of each other incredibly well to the point where a friendly rivalry had formed with the two men competing to see who could make more impressive sequences while sakaguchi was in charge of coming up with the story as had always been the case the nuts and bolts of it were figured out in a more improvisational free-form manner between him and katase one of them would put together an event sequence show the other and they would then try to one-up them kitase would often aim for spectacle wanting to wow players so much that he would go out of his way to have programmers write programs to allow him to create scenes that sakaguchi had deemed impossible in response sakaguchi would pivot in the other direction creating more emotional sequences with the intention of making players cry to add levity to what he saw as a solemn weightier narrative kitase would also add comedic flourish and sprinkle humor throughout the game's story and perhaps some levity would be appreciated by The Game's target audience of teens and young adults given the real world turmoil that had begun to take hold across the country [Music] because of how complex this topic is I'm going to summarize it as best I can without getting too deep into extraneous details following World War II Japan's economy would begin to experience phenomenal growth over the next several decades their financial system was centered more on the nation's Banks than on domestic businesses which were largely protected from foreign competition while acquiring market share in other countries around the world large conglomerates would form over time and in the 1980s they would begin to increase their focus on technology and consumer electronics with governmental support efficient production methods allowed for low-cost and competitive products which saw both corporations and Banks raking in profits with the country's per capita GDP eclipsing several Western Nations however this was also thanks in part to deregulation of the financial sector in the 1980s and an aggressive push from the United States to have Japan open up their economy to foreign business the stock market had become a more prominent part of the financial sector than it had before eclipsing the banks with the rising value of stocks and real estate Banks were more willing to provide loans to those with such collateral even if these loans became riskier for both the customers who were largely taking out loans for Real Estate Ventures and the banks themselves risk tolerance was high so all parties were confident this would all pay off even as stock and urban real estate values quadrupled between 1987 and 1991 before ultimately crashing as a result of debt from loans growing higher than the GDP and Banks gradually raising interest from 2.5 percent to six percent corporate profits began diminishing as Investments were restrained while real estate initially seemed to be unaffected in 1992 that market would bottom out as well what followed would be a series of lost decades in which the economy would experience little if any growth and deflation and falling wages would unfortunately become Just Another Part of Life young people would be hit especially hard by this having less money to spend on non-essential goods and needing to spend more on Essentials while earning less and of course this was also the Target demographic for video games Square was able to weather the storm arm moving their head office to the ibisu district of Shibuya in March 1992. the staff were almost certainly thankful to have just gotten significant raises and the extra leg room provided by having a 16 megabit cartridge twice the size of Final Fantasy 4 helped make development of Final Fantasy V more comfortable for the most part but it wasn't all smooth sailing the jump to a higher capacity cartridge may have given the team more room to breathe but it also led to ballooning expectations that needed to be scaled back to actually fit on the cartridge Maps were compressed as much as they possibly could a memory miscalculation almost led to the final boss being cut and some designers were working so hard on the graphics that for a time sakuguchi was concerned they would hog all the storage in his own words quotes at the start of development all the developers were being very liberal with the memory and by the end they were all stealing whatever space they could from each other end quote and the development woes wouldn't end with the cartridge capacity there were multiple computer and hard drive crashes that led to days of hard work being totally lost and needed to be redone from scratch akihiko Matsui ended up creating over 100 new programming algorithms just for the battle system and there was a fire at the studio during development which almost certainly set them back a bit but as chaotic as the development was at times the world outside the office was still there waiting and as if the economic downturn wasn't anxiety-inducing enough for the game's success relatively early on the team learns that Dragon Quest 5 the first in that series for the super famicom was also in development in a desperate attempt to learn what they could about nx's upcoming Blockbuster sakaguchi and katase would tap any and all industry contacts they knew to get even a crumb of information though unfortunately these attempts would mostly turn up fruitless the only information sakuguchi would procure would be that the player could choose a girl to marry which he found to be an interesting design choice but would make clear to his team that they would not pill for ideas from their competition he wanted Final Fantasy V like each of its predecessors to have its own identity and stand apart from other games on the markets however in the Gap in time between final fantasies 4 and 5 the super famicom had begun to experience waves of RPGs both ports and Originals Dragon Quest 5 which released ahead of ff5 on September 27 1992 was at the head of the pack with games like shin nagami tensei Ultima 6 Glory of Hercules 3 and Wizardry 5 also available competition was fierce and fewer players would be able to buy multiple games this holiday season as if all that weren't enough Dragon Quest 5 was so successful selling 1.3 million copies on the day of its release that the demand for it would in turn increase demand for the super famicom itself leading to the price of the console steadily increasing in the ensuing months making it slightly less affordable in an already turbulent economy in the lead-up to release however marketing for Final Fantasy V was strong fomitsu had begun providing in-depth coverage of the game months ahead of its release and Merchant dice such as calendars and t-shirts had already hit shelves but with the shadow of Dragon Quest 5 looming over it and several other RPGs crowding the markets it looks like Final Fantasy V would be heading into a bloodbath when it would ultimately be released on December 6th 1992. [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] sets itself apart from its predecessors opening with the game's title rising from Beneath The Horizon reflected in the calm Waters beneath it in total darkness and silence but after roughly 30 seconds the dragon behind the text disappears as do the water and reflection and the title centers itself as it becomes a window into the world and Adventure the player is about to experience someone rides a chocobo through the planes parallel to the mountains as the staff credits roll all accompanied by The Game's main theme it's enticing and Whimsical invoking a wondrous Spirit of Adventure beckoning those who hear it to answer the call foreign the king of Tycoon sensing something is amiss with the wind Crystal leaves his castle in the hands of his daughter Princess Lena to assess the situation unfortunately he's too late as the world's winds stop and the Crystal shatters upon his arrival shortly after a large meteor crash lands just outside the kingdom of Tycoon where a nomadic young man named butts rescues an unconscious Lena from a pair of goblins butts and Lena find an old man named Gallop beside the meteor but save for his name he can't remember anything when Lena mentions that she needs to go to the wind shrine however Gala feels that he was heading there as well soon enough after some convincing from his trusty Chocobo companion Boko butts agrees to accompany them on their Quest shortly thereafter they try to hijack a pirate ship which has The Uncanny ability to sail without any wins only to be captured by the ship's Captain Ferris however they let the party go and even join them on their Quest when they realize that day and Lena share the same pendants revealing that their ship can be pulled by their pet sea dragon sildra when they reach the windshrine the party find only the shattered remains of the wind Crystal but the spirits of the four crystals bless each of them and an ethereal projection of King Tycoon warns them that the other three crystals will surely shatter soon they must protect them from an evil spirit that would plunge the world into darkness should it return the Crystal Shards are absorbed into the party with each one blessing them with the powers used by ancient heroes from long ago thus begins Final Fantasy V some of this may seem a bit familiar to returning players four crystals four Warriors of light the crystals blessing them with new powers and evil spirits set to return if the crystals aren't protected the broad Strokes of Final Fantasy V story take a lot of cues from one in three but truthfully it is quite a leap ahead of its forebears before really digging into the meat of the game however I would like to address a point of contention some fans have about this game the main character's name among Western fans Final Fantasy 5's protagonist is known by one of two names butts which I used during the playthrough I recorded for this video and Barts which is his official localized name I've opted to refer to him as butts for the bulk of this installment for reasons which I will make clear later on but it must be known that both names are equally valid ways to localize his original Japanese name batsu with that being said this entire introductory section of the game is a treat for the eyes and ears a Cavalcade of sights and sounds which reveals to of the player just how ambitious Final Fantasy 5 is with its presentation character sprites have a wider variety of expressions and gestures so not only is there less abstraction than before but now storytelling can more comfortably utilize the visual components of the medium and rely a bit less on text but it's the little details that truly Market as a step up from its predecessor there are more fine details in the tile sets this go around adding more texture to the game's environments and the occasional use of transparency layers adds to this while most people would probably find it difficult to differentiate the three famicom games due to their close visual similarities one would be hard-pressed to mistake ff4 and 5 due to the stark contrast in their most basic visual Aesthetics another key component of Final Fantasy 5's visuals is its use of mode 7. while it was used pretty sparingly in ff4 mostly just for the Airship ff5 makes use of the feature with more regularity the opening sequence uses it to show the scale of gallop's meteor crashing down near Tycoon both by focusing on the meteorite itself and on its is sent to the surface in a first person perspective it's a major step up in presentation that I'm sure Wild players at the time and may even impress those curious enough to pick the game up today but while much of this can be seen as an evolution of what's come before there is one aspect of Final Fantasy 5's visual design that isn't quite so rooted in series tradition its enemy and creature designs sure there are still some old favorites butts has his trusty Chocobo companion Boko mughal's return from Final Fantasy 3 and recurring summons like ifreets Shiva Leviathan and Bahamut all make a return as well and while yoshitaka Amano still designed a fair number of enemies and bosses many others were designed by series newcomer tetsuya nomura having joined Square towards the end stages of Final Fantasy 4's development nomura like the rest of the Final Fantasy staff would keep a planning book filled with ideas and documents for what he would like to see in the next installment while his colleagues would produce clean tight professional documents made on their computers nomura made everything in his book by hand and his sketches and Concepts impressed sakaguchi and katase so much that they began to eagerly anticipate whatever he had to present to them whenever it was time to submit books sakaguchi ultimately made him an artist and though some of his ideas for jobs specifically a gambler who used cards and dice as weapons and a ninja with a canine companion wouldn't make the cuts his monster designs would become a staple of Final Fantasy V nomura's designs tend to be highly detailed with some leaning into the realm of the grotesque but some like the Mover and tonberry are simple and plain nomura's details may not always lend themselves to one-to-one Sprite translations but they mesh well with yoshitaka amano's use of lines of watercolors which give Sprite artists room to interpret the latter's work in their adaptation it may be impossible to confuse the concept art of nomura with that of Amano but in Sprite form they pair together surprisingly well the vast majority of the time nomura and Amano were not the only artists for Final Fantasy V however as kazuko would return to the fold she and another artist likely hiromi Ito based on their placement in the game's credits would be tasked with designing possibly the most significant aspect of the game the jobs while there would be just as many jobs here as there were in Final Fantasy 3 each party member would have their own unique designs for all of them Shibuya spent an entire year just working on the job designs and sometime after the game's release would tell sakaguchi quote there were too many damn jobs but her efforts paid off as each and every one of her bespoke designs is not only Charming but easily recognizable as not only a specific job but that particular character adopting that job there is no confusing Ferris and Gallop when they're both black Mages for example as pharah still has their purple hair and gallop's beard stays visible they all still have their normal Sprites in the Overworld rather than Sprites tied to whatever jobs they have equipped but I believe this along with their unique battle Sprites for every job helps them to retain their individual identities something I'll touch more on later the job system is the Crux of Final Fantasy V as the party reaches the shrine of each Crystal and subsequently fails to protect them they'll acquire the leftover shards which bequeath them with the powers of ancient Heroes however there have been several notable changes made to the system which not only set it apart from its previous Incarnation but refines and in my opinion practically perfects it the loose upgrade ability from Final Fantasy 3's version of the job system has been abandoned no longer will any jobs become obsolete by the acquisition of a more powerful version of the same class A White Mage for example will be useful all the way through to the end of the game as a result the system is far more lateral than it was before allowing players more freedom to pick and choose their party's jobs to suit their needs or preferences this is helped by the removal of any cost to changing jobs simply pick what you want on a whim the game will automatically apply statistically optimal equipment and off you go with this laterality also comes the removal of several redundant and less defined jobs from Final Fantasy 3 in exchange for losing the onion Knights Warrior scholar Viking Dark Knight evoker black belt devout Magus and Sage we now have the freelancer blue Mage Berserker Mystic Knight Time Mage Beastmaster dancer Samurai chemist and mime the Berserker is a straightforward job it does a lot of damage but is automatically inflicted with the berserk status meaning they'll attack on their own without any input from the player Mystic Knights can enchant certain weapons with magic effectively casting that spell whenever they attack without spending MP to do so Time Mage is a bit of a misnomer as not only does it use spells like haste slow and stop which in previous titles bounced between black and white magic designations and are under the moniker of time magic here but they're also able to cast spells such as Demi Comet teleport and meteor these spells are also called time magic in this game but given their more Celestial connotations it wouldn't be entirely in a appropriate to think of the Time Mage as a time and space Mage The Beastmaster is able to capture and control enemies to either force them to use certain commands or to unleash them on enemies in later battles dancers are allegedly melee Fighters but they're more of a support class that can randomly drain HP and MP from enemies confuse them charm them through flirting and most significantly deal quadruple damage with Swords Dance Samurai are powerful melee Fighters that hit hard tank attacks and boast the ability to deal absurd amounts of damage with zeninage which sees them toss a chunk of your loose change at every enemy on screen most of these jobs are fairly straightforward in their basic use but the blue Mage and chemists are just a little bit more complex the former which is received in place of the Red Mage at the wind crystal is able to learn and use various skills used by enemies throughout the game but unlike the other Mages which once again learn their magic through one-time purchases at Shops blue Mages must learn their magic in the field by being on the receiving end of them and surviving the battle and there's quite a wide variety of Blue Magic to be learned from basic Arrow spells to flamethrower to Mighty guard which casts protect float and shell to the whole party however not all blue magic is so straightforward in its acquisition some spells such as the aforementioned Mighty guard and white wind can only be learned if the player either uses a Beastmaster to take control of an enemy that knows it and then has that enemy casted on the party or by casting reflect on said enemy so that when it casts the spell it'll bounce back onto the party and level based spells only land if the target's level is divisible by a certain number meaning that if yours isn't divisible by 5 when they're targeted by level 5 death not only will they not instantly Keel over but they won't learn the spell I find the blue Mage to be fascinating as it rewards curious players with new ways to play the game but also a bit frustrating for those who don't already have intimate knowledge of the game la learning