Hello all!
For the past week or so I have been in a total Final Fantasy mood; listening to FF soundtracks, playing the games and fantasizing about playing the games. The latest FF game I've played is number five, and that's what I'm going to write about today.
I once started playing Final Fantasy V on my phone but like so many other projects of mine I never finished the game. This time I decided to give the game another try with the latest Steam edition. What you notice immediately is that the character sprites have been updated, for better or worse. If I remember correctly, in the original version Faris, the male pirate captain is wearing a cape up until the point it's revealed that he is actually a she. In the Steam version Faris is not wearing a cape and though it is a little unclear and pixelated, you can still see that the character is obviously female. So there goes the big reveal, right in the beginning. I also think that the character photos next to text boxes don't quite match with how the character sprites look. For instance Faris and Lenna are blonde, but they're character sprites' hair colors are pinkish. Bartz is also a blonde, while his character sprite has brown hair. Where's the logic in that? I may be a bit too picky, but these are details that have seriously bothered me.
Let's talk about the story in the game, just a little bit. Personally I think that the story is pretty average and predictable. You have four crystals on the verge of breaking and your main character and his friends become the chosen ones to protect the crystals in question. Each crystal represents one of the elements, wind, fire, water and earth. Once a crystal shatters, the element in question stops working in the entire world. Once all of them shatter, something terrible happens (won't spoil that for you guys, since there is so little to spoil about this story...) Overall, the whole point of the game is to save the world. So our main character, Bartz, hooks up with a princess looking for her dad, an old man with memory loss and a pirate captain with a secret or two. The characters do develop during the story but the reveals about their pasts aren't as drastic as in some other Final Fantasy games. Which is acceptable, as the game was released in 1992 before something as groundbreaking as Chrono Trigger, for instance.
Even though some of the details in the Steam version I don't like, I have thoroughly enjoyed the first 20 hours of playing FFV. Since I'm a huge FFVII and materia-system fan, I never got into the whole jobs-system. That has changed with my experience of FFV. In the beginning you start as a freelancer, but later on every crystal you encounter will give you more jobs. The first one, the Earth crystal, gives you knight, monk, thief, white mage, black mage and blue mage. But don't worry, in the end you are going to have so much to choose from that perfecting your team becomes nearly impossible, unless you know exactly what to do (I don't!). The most interesting part is that by leveling a job you get different abilities. So let's say that you want to use both white and black magic for one character. If you have learnt the appropriate abilities, you simply choose white mage as a job which allows you to use all of its abilities to full potential, plus you choose black magic as an ability. This way you have a character that knows both offensive and defensive magic. Quite handy, until you get the red mage that can use both black and white magic.
Let's talk about my current team, for instance. In my game Bartz is a knight, because its the only class that can use the Blood Sword that drains hit points from an enemy. Unfortunately the sword's accuracy is nonexistant. That's why Bartz is equipped with the Jump ability that comes from the Dragoon class. With Jump, the Blood Sword always hits. There are better combinations for sure, but I have come to love the Jump ability. Galuf is a Black Mage, because I want him to learn the ga-spells (Firaga, thundaga etc.). On top of that he has the Summoner ability which allows him to be of great aid to the entire team. Summoning Golem secures the team from all physical attacks. Golem has become almost a necessity to me in every fight. Lenna is a White Mage, because sooner or later I want someone to learn Curaga. Hastega is also going to be very useful to me eventually, so that's why I change her job to Time Mage every once in a while. Currently Time Magic is her ability. I keep changing the entire team's roles but Faris has been a constant for me. For the past 10 hours he has been a ninja. Dual weild plus throw, what else do you need?
This was a shorty but I'll write more once I start playing something new, or old. I'm very tempted to start playing FFVIII again, but I just hate the card minigame. I suppose it's a little fun in its way but not when you keep losing all your cards. Give me a FFVIII mod that deletes the card minigame!