how to use them and what magic they can learn is a matter of experimentation and patience but on the flip side it adds incentive to play through the game multiple times to understand and Master Blue Magic the chemist meanwhile is a similarly interesting job that is significantly more opaque using potions and ethers with them in battle doubles their potency which is nice but their primary function is combining items to use and consume in battle to Myriad results from Reviving and restoring party members to facsimiles of magic spells to raising a character's level and even inflicting instant death on a wide variety of enemies there are dozens of concoctions and combinations the chemists can unleash but the catch is that the player either has to again experiment or already know them but those who put in the time to learn how to use the chemist could theoretically fly through the rest of the game with little issue and yet even setting aside the blue agent chemist the lateral nature of ff5's job system belies its true depths whereas jobs in ff1 and 3 were were only what they were in five they can be augmented to widen their capabilities based on each character's proficiencies with other jobs like in three each job has their own level but instead of them all going up to 99 with the actual benefits besides additional spell charges for magic users being enigmatic or even nebulous Final Fantasy 5 has significantly fewer levels per job between two and seven with each level granting them access to new commands and innate abilities these can be equipped to any other job's open ability slots and this is where the true joy of the job system begins mixing and matching different abilities to suit the whims and needs of the player of course one still needs to actually level the jobs up to attain these abilities the process for which is now fully transparent in addition to standard experience points battles now also reward ability points or AP which contribute to the experience of their current job this separation of experienced gains would theoretically mean that players would now have to grind twice as much but I just agree the nature of the job system means that grinding alone isn't a Surefire way to Victory this time around it's not enough to grind experience as that only increases HP and MP and grinding AP is only worth doing if the player has a specific goal in mind provided said goal is conducive to the combination of abilities they want to use for example it may sound useful to have a monk who can cast white magic but the Monk's minus 24 magic modifier would make those cure spells less effective but teaching a black mage to use white magic would not only make more sense but would actually make the white magic more effective as the Black Mage has a higher magic modifier of course you can still equip the ability to use white magic on your monk if you so choose but maybe it would be more beneficial to level up monk until they learn the bare-handed ability and equip that as a White Mage in order to increase their damage outputs whenever they aren't healing without needing to give them a weapon and there are plenty of other useful job combinations just waiting for those bold enough to put the time into leveling their jobs and experimenting but the Apex of this comes as players begin to master jobs because that's when you can start issuing them all together for the freelancer or if you're feeling a little Saucy the mime at the start of the game the default freelancer job is basically just a placeholder until you get your first set of jobs from the wind Crystal but whenever a party member Masters a job the freelancer inherits all of that job's innate abilities and positive stat modifiers with the highest modifier for each stat among all mastered jobs being applied combine this with the freelancer having two open ability slots and the floodgates are pushed wide open because the freelancer learns all of the job's innate abilities aside from the berserker's berserk the player doesn't need to equip them like they would for most other jobs and as such is free to only select the command abilities they want to use and synergize the mime Works similarly but is more effective at spell casting thanks to having three open ability slots for the red mage's double casts and whatever two magic commands you want the trade-off is that it can't attack or use items without equipping them as abilities in favor of being able to mimic allies and the job itself is only attainable towards the end of the game surprisingly having the freelancer be so versatile was not a part of the original plan it was only towards the end of development when someone brought up the idea and the whole team thought it was too cool not to implement with only a few scant months left before the ROM had to be finalized it was no time to try and cram in such a complex feature but cram it in they did and the game is better for it now the freelancer can inherently Dash and see hidden passages like a thief avoid traps like a geomancer have significantly boosted HP like a monk and wield two weapons like a ninja among other things and it's that last passive trait that is part of a Holy Trinity of abilities that can trivialize much of the latter half of the game on its own dual wielding allows one to deal damage twice per turn once with each weapon this can be combined with the Rangers rapid fire ability which normally attacks four times with each strike dealing roughly half the damage it normally would this allows the player to attack eight times in the single turn albeit still at half damage and targets can't be chosen combine this again with the Mystic Knight Spell blade to imbue their weapons with one of the more powerful spells in the game and you get a devastatingly powerful combo that will cut down almost anything in your path I used this combo on my first playthrough of the game and it definitely made the experience a more comfortable one although perhaps a bit too comfortable there are other more obtuse strategies though such as the obscenely hilarious death by math using only a blue Mage provided the players found the necessary spells they can use level 5 death to instantly kill practically any enemy in the game regardless of whether their level actually ends in a five or zero by casting dark shock on enemies with odd numbered levels the player can make their level an even number and then cast level 2 old to inflict them with the old status which slow only ticks their level down through rigorous trial and error the player can then carefully figure out the point at which the enemy's level becomes a multiple of five and cast level 5 death to kill them instantly it's absurd and takes a lot of patience to get the timing right but it is a legitimate and creative way to play even the Berserker who the player cannot control as they mindlessly Rush enemies can be made useful by giving it a crown of thorns the berserker's defense increases significantly at the cost of its HP gradually ticking away and decreasing its magic stats but because the berserker's magic modifier is already so low the crown of thorns rolls it into the negatives or at least it would if the super famicom could handle negative numbers instead the opposite happens the berserker's magic stat rolls back from zero to a whopping 255 the highest in the entire game because you can't control the Berserker though it may not seem worthwhile but give them the Gaia Hammer a weapon which deals high damage and has a decent chance of casting Quake whenever it's used and the Berserker becomes every enemy's worst to nightmare Final Fantasy 5's expansive job system was designed with many little tricks in mind but many were never considered by the staff and instead discovered by players it's this emergent gameplay which gives Final Fantasy 5 a particular Allure with enough experimentation and devotion literally any combination of jobs and abilities is viable some of the development team were even able to clear the game as Freelancers never changing jobs once and as such never using things like magic or dual wielding and it's because of this Limitless potential that the way the game presents its challenge had to be drastically altered from previous entries [Music] brute strength alone isn't going to overcome whatever this game has to throw at you like its predecessor many of Final Fantasy 5's bosses are almost like puzzles in and of themselves only this time the complexity has been ramped up across the board of course some are more difficult or complex than others just as an ff4 but there's more variety and creativity in their idiosyncrasies this time early on for example is the siren who regularly shifts between living and Undead forms when she's alive she's physically frail so you just attack her with melee but when she's Undead melee becomes far less effective while her magic defense drops to zero in addition to her now being vulnerable to the usual weaknesses inherent to Undead enemies in the series cure and fire it's not terribly complex but there's a dynamism there that requires the player to adjust their strategy periodically she can cast haste on herself while casting slow sleep and silence on you with giving herself more opportunity to quickly wear you down while you try to catch up towards the end of the game game's First Act after the last crystal is shattered and Gallop temporarily leaves the party but Selena and Ferris face a group of six special bombs called pirobolos a play on pyrobolus the Latin word for bomb for the unprepared it's a frustrating encounter as if any of them is defeated by anything other than their own self-destruct they'll revive all of the others who've died with full HP the trick is to defeat them all at the same time so that their Resurrection doesn't do anything and the easiest way to do that is with multi-target magic and abilities but if just one of them survives then when you defeat it you'll have to contend with the rest and it creates a cycle that's difficult to break some battles take advantage of the physical space of the battle screen such as atomos the Beast spams Comet until at least one party member is knocked out after which it will slowly pull the downed character toward it until it's close enough to use Wormhole to remove them from the battle completely and the process starts again you can use this to your advantage as you can freely attack atom most while they're distracted and revive your downed party member just before they would be sucked in starting the whole process over some of these battles can be won with good old Brawn pulling out the Berserker for some Unga Bunga strats but it's far from enjoyable attrition can often feel like a death march even in situations where it is feasible the pureobolo Spas for instance is able to be overcome with enough Patience by chipping away at the individual bombs gradually until they blow themselves up even down to the last one all you have to do is keep Reviving party members who fall victim to the blast for a good chunk of the game it's easy to feel like you've fallen behind in damage output it doesn't help that the majority of enemy encounters yield little AP usually one or two grinding for AP is a chore outside of certain spots later on in the adventure movers in the last area of the final dungeon for example reward a whopping 199 AP the first truly great place for grinding AP however is in the basement of Castle ball using softs or or gold needles depending on the translation these statues can be defeated instantly yielding up to 8 AP but the process can be hastened significantly with the blue magic spell level 5 death the statues are all level 45 meaning that a single cast of it immediately defeats all of them the experience yield is low but this was intentional because as previously discussed the AP itself is useful only if the player has a plan in mind on my first playthrough I spent hours grinding here with this very strategy and while I didn't go whole hog and maxing out literally everything I felt like I needed I did enough to make the journey more comfortable the difficulty is thankfully tempered a bit by the changes made to combat it's still largely the same as it was in Final Fantasy 4 with the ATV system still in place but the little irritations I had with it then have been practically erased the number of party members has been reduced back down to four making battles a bit less hectic an ATB meter has been added to the battle UI and casting times have have been eliminated so now party members commands are executed practically instantaneously barring enemies getting their turn in under the wire Final Fantasy 5's overall gameplay Loop is fairly spry it's open-ended enough that one can change or experiments with new strategies easily and discovering new combinations and synergies is both exciting and extremely gratifying it's certainly the most challenging game so far but it's also only as challenging as the player allows it to be of course if the player knows the game inside and out it's a cakewalk however for someone coming into it a bit more blindly who still needs to figure out what has good Synergy and what's just poorly optimized while also contending with some of the most brutal and complex bosses yet it can be a trial but the moment you master that one job finds that perfect party composition break through that one boss that's been giving you so much grief that you almost gave up on the game entirely that is when Final Fantasy V is truly at its best [Music] where it's at its worst at least in my opinion is in the setting and pacing foreign [Music] seems like it moves along at a somewhat brisk Pace at first by the 10 hour mark all four of the crystals had shattered and I had access to basically every job all the places that couldn't be Revisited before were now available again thanks to the Airship that Sid and his grandson mid had restored to working order but there are a few signs hinting that the story isn't nearly over quite yet the world feels much smaller than previous games the party's levels are only in the 20s and I haven't even gotten close to the highest level magic well as it turns out this is only the end of the First Act of the story in the lead-up to the Earth crystal gallup's memories start to become clear he comes from another world and he came here to prevent the crystals from shattering and releasing an evil warlock named ex-death from his imprisonment thirty years ago Gallop along with three other Heroes collectively known as The Warriors of dawn had borrowed the Crystal's power to fight ex-death and seal him away in this world unfortunately because the people of this world have been harnessing the power of the crystals using Sid's amplification machines to lead more comfortable lives the crystals and by extension the seal have been weakened this allowed ex-death to exert his will over others like Queen Karnak to destroy the crystals through them and his latest Pawn is King Tycoon who he is sent to the ancient ronca city to find and destroy the final Crystal which is being used as a power source to raise the city into the sky of course the party fails to stop this from happening the seal is broken and ex-death returns preparing to conquer gallop's world the old man in his recently granddaughter Cara take their leave using the portal inside his meteorite to return to their home to defend it from the evil warlock butts and the others despite gallop's plea for them not to follow him lest they never be able to return home feel obligated to do so anyway Gallop is their friend and they can't let him fight this monster alone with help from Sid and mid they open a portal to gallop's world and from there we kind of start from square one again the general way that Final Fantasy games up to this point to lay out their world maps lends them to organically opening up over time Final Fantasy V issues this philosophy for the bulk of its duration and instead sees the player moving between different areas of the world with no way of backtracking until later on the general minutia of moving the story forward feels more repetitive than its predecessors though I'd argue this isn't necessarily because of how dungeons are designed for paced but rather because of how little development there is for the characters and story for long stretches of time by the end of the first world the player has a sense of freedom and power similar to the end game of previous installments but upon leaping into the portal to gallop's world this is almost completely Stripped Away you still have all of your items equipment and progress made from leveling up your jobs but you start on a tiny island with no way off of it and when you reunite with gallop and attempt to retreat to safety the party has flung to the continent on the far side of the world leading once again to a one-way path to gallip's home Ace Castle ball the player is eventually given free reign to travel around the second world via submarine and Cara's windrake but neither is as liberating as the Airship you had at the end of the first world I probably wouldn't mind this more stringent linearity if the worlds themselves were more interesting the first four games had a surprising amount of character weaved into their settings from the post-apocalyptic implications of the first game to the brutal imperialism attempting to conquer the worlds of two and four Final Fantasy 5 has backstory and legends in its world like the ancient Ranka civilization that made airships and the Flying Fortress city with the Earth crystal the various summons like ifri Shiva and Muhammad existing as part of the world before you encounter them and the crystals and by extension the world being split in half a thousand years ago to seal the power of the Void which ex-death so desperately craves with the void itself being created by another evil sorcerer named enuo who was defeated with the power of the 12 sealed weapons there are interesting parts of this world but there is isn't much depth to it the stuff with the Ancients is basically just a way of giving the party an Airship and some unique set pieces most of the various towns and kingdoms are lightly implied to have some dealings with each other but such references are fleeting and don't amount to all that much the way the two halves fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle is inspired World design and wonderful foreshadowing but really the world of Final Fantasy V just doesn't feel as tangible to me as those of the first four there aren't nearly as many Side characters who leave much of an impression or survive to the end of the story for that matter there's not much cohesion between the smaller story beats when moving from place to place most of the towns and Kingdoms in this world feel like they were conceived in isolation or were otherwise designed to be purely functional leaving only a handful of them with any significance or personality the only major exception I can think of is Karnak erecting its walls around their Kingdom to keep out the scholars from the library of the Ancients who keep warning them about the dangers of amplifying the power of the fire Crystal of course the people who benefit from the abuse and destruction of natural forces are the ones who don't want to hear about the inevitable damage they'll bring about through doing so but if you're not talking with every person you come across which you're encouraged to do but isn't strictly necessary to know what to do then you would completely miss out on this interesting nugget of information I remember Tycoon because that's where Lena's from I remember Castle ball because that's where galif and Kara live and I remember licks because that's butts's Hometown but that's all because of their significance to the characters rather than anything intrinsic to the locations themselves save for licks's Unique Town Theme the only places that I did find intrinsically interesting were walls and Karnak because of their respective water and fire motifs reflecting the crystals whose power they're abusing and the library of the Ancients well that's not entirely true Karnak also sticks out in my mind for the escape sequence at the end where the player has 10 minutes to escape the Burning Castle before it explodes truthfully simply beelining for the exit isn't particularly difficult nor would it require anywhere close to 10 minutes to pull off but because the fire Crystal was destroyed the flame Flames which blocked various chests throughout the castle are now accessible and not only are there a lot of chests but there are some pretty fantastic loot inside of them like the main Gauss knife which has a 25 chance to block enemy attacks the Elven mantle which has a higher chance of evading attacks the heel or s in a spell several hours before you can buy it in licks and a ribbon consistently one of the best accessories in the series thanks to its defensive capabilities in Final Fantasy V it gives plus 5 to each of the characters four primary stats and prevents a host of crippling status effects they tend to be pretty difficult to come by so getting one so early seems like a major Boon but this is counterbalanced by the fact that it can only be equipped by dancers and Freelancers the latter of which can equip anything further adding tension to this Mad Dash against the clock is that most of the chests have enemies inside the fights don't take long but that time does add up and the gigas enemy commonly found inside them knows arrow and arrow 2 which can be learned by Blue Mages if they're hit by them and and just when you think you've escaped you're confronted by the Bounty Hunter Iron Claw from whom you can learn the powerful blue magic spell deathclaw which brings the target's HP down to single digits and paralyzes them there's so much great stuff available in this 10 minute window but most players won't be able to get all of it so you have to pick your battles so to speak it's an exhilarating sequence one of the tensest in the game and the real reason that Karnak is so memorable and sakaguchi and katase loved it too perhaps a bit too much they would continue devising similar challenges if not for the game itself than for each other with more intricate level design and shorter time limits it became another part of their friendly rivalry but as much as they loved it they knew they couldn't use it as freely as they would like it was decided that they had to implement such a fun intense set piece like this sparingly in order to retain the impact as such the Karnak Escape is the only time sequence the player is required to overcome in the story with another one able to be discovered towards the end of the game to unlock the mime job as fun as these sequences are I agree with sakaguchi limiting them was definitely for the best not just for the sake of not diluting the concept but to keep the world from feeling more video gamey than it already is in a way the Karnak Escape is kind of emblematic of the core problems with the world of Final Fantasy V it feels like it was created not to be an interesting setting for a compelling story but as a backdrop for a Sandbox that players can have fun in with the new job system and because sakaguchi wanted this game's Focus to be on mechanics and systems that may well have been the intention [Music] speaking of which regarding the focus on the job system recall that during Final Fantasy 2's development here in OBU sakaguchi and akatoshi kawazu sought to have a more story-driven experience but kawazu wanted players to have more freedom in character building unfortunately the result was a party which didn't have very much in the way of defined character traits as they could have philosophically pigeonholed them into being a sort of character that wasn't accurately reflected in their combat prowess the first and third games skirted this entirely with having static roles chosen from the very beginning and employing a loose Coming of Age theme explored through the job system respectively and Final Fantasy 4 issued customization of the sort entirely in favor of telling a cohesive story this leaves Final Fantasy V in a bit of an odd spot as it's the follow-up to a game which was praised for its characters and story but players were completely Tethered to them so instead of trying to tell a newer Grandeur story sakaguchi wanted to Pivot towards mechanical depth which it certainly does so with the job system back in force for Final Fantasy V you would think that the party would be made up of mostly blank slates again to accommodate for the fluidity of their capabilities surprisingly this is not the case while not as deep or complex as Cecil or Kane but Selena Gala Ferris and later Cara are all fairly well-rounded characters with their own distinct personalities struggles desires flaws Hang-Ups and Trauma which are well encapsulated by their representative elements foreign butts klauser is the son of dorgan klauser another one of the Dawn Warriors from gallop's World dorgan had stayed behind after he and his comrades had sealed X death to make sure he wouldn't Escape then fell in love with a woman named Stella in the quiet town of licks and butts was the result when butts was young dorgan would often travel the world fighting monsters and keeping the crystals safe never telling his son about his past or the crystals as he didn't want them to become his burden to bear Stella didn't like how often dorgan was away from home especially as she began to grow ill despite her protests he was prepared to go off into the world once again before she suddenly collapsed in their home and passed away following their loss butts would travel the world alongside his father who taught him how to fight but three years ago dorgan would pass away as well with his dying wish being for butts to travel the world in his stead Butz is a nomad who goes where the wind takes him Always In Search of the next adventure with his trusty Steve Boko the choco his nomadic tendency is run so deep that he initially rejects The Call to Adventure it takes some coaxing from Boko to convince him that maybe an elderly amnesiac and a young woman who is almost Goblin food may need an extra bit of help if they're going to make it to the wind shrine after being chosen by the crystals however embodying the wind he starts to become increasingly aware of the importance of his place in the world and the responsibilities that come with it he's still a bit of a goofball throughout the whole Adventure but over time he gets the slightest bit more serious when the player initially visits his hometown it's the first time but seems to have been there since the passing of his father the town's folk are glad to see him but he doesn't seem to pay them much mind at no point in the story do you have to go to licks but doing so rewards you with a few additional scenes which flesh out butts his character and backgrounds early in the game butts is hesitant to fly on hiryu's back because he's afraid of heights something the rest of the party give him Flack for but by talking to this scholar and training in licks we learn how butts is acrophobia developed in the first place as a small child he hid on top of a third story roof while playing hide and seek with some of the other kids and not only did they not find him he was left alone and scared on that roof all day and night unable to get himself down there are things he likes about his hometown mainly that it's his parents final resting place but beyond that he has no ties no real reason to stick around not that he wants to stay at one place for very long anyway and yet towards the end of the game when X death uses the power of the Void to wipe licks off the face of the world but is consumed with rage for the first time the young level-headed hero to be the one who tries not to form attachments and keep moving to the next adventure Beyond the Horizon breaks and his passionate Fury is only tempered by his found family foreign privileged and opulent upbringing has left her fairly naive regarding social interactions and how The Wider World Works Lena Charlotte Tycoon is also selfless and compassionate to a fault following her heart and often putting herself In Harm's Way as a result she willingly crosses through bushels of dragon grass which is poisonous to humans but a sort of Curative herb for wind Drakes in order to retrieve enough to nurse her family's injured Drake back to health it's an especially powerful moment considering her history with hiru as when she was younger she was prepared to cut out its tongue to use it to cure her mother's terminal illness which would condemn the entire species to Extinction the player is given the choice of whether she goes through with the mutilation though for plot reasons It ultimately doesn't happen but either choice is perfectly in character for Elena she loves both here you and her mother and is both impulsive and compassionate enough that condemning either of them to death for the sake of the other's life is believable is it any wonder why she's represented by water like butts and Lena galif Holm baldessian is a bit Brash but he's also headstrong and jovial at times being easier going than even butts she's Lord of his own kingdom and a legendary hero but he is so incredibly humble never getting a big head about his nobility and even neglecting to mention it because he felt it was unimportant he can be sentimental but he keeps his heart close to his chest as seen when he finds that the other light Warriors defied his wishes and followed him to his world he outwardly berates them though not harshly but admits to himself that them following him made his day he is fiercely loyal to his friends charging into Castle X death alone to save them when they're captured and the loss of the other Dawn Warriors weighs heavily on him feeling that he could have done more to prevent their demise and having difficulty even accepting their deaths in some ways galif is as immovable as the Earth he represents in others he's a big old softy looked to his relationship with his granddaughter Cara who protects him as much as he protects her despite inheriting her grandfather's abilities and responsibilities including the essence of Earth the two have little in common she's modest about her status as a royal and is kind-hearted but her youth inexperience and naivete lead to her having more in common with Lena than galif but what sets her apart from Lena aside from her ability to communicate telepathically with animals like mughals and windrakes are an anxiety and loneliness that follow her through the Final Act of the story after Gallup sacrifices himself to save her and the rest of his friends from ex-death Kara has lost everyone and almost everything she knows and without gallup's guidance has little sense of direction she holds those she cares about so close to the point where she would probably fall into a deep depression if left to her own devices thank you foreign s to describe Ferris through this video is no accidents nor is it a contrived way to obfuscate the reveal that this seemingly male pirate Captain was in fact born female setting aside the invasive way in which that information is revealed to the party and the player Ferris sherwiz is easily the most complex character in Final Fantasy V possibly the most complex in the entire Series so far born sarisa sure will Tycoon older sibling of Lena who has lost at sea at a young age Ferris would be found by a band of pirates and raised among them alongside a sea dragon sildra not wanting to be the only girl among a group of pirates they began to present themselves as a boy with the Pirates re-christening them fairest due to their inability to correctly pronounce their birth name at the time they could only muster farifa the trauma of being around such a Rowdy and rambunctious group of vagabonds from such a young age led to them forgetting much of their Early Childhood in Tycoon with the only Memento from that time of their life being a pendant identical to lennas leading fairest to join up with the party in search of answers ferris's sex is revealed when butts and galif attempt to remove their clothes to dry them by the fire in the ship graveyard the others don't give it much of a second thought to them Ferris is Ferris they accept them for who they are not the gender they thought them to be what follows throughout the game are scenarios where the rough and tough Captain Ferris who for so long had to fend for themselves and assert their dominance amongst a gaggle of drunken violent vagabonds learns to care for the people around them they learn how to be an older sibling a comrade a teammate and a friend they ultimately accept that yes they are the child of King Tycoon even going out of their way to stop butts and Gallop from attacking their dear papa when he's possessed by ex-death but it's the trappings of royalty specifically the gendered expectations set upon them that are of particular note [Music] at first today accept the position of Princess alongside their sister but as soon as the opportunity to leave the castle presents itself they take it they don't like wearing a dress being all prim and proper in fact whenever they wear the regalia of a princess on screen Ferris doesn't say a word as though they are beside themselves resentful of The Ensemble or even seething with rage their lack of expression or visual cues allow for any and all of these to be the case Ferris prefers the Rough and Tumble of the Wilderness sailing the high seas getting into fights with monsters and the spirit of adventure with a sense of bravery and courage emblematic of the fire they represent when put in the position of having to choose between the masculinity they've adopted and the femininity tied to their birthrights that they are expected to express Ferris chooses the former every time in the English-speaking World Ferris is typically viewed as a woman who cross-dressed as a man to both survive and be taken seriously in more recent official localizations their expression of gender through dialogue takes the form of referring to themselves as male before self-correcting substituting male identifiers like lad or Prince with their female equivalents lass and princess in those examples but this is largely due to the nion untranslatable manner in which Ferris identifies themselves in the original Japanese script in Japanese there is a far greater range of first-person pronouns than in English and the ones we do have are all gender neutral you can't identify the gender of somebody who identifies themselves in conversation as me or I but Japanese has a wealth of personal pronouns which ascribe more meaning Beyond merely the concept of the self and Ferris uses one such pronoun throughout the original Japanese script ore ore is used almost exclusively by men meant to sound rough and tough and ferris's consistent use of it throughout the game reflects how they see themselves even as several of those around them from their father to the people of Tycoon to Gilgamesh continue to refer to them not just as a woman but by also using the birth name that Ferris has long discarded they are only accepted for who they are by their found family ferris's story intentionally or not is very queer-coded and while it can at times be empowering it can also be implicitly demeaning to people who identify as such there is an argument to be made that because Ferris can only truly be themselves when they're in Outlaw cast out of heteronormative society that they're being framed in a negative Light Within the context of the time and place Final Fantasy V was originally developed and released they are constantly misgendered and disrespected when in quote unquote polite society which does not tolerate their expression of masculinity it's reflective of the cultural attitude of Japan as being intolerant of those who try to stand out from the pack the Paradox that individuality is fine as long as it doesn't deviate from what is viewed as acceptable it certainly doesn't help that ferris's name in Japanese farisu could just as easily be phonetically translated as phallus there is a more charitable interpretation of this however that society's ignorance or rejection of ferris's gender identity is a condemnation not of so-called deviancy but of society itself Ferris doesn't need the people of Tycoon and if they don't respect who they are then why should they stick around screw you guys I'm going on an adventure but where do I come down on this honestly I'm not totally sure I'm a cisgendered man and not especially well-versed in issues of transness despite having numerous trans friends and acquaintances I am far from an authority on the matter I tend to be more charitable with my critiques of media because I like to believe those in charge had the best of intentions or at the very least weren't actively malicious but a running theme in my research for this entire retrospective project thus far has been a lack of developer commentary regarding these more complex topics the only reference to ferris's Creation I could come across was in Chris Kohler's book on Final Fantasy 5 from boss fight books wherein hironobusakaguchi told Kohler that he was likely thinking about the protagonist of the Osamu tezica manga princess Knight which is about a princess born with the hearts of both a boy and a girl who publicly presents themselves as a prince in order to inherit her father's Throne lest it be taken by another Noble of ill intent interestingly a close friend of the protagonist is a male pirate who also comes from a noble family while I do believe there's some wiggle room here to interpret Ferris as being a tomboy who uses male pronouns out of a force of habit I'm personally more inclined to see them as a non-binary trans man hence my persistent use of they them pronouns yet because of how deeply ingrained the idea of Ferris as a woman is amongst players and how the inspiration for the character is very explicitly a cisgendered girl who identifies as such I don't really begrudge anybody who continues to refer to Ferris as a woman and I don't feel comfortable calling for a revolution in how we collectively view their gender as someone who isn't as familiar with the topic as others even setting the topic of their gender aside though Ferris is easily my favorite character of the bunch [Music] what I found Most Fascinating about these characters is not just how well defined they are but how their personalities actually lend themselves to the fluid nature of the job system but being a nomad always on the hunt for adventure never stays in one place for long and as such being able to change skill sets is something that could be second nature to him Lena isn't experienced in combat but her determination would push her to learn whatever skills she can gallip having used the Crystal's power before would be accustomed to using these abilities to their fullest potential but his initial status as an amnesiac would also play into this as he would likely have to start from scratch as a warrior Kara being even greener than Lena and indecisive without her grandpa's guidance would probably bounce around between different jobs because she isn't sure which abilities she should cultivate and Ferris who lives outside the trappings and expectations of so-called polite Society wouldn't feel the need to conform to any one job because why would they limit themselves and yet as brilliant as that is there's still a case to be made at least in my opinion that each of them would be inclined to take on certain jobs based on their characterizations the way I see it butts could be a blue Mage learning new skills from Monsters he fights the world over Lena being the daughter of a man whose middle name is high wind and having a deep connection with the last wind Drake could be a Dragoon or because of her compassion and drive to help others a White Mage Gallop is a bit tougher to pin down but his experience and humble demeanor lends me to think he could be a knight Cara could be one of many things a Beastmaster for her ability to communicate with animals a Dragoon for her connection with her own pet wins Drake a black mage because of her natural inclination towards magic as seen when she saves the party from a brainwashed King Tycoon but given that her Japanese name karuru is really close to the Japanese onomatopoeia for twirling or spinning I'm inclined to go with the slightly out there pick of dancer Ferris is much easier to pin down they'd likely be a thief or ninja someone who steals from others and uses underhanded tactics to get what they want reflecting their background as a pirate but I'd also like to throw Beastmaster and Summoner into the mix if only because of their connection with sildra who becomes a summon later on in the game despite how much can be gleamed from these characters however the truth of the matter is that their growth and development over the course of the story is fairly subtle and somewhat understated I wouldn't be surprised if it completely passes by a large number of players and I believe this subtlety is due at least in part to how their character arcs actually tie into the greater narrative or rather how they don't thank you Final Fantasy 5 story is about as simple as the first and third games and evil forces corrupting the four crystals and the Warriors of Light have to stop it sure there are some wrinkles along the way such as the Crystal's power being harnessed by man to make their lives more comfortable and thus allowing X death to destroy the crystals and the world being split in two a thousand years ago to seal off the void from anyone after nuo but the main plot points are largely the same there is no greater evil this go around no chaos cloud of Darkness zemus or zaromas to fight after X death has been defeated it's all very direct on the one hand it means that the game's narrative is another retread of the first game in the broad strokes but on the other hand it means that less time needs to be taken to explain the plot and that time can now be spent on the characters which I appreciate despite such beats being spread out so much as previously discussed the story that sakaguchi had in mind for Final Fantasy 5 was one which yoshinori kitase felt was quite dark so he took the opportunity to imbue humor to ease the tension and boy did he add humor Final Fantasy 5 is easily the most comedic entry in the series thus far bordering on outright farcical at times I won't spoil the bulk of the humor as explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog you understand it better but now it's dead but suffice it to say it does a wonderful job of giving the player a good chuckle and I think the best example of this is xdath's top lieutenants Gilgamesh named for the Mesopotamian god king and protagonist of the earliest to known work of written literature Gilgamesh despite being ex-dath's trusty right hand is more of a bumbling fool than a true antagonist his true goal isn't Conquest but rather to collect valuable weapons and face strong opponents what holds him back is that his Declaration of Might and power are mostly just talk while an unprepared player can be stomped by him Gilgamesh is actually little more than a cowardly blowhard running from fights when it's clear he can't win and feigning fealty and surrender to give him time to build himself back up he ultimately respects butts as a rival and doesn't hold a grudge against him or the rest of the party and in his final moments before being lost within the interdimensional rift he not only teams up with them but tries giving them all an uplifting speech showing how much he admires and believes in them but because of his clumsy phrasing he's met with confusion if not outright dismissal he is ultimately lost within the rift and whether he lives or dies from there or is unclear Gilgamesh is endlessly hilarious his ineptitude knowing no bounds he's so pitiable from the moment the party meets him on the big bridge where he surprises them from behind the door boasting about how he was there waiting to Ambush them the whole time while quietly bemoaning how embarrassed he'd be if they'd never showed up but perhaps his greatest moment is when he shows up to fight wielding the legendary sword Excalibur a recurring weapon that's been in every installment since the first game meant always one of the strongest unfortunately for Gilgamesh what he procured was into the Mythic blade of Arthurian Legend but a cheap knockoff Excalibur which despite its High stats is hard-coded to deal extremely low damage double unfortunate is that not only does X death banish Gilgamesh to the void for his folly but that the player can actually make Excalibur usable either by chucking it at an enemy for high damage or by combining it with the blue magic spell Goblin punch which calculates damage based on the equipped weapon without taking the excalibur's hard-coded handicap into accounts even when Gilgamesh is on the cusp of something great his incompetence keeps it just Out Of Reach amusingly stripping away the more comedic aspects of his character will reveal a point of origin that would likely pass by most non-japanese players while his name comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh the basis for his character air is much closer to Legendary Japanese warrior monk Saito musashibo benkei while he did actually exist based on his name appearing in some records made during his lifetime in the mid to late 12th century today benke is known more through the lens of folklore than that of actual history but an aspect of his Chronicle that was a part of both was his goal to acquire a thousand swords from those who attempted to cross the Gojo bridge in Kyoto he was nearly successful in this Pursuit if not for his defeat at the hands of the one who held what would have been his thousandth prize minamoto yoshitsune Ben K became yoshitsune's loyal follower and would Aid him in many battles as the latter would become a general and would die while protecting his master at the Battle of coromagawa like benke Gilgamesh likes hunting for weapons skulk's about a large bridge and ultimately comes to respect and in the end serves butts rather than fight against him it doesn't really change the fact that he's played more for comedy than anything else but knowing that Gilgamesh is based on such a notable figure in Japanese folklore is intriguing astonishingly sakaguchi was originally against having Gilgamesh in the game game he felt that he didn't contribute anything to the narrative and to be fair he has a point you could excise Gilgamesh from the story and nothing would fundamentally change but he was ultimately kept because those who were play testing the game adored him he was comedy gold the gift that kept on giving so sakaguchi relented because even if gilgamesh's presence was in direct conflict with his vision for the game he wanted players to still have fun Gilgamesh may be a comic relief antagonist but that doesn't mean that X death is much more threatening on the contrary x-death is just as hammy as his Lieutenant if not more so with a borderline absurd origin story following enuo's defeat a thousand years ago the void was sealed within the interdimensional rift and the world was split in two in order to prevent access to the Rifts within the forest of more on gallip's half of the world evil spirits would be sealed within a single tree for 500 years until they reached a critical mass turning their prison into an evil creature with a life and will of its own ex-dath while the sage Guido was able to place a seal on the tree to prevent it from leaving the forest after 470 years the seal was broken and ex-dath would begin his conquest of gallop's world it was only thanks to the efforts of the Warriors of dawn gallop dorgan kelger and zezats that ex-death was able to be fought back but they couldn't defeat him instead they sealed him within a cave where the power of the four crystals gathered on the other half of of the world and dorgan would stay behind to keep watch over the seal fast forward to the present and ex-death takes advantage of the crystals weakened State brought on by Sid's amplification devices to destroy them through mind controlling people close to them he then manipulates the light Warriors into destroying the crystals on gallop's half of the world thereby merging the two back into one feigning defeat and disguising himself as a splinter in Kara's finger to safely pass into the merged World undetected his ultimate goal is to use the power of the Void to return the world to a state of nothingness much like the cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy 3 except unlike in Final Fantasy 3 xdath Remains the primary villain through the entire story he doesn't just pop up at the end nor is he replaced by something worse he's also cartoonishly evil he absolutely Revels in it there is no deep philosophizing about the nature of existence where things come from and where they go when they meet Oblivion there is no real meaning to what he's doing at all Beyond simply being a bad guy AI considering that he is effectively an amalgamation of centuries of evil spirits possessing a tree it makes some amount of sense that there isn't any sort of grand purpose behind his plan beyond the plan itself there would be too many cooks in that kitchen but if he weren't so over the top with his villainy so in love with the idea of the Void he would ultimately be a boring and forgettable antagonist and on some level he is a bit forgettable but only because there are few elements to remember yet those few elements are all that are needed to make him a fun villain just the fact that he can be easily summarized as a big hammy evil tree would Peak enough people's interest on its own not much else is really needed for this particular story and yet ex-death's plans present a truly existential threat he wishes to do worse than conquer or destroy the world he wants to return the world to a state of non-existence that on its own is conceptually pretty heavy just like it was in ff3 but it's not the only time Final Fantasy 5 gets weighty with its story or characters butts's quiet morning for his parents sildra's death relatively early on the flashback where Leno was willing to condemn the windrakes to Extinction to save her mother's life gallop's sacrifice and Kara's subsequent consternation without his guidance there's also X death's Castle which initially appears to look like any other Fortress but when the illusion veiling its Visage is broken it's revealed not to be made of stone brick and wood but of writhing flesh a twisted inversion of how humans use wood to build their homes Final Fantasy 5 story does go to some sincere and Dark Places and yet it's the humor and comedy which tend to stick out the most in fact it isn't uncommon to hear the game described as being genuinely light-hearted and humorous overall I am simultaneously baffled by and understanding of such views after all a good chunk of the truly moving character moments are completely miscible and those that aren't don't remain a focal point for very long the character work is also on the subtle side as I've mentioned mentioned and for the most part doesn't tie into the greater scope of the plot really only butts's character Arc learning to take responsibility for his place in the world ties into the main narrative in a way Final Fantasy 5 has just a bit of a tone problem where the comedy tends to displace the more humanistic aspects but perhaps calling it a tone problem is a bit harsh because for the most part it does still work rarely is there any tonal Whiplash the pacing between comedy and drama is handled fairly well and they both still work in equal measure for the same reason that the Muppets at least under Jim Henson were able to masterfully slide between the two tones a lack of cynicism if at any point the comedy slides into the realm of the cynical then the earnestness of the whole Affair is lost the audience would no longer have a reason to believe that any of the Pathos in the story is genuine and the spell would be broken as a result the sincerity of its pathos becomes more believable even if it is surrounded by wacky hijinks you could still get the comedy with the cynicism but you'd lose the heart of the story and if there was ever a frog whose heart you don't want to lose it would have to be Kermit of course one of the best ways to support the heart of a story is with music following the completion of Final Fantasy 4 and his disappointments with how that game's score ultimately turned out on a technical level nobuo uematsu would travel to Dublin to record an album of Celtic inspired Arrangements of pieces from its soundtrack with a stable of prolific Irish traditional musicians including violinist mayor bernock and Piper Ronan Brown the resulting album Final Fantasy 4 Celtic Moon would be the first of two such labors of Love born from this trip the other would be his score for Final Fantasy V drawing on his adoration for Irish Trad uematsu clearly wanted to share this passion with players the score is absolutely soaked in it and the higher quality samples helped to make his compositions shine that much brighter while the soundtrack as a whole doesn't draw from this same pool of influence it's impossible to ignore when it does show up which is still fairly often if I could pin down one track to embody this Celtic Spirit it would without a doubt be Harvest one of the game's many Town themes it is beat for beat note for note indistinguishable from a traditional Irish jig so bouncy catchy and fun that it almost feels wrong but it is so so right [Music] foreign [Music] s share themes with others there is but one that has its own bespoke composition buts his hometown of licks with the track home sweet home it's calm it sticks out in the minds it even carries a bit of that Celtic influence but there's a melancholic undercurrent as though suddenly communicating that's on some level butts is glad to be here to get away from his responsibilities for even a moment but that there are too many memories for him to stay for long licks and its people welcome him back with open arms and butts knows he can stay for as long as he likes but this isn't who he is anymore [Music] uematsu also experiments a bit more with light motifs this go around specifically with the game's main theme its Melody is used for more than just the the title theme which itself pops up occasionally during the story but is front and center in the theme for butts's world [Music] and is rearranged to fit more tense or somber moments such as when the wind dies in The Game's opening sequence [Music] and again in both deception [Music] and the day will come [Music] the Chocobo theme has also been given a complete stylistic overhaul being a mambo iteration that's kicked off with the very first vocal sample in the entire series oh really [Music] [Applause] but if there is one track in Final Fantasy 5 that stands up above the rest it's gilgamesh's theme battle at the big bridge not only does it play during every encounter with the boisterous oaf but it also plays uninterrupted during the entirety of the big bridge sequence it's pure Prague in its composition shifting Tempo and energy regularly but whenever that first strike hits the synthesizer seeming to imitate a sped up rendition of the series Prelude and the percussion starts building it is an absolute treat [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the whole while Final Fantasy 5 score has some unquestionably phenomenal compositions in my opinion most of it doesn't linger in the mind as much as previous titles it's still a great soundtrack overall and there are plenty of tracks I adore that I didn't take the time to highlight but while the game's heart energy and moment-to-moment gameplay are supported by the score the one aspect umatsu unfortunately did not uplift though not for a lack of trying was its themes ask most players what they think the core themes of Final Fantasy 5 are and they'll likely say something along the lines of Legacy after all its story is about a new crop of light Warriors inheriting the responsibilities of their parents and grandparents who fought against an ancient evil years before they were even born and while they would be correct to identify this as a thematic through line it's also one which is missing a great deal of cultural context which creates a much deeper thematic resonance with the game's original target audience Japanese teens and young adults in the early 1990s remember around the time ff5 began development the Japanese economy was in shambles the primary demographic for RPGs didn't have as much money to spend on games as they had in the past few years and while the poor and the younger Generations would have to deal with the Fallout of the bubble bursting for decades to come the older and Wealthy upper class who helped to instigate such an economic Calamity would ultimately come out of it all right even as early as 1992 it was clear that The Young and the old were living in two very different worlds each a different side of the same coin and despite the gravity of the economic Fallout affecting them both one of them would suffer a much greater lasting impact in Final Fantasy V the world is initially split in two butts's World which we associate with the young and gallop's World which we associate with their forebears when X death initially Broke Free of his seal 30 years ago he began to ravage the latter until a powerful few pushed him off into the other world and when they couldn't defeat him decided to seal him off again in the hope that nothing bad will happen and while dorgan stayed behind to watch over the seal and didn't want butts to Bear the burden of his responsibilities the reality is that he and the other Dawn Warriors still passed the buck off to the people of this world even if they did have the best of intentions the only thing keeping the two halves of the world separated were two sets of crystals with one set being disempowered by the upper class for the sake of societal Comforts and the others that being maliciously destroyed through manipulation and when the Two Worlds merge the seal and the void is broken allowing ex-death to begin returning everything to a state of nothingness inflicting this fate onto places from both halves of the world indiscriminately all because the dawn Warriors couldn't defeat him 30 years ago and put a Band-Aid on the problem instead in short Final Fantasy V can easily be read as an indictment of the old and Rich robbing younger generations of their future through economic manipulation and mismanagements cutting them off from a wealth of opportunity and prosperity for the sake of self-preservation and enrichment sure there are those affluent people who do sacrifice for the young and less fortunate who do have the best of intentions like gallop and dorgan but they were either unwilling or in this case unable to stop the Calamity for good and decided to do whatever they could to contain it instead galif even sacrifices himself to save his granddaughter's life when facing off against ex-dath and while she inherits his wealth and power both figuratively and literally she's so sheltered from life outside her bubble that she becomes anxious and directionless as her world is forcibly mashed into another which is totally foreign to her the world's merging is expertly foreshadowed as well not only do each of them feel a bit smaller than previous world maps but laying them over top of each other reveals that they fill in each other's gaps they were always the same world but they were segregated to keep the power of the Void sealed away within the framework of the analogy of the game acting as commentary on the Fallout of the Japanese economy X death in the void together represent the economic collapse how it will affect the rich and poor young and old and how they were pushed away or sealed off rather than confronted directly either due to a lack of ability or simple apathy the two halves of the world obviously represent the old and Rich and the young and poor with the merge World being the true worlds they all inhabit together the world which is collectively experiencing the effects of an economic depression even the game's job system fits into this butts and the others must learn various skills not necessarily because that's their calling in life but because they have to in order to survive a world that's becoming more difficult to navigate job security may not be as guaran guarantee it as it had been for previous generations so they may have to change occupations frequently and pick up new skills in the process skills which after utilizing them long enough become second nature and can be immediately called upon in their day-to-day life represented by the freelancer job hell they can use the samurai zeninagi ability to literally throw money at their problems to make them go away and on top of that Cara as the granddaughter of a member of the Bourgeois class inherits all of gallop's hard work upon his death without having done much to earn it other than simply being his descendant of course this was likely done more for gameplay reasons but it still fits the theme the solution posited by the game is to uplift the young and destitute so that they may Forge their own path in the world and fight back against economic turmoil after all the rituals stay rich and the older generation have had their time and need to step out of the way of those who will inherit the world they leave behind it presents a bit of an oversimplified version of the issue but it gets the points across however despite my reading into it like this I don't quite believe this social commentary was entirely intended on the part of sakaguchi and katase after all sakaguchi wanted the game to be more focused on its mechanics and its narrative and he and katase developed the scenario in an almost linear fashion as far as I've been able to find neither they nor anybody else who had worked on the game has said that they were trying to make any kind of statement with it it's certainly possible that their new higher wages at Square being awarded as the bubble was bursting may have led to some of them to reflect on the state of the economy and how they could have very easily been caught up in the turmoil as well maybe reality was seeping in and their thoughts about it were being subconsciously applied to the game it's certainly applicable and adds a new layer to Final Fantasy 5's story which completely passes Western players by but for those who played it when it was new it may have resonated with them that much more further invigorating them to see the game through to completion oh [Music] up until this point Final Fantasy has tended towards laying out a pretty linear path for the player with some optional deviations along the way and while Final Fantasy V largely sticks with this framework its finale discards this philosophy in favor of presenting a laundry list of challenges for the player to undertake if they are so inclined before the final battle within the sealed Castle lies the 12 sealed weapons used to defeat enuo long ago and now that the world has become whole and the void has returned the seals on these weapons can be broken once you've secured the four lithographs one for each element the weapons will be yours however while you're encouraged to unlock all of them you only need to acquire the Earth lithograph for story purposes the rests are technically optional but the rewards for attaining them all amount to more than just the strongest weapons in the game as they also unlock additional Side Quests for the most powerful spells and summons and after Sid gives the Airship the ability to turn into a submarine you can even return to the sunken remains of the walls Tower to procure A Shard from the water crystal that was out of your reach before but it's guarded by GoGo a mimic who will copy anything you do but therein lies the method to defeating him if you do nothing they will do nothing they'll commend you on your cleverness before dispersing and now you've unlocked the final job the mime but the ultimate challenges lie within the interdimensional rift itself among the conga line of tense battles with X deaths minions are two monstrosities which stand Above the Rest the stalwart automaton Omega and the draconic terror shinrio a library within the rift alludes not just to their presence but their obscene power stating that even the sealed weapons which defeated enuo were not enough to combat them and so they were sealed within the rift this is more than just flavor texts as they can't be defeated through sheer tenacity alone they require prep operation and strategy gained through a holistic understanding of the game's job system simply grinding for high levels like every other boss including the final battle with X death himself is meaningless this came about as a result of the receptions of Final Fantasy 3's end game where some players were discouraged and turned off by the difficulty of its final gauntlets sakaguchi reasons that those players who couldn't speed it would come away from the game dissatisfied and would be less likely to pick up the next one but he also wanted to give hardcore players the opportunity to really put their knowledge of the game's systems to full use the solution was to make the core game beatable by more casual players while placing these major tests of skill off the beaten path which in turn would allow the dev team to supercharge these challenging bosses since they were no longer roadblocks to finishing the story The trade-off was that these enemies these super bosses would only reward players with key items which served to prove that they did in fact defeat them a digital manifestation of the knowledge and satisfaction of having done so of course shinriyu also rewards Ragnarok the most powerful sword in the game but by the time you've received it there's nothing left to use it on it's simply an extension of that satisfaction another symbol to mark your accomplishments it's as counter-intuitive as it sounds but I can't bring myself to dislike it because I agree with sakaguchi that the satisfaction of having conquered them in the first place is enough of a reward in its own right the sword is just a nice bonus thankfully enemies within the interdimensional Rifts award much more AP than those practically anywhere else in the game allowing the player to fine-tune their party's builds at the 11th Hour both for the super bosses and for the final confrontation with X death there's an uneasiness pervading the whole dungeon the laws of time and space are thrown out the window here with the party trekking through areas which resemble places they visited along their Journey all with little to no logical cohesion between them the Phantom Village for example the inhab evidence of which inform you that their Town fell into the rift when the world was split in two is passed through on your way to fight X death but is completely Frozen in time in the depths of the rift the abstract spaces begin to percolate into a consistent theme blue crystalline Cliffs infested with the roots of the evil tree waiting at the end all floating in a void of nothingness it's here where the party once again encounters Gilgamesh whose parting I've already gone over when the party finally confronts ex-death deep within the rift the Warlock gloats that they're too late that he's finally attained the full power of the Void he takes the form of a large tree with roots extending down past where butts and the others had tread to arrive here its bark appears almost like the sinew of muscle some of it coalescing into what looked like a pair of squinted eyes near the top of the trunk and a featureless face pulsating at the base he begins exerting his Newfound power to absorb more and more of the world into the void before attempting to do the same to the party and for just a moment it works but the spirits of the Dawn Warriors and King Tycoon appear before them to hold back the void and give them time to defeat ex-death once and for all as striking as X death's design is in this form the battle itself is actually pretty underwhelming he doesn't seem to attack very often and when he does it's mostly just kind of pathetic even his meteor wasn't quite enough to knock out even a single member of my party but defeating this arboreal atrocity is not the end of the battle as the void consumes exdeth himself to give him a new form Neo X death a terrifying amalgam of man Beast Undead demon tree he is now visually almost totally removed from what he had been before and his goal has shifted ever so slightly now he desires to erase everything every Dimension every memory every world everything from existence for eternity after which he will erase himself how much of this is brought on by xdath's own desires and what may be the will of the Void is unclear but at this point it doesn't matter he's still a threat and now he isn't restrained by his previous hamminess he needs to be stopped now the multi-phase boss fight was nothing new by the time of Final Fantasy V Dragon Quest had been doing it since its first installment in 1986 but as a first crack at the concept Final Fantasy 5 does it pretty well the first phase warms you up and the second adds additional complexity with multiple points to Target with their Own stat blocks like zoromis he has tells for his ultimate attacks Al majest and Grand Cross the former is a holy attack that does high damage and inflicts sap while the latter merely inflicts a negative status ailment on each party member amusingly Grand Cross is predicated by an exclamation of the laws of physics being broken which appears to be muttered by ex-death but is actually meant to be a description of what's supposed to be happening to compensate for the lack of a visual effect the fight with Neo X death is exhilarating a frenetic marathon where there's always momentum even when you have to restore and revive your party Neo X death hits hard and takes a lot to kill as the various sections of his monstrous form collectively have over 200 000 HP ideally one would want to focus on one part at a time but taking care to split Focus between the final two this is because he'll start hitting the party with a barrage of powerful magic when only one of his Parts remains so splitting Focus before then would shrink the window of opportunity he has to do so of course I mostly used spread attacks anyway and I came out of it okay and thankfully there are a multitude of strategies which can be used to defeat him thanks to the flexibility of the job system he goes down just the same in the end oh [Music] [Music] foreign text crawl reveals that the void has always existed and that it is the birthplace of the four crystals so long as the spirits that originally spawned the crystals hope courage kindness and pursuit continue to exist within the hearts of man then the light of the crystals will be reborn at first the Warriors of light are confused at the void's continued presence until the Crystal Shards exit their bodies to reform the crystals back home causing the damage incurred by x-death to be undone the spirits of King Tycoon and the Warriors of dawn tell the party that the world still needs them that it's not time yet for them to join them in the next life and so our heroes return to the world they saved on the back of Cara's wind Drake [Music] foreign foreign passes and mid receives a letter from Cara describing what the other light Warriors have gotten up to since they saved the world butts has returned home to licks to spend time caring for his parents grave sites before starting a new Journey Lena and Ferris were set to rule over their Kingdom together but Ferris ultimately returned to their old Life as a pirate meanwhile Kara has been all alone with only her wind Drake her Mughal and her memories of their final battle keeping her company on the anniversary of gallop's death she visits his final resting place at the Guardian Tree and asks Sid and mid to tell the others she'll be there if they ask about her that she wants to see them again it's heartbreaking to know that they all went their separate ways shortly after going through such a harrowing ordeal that this found family was only staying together because of circumstance but life is just like that sometimes people grow apart obligations get in the way sometimes a calling will keep someone away from those they care about most to really help twist the knife if anyone fell during the final battle they don't return home afterward they fall to the void and if that happens to Cara someone else will write the letter though they pretty much say the same things verbatim Cara pays her respects to her grandfather at the Guardian Tree feeling more isolated than ever without her friends or beloved Grandpa everything they went through together is starting to feel like a dream now it was so long ago but as she leaves she hears butts called out to her telling her she isn't alone she Lena and Ferris all came to remember their fallen friend too and Kara begins to Cry tears of joy anyone who supposedly died in the final battle with ex-death is brought back and the four of them vowed to protect the crystals just as their Elders had as they ride off together to wherever the wind may take them thus concludes Final Fantasy V I originally didn't think I would have all that much to say about Final Fantasy V given how simple it all appears on the surface but scratching it even a little bit yields something significantly more interesting and complex than its threadbare plot would suggest the job system of course is The Game's standout feature but it's the characters despite not being as complex as those from its predecessor that in view Final Fantasy V with the series Beating Heart yet I still have some reservations about it the job system's Freedom allows for more complex boss design but these complexities can lead to frustration among players who aren't as intimately familiar with the interactions between abilities the concept of the world being split into is interesting but the world itself feels more like it was designed to be functional rather than believable and while I love these characters the lack of resonance most of their arcs have with the story leaves me a bit wanting these however are mostly nitpicks because the the game's core the job system is so strong an omnipresence that everything else basically takes a back seat would I have preferred a more deeply engaging character piece to accompany the gameplay of course but I was still really engaged with the characters we got even if the greater scope of the narrative doesn't really lean on them I enjoyed Final Fantasy V a great deal in fact I easily hold it above its four predecessors on the strength of its gameplay alone even if I do prefer ff4's story just a smidgen more if nothing else the experience was more than worthwhile a sentiment that Western players hoped would be true when it would finally cross the Pacific [Music] thank you [Music] before Final Fantasy 5 even saw release in Japan however Square were working on solutions to the issues they were facing in the U.S markets Final Fantasy 4 may have been adored by players and sold reasonably well given its status as an early title for the Super Nintendo in the territory but it fell woefully short of the 1 million units the company had begun to expect for its games in the wake of ff4's release in North America an emergency meeting would be held at Square's headquarters in Tokyo and among those in attendance was squaresoft's new in-house translator Ted Woolsey it shipped ff2 and they just uh you know felt in Tokyo that they needed something else to kind of get people trained up on that style of gaming and that that became a game called Mystic Quest which was a little four Meg a little format game which is basically a game a game boy game that was put onto the SNES and that one came about we were in a board meeting in Saku sun and miyamoto-san and some other folks uh you know kind of immediately just said they had to fix this and they called they called the guy who was waiting around you know the corner or outside the office to come in and it turns out he was the head of the new Osaka development team and said you will make a game for America he was like okay I'm doing it great so I was a little bit more involved in the the writing of the story on that one just to kind of try to shape it better but it's you know as a format ROM there there was just a an excruciatingly small amount of space there to kind of um you know kind of Spin A Yarn as it were they wanted a million million years that was their that was their number and they were getting that starting to get that in Tokyo for with every release for Final Fantasy and of course you know Annex would would always outdo them with its release of its next game so there's a big competition that way and in North America they you know FFF uh two for you know first start PG for SNES I think um did well in the early days of Super NES between stall base was small and the percentage of of users that were buying the game was was relatively small and it just it did not play out as they had hoped I think Nintendo said hey you guys will be you know out there as one of the best games you know you're going to sell a ton of software I think that they just felt that the game was too complicated and not mainstream enough and so that was the uh the reason that that Mystic Quest came to be woolsey's remarks comparing Mystic Quest to a Game Boy title weren't entirely unfounded either as the Osaka team were also responsible for Saga 3 which would be localized as Final Fantasy legend 3 upon its North American release the following August the reception to Mystic Quest was decidedly more tempered than previous titles with Nintendo Power scoring at a 3.725 out of 5 and electronic gaming monthly awarding it a 29 out of 40 with criticism aimed primarily towards the game's Simplicity for the sake of drawing in novice and young players but otherwise felt it was a reasonably worthwhile game it would ultimately outsell Final Fantasy 4 outside Japan moving roughly 400 000 copies possibly due in part to its comparatively low price of only 39.99 still this was Far Below Square's expectations and while Mystic Quest was appreciated by younger players it didn't have nearly the same impact as any of the other games bearing the Final Fantasy name all of which would regular if not consistently make appearances in Nintendo power's top 20 lists for their respective platforms Mystic quests by comparison would only appear in the top 20 SNES list twice in the February and March 1993 issues peaking at the number 19 spots before quietly fading away Mystic Quest would ultimately have a second life of sorts in Japan the following year where it would be retitled Final Fantasy USA Mystic Quest and go on to sell another 400 000 copies however the reception there was much colder than it had been in North America with famitu's cross review panel giving it a paltry score of 23 out of 40. it would also be the first Final Fantasy title to be released in Europe albeit stripped of its original namesake and retitled Mystic Quest Legend meanwhile fans back in North America were still eagerly anticipating the release of Final Fantasy V which was taking much longer to hit store shelves than expected initially squaresoft's newsletter the oga Pogo examiner a assured fans that the game was going to come to North America in 1993 albeit renamed Final Fantasy 3 in their following issue they would Proclaim that the localization process had officially begun in mid-1993 in that same issue squaresoft would explain that the delay was a result of the difficulty of splitting the software Engineers back in Japan between upcoming games and localizations of those already released meanwhile word of the game's existence both under its original and localized titles had already begun to spread amongst would-be players Dennis publishing's Nintendo Game Zone would run an article covering the game's premise and Japanese release in their February 1993 issue in April game Pro's Monty Hall would run a brief feature on the game in which he erroneously claims that it took place in the same world as its predecessor only 700 years later and stated that it would be released Stateside in November in August Nintendo power would make their first reference to the game with with an expected release window of the first quarter of 1994 then in January in a section exploring games that never left Japan they would highlight final fantasies 2 3 and 5 noting that the latter was due to be released as Final Fantasy 3 later that year but after that any mentioned a Final Fantasy 3 and Nintendo power would be in reference to Final Fantasy VI this decision had come about as a result of focus groups largely feeling that Final Fantasy V was too complex and inaccessible even though the more involved character building and strategic gameplay were major Boons to more seasoned players this disgruntled numerous fans who had been following what crumbs of information they could get their hands on about the game and with Mystic quests still being somewhat fresh in their minds a narrative would begin to form that it was actually made to replace Final Fantasy V in North America thus what was initially mild positivity toward Mystic quests would morph into derision that this game was the reason Final Fantasy V never came out in North America for the Super Nintendo this is untrue of course as the timeline of events doesn't even slightly add up even in the pre-internet age this conclusion could have been reached with the information that was available simply looking at the release dates of Mystic Quest in North America and Final Fantasy V in Japan would have been very telling but the information was scattered among multiple Publications and newsletters and even then the full story behind the creation of Mystic Quest hadn't yet been divulged despite the air being cleared on the matter since the mid 90s however this falsehood would continue to persist for some time with some believing it even to this very day thus continuing to fuel some fans contempt for Mystic quests however plans to bring Final Fantasy 5 Stateside were still in motion that June electronic gaming monthly in response to a letter from a disgruntled fan would state that it would be released in the U.S in early 1995 targeting a more hardcore player base who would appreciate its higher difficulty squaresoft would confirm this in their singular newsletter for the year now rebranded as simply squaresoft to the official newsletter which referred to it under a new title Final Fantasy extreme unfortunately this attempt would be quietly canceled as well much to the disappointment of not only fans but of Ted Woolsey I think one of my favorite games was Final Fantasy V which I had almost all translated but which they opted not to ship because they didn't really feel the U.S market was ready yet for a second you know you know Flagship RPG ff5 I thought was just you know spine tingling it's just you know with the sound of the wind and you know Bells you know in the background and you know dragons to ride on and that was that was that was where I really got just hit deep into into these this style of RPG the sheer fact of not being able to bring that one out here that's where I was worried about being met in a dark alley by someone who's pissed off I would have understood seeing legend for that because that that was a mistake we should have brought that out I thought and I championed that idea I did ultimately send my screen text to them I'm not sure if it was ever used for the translation with the release of the Nintendo 60 4 in 1996 and the direct falling out between square and Nintendo brought on by the console any further plans to bring Final Fantasy 5 to the West would have to Target other Platforms in 1998 such plans would be announced as being a port for Windows 95 with Top Dog software working to Port the game Square provided the game's original source code which no one could read because it was entirely in Japanese as well as English translations for the in-game text though whether or not any of the latter was written by Ted Woolsey for previous localization attempts is unclear regardless of whether any of woolsey's work was handed over to Top Dog however the studio would ultimately have somebody fly over to work on the localization for about two months unfortunately the developments of this version would experience several issues stemming from poor communication between top dog who were in Austin Texas squaresoft who had relocated from Washington State to Los Angeles and square headquarters in Tokyo Square failed to deliver all the necessary documentation early enough in the process leading to numerous delays false starts and other issues that Tech lead William Ivey would describe as quote familiar to most programmers and project managers but worse than usual in this case yet the team were coming to grips with the game fairly well perhaps a bit too well as event system and user interface programmer Tony Duncan recalled an incident which drew the ire of squaresoft's quality assurance Department quote I forgot the exact circumstances but there was a part in the game where the group was on top of a mountain with a dragon they're chatting for a while and then go to the dragon to fly away under a certain set of circumstances the dragon would reach down and snap off Lena rayna's head and it would roll away but slash Barts would then yell out you bastard you killed Reina then everything would restore itself and the game would continue when the QA people found it the first time they tried and tried to make it happen again after that I was called into the project manager's office to discuss their display pleasure end quote although the team that worked on it haven't suggested as much this may have been the Catalyst that would ultimately kill this port's turbulent development despite having made significant progress on the ports being in a mostly playable State and running at a full screen resolution of 640x480 square yoinked the project from top dog when they were two to six months out from completion and handed it over to idos who would also Port Final Fantasy VII to the PC that same year the Windows 95 Port of Final Fantasy V would ultimately never materialize it wasn't all doom and gloom however as fans had already found their own way of playing the ever elusive Final Fantasy 5 on their home computers and thanks to the tenacity and Ingenuity of a select few they wouldn't even need squaresoft's help to experience it entirely in English while computers began to make their way into American homes in the 1980s they wouldn't begin to be especially commonplace until well into the 90s the percentage of U.S households that had home computers roughly doubled from an average of 16 to 34 percent and the number of people using the internet around the world grew at a similar rate it was also during this time that enthusiasts began to develop emulators to play their favorite console games on their PCS with a vast swath of ROM files available to download online in this era of hard drives that were only just getting into the gigabytes and 28k modems the relatively small file sizes of NES and SNES ROMs didn't take up much space on the average Drive nor take an entire day or more to download and as the emulators themselves became more robust and the internet more widespread playing old Nintendo games on a PC would become easier than ever this accessibility would introduce players to numerous games which had only been released in Japan skipping North America and Europe for square this includes included the likes of Final Fantasy 2 and 3 second and setsu 3 Romancing Saga live alive Front Mission and of course Final Fantasy V however while the opportunity to finally play it had now presented itself it was still a Japanese game that had never been released in English and as such English-speaking fans were left to Fumble through the game without being able to understand anything that was going on that is of course unless they had access to an extensive FAQ created by University of Michigan freshman Nora Stevens University of Colorado Boulder students tatsushi nakao and future games writer Chris Kohler originally written before the emulation boom when the only way to play Final Fantasy 5 was by importing it and snapping some tabs off of the inside of your Super Nintendo this FAQ not only provided notes and tips on how to progress through the game but also contained English translations of the game's text side by side with the original Japanese of course this necessitated the use of the freeware word processor njs Star as American browsers and word processors of the time didn't support Japanese and with the explosion of interest in emulating Final Fantasy V came a massive jump in the number of downloads for the FAQ with the most common type of email being sent to its writers being that it displayed weird nonsensical symbols this was why you needed NJ star the second most common email would ask about the so-called water maze puzzle which in reality was just a hiccup in the emulation brought about by the program not being able to handle the game's transparency effects some emulators could handle them and some That Couldn't were robust enough that users could turn off individual Graphics layers in order to proceed unimpeded it was a clunky imperfect solution but for the most dedicated Final Fantasy fans it would have to make do soon after however the emulation situation surrounding Final Fantasy V would enter a new stage one which would issue the need for a written FAQ and make the experience more palatable to a wider player base however because the situation unfolded on forums and IRC channels all the way back in the mid to late 90s there isn't much in the way of visuals to throw up on the screen so in order to tell the story of what happens next we're going to try something a little different foreign project for Final Fantasy 5 are making the rounds and the emulation and raw macking communities these rumors are quickly traced back to a user named hazama the leader of a group called kawasuku while fan translations weren't exactly new at this point they were certainly still novel The Dutch group Oasis had released an English patch for SD snatcher in 1993 but it was a bit rough and didn't leave much of an impact in fact it was common for fan translations at the time to be unpolished janky and at times garbled messes that were somehow even less legible to English speakers than the original Japanese and that's if the project could get off the ground hosmos attempted translating Final Fantasy V would be one such false start neither he nor the rest of kuasuku would provide proof of their work and the project was quickly abandoned foreign members of the community were disappointed their hopes crushed but there was one person who would not just quietly accept this a member going by the name Demi would piggyback off the interest kawasuku had generated in an effort to get the ball rolling on a more Earnest effort at translating Final Fantasy V this would lead to the founding of what can be considered the first truly significant fan translation group multiple Demi Force but before too long this project would be abandoned as well instead Demi would join forces with another user Psalm 2 freak to translate Final Fantasy 2 seeing it as a more attainable goal and that seemed to be true as they would share screenshots of their progress online to much praise but due to creative differences this project would be put on hold what had been released of their ff2 efforts however would serve as the impetus for the first successful attempt at translating Final Fantasy V after discovering the incomplete ff2 translation 14 year old Derek sobidash under the handle Shadow D or simply Shadow became interested in the idea of fan translations he would ask sam2 about how he could go about doing it himself and Psalm 2 would provide the young lad with programs and materials to get him started now before we go any further let's get a better idea of the kind of kids soba Dash was Derek sobidash was a self-described script Kitty basically someone who messed around with malicious tools software and code for a laugh notably he used a key logger to get a hold of his high school administrator's login information and since the anarchists cookbook to every email address in the school from the admin accounts he claimed this was an accident but he would end up with a lifetime ban from his school library for his trouble it was shortly after the stunt that he discovered ROM hacking and the ff2 translation the most recent Final Fantasy at the time was Final Fantasy VI and so badash figured that if that was the best game in the series then surely Final Fantasy 5 would be the next best thing but despite his eagerness to produce his own translation patch he didn't know any Japanese instead he would simply pill for somebody else's written translation to expedite the process but so badash found the tools some too had given him to be too cumbersome and unwieldy one of them would even crash whenever he all tabbed he would quickly discard these tools in favor of others which were being used to develop a rom hack of Dragon Quest 1 and 2 for the Super Nintendo as well as a different text editor but this hex editor didn't have a table to sort hex automatically leading sobadash to complicate the process further he would fill a three-ringed binder with the 380-page translation he had procured the game's Japanese font and hexadecimal tables the sheer amount of paper he was using claimed for the life of his family's printer he would bring all of this to school with him every day making flashcards in order to teach himself which hex codes matched each Japanese and English character otherwise he was spending hours studying raw hex and converting hex code into romanji despite all of this time and effort he had been putting into the project however sobidesh had little to show for it but strong was the appetite for an ff5 translation and sobidash looking to bring more attention his way would do the unthinkable he would lie on the internet he edited screenshots of the game with Photoshop replacing the Japanese text with English to make it seem as though he was further along than he really was and fans ate them up for months so badash would be bombarded with requests to help with the project one of them a computer engineering major with the handle Hui would help to really get things moving they were able to start replacing some of the game's text and even got some patches bundled in with the fan run Final Fantasy mailing list that summer sobadash would recruit David timko and thermopile to the project and the four of them would officially name their group rpge but not too long afterward the project would undergo a significant shift in Direction following the arrival of a newcomer to the group a high school sophomore from Irvine California with the handle myria like many Final Fantasy fans in North America at the time the announcement of Final Fantasy VII had perplexed Maria Final Fantasy 3 was the most recent game right for the Super Nintendo what happened to four five and six we've already gone over the numbering discrepancy at length so we won't retread that here again but suffice it to say that miria had become intrigued after a bit more research she realized just how compromised Square's localization of Final Fantasy 4 had been she contemplated getting into the burgeoning fan translation scene with the intent of fixing that script but when she found members of rpge hanging out in an IRC Channel talking about ff5 her interest would be peaked once again Final Fantasy 4 can wait translating a game that had never been released in English now that's way cooler but there was a problem Mario found soba Dash and RPG's methods to be not just extremely crude but fundamentally flawed the game displayed text in a way that specifically accommodated the Japanese language which is not only much more compact than English but each character has a consistent width it wasn't enough to Simply change the text but how the game displayed that text to compound this issue the group was being plagued with internal strife and Maria's attempts at explaining the limitations of their methods mostly fell on deaf ears but there was one person out of all of those who heard Maria's protests that would take them seriously someone who sobadash had firmly trusted Psalm 2 freak the same one who enabled sobidesh to take this path in the first place but rather than try to leverage whatever sway he may have had over sobadash Psalm 2 and Maria decided on a different course of action they would begin working on their own translation project for the entire summer Maria would tear apart the game's code teaching herself how it worked on the most fundamental level using her old anemic Intel 486 PC through trial and error she would learn the function of every line of code that she could disassemble meanwhile Psalm 2 would diligently translate the script which miria would learn how to implement into the game itself but in order to test her work she would have to use her father's more modern Pentium machine because her PC didn't have the power to run SNES 90x they worked tirelessly day and night completely unbeknownst to sobadash and unlike sobadash they didn't need Photoshop they didn't need to sacrifice a printer to the great Radio Shack in the sky they were getting results Maria would even bring on a third person katsuyuki omaro an upperclassmen at her school Under the username Harmony 7. omro was brought on to help edit song 2 script which because of his Youth and unfamiliarity with Japanese was littered with errors omro would quickly get to work revising the script and making Corrections prompting a bitter Psalm 2 to quit the project Maria and omaro continued working on the project as the school year started miria's work would conclude after writing a program which would allow them to more easily inject their English script into the ROM now it was down to omero to finish and revise his script and their fan translation the only one left still being worked on within rpge would be complete foreign but then in early October another translation group society's hell would publish a beta version of myria and omaro's work as their own they had acquired it through news groups that were sharing it around but like any beta it was incomplete and lacked a bit of Polish miria and omaro were stunned they had poured their entire summer vacation and then some into this project they absolutely could not let these guys take credit for all their hard work but their patch was just not ready yet the text crawl at the end of the game was still in Japanese and omaro needed more time for that extra bit of Polish they deliberated for about a week before ultimately deciding that they needed to set the record straight and so on October 15 1997 they would upload a slightly more current version of the patch dubbed version 0.96 to the internet and despite the aforementioned shortcomings this version was playable entirely in English from start to finish the patch quickly made its way through chat rooms and message boards across the internet without any push from its creators the translation had gone viral the fandom rejoiced and took to the streets to celebrate envious Dragon Quest fans still waiting for DQ 5 and 6 began attacking the Final Fantasy fans in a jealous rage the celebrations turned to rioting and the City of Chicago would have to call in the National Guard to quell the violence for the second time that year or maybe there was just a bunch of Buzz and forums and chat rooms and such the history of this thing can get kind of hazy in places eventually omaro would tidy up the script and publish version 1.0 in June 1998 which included the translation of the text crawl at the end of the game this would be the version I played for this video as for Derek sobidash his inflating ego would spiral out of control throwing rpge into disarray while Maria som2 and omero worked in the background his competitive mindset and adamance to have his translations done as quickly as possible hurt his image even more he would ultimately leave the scene altogether in March of 1998 after months of death threats and other forms of harassment by then the group's other co-founders had already left leaving only omro and magitek KN to keep the lights on it's ironic then that after all of this his group will always be associated with one of the most important fan translations of all time and he ultimately had nothing to do with it okay funny time's over we're going back to the normal style now it can't be overstated just how much of a landmark this fan translation is not just for Final Fantasy V not just for the Final Fantasy franchise but for fan translations as a whole this was the first truly significant fan translation one which would lay the foundation for those to come through miria's methods and contributions to the scene there were hardly any tools or resources to accomplish such a task at the time and emulation was still in its relatively early stages you can draw a direct line from the rpge translation of Final Fantasy V to Clyde mandolin's translation of Mother 3 and I don't just mean that in the abstract mandolin himself went from viewing emulation as a gimmick or novelty to something truly groundbreaking when he experienced Mario and omaro's work he immediately set off on learning more about how ROM hacking and translation patches work which led him to working in fan translation groups and ultimately led him to becoming a professional translator but setting all of that aside how is the fan translation it's generally pretty solid if a bit dry and somewhat literal it does exhibit a couple of common problems with anime fan Subs of the day namely gratuitous swearing in the retention of some Japanese words but I only noticed two brief instances of the former and the latter is primarily in reference to the wind Drakes which are referred to as hiryu the Japanese word for flying dragon there really isn't all that much Flair to it but it's internally consistent and serves its purpose in 1997 just having a complete and functional English translation was a major accomplishment in and of itself it helps that a lot of the game's tone is set by the Sprite animations blocking and music more so than the scripts so neither the drama nor the comedy was lost in the process the only significant deviations made with their script were the names of the main protagonist and gallop's granddaughter butts and Cara in the case of butts it's not so much that his name was changed but codified as the original Japanese version had no default name set when the player is prompted to name him the name butts was added because while his name is displayed as Square in the screenshots printed in the game's manual bhatsu was the name he had in one of the screenshots on the back of the game's box and the name butts was given to him in official guidebooks released ahead of the game itself in Japan as for Cara while her official Japanese name is kurulu none of those official guidebooks had given her an English name like they had for the others and because kururu is such a harsh name to pronounce for native English speakers miria and Psalm 2 freak were stumped on how to approach it some too would suggest to the name Cara which was more palatable to the English tongue while Maria disagreed feeling it didn't line up with kururu she didn't put up much of a fuss and the name stuck for a hot minute this was the only way to play Final Fantasy V in English but it wouldn't be long before Square would finally bring us an official localization unfortunately it wouldn't be on quite the same level as what fans had already been playing foreign on March 19 1998 several months before rpge would release the first version of their English patch Final Fantasy V would be released for the PlayStation in Japan with North America and Europe receiving the port on October 5th 1999 and February 27 2002 respectively as part of their respective Final Fantasy Anthology compilations this version like the PlayStation version of its predecessor would feature new fmvs and the ability to Sprint without needing the thief's ability though it does stack with the standard Sprints to further increase movement speed this would Mark the first time the game would be officially playable in the west but it would unfortunately sport a Litany of issues poor sound quality and horrendous load times are very apparent in addition to visual errors and even crashes surrounding the save menu when the game is played on subsequent PlayStation consoles although these issues would apparently be fixed in the greatest hits release but these problems pale in comparison to the localization the quality of the which waffles between misguided and incompetent wyverns are now why Burns victory at the end of a battle is now a protracted yes tonberry is now dingleberry X death is now X death and most of the party have had some changes made to them as well at least compared to what RPG's work had given us Lena is now Reyna Kara has been given the official English name kryol Ferris easily got hit the worst out of the main cast in this version if it isn't the mistranslation of their birth name from sarisa to salsa that confounds you then it's their incessant pirate speak and not only makes it a bit more difficult to understand what they're saying it also unintentionally reduces an interesting and complex character into a bad joke that's as far away from endearing as you can get Final Fantasy 5 is more comedic than its predecessors yes but it knew when to pull back on the humor and let the story and characters breathe a bit and with just this one localization Choice the wind is taken out of the game's sales just enough to make me not want to give this version the time of day all the other issu aside sure their character Arc is still there but geez that accent and then there's our main protagonist butts or rather Barts as he would officially be known in the western world they're both technically correct as far as localizations go for his Japanese name batsu but this decision has since created a bit of a ripple among fans from what I can tell those who prefer butts usually do so because they either knew him by that name first via either playing the rpge translation or hearing about the game second hand from those who had believe it to be the definitively correct name because of its appearances in official supplementary materials released in Japan around the game's original release or because they simply find it amusing meanwhile those on team Barts either similarly played one of the official localizations first and know him that way or find the name butts to be too childish as for myself despite having called him butts for the duration of this video I air more towards Barts as it doesn't sound like a name conjured up by a six-year-old filling out Mad Lib I also feel that there's a bit of an air of snobbish elitism that comes with calling him butts as though one is trying to say I played this game before the normies and I'm better for it of course not everyone on team butts is like this but the stench still wafts through the cabins like the bo of a group of teenage boys on a three-day gaming Bender subsisting solely on Doritos and Mountain Dew without bathing the reason I called him butts here was because for several years English-speaking players knew him primarily by that name not just because of the fan translation but because the poor quality of the PlayStation version turned many players away from it and so they would play the other game in their Anthology sets Final Fantasy 4 in Europe and Final Fantasy VI in North America looking at what few screenshots were released for the canceled PC version of the game it would appear that the localization produced for it was reused for the PlayStation version albeit slightly modified if this screenshot of Ferris speaking in their pirate accent is anything to go by it's small but the PlayStation version add an an extra o to woman changing it to woo man and thus thickening their accent but without a larger pool of screenshots I can't really say for certain this localization was compared very unfavorably to the fan translation Maria herself found it to be laughable quote we were laughing so hard because the translation was absolutely awful we were like okay a couple kids in high school over four months did a better job than Square it probably took them at least a year we were just laughing so hard end quote many fans felt similarly and would stick to the fan translation it wouldn't be until more than half a decade later that Square Enix would revisit Final Fantasy V once again this time for the Game Boy Advance released in Autumn 2006 in Japan and North America and Spring 2007 in Europe and Australia Final Fantasy V Advance would support the usual bestiary and quick save features as well as a new bonus dungeon new super bosses and four new jobs on top of various minor gameplay tweaks but most importantly the advanced version did away with the maligned PlayStation script and sported a completely new English localization which has been largely embraced by players ever since to keep it brief the advanced script is a massive improvement over the PlayStation version retaining accurate names for characters and enemies while having a bit more flavor than the fan translation in more ways than one the writing is more colorful and the characters stand out from each other much more than they had before they even retained ferris's pirate speak by way of incorp operating euphemisms and the like into their dialogue without giving them a terrible accent however I also feel this script leans a bit too much into the comedic and farcical through the injection of jokes puns and pop culture references which weren't there before The Simpsons Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Power Rangers Pokemon and A Streetcar Named Desire among others all get referenced at various points I'm personally not crazy about the reference humor and feel that the addition of some additional comedic Flair serves to further paint the game as even more light-hearted than it actually is but when the drama is front and center it really sings I teared up more playing this version than I did playing the fan translation not to say this is necessarily better than that version but it's definitely a different flavor I found the experience of playing the GBA version to be more comfortable overall but whether this was due to an increased familiarity with various ins and outs of the game is a bit hard to say what I can say with confidence however is that the new post-game dungeon the sealed Temple does an Immaculate job of building off of the ethos of the original game's super bosses there are moments where it veers into the same territory as Final Fantasy 3 and how certain jobs or abilities are necessary to proceed most notably when you have to capture a behemoth to unlock the door to the arena but considering that this is optional post-game content which is meant to test the player's knowledge and use of everything the game has to offer I frankly don't find it to be much of an issue before saving clear data however the entrance to the temple will only yield three of the four new job crystals the Gladiator the cannoner and the Oracle to me they were mostly unremarkable the Gladiator was strong and had interesting finishing moves but that's about it canineers can mix together different ammo types for stronger attacks but only after leveling them up a bit and oracles can predict powerful natural phenomena and weaponize them but the one time I did this it ended up wiping the party as well I mastered them for the sake of gaining additional experience while using freelancer but otherwise I set them aside to unlock the final job however you have to defeat the evil lurking in the deepest depths of the sealed temple in addition to new iterations of Omega and shinriyu the final zone of the temple brings the party face to face with the one who kick-started all this craziness with the void in the first place enuo who appears to have been banished to the plane between it's an interesting fight effectively a supercharged Neo X death when you get him to his second phase and it's satisfying in a narrative sense not that there is an interesting story tying the sealed Temple to anything else but because enuo himself was an element of the original game's story that always felt like a bit of a dangling thread not one that necessarily needed to be tied up but one which I felt had a bit more behind it and was curious to see more in my opinion he could have been the true final boss someone manipulating ex-death the whole time or even the first Spirit sealed within the tree who would act as the driving force behind ex-dath's actions instead he's merely a super boss one with loose ties to the main narrative but which ultimately doesn't affect it and this was probably for the best Final Fantasy 5 was already treading a bit into ff3's Waters and pulling anuo out of the Aether at the 11th hour would have been a repeat of the cloud of Darkness albeit with slightly more adequate setup it's okay though I think having him as the final ultimate test for players is a fine enough Coda for the experience you defeated the one who wants to restore the void now you've done the same to the one who was believed to have created it in the first place tetsuya namura being brought back to design him acts as a nice cherry on top too the rewards for defeating nuo are twofold a final job Crystal which unlocks The Necromancer and The Cloister of the Dead The Necromancer is accompanied by a brief tutorial which explains that they unlock special dark arts by Landing the killing blow to certain enemies they're effectively Undead blue Mages but with much higher magic and stamina stats and a shallower spell pool some of their dark arts are truly powerful but between their permanent Undead status making it difficult to heal them and the lack of remaining challenges after acquiring the job I quickly set it aside The Cloister of the Dead meanwhile is a simple Boss Rush mode you fight five of The Game's bosses at a time with minor changes made to them and your reward is a key item saying you beat the boss Rush it's basically a Victory lap I got pretty close to the end before Hala carnassus did me in but I personally saw no reason to try and complete it Beyond bragging rights all told Final Fantasy 5 Advance is a fantastic way to play ff5 sure the game is a bit brighter to compensate for the unlit screens of the original GBA model and the sound quality took a bit of a hit because of the hardware but the former isn't a deal breaker and the latter isn't nearly as bad as some claim it to be it if the music is that big of an issue for you there are patches available to restore the original soundtrack as best as possible the next version however would address both of these aspects sort of in 2013 Final Fantasy 5 would make its way to IOS and Android with a PC release in 2015 this version was based on the advanced ports with its own host of gameplay tweaks fixes and features it's mostly little things with an auto battle toggle being the biggest quality of life feature and the original Super famicom soundtrack has been restored but what comes to mind before any of that when discussing this port are the touch friendly interface and the visuals a mobile ports having a UI like this is understandable you need big buttons for small screens the problem with it is that the UI was unchanged for the PC Port which has controller supports more pressingly the visuals are absolutely reviled by fans for being a mishmash of conflicting Aesthetics with seemingly no care put into making sure anything is cohesive the monster Sprites are gorgeous almost as though they were meant for a PSP remake like one two and four but everything else well look at it for these videos I tried to play the most up-to-date versions of these games with as much of the bonus content as possible for this section it's why I skipped the GBA versions of one two and four in favor of the PSP versions I did not do that for Final Fantasy 5 for two reasons the first being the awful visuals in this port and the second is because you can't actually buy this version anymore in summer 2021 ahead of the upcoming pixel remasters Square Enix delisted all previous versions of the first six games from mobile platforms and steam to prevent buyer confusion the only exceptions were the 3D remakes of ff3 and 4 which had 3D remake added to their titles to stand apart and those who had the old version of ff5 in their Library would have old version added to its name to differentiate it from the pixel remaster some may say Good Riddance but considering that this was the last way to legally play a version with all that bonus content I feel that it was a net loss yes it's visual are poor but leaving it as an option would only have been a positive instead the pixel remaster released in 2021 for mobile and PC and in 2023 for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo switch is the only version available to buy on Modern Hardware and even then currently only the console versions sport a slightly more appealing pixel font the ability to disable Random Encounters and adjustable experience AP and Guild yields ranging from zero to four times these features are supposedly being planned for the PC and mobile versions but as of right now it's unclear when they will arrive for this go around I played the pixel remaster on the Nintendo switch I decided to max out the boosters for this playthrough so that I could experience the game in a manner closer to someone who had never played it before and wanted a more comfortable experience because of ff5's design I was unsure how the boosters would really affect the difficulty broadly speaking the game's challenge comes from tactics rather than stats I don't think I can accurately judge the difficult multi in the pixel remaster because of how familiar I've become with the game but I can say with confidence that the boosts don't break the game in half either if anything they assuage the tedium of grinding for Gill and AP encouraging new players to try and experiment more with different job and ability combinations because the amount of effort required to level them up and kit them out has been significantly reduced so in that regard I suppose it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that it's easier than previous versions or at the very least it's the version of the game that's the friendliest to newcomers thanks to these quality of life improvements as well as Auto and quick saves the presentation is easily my favorite of the pixel remaster so far preserving the feel of the original pixel art while adding just a bit more depth and color as well as adding more visual Flair and finesse that simply wasn't possible on the super famicom or Game Boy Advance and the rearranged soundtrack is the coup de gras I greatly enjoyed the pixel remaster it's a treat for the eyes and ears and the boosters added to the console versions allow players to tailor the difficulty a bit more to their liking but what I recommended over the GBA version well it depends on what you're looking for if you want to challenge the pixel remaster certainly allows you to adjust some options to cut kill experience and AP yields in half or turn them off entirely but it also lacks the sealed Temple from the GBA version which is much more of a challenge for power players for that reason alone I would probably recommend the GBA version if you're looking for more complex challenges even if they only really come at the end for those who've never played Final Fantasy V before the GBA version is a solid choice but if you don't care much for super challenging post game content or overall prefer fun to challenge in your games definitely spring for the pixel remaster it'll still have a few curveballs in there but it's much more forgiving than previous versions I suppose that it's only fitting that Final Fantasy V has multiple legitimate options for newcomers to play when one considers its unique reputation among players outside its home country [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] early in the morning on December 6 1992 fans had begun lining up outside of big camera in Tokyo's ikebukuro District in anticipation of Final Fantasy V some had initially lined up the previous evening prompting the store to give these extreme early birds vouchers so they could save their place in line by the time the store opened the queue had already numbered in the thousands Final Fantasy V would sell around 900 000 copies on launch day four and a half times as many copies as Final Fantasy 4 had sold on its first day famitsu's cross review of the game would praise its presentation and story noting the expressiveness of the characters and how much of a tear-jerker the experience was each of the four panelists recommended it wholeheartedly with one of them Isabella Nagano especially recommending it for girls overall they gave it a rating of 34 out of 40 a high score befitting their Acclaim but slightly lower than the 36 bestowed upon both its predecessor and dragon Quest 5 famitsu wouldn't be alone in their praise either as the super famicom magazine would share similar sentiments in their own review of the game the following month wherein they would give it a score of 90. between its staggering day one sales and the Stellar praise from both players and critics alike Square were expecting to have 2 million copies shipped by the end of the year a bold expectation but not entirely unreasonable Final Fantasy V would remain a bestseller for some time and it would hit that 2 million Mark by the end of January becoming the fourth multi-million seller of 1992 alongside Dragon Quest 5 Super Mario Kart and Street Fighter 2. ultimately Square would sell 2.45 million copies in Japan and it would be the second best-selling Game of the Year behind Dragon Quest V A Monumental achievement especially considering the demand for Dragon Quest had led to a steady increase in price for the console raising the barrier to entry for new players interestingly however Final Fantasy V would outsell enix's latest outing in South Korea being outsold only by Street Fighter 2 and while It ultimately wouldn't see a release for the Super Nintendo in North America the then still nascent Game Fan magazine would recognize it as being one of the best Imports of the year as well as having one of the best soundtracks of the Year among said Imports amusingly before the game itself was officially released in North America a final fantasy OVA commissioned by NTT publishing and animated by Studio bones would make its way Stateside originally released in Japan between March 21st and July 21st 1994 this OVA simply titled Final Fantasy in Japan would take place roughly 200 years after the events of Final Fantasy V and Center on Bart's descendant lenali in North America Urban vision would release the dub in two volumes each containing two episodes on December 9 1997 and February 3rd 1998 while the OVA was well received upon its initial release both in Japan and in North America in recent years it's been more often maligned for its crudeness and focus on Comedy I could go into detail about the OVA but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it at that but if you want to hear more of my personal thoughts on it I have a review available on patreon as a bonus video to accompany this one when Final Fantasy V did finally make its way to North America in 1999 via the Final Fantasy Anthology for PlayStation critical reception while overall fairly positive wasn't quite as glowing as it had been in Japan it would be disparaged for having an overly simplistic plot flat characters and a repetitive structure Gamespot would also take the translation to task comparing it unfavorably with RPGs is still fresh and easily accessible fan translation and the oft maligned translations produced by working designs all of this and the somewhat shoddy performance would be largely forgiven however by the robustness of the job system and the Anthology would ultimately sell an estimated 364 000 copies in North America by 2004 but it seemed most fans continued to stick with the fan translation meanwhile the Japanese of final fantasy collection set a 1999 repackaging of the PlayStation versions of final fantasies four five and six would sell over 412 000 copies by Year's End becoming the 31st best-selling game in Japan that year while the Game Boy Advance version would be praised for its localization the other General criticisms regarding the game's characters narrative and structure would persist upon its release in 2006. this version would also unfortunately end up competing against the Nintendo DS remake of Final Fantasy 3 in North America during the 2006 holiday season a season which also saw the release of Final Fantasy 12 for the PlayStation 2. a truly crowded time and one which would once again Place Final Fantasy V in the underdog position being a Game Boy Advance game released two years into the life of its successor of course the DS could play ff5 Advance it was backwards compatible with GBA games but given the choice between paying 40 dollars for a gba game when that platform was on the way out or paying the same price for a game made for the hot new system most people would probably opt for the latter unfortunately the only sales figures we have for ff5 Advance are for Japan where it sold to just shy of 206 60 000 copies as of December thirtieth two thousand seven judging by the ff3 remakes domestic sales of 990 000 copies being more than double that of the 460 000 sold in North America by August 2007 I strongly suspect that ff5 Advance didn't fare particularly well over here commercially and yet thanks to the new localization many fans had begun to Herald it as not only the first truly worthwhile way to play the game officially in English but as the definitive version of the game but because of what may have been low sales emulation once again became the optimal way for many fans to experience it it's only thanks to the pixel remaster that we now have a legitimate way of playing Final Fantasy 5 on current platforms that is easily available affordable and has a good localization without having had to wish on a monkey's paw to get it for 25 years Final Fantasy V has been strongly associated with emulation piracy and fan translations its official releases were constantly burdened by adverse conditions be it poor localization crashes lag long load times low availability absurd second-hand prices ugly and inconsistent art styles or half thought out UI and as a result it remains largely overlooked in the western world today while in Japan Final Fantasy V continues to be celebrated as not just one of the best in the series but one of the best games of all time elsewhere it practically never sees any recognition outside the confines of the Final Fantasy franchise itself and even then its placements on best of lists tend to gravitate towards the Middle with fleeting flirtations with both the lower and higher ends fans tend to chalk this up to the game originally not being released on the Super Nintendo outside Japan and based on the frequency with which both ff4 and 6 are discussed over here as some of the best games ever made I'm inclined to agree but that's purely speculation after all today final fantasy is known for its interesting stories and characters and while I do like the cast of five I recognize that they aren't nearly as developed as characters from later entries or even in my opinion its predecessor and that's to say nothing of its story I've seen some suggest that the story is meant to be a satire or a parody of RPG narratives but this doesn't exactly track it plays its tropes pretty straight and doesn't highlight any supposed absurdities inherits to traditional or cliche storytelling in the genre the GBA script leans much more in the comedic Direction but this is the result of a punched up localization the game isn't trying to Lampoon RPG conventions it's mainly using them as a backdrop for its gameplay but for a lot of people that's not enough to hook them or for them to forgive a mostly paint by numbers narrative but those who love Final Fantasy V really love it and its influence on the franchise can be felt through the job system which has seen further iterations in Final Fantasy XI the Zodiac releases of 12 13 and 14. it's even made its way into other Square Enix games most notably Bravely Default considering the relatively simplistic nature of everything else it has to offer it's understandable that this would be the aspect of the game which would be carried forward and rightfully so in fact the job system would become the focus of an annual charity event the four job Fiesta in which fans raise money for various Charities through playing Final Fantasy V with a randomly selected set of jobs one from each of the four crystals a testament to not only the versatility of the game's mechanics but to the love and compassion of those who adore this particular entry entertaining others for a good cause Final Fantasy V has had an interesting history outside of Japan and in my opinion it's one of the most overlooked and to an extent misunder stood entries in the series its engaging gameplay and strong character moments make up for its threadbare story and the humor is a nice garnish maybe later entries have more to offer players today but if it wasn't for the calculated risk taken with ff5 they would probably have looked very different because even if they don't exactly use a job system they would still have character building and customization options which would be cut from a similar cloth for that reason I'm confident in saying that Final Fantasy V is not only one of the most fun and replayable installments but also one of the most important games in the franchise thank you even when the odds were stacked against them hironobu sakaguchi and the rest of the final fantasy team were elated to see the fifth installment achieve such tremendous success but with the market for RPGs becoming increasingly saturated there was a renewed pressure to keep the series fresh to retain player interest to that end sakaguchi wanted to flip the focus once again from gameplay to narrative and characters specifically with a large ensemble cast but as his duties as an executive would begin to take priority he would step out of the director's chair for the first time in Series history as he settled into the role of a producer he would hand the directorial Reigns over to his new partner and protege yoshinori katase leaving him in charge of bringing together the disparate character arcs of several writers into a cohesive whole the pressure was on As the First Time director had to Cobble together not just another Final Fantasy but the most ambitious final fantasy yet [Music] thank you [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Andrew Bluett

Views: 48,299

Keywords: video essay, analysis, Andrew Bluett, LordDrubie, retrospective, review, Final Fantasy XVI, FF5, FF7 Rebirth, Square Enix, Squaresoft, PlayStation, SNES, Nintendo, Yoshinori Kitase, Exdeath, Butz, Bartz, Dragon Quest V, gametrailers retrospective, SaGa, PS5, FF16, chocobo, documentary, Japan, Japanese Asset Pricing Bubble, economy, RPG, retro, Job, FF14, Super Famicom, Legend, Adventure, Mana, GBA, Advance, Pixel Remaster, Switch, PS4, Faris, Galuf, Lenna, Cara, Krile, fan translation, RPGe, localization, trailer, demo

Id: CP39YJ2EMbY

Length: 161min 21sec (9681 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023